I also think that hs/the hs fandom was responding to the way the internet was in the early 2010s. it's probably a cycle of influence but I will say that with books like htn whose authors originally wrote like. complex gothic sff angst fic, that type of writing isn't limited to the hs fandom at all. There was a whole time period where if your fandom was even a little sff oriented you would have people writing these epic fics with fantasy elements where two characters would have a wildly complex and fraught relationship destroying everything else in their path for the same amount of words as the holy bible. It's so hard to describe this vibe but I'd say like, gothic sff melodrama with unreliable narrators really had a moment in fandom in the hs time period. Some of that stuff influences the way I think about fiction to this day and like. I do believe muir a little when she says she didn't take anything in particular from hs because even though there are some similar choices she makes in her writing, that was kinda just the vibe back then too