#hey....

Why the hell would you do that:

So, in the spring of 2024, I was busy. I started planning several fics at once, and I reactivated my Tumblr after having deleted it at the start of the year in a hissy fit. I got over myself rather fast and realized the joy of sharing my work online and having people talk to me about it, is too great to be ruined by momentary discomfort. 

Still, I set some rules in my head about how much of myself I was allowed to share with people, to avoid having my unspoken boundaries being overstepped again. 

One of the fics I started planning that spring was “everything is romantic”. For all intents and purposes, it’s a rather personal piece of work, and anyone who knows even a lick about me would immediately realize just how personal it is. 

Something about that didn’t sit right with me. I wanted the liberty to post—what I thought was— a really fun and good fic without having my personhood attached to it so closely.

So I created another account and lived in peace for 8 months.

What ruined to your peace my guy:

Glad you asked.

Well, aside from the fact that I couldn’t help my dumb self and kept getting personal in the author’s notes and comments, completely blowing up my already awful cover, and essentially hiding behind my finger—the fic got a tiny bit popular. 

And I do mean a tiny bit. It didn’t blow up, but it did gain an unexpected amount of attention. Given that the expected attention was zero, anything can be a surprise, but the actual surprise was how many people related to the fic, given the subject matter.

I set out to write a portrayal of asexuality that was uniquely curated to my personal experience. Not only did I think no one would relate to that degree, but I was also kind of shitting my pants about it. We already have little representation as is, and there I go writing about two very complicated and very flawed people on opposite ends of the spectrum trying to make something weird out of their situation. Who would fuck with that, right?

Well. Turns out hundreds of people. And they fuck with it heavy. 

I got so many gutting comments of people saying the fic helped them understand themselves better or redefined their idea of sex and love, or that they felt seen, or that they learned something new— it was all so much but in the best way possible.

I thought, it’s a real shame that all of these people don’t have a leeway to talk to me more even though I have a Tumblr account (and really really want them to), and I don’t get to talk more about the fic in return. I had essentially trapped myself in an oppressive system of my own making that was entirely imaginative. Like what the fuck? Who creates a hidden identity to escape their already hidden identity ?????? Me, apparently, but that’s insane. I can literally do whatever I want.

So this is me doing whatever I want.

How did we get here?

It started as a crack fic, okay?

I meant to do an aroace retelling of that very old trope where people try and have sex for experience/educational purposes and then inevitably fall in love. I think Yuuji even mentions/ makes fun of that in-text. Generally, the idea that itafushi agrees to sleep together because they’re on the precise opposite ends of the spectrum, and so it wouldn’t create conflict, was hilarious to me. But then it also became kinda tender. Beneath the wordplay and the awkward jokes and the sitcom humor, I found myself really taking an interest on whether this could actually work out. And it could, but it would require me to put my Serious Author cap on, and really try to build a narrative here. To answer some proper existential questions.

Ace representation in media leaves a lot to be desired. It’s like scriptwriters are allergic to the word, for starters. And when they say it through gritted teeth, it’s in the voice of a “perfect” ace person. The one who is 100% okay with being who they are and is totally unfazed by society’s standards and expectations. The one who dismisses all kinds of traditional relationships and has never felt envy towards them. The one who has never yearned to be “normal”, if only to make people shut up and mind their business. And when they do yearn to be normal, it's expressed in such a surface-level manner it maked your skin crawl. The one who can sit and justify their existence over and over and over—

That was a bit too clean for my liking. 

So I fell into 3 separate rabbit holes: 1) jkk’s fruitful soil of wonderful dynamics, 2) the inherent eroticism of video games, 3) and the intricacies of queer relationships.

Why Itafushi:

JJK hyperfixation wave aside, it was a pretty easy choice. For Megumi, this is almost canon to me. The second he answers Todo’s infamous question by naming a personality trait instead of a physical one, I clocked him. Alarms started beeping in my head like; Ace person. Ace person. Ace person.

Now, on why he’s not sex-averse, that’s also simple: I am not. I’m out here writing the most self-indulgent piece of fic there is, and it provides me with a great opportunity to just talk about what I know. What I know is that sex is a complicated and fascinating thing that I have absolutely no need to partake in. So that was a good base to start with. 

I’m not sure if anyone noticed and didn’t say, but I meant for him to come off as some form of autistic too, because again—that’s almost canon to me. Black-and-white thinking, difficulty articulating emotions, overachiever, weird relationship with empathy…you get the jist.

For Yuuji, things were more interesting. What little mention aromantic (but not asexual) people get, it’s always in the context of snubbing relationships of all kinds. I wanted to flip the coin on that. What if aromanticism is not the absence of love but the abundance of it? What if you have so much love to give to so many people and distinguishing it into different “kinds” diminishes it? What if that’s not the point?  

