To be perfectly honest, that was just meant as a lighthearted joke, which I would not have made if you hadn’t already engaged with the thread on its terms after your initial comment. It wasn’t meant as anything else, and I’m sorry that you seem to have taken it as a slight.
If you want a serious answer: Sentinel Comics is not just the card game any more, and arguably it was never just the card game. What made it succeed, and made it sing, was that it was portrayed as a snapshot of a much larger and more expansive world, a world that is now reflected in Sentinels of the Multiverse, Sentinel Tactics, the Sentinel Comics RPG, the Sentinels of Freedom video game, and the Letters Page podcast.
With so many outputs, many of which directly involve narrative, the notion of whether romance is part of the game mechanics is going to be pretty heavily involved in what output you’re looking at. Recovery scenes in the RPG are going to be based on romance, the Letters Page stories will often involve romance, plot lines in the video game will touch on romance and romantic partners will appear and have appeared in the Definitive Edition. So yes, romance is a part of things.
And the follow-up is: it’s fine not to like an aspect of a thing, but if that’s the case, you shouldn’t take part. I had assumed that since you got involved with a couple of pairings you were taking part, but it now feels rather like you’re trying to define how other people are allowed to have fun. I wasn’t being sarcastic - La Commodora and Arataki are a good pairing, for the reasons you mentioned. I added an extra wrinkle with the goal of spurring discussion. I don’t know why you’re so insistent on not taking the compliment, but honestly this has happened just about every time that we’ve interacted, so I’m just going to apologize and stop engaging with you from now on.