Is MSR Platonic?

I field this question occasionally.

"Hey, geophf, love your work [shameless self-plug], but is MSR platonic?"

Hm. Is MSR platonic?

Well, what, actually, is platonic love? Is it a love of mutual admiration entirely lacking in a sexual component? Is that what platonic love is?

Nope.

'Platonic' love, originally, was when Plato, and his students ... effed young boys, so they could keep their minds off the local girls, so they could think about philosophy. "Platonic" love wasn't. It never was. Platonic love was very, very carnal, and homosexual.

It's fascinating how that word, originally meaning something very clear and direct, has come to mean something nearly entirely the opposite: some vague, ambiguous, neutered, watered-down excuse to hide one's true feelings behind 'friendship' because either or both parties are too scared to show what they really feel because they might lose 'this.' 'This' being this frustrating masquerade of 'niceness' and 'sincerity' to cover over true feelings, but 'this' is all we have now, and we can't risk losing that for a real friendship or a real relationship, because I don't want to scare him or her away, because if I do that, then I'll really have nothing, instead of having this ambiguous nothing that I don't really have, anyway.

Hm. So, is MSR platonic? Oh, and by the way, how are your 'friendships' going for ya?

I always love answering that question by saying what platonic is, and then asking it right back to the asker.

MSR brings out a lot of feelings in the readers, particularly feelings of who they are as people. It's really 'interesting' to read reviewers' reactions, because it's always about how they are dealing with their own feelings and thoughts, even if they attack MSR by proxy or transference.

I like those reviews. A lot. "geophf, when are you going to get away from people dealing with their feelings already! I can't deal with mine, so I don't want to deal with other people dealing with theirs."

Great.

My best chapter, savaged by someone bored with all this touchy-feely stuff.

Or, "I'm tired of Bella whining! Rosalie should just off her. I can't deal with people being sick and when people get sick around me, I just want them to die."

Somebody actually wrote that. But that's okay, that's not really them expressing their real feelings. After all, "It's just fan fiction."

Keep believing that. Keep believing that what you say and what you think, even if it's just your thoughts and feelings about fan fiction, have no bearing on who you are and your life. Keep living that disassociated life that objectifies everything around you. Hitler didn't have bad people to do his bidding, no, he had people "just follow orders," so it "wasn't their fault."

"It's just fan fiction, so I can say anything I want about it because it doesn't matter. It's not me, it's just my views about a fictional situation that I would totally repeat because that's how I think."

Yeah. Keep believing that.

That's one type of reader, you know: the kind that lets others do the thinking for them. They typically don't like MSR, because it's "slow" and hard for them to "understand."

On the other hand, I like reading reviews where somebody got something that they could take away something I put into that chapter, my heart, that is, and carried it in their own. Because why? Because they opened their heart, maybe for the first time, looked inside, saw something there that they didn't see before, and, seeing it, left a better person.

Not because something I wrote. I'm simply a catalyst or a cipher. No, it's because they went up to the mirror and truly looked.

I'm glad I was there to see you look into your heart. Thank you for looking.