And who better to burden with that dilemma than the personification of abundance in jjk :D

Yuuji’s character to me, is about a certain gluttony. Canibalism aside, he is a person who we’ve seen wanting it all, but for others and not himself. He can’t help it. He can’t just stop at investigating Junpei, he has to befriend him and come to his house and meet his mom, and hold him as he dies. He can’t just learn to be a sorcerer quietly, he has to wreak havoc across all dynamics simply with how likable he is. He can’t just accept that people will die at his hands,,he wants them to have a “good” death. 

To take a character like that and basically tell him there’s something universally “wrong” with the way he loves people, creates some creatively fucked up inner conflict that I wanted to put my fingers on, so badly. And because he is who he is, of course, that character will emerge on the other side of that conflict, covered in his own blood, and say “You know what, that’s okay. I’m okay with it.”

Why everything else besides Itafushi:

In classic “me” fashion, I could not limit myself to writing about one thing. Yes, itafushi is the heart of the story, but the way the story unfolds has a lot to do with everything else around them. 

I made it into a modern AU because I wanted everything to be as grounded as possible. No extravagant college parties or crazy adventures but really just a bunch of studying, extra work, and two (sometimes more) people getting to know each other in a dorm. 

Unlike with the Non-Place though, I wanted everything outside the dorm to feel real and important too, so I started building their lives as sensically as I could. I wanted to give Yuuji the broke, raggedy college student starter pack, with too much going on and not enough time to do it all. He is effectively alone but also has a myriad of people around him. He has no true parent or guardian, but Choso is mentioned to be in his life. Then Todo is taking care of him at work. Then he and Kugisaki take care of each other. Then Nanami tries to join, subtly, without overstepping. 

Similarly, Megumi has a whole army of people around him but acts as though he’d prefer to be alone. His family is complicated, the way everything with him is complicated. Having him be close in a way that matters to Tsumiki was a no-brainer. Canon insists that Tsumiki is the most important person in Megumi’s life, and I’m a sucker for sibling dynamics, so I wanted her impact to be as strong as possible, even in the background. I also really wanted to examine a reality in which Toji tries. He’s halfway there emotionally, but not physically. Still, there’s damage and issues to unpack, but there's effort there. There is quiet, almost invisible progress.

And I guess I should talk about Gojo now.

Gojo steals the fucking show again:

I swear this happens every time I try to write him in the background. He just refuses to be wallpaper, he always jumps at the front, and I just let him.

There are small parallels and grand parallels with him, even in canon. The small, is that between Megumi and him which I’ve always loved. Both being exceptionally gifted in their respective fields and having said giftedness come with a certain amount of emotional immaturity/ constipation. Both having to be adults and develop a sense of responsibility far too early. Both having this one person who can undo them like no one else. 

With Toji being present and not Evil, I was also given a lot of wiggle room to explore how his dynamic with Megumi is not exactly parental or sibling-like, or even a mentorship, but a fourth fucked up thing. It was interesting trying to correlate Megumi’s obvious admiration for him with the endless frustration that Gojo’s immaturity causes.

Again, like with most things in this fic, Gojo started out as a crack presence. But the more I wrote, the more my hands deviated across the keyboard and I started involuntarily fleshing him out. 

What are his mannerisms like with a cane? How is he a professor so young? Is he any good at it? Why or why not? What’s the deal with him and the Fushiguro family? How is his relationship to Tsumiki different than his with Megumi?

Why, of all the things I could make him, I made him a game dev?????

The Game:

I got so many comments saying that the plotline of Hidden Inventory and the game metaphor was an unexpected pleasure and it made me so happy. I love games, I really do. I didn’t get to play them a lot as a kid because I lacked the resources, but I was always fascinated by the uniqueness of the medium. 

“everything is romantic” is, at its core, a short story about carving out your own path in everything that you do. It’s also a story about intimacy in its many forms. And to me, there’s a surprising amount of intimacy in the way video games carve out new paths, depending on who is playing them. 

This passage at the start of chapter 7 where Gojo mentions they’re a bit like sex—yes, it’s played up for shits and gigs, but ultimately it’s true. Video Games are the only form of art in which the consumer is a supremely active participant, every time. The devs and artists think about the player all the time. You’re not just watching the journey of the main character unfold, you are the main character. Their choices are your choices, their mistakes are your mistakes, their wins, their losses, their struggles, and feelings. All yours. 

Many people questioned the choice of having the game revolve around Toji’s canon arc, but there are two reasons I wrote it:

1- I think games that have you playing as the antagonist and weigh on your choices a ton, are fascinating, given how interlinked the player and the character are (the choice here being whether to kill Amanai knowing she is a child and then whether to fight Gojo a second time for the sake of pride, knowing you probably will lose) 2- I was rereading the Culling games arc and in the Zenin massacre, Naoya says something extremely interesting: He says that only Gojo could ever understand Toji because they were equal in strength and ego. So I thought of a modern version of Satoru constructing an adventure about someone who dies at the hands of his own hubris and sick pride would be fun.

