"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?"
The current draft of the main story (fka 'the main ficmess', now known as 'Tell Me Secrets That Make You Cry') I've posted on here is a sprawling, first-person quasi-journal-like... basically fanfic novel (533 1.5-spaced pages in a word document) that I started writing at the beginning of Covid as a way to privately indulge in and psychoanalyze my hyperfixation/special interest target of the day and get it all out of my system. ...It's been five years and while this 3rd draft is *basically* complete I'm still editing and adding little parts to the damn thing and steve perry/journey's still a special interest of mine, so let that be a lesson to you (make sure you love things that aren't cringe or-- more realistically and healthily-- be prepared to face your cringe, permit it to pass over you and through you, and be Strengthened by it so that only you remain). Ok yay!
The main character of the main ficmess isn't really steve, though. He started out as a very basic "what if steve but 6/6 kinsey scale gay and a little more scrappy and fighty with it" alternate timeline bizarro-Steve, but the more "what ifs" I added to it, the more he just started becoming something of his own guy? Julian Rajani (Jules, or Julie if he's feelin more femmey with it) is the name I gave him basically from the beginning, even though it's always been 100% fanfic. People can be a little silly about RPF, but I think it's fine generally speaking (and the more historical it is the more obviously fine it is). I like reading it. I just prefer writing with a bit of separation and it's personally healthier for me. It keeps the boundaries firmly in place. I like that Jules is kind of his own guy and becomes more and more that as the story progresses. I like allowing divergences from "[fan consensus]canon" personality to happen and following them to their in-story social and psychological conclusions, whatever those are. I like thinking about how the others would react to it. Maybe someday this can be the foundation/bones to something truly unique, but as it is, the setting and other characters are too close to their real-life counterparts to be anything but alternate universe fic. (Nate-- the Neal counterpart-- being something of an exception. He's also become more and more of his own guy)
The main themes of this story, to me, now that it's mostly finished, are: assimilation into patriarchy is a poisoned chalice. You need to learn how to save yourself and you need to not drown in your own pain and victimhood, but at the same time, you need community around you in order to do that. Sometimes you have the most to give at the moments things seem the most hopeless. You can't erase past mistakes, but those past mistakes don't have to stop you from learning how to do better. Even the messiest bitch can save the day (even if it's not as dramatic or immediate as the messy bitch would like ;p), or at least, open the door to the house. The house is evil. If you take control of the house, the house's evil begins to seep into you. The house cannot be fixed. You can leave the house (And the house, in this story, is a metaphor for the places trauma is keeping us stuck and for the cycle of abuse, but also the structures and systems that perpetuate their own cycles of harm: the corporation, the high-control group, the family).
Final notes: there is plenty of sex in this story that's hot and completely consensual (and gay). Therefore, it's 18+. There's also discussion and description of self-harm and some disordered eating stuff, mention of CSA, mention of physical abuse, description of physical abuse, and mention of and description of sexual abuse. As much as I want to avoid making a grimdark story for the sake of it (and I've tried to not be overly graphic, and certainly never graphic for the sake of it wrt heavier stuff-- there's not a ton of it, it's just there), the rock scene in the 70s and 80s was frankly a disgusting place. I don't want to make this story *about* that but I don't want to pretend it wasn't a misogynistic cesspit of predators even if Jules himself is avoidant of the fact (another reason for Jules instead of Steve: I fear he was deeper in that cesspit than Jules ever was, sometimes simply to fit in, and I don't want to pretend like he wasn't; I don't want to erase womens' pain in order to give Steve a nicer ending or whatever). Being a gay boy that grows up into a poor gay guy in the mid-late 20th century has its own potential traumas attached to it-- being a gay guy in that time period suddenly thrust into fame also its own potential insanities-- and I want to explore those as well. Some of the things Jules goes through are things I introduced from other influences, or from my own life. Some of the things Jules goes through are influenced by things Steve went through. I will include a content warning at the beginning of any part that includes any serious examples of the bolded above.. Feel free to reach out at my Tumblr (linked on my home page) and make requests if I missed anything, or if there's something you'd like to have a warning on it that doesn't already.
So without further ado or overthinking: I hope you enjoy! :)