Just for a moment...
I've tried to express this a few times; it's surprisingly hard for someone who enjoys writing. We'll get back to the other stuff after I'm done.
When you talk to Diotima, you're talking to a mask.; she's a fiction I created to protect myself. There are reasons for that, but the only important one is that I just... wanted the freedom to be myself outside of my stupid, boring, frustrating day to day existence. And it worked at first... I could be silly and create things and just have fun without worrying too much about being anything but the silly tiefling that I am. I was going to be “her” until got bored with it... then I was going to do what I have always done... kill her off and run away before I got too attached.
But... I sort of played myself. I started caring because you started caring. I kind of hate everyone including myself for that, sometimes. I didn't want to care, I was happy not caring, and you... you... fuckers, made me. But I also love you. It's complicated, okay?
So yeah. Slowly, Diotima became more and more me and less and less fiction. She didn't take over so much as I’ve started letting little shards of myself in, shades of my real self filling in the gaps in her story. She became an idealized version of me, framed in fiction. And I fooled myself into thinking she was still separate, but I was lying to myself.
Honestly, sex stuffs aside, the Diotima in my spicy stories is more me that even Mastodon me. She's easy to write because I just... need to be myself. My bitchy, angry, sometimes horrible self. Sometimes I'm ashamed to show how terrible I am but I can't not show you; I have to be true to who I am. I'm not always nice. I'm a monster sometimes. I'm... I guess complicated like most people are complicated, okay? I would like to think my balance of not-shitty is better than my shitty, but I mean... that's not really for me to say.
Anyway, I'm like... on a tangent.
Diotima is a fiction, but we're also the same person. That girl is this girl, you know? So... yeah, when you talk to “me” you're talking to someone that is fiction, but also... more real than I've ever really felt. If I call you my friend, if I tell you I care, if I, I dunno, flirt with you, then I'm being real... even if ultimately, I'm just a wisp of gossamer nothing.
TL;DR, thanks for making a kind of but not really but actually maybe fictional girl feel connected.