Mini-sode: Cartoon Love

Episodes with Gio coming THIS WEEK. We talk so much I haven't been able to edit them down to manageable episodes. I promise!!

I spoke to fictophile/fictosexual Cait Calder about what it’s like to have a fictional crush.

When I first talked about fictosexuality over at UnHerd, I got a lot of pushback: Why does this need to be labeled? Don’t all women do this?

To some extent, sure. The success of Twilight and Fifty Shades is illustrative. Before that, Stephen King wrote an entire book about women's tendency to fall in love not only with fictional characters but with fiction itself—Misery. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth both labeling and exploring. I’m not of the school of thought that the exercise of labeling these more fringe expressions of sexuality is excessive or decadent. If I’ve learned anything from being Terminally Online, it’s that most of these things aren’t “fake.” They’re unconventional and our language hasn’t caught up the way even television has impacted people’s emotional landscapes.

Online dating, objectum sexuality (when you fall in love with an object, like a robot or a rollercoaster), the limerence of writers like Dante Alighieri, fandom, divine devotion, and fictophilia all exist on a spectrum.

What are the contours of that spectrum, though? “Loneliness” isn’t a good enough answer. I’m still figuring it out.