You can call me MsJarvis...

Really, we are. You keep us up at night. All you do is stare at your screen, scrolling and typing and clicking and posting. You’ve probably got a whole queue of posts dedicated to this shit, right? Weirdo. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any friends?

Of course you don’t. You’re here! And if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you went looking for it.

That’s where our problem begins.

Joel clicks his fingers in front of your face. “Hey. Are you even listening to me?”

“What?” you ask, looking up from your phone. You’ve been talking to your only friend again; a gray floating head with shades on. You’re not sure what it is about them, this faceless figure: they just get you.

“Unbelievable,” Joel says. He shakes his head and struts off.

“I was listening,” you call, chasing after him. “I heard you.”

“What’d I say?”

“You said something about immorality. And therapy. About me needing therapy. Right?”

His jaw clenches, releasing some sort of disapproving grunt. He gauges the distance between you, making sure it’s a respectable, appropriate five feet before he responds. “That’s about it, yeah.”

“Yeah…” You scratch your head. “And what do I need therapy for again?”

Well, that sets him off.

His eyes widen in shock. He gestures between your body and his, gaping. “How about you trying to dream up some world where you and I are in a sexual relationship? I mean, my God, Fellow Legal Adult, it’s like you’re attracted to me or something.”

Fellow Legal Adult. This is his new thing, the nickname he’s been using since baby girl is too inappropriate in today’s climate. He calls his fictional daughters baby girl, and you’re wrong and sick and twisted for enjoying the sound of it in his waxy Texan accent.

“I just thought it might be some fun to imagine it,” you admit. “I don’t actually want to do it, I just want to play pretend and maybe write a story about doing it.”

“No,” Joel says. “Writing a story about something is the exact same as doing it. Every work of fiction ever is actually the writer’s endorsement of that thing. Shakespeare has been cancelled for years over Macbeth, or did you miss that Twitter thread?”

You pull at the skirt of your sundress. Shit – my bad, you’re not wearing a sundress. That’s overdone. Also kinda slutty. You’re only wearing it for easy access, right? Come on, now. This isn’t one of those fics from 2023, with zero plot and just sex. We’re better than that. We’re literates.

That’s why we’re on Tumblr.

You pull at the skirt of your frock. It’s now ankle-length and much more self-respecting. “I’m confused,” you reply. “So you’re saying no?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying yes?”

Joel sighs, taking another conservative step back. “No. We can’t. This would be wrong.”

“What’s so wrong with it?” you ask, impatient now. You’ve met all the required terms and conditions of pursuing a romantic relationship with a man who does not, never has, and never will exist outside of the confines of your imagination.

You’re not his best friend’s daughter, because – ew, right? Who the fuck wants to fantasize about a clandestine summer fling with a mature, intelligent man who only has eyes for you, against all odds and rules of society; a man who would put his closest friendship on the line because you are just that insatiable to him; a man who treats you with the respect, trust, and – my God, I’m about to say it – the love that no other boy ever has or ever could?

It’s not like you’re calling him daddy, either. What fucking twisted piece of shit would do that? Doesn’t Joel know about the decades of usage of that term, the sheer number of people who buy into such whimsy, the little fantasy one might like to indulge in while existing on this hellish lump of rock and partake in sex so immoral, so filthy, so – incestuous? And here you are, promising to refrain from such practice. Protecting him and yourself from the dreaded patriarchy, which solely oppresses fictional characters, as everybody knows.

Really, he should be grateful.

Jesus, what else? You dress in a frock and petticoat; your ankles are never on display. You don’t allow yourself the fun of pretty, girlish clothes which feed the patriarchy and may lure the untrained eye into thinking you are – oh, Christ, a child! In actual fact, you’re fifty-two – supremely middle-aged – just like Joel. Actually, you never were a teenager, nor a twenty-year-old, not a dreaded, unsightly, geriatric thirty-year-old at all. And if you ever were, you sure as shit wouldn’t write fiction about it, because it is uncouth, tasteless, and downright predatory to imagine yourself a day younger than you currently are.

No. You marched straight from your poor mother’s body, armed with a smartphone in one hand, X-formerly-Twitter pre-downloaded, with some hefty conservative views to punch into it as soon as you learned how to spell the four most important words: romanticize, fetishize, sexualize and normalize. You’ve spent your entire life hunched over the thing, foaming at the mouth and wiping thick globs of saliva with the back of your hand; screaming at people you don’t know, will never know, and reminding them what ugly, loathsome, untalented, worthless people they are.

What the fuck isn’t there to like about you?

Joel sighs. He shakes his head, then reaches around to his back pocket for his phone.

“I have to check what the people online would say about this,” he says. “You know, the ones with blogs dedicated to policing this kind of thing. They give their summers up for this, Fellow Legal Adult, they’re really brave and inspiring and I owe them a lot for keeping my reputation safe. With all the innocent survivors I’ve killed over the years – not to mention the entire hospital I shot up to save one little girl – I really don’t need a completely fictional relationship to turn me into some kind of bad guy.”

“But it’s just fantasy,” you say. “None of it is real. You’re not even real.”

His jaw drops. “Excuse me?”

You scrape together an explanation.

