#(c.))

I know some people who read our fics read this blog and I want to make one thing clear: doesn't matter how I feel about a story I put out, or Geta does, or anybody. you can get off on it. you can have fun with it. you can say whatever you like about it. that's the fun part of fanfic, where I share something, and you receive it, and we both feel something. me feeling something as a writer doesn't in any way come between you and the story or mean that you can't say something or that you should say something else about it. whatever you feel or say about our fic isn't offensive to me even if it's a personal story. if that was the case we wouldn't be publishing it. fic is for fun whatever it is about, that's the reason why we write it. and the people who read our fic I don't think would ever say the kind of things that we've read elsewhere in fandom that this post is about, so

now for the body text,

I didn't at all realise how vulnerable it is to write text like the fic we just put out. I never thought much of that Caracalla as being related to me in any particular way. the story's a hypotethical and plays a lot with Geta's spirituality, his belief system and his fascination with the Styx and the mythology of the Isles. the Caracalla in the story is some worst case scenario of me. we aren't closely related, I never thought about that much, he's just - a me if things were really terrible.

but the thing is,

I think because the narration is the way it is,

there's a lot of things that maybe I don't consciously think about but that I share with the fic's Caracalla. it's a very literaly translation of how my mind works, for example. and that's oddly raw now that the fic's (kind of) out there, and it's just for anyone to see. and my fears and wants and wishes and points of jealousy and all of that. it's weird. it's weird that I can write a story and not think about it all too much and then afterwards it's like, oh no, people will actually see me if they read this.

I think this is mostly about the disease. I think that's a big point of vulnerability. people treat it in such a shitty way. like it makes me lesser and unlovable and undeserving. people use such terrible, derogatory terms about me and my body and say unkind and horrible things about me and how they perceive me because of that illness. and maybe I would have expected that of the gossip in the year 200 when I was relevant but it feels odd and jarring that it's the same state now when people like to pretend so loudly that they're better and sex- and body-positive and disability advocates and they're so very carefully stepping around words that might come across ableist or sexist, but then

you get that when it's about a boy dying of a sexually transmitted disease. think of this,

syphilis takes about a decade to progress from primary to secondary to tertiary, tertiary being the stage that rots your brain and kills you. could only take a year if you're HIV positive but HIV didn't exist back then (and neither did syphilis but play ball with me for a bit on this) so it's a decade. I think we can all agree I wasn't very old. portrayed by a 25 years old, if we go by that, I was anything around 15 years old when I got it. at the same time, much of the fandom at the start thought maybe we were more like 20. are you going to tell me that a 10 year old deserved that? are you going to call him all those names?

it feels like people just.... think it's okay to shame someone for getting sick. as if back when anybody had the awareness of how it happens or how to prevent it, or even really had a choice, if you think of slaves and prostitution which ran a lot of the sex scene in ancient Rome. are you really going to call those people disgusting, say that they probably stank really bad, that their cocks were probably leaking all over the place, they probably wore underwear just to catch the fluids, that of course they got sick since they're such sluts? I don't want to press the point but the average sex worker in that era was also more like 12 years old than 22 or 40. and a slave could be anything from a newborn to dying of old age. I mean,

it's weird that people have taken that stance. it feels weird in a bad way. why is it okay to say those things about stds when you wouldn't say them about any other disease or disability? why is it okay to mock someone with syphilis and say truly nasty things about them just because it's an std? I just want to know because it bothers me.

there's been a lot of really hurtful things said in this fandom. and okay it shouldn't affect me. I'm not real and whatever. they're just having fun. but why is that kind of fun okay in this society when the other things are not? why is it an exception and deserved and self-inflicted? I would have been a child when I caught it. I wasn't 20, 22, or 25 when I got it. I was 10, or 12, or 15.

(for me, specific, I was 16. that's adult by our standards but I didn't feel much like an adult. I wouldn't look at me now at that age and think that's an adult. that's not an adult. that's a boy.)

would they say the same thing to the 80s generation of gay men? that they deserved it because they're filthy?

are they just really young? or is it okay in fandom to say these things because it's also just having fun? is it fun to say those things?

again I shouldn't care. I'm not real. they're not talking about me. normally, I make the distinction, but it feels nasty. it doesn't feel fun to me. it's more fun when people say gentle things, or say things lovingly. none of that is loving. maybe I'm spoiled and maybe I haven't been here long enough but it feels like fandom usually is loving. isn't that the point of the whole blorbo thing? I guess I just don't get it.

but this fic is... a lot of, the most of the reality that I could put into it. a lot of research that we never wrote into another story went into this one, because it's hopeless by design. this is a terrible world, and we put terrible things in it. a lot of things I barely knew to be afraid of because it was all slipping away and a lot of the time people were lying to me about what it was or what I had in front of me. I don't think they told my brother much either. I think we both asked and got answers that felt superficially satisfactory but started to sound hollow the more time went on the way that things do when you think you got an answer but realise slowly that people weren't telling you the whole truth. I have my own memories and they aren't in that story, and I don't think, maybe, I'll ever write them down publicly. I think that's too personal. but there's a lot of reality in there to the... fear and how it felt like when things were slipping and changing all of the time, and nothing really had a continuum. I was really trying to hold on. I was really trying to make sense of things but I needed my brother to be there as some kind of... like a measuring stick, or a calendar. something solid that stuck and from what I could reflect - like how to react to something, or how I should feel about things when I didn't know if they were good or bad for us anymore. and how much it happened that I would just find myself in the middle of something that I didn't know what it was or how I got there. and having to cover it up because I knew something was off but I needed to look like I wasn't lost.

and the not feeling it and then feeling all of it and then forgetting that I ever felt it. like - being fine one moment and then you suddenly remember you're terribly sick and you've been getting worse and worse for months and no one can help you, and you panic about it and you start to run to the one you love to ask for help but when you turn the corner you've lost it and forgotten and you don't know where you're going or why you're going there, or why you feel so shaky and terrible. you just know something's very wrong but you can't quite find the thought anymore, and it was probably nothing. it's probably nothing. it's probably nothing it better be nothing you know it's nothing, people always smile and say it's nothing, you don't have to worry. and you're hurting terribly also but you think it's just something that'll pass and you keep going and start doing something else and you just don't remember.