It was interesting to read Caracalla's discussion of fanfiction and how it's a useful way for you to both converse with each other and explore the concepts you need to. Thank you for writing it.
It makes me wonder, what's it like reading fanfiction written by others or having fandom discussions?
Because, thinking about it, there are so many awful things that I put the fictional Caracalla and Geta through in fic and in discussions; it's very cathartic for me to do so. But I absolutely wouldn't want any of those awful things to happen to you two, being real people.
So how do you find reading about your fictional counterparts?
This is a really interesting question, thank you!! It's something we've actually alluded to a lot but always by pretending it wasn't about us at all because you know, passing as a singular person who is coherent and whose opinions make rational sense etc. So to recap, we typically don't like reading stuff that ends badly. All of our stories have an element of hope and we need that from the other stuff we read, too.
Geta has a really elaborate view of... like... what it means to be us and how we came to be and all that, it might be fun if he went full crazy on main and talked about that sometime. (Please?) But in short, you know how we've written those few stories where in the afterlife, we meet by the River Styx and don't pass beyond it? We just kind of go to other lives doing some eternal penance and going through stages of self-discovery and problem-solving with ourselves until we're "ready" to move on. So, the way we look at stories, it's like all (most) of them are true to their own worlds. Some of them have nothing to do with us beyond being parallels in some way, but many are very close to who we are and we can visit those places in writing or in our imagination or spiritually or in dreams or however, and glimpse into those other lives we've lived or that parts of us are living or lived or will live and so on. It's a really elaborate thing that... we should finish writing our NaNo fic because that's a lot of it, too.
Anyway, point being, other people's stories can be other lives "we" have lived, just like the movie is another life that "we've" lived, and all of our own stories are possible worlds and lives that we might have lived, or needed to visit and see for whatever reason. This is very spiritual. I didn't realise this was so spiritual. But the thing is, we don't cope well with seeing and living again the lives that are hopeless. We've been through a lot but we need to feel like... we're still moving somewhere. There are so many lives and places that only hurt and then nothing, and we never get to find safety or peace or comfort together, and never learn to understand each other, or one of us is left alone, or something of the sort. We don't know how to deal with those and they feel like branding irons inside. It feels like eating liquid metal. So we... usually can't and don't read sad stories.
Everything else goes, really. I mean, we've been through hell, it's nothing new to us. Usually it sparks conversation and makes us think of things we maybe wouldn't have realised needed addressing without the story. And even with the sad ones, we often might read a bit - we don't usually read tags before we start at all - and drop out before it gets bad so we can complete it on our own, find our way out of it.
So the pain and suffering and horrors don't really bother us. Neither does the funny stuff like kinks we'd never actually get into or whatever, though for whatever reason, shipping us with the wrong people does very much awfully, horribly get to us, I think because it feels so violating because of the trust thing and the whole vulnerability thing, and we're usually really vulnerable while reading too because it's still us processing our things. Which is why we don't read a lot! We can't trust that process to others without getting hurt a lot and often. But some writers we trust to do things right and we can lean into that and get on that journey with them, and that's usually really enlightening. It shows us things about ourselves that we maybe never even thought of or recognised.
And it's nice to read other people writing about us surviving, too, in particular. Even if the beginning and middle are terrible, or if it's really twisted, it's just nice to hear those stories. It's reassuring and it feels... loving, to see people rooting for us, and wanting us to find our ways through, even at our worst. Even if it's not "us" but it's their versions, their worlds, their own us - it's still nice.
It's also nice that you don't want bad things to happen to the us here, either. That's a sweet thing to say, really. It's probably stupid but we still don't really expect people to be kind or think of them as reliable or friendly, so it's... new.
Also as a post scriptum I guess, we also think of the most fucked up stuff all on our own. Just look at the bloodplay kinktober fic. Like that's up there for sure