Now as to Geto’s involvement, this is where the bigger parallel comes into place: itafushi vs satosugu. Their dynamics mirror each other perfectly, but the mean kicker is that itafushi succeeds. They get it right, they break the spell. Gojo and Geto’s story to me is about how there can be an abundance of love and it still won’t matter without an abundance of understanding and communication. 

This is also the part of the story where I messed the most with formatting choices. All that you hear from Geto and Gojo’s past is through interview transcribes and Megumi’s own biased memories. I wanted to build this almost-myth around them. As though the reality of their relationship is a tender secret, not yet sullied but how it ended. Queerplatonic to its core.

Which I guess brings us to rabbit hole number 3:

Research and Shame: 

I’ve been out as asexual for years now, and over those years I’ve accumulated a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings about that. Most of them good. Some of them, not so much. And once my head is not buried in the sand of those feelings, and I take a few steps back, I realize they are so interesting and so worth writing about.

But just because I was writing from experience, it didn’t mean it would turn out good and honest. Being stuck in my head, with my limited understanding of myself and said experiences, put me in a weird spot when I tried to write about them. Even if people didn’t relate or didn’t get it, I at least wanted to sound honest, and not like I’m checking items off of an “ace core memories” list. 

But still, there are things that are universal in how they feel, if not how they play out. Like the first time you develop feelings for a person, then you think about them touching you and shriveling up at the implications. Like there’s some quintessential wrongness about relating romance to sex. Like wondering if you’re missing out on something you’re almost certain you don’t want. 

One thing that’s common across all ends of the spectrum, is the crippling sensation of Shame. There’s the inherent shame of being queer, of course. Then there’s the shame about your specific kind of queerness, imposed on you by heteronormative standards. The shame that says you are an unfeeling robot or a prude or a deviant or disgusting or abnormal. Then, there’s the shame you impose on yourself about feeling shame at all. The shame that feels like a betrayal to your own community. As if you should never dare wish that you were part of the majority, because it makes you sound like them. Shame, shame, shame. It was hard, trying to put all these indigestible feelings into scenes, let alone specific words. But aside from a depressing process, that was also not enough. 

Not being aromantic but wanting to write about it meant I had to be careful so I spent some time in aro online spaces trying to get beneath Wikipedia-esque definitions and understand these people’s lived experience. All the posts listed in Chapter 2 that Yuuji reads online are real comments I found on various forums, written by real people. Some are rephrased (like the last 2) but some are raw, just as I read them and felt them. I found it fascinating how all of these people shared an identity but had such different perceptions of it and experiences around it. They felt all manners of different ways about themselves and they were each consumed by it enough to post these feelings online. The internet is dope like that.

I also looked a bunch into Queerplatonic Relationships and that was woefully unhelpful and supremely helpful all at once. Everyone described it differently, which is wonderful, but also makes it into a non-word after a bit. Which is great again because queerness is inherently something outside of the binary. It can be about sex and also have nothing to do with sex at all. It can be about touches that are “more than” friendly, but who can define the limits of friendship anyway? It can be about intimacy in all of its forms, and then more. 

So how does a narrative navigating something like this resolve itself?

What’s with the ending? 

That was honestly the scariest part. There were so many ways I could have gone wrong and fucked up here, and instead of telling a story about two people discovering what a relationship means for them, completely divorced from heteronormative standards,, I could end up sounding like “see guys?? everyone can be fixed!!! you just need to find the right person!!!”— which I would hate. 

The point is to say “fuck labels” but not in the way a 6ft guy with a pornstach and a skateboard says “fuck labels” to manipulate you into being exclusive with him sexually without him doing any of the emotional labor required to sustain a relationship. I mean “fuck labels” in the sense that: what the fuck is even a romantic partner? Is it someone you have sex with??? No, people do that all the time with strangers and with friends. Is it someone you have sex with feelings with??? Well yeah, but what’s the feeling?? Respect??? I sure hope you respect the strangers you fuck too. Love??? Don’t you love your friends with benefits, at least in some sense???? What are romantic feelings???? In what way is romantic love different from platonic, without relying on the crutch of sex???? Is it more intense??? Is it more unreasonable??? Does it warrant greater sacrifices??? 

If you can answer all these questions definitively without blinking, congrats. I couldn’t. Still can’t. I tried to, for the sake of writing this fic, but realized that me not knowing the answers makes for an infinitely better story. 

The point is not if they end up together, what they call each other, if they are exclusive, ect. The point is that they indubitably love each other in their own way. The point is that “love” is a word incapable of encompassing all that it is. The point is that it’s fluid and elusive and it creates problems, but as long as it’s there, that’s all you need to know. 

Cheesy afterthoughts:

To all the people who wrote me about me causing them to contemplate love and their idea of it; thank you! you caused me to contemplate the art of fic writing and sharing my work even if I think its not all that good! 

There are a gazillion other references I could list, and a whole lot of tiny details correlating to me, but that’s not really the point of the fic. I think it would break the magic if I told you exactly how much of this is real and how much is writer’s creativity.