“I just meant: nothing we do actually means anything. We’re just words on this person’s screen. Look at them, reading about us right now. We’re figments of their imagination! I wonder if I have brown or blue or green eyes; I wonder if you have a full beard or you’re the other guy with the curly hair. It wouldn’t matter either way, because neither of us exist! Right?”

“Not the point.” Joel shakes his head, logging in to his account. “It romanticizes unhealthy sex practices.”

“Joel,” you whisper, with love and patience, holding his little brain like it’s a smooth lump of damp clay. “We’re not actually having sex. Same as you didn’t actually blitz a hospital. And anyway, if I consent and you consent, and nobody gets hurt, what’s unhealthy about sex?”

“It normalizes kink and taboo, that’s what.” He nods, dignified, proud of the argument. It took him a whole hour to come up with. His brain grew one wrinkle in the process. For a little extra punch, he adds, “It’s propaganda I’m not falling for.”

“Using normalize and taboo in the same sentence feels a little contradictory, Joel. You’re starting to sound like one of those freaks with a stan account dedicated to Ellie or Tommy.”

He rolls his eyes and shoves his phone back into his pocket. They’re debating the ethics of reblogging other writers’ work right now, and he hasn’t the time to get into it. “You wouldn’t understand,” he grunts. “You’re fetishizing me, you’re glorifying your own abuse and manipulation, and you’re forcing everybody else to be on board with it too. It’s disgusting, Fellow Legal Adult, I’m actually disgusted.”

“Nobody has to be on board with anything they don’t want to,” you say. “That’s a pretty basic rule of thumb in anything, but especially sex. Are you sure you’ve had enough sex to understand the basic concept of consent? Maybe if you spent less time yelling in your tags, someone might want to…”

He laughs. “You’re just a girl who doesn’t know the ideologies she’s playing into.”

“Which ideologies are those?”

He hesitates. “Patriarchy,” he spits out, the word wobbling across his tongue. It sounds like a big word and it victimizes women, so it must be right. It seemed to come up a lot when he asked ChatGPT for an argument which both liberates and subjugates women. He has no idea what it actually means or how it ties into this discussion.

“So, let me get this straight. You think you’re punching a hole in the patriarchy by talking down to women and comparing them to real-life criminals, all for writing some stories on a fandom website?”

He hesitates. Again. He’s not used to having human interaction without his keyboard to hide behind.

Also: he hesitates because he’s not real. I can’t stress that enough. I’m making this dude do whatever the fuck I say. Look, now he’s on a pogo stick. He’s bouncing all over the fucking joint. Joel would never pogo, I hear you say. Too bad! Now he’s going no hands. Damn, this guy’s good.

“Why would women want to fantasize about some of the shit you write?” Joel asks.

Fuck. That’s a great question. I better make him put the pogo stick down.

“Sexuality is a complicated thing,” you reply. “It always has been. We’ve never really understood human desire; that’s kind of why it’s such a heavily-covered topic in media. It’s not supposed to be interpreted literally. The crazy thing is literature is full of metaphors and symbolism, but people only have a hard time understanding that shit when it comes to erotica.”

He scoffs, twisting the pogo stick into the ground. “So you want me to believe you don’t actually want to fuck the people you’re writing about?”

You purse your lips. “I feel like it says more about your intelligence level that you can’t wrap your head around the concept of a metaphor, than it does mine. Maybe you wanna read more books and less anonymous messages?”

“No, thank you,” he says, waving his hand. “I don’t like to be made to feel uncomfortable. By anything. Ever. I live in my bubble of legality and morality. We’re all good people here. That’s why we have an obligation to bully the living shit out of anyone we disagree with, and threaten their personal safety in the process.”

“Right.” You back up, dragging the heels of your sneakers – sorry, your Victorian boots, no ankles. Suddenly, the thought of sleeping with someone so stupid and immature doesn’t feel as fun anymore.

“Where are you going?” he asks, pogoing after you. His voice shudders as the stick makes contact with the earth.

“I think I’m gonna close this doc,” you mumble, gathering your frock as you jog. “I’ll just open a new one and write a version of you who’s normal and doesn’t talk out of his ass as much.”

“Good luck with that,” he replies. “That’s totally out of character for me.”

In one click, he pauses, glitches, pogo stick springing – before he plummets into the recycle bin on your screen. The silence is bliss.

You look around the room. Outside, birds sing and cars soar by on the street. You remember that the real world exists; with real rules and real codes of conduct which help to protect real people. With real patriarchy: not fictional girls in sundresses who like summers of sex, but instead an insidious rot which runs so deep through society, it threatens to permeate the fantastical.

Here on your screen, a blank page and cursor blinking, just waiting for the stories and silliness you might spill into it – none of that shit has to matter. You are safe within the realm of fiction to be whoever you like, do whatever you want. Even shit that makes other people uncomfortable. Think of it like an intellectual jungle gym for adults.

You can paint yourself brave, beautiful, funny, smart, sexy. You can chase your wildest dreams, accomplish the impossible, fraternize with your favorite characters and exist in faraway universes. You can be desired by everybody you ever wanted, or nobody at all. You can explore things that make you feel good, things that make you feel scared, and no harm can ever come from it.

Hell, you might even learn a thing or two about yourself in the process.