We are nothing but a game to the Goddesses we are meant to love.
They watch us with their milky eyes and plaster grins, drinking their cocktails mixed of salty tears and bitter blood. In our dreams we see them, sword in hand, sword in heart. They hold our souls on puppet strings, toying with us until we drop dead. They've built their thrones atop our burial grounds, their palaces on our battle fields. Their marble fortresses are stained with our blood. They never have to worry about it fading, every hundred years there's a fresh coat.
One thousand years ago and another four hundred, the first Rite was performed. It was only Apollonia and Amalthea then, sisters of sun and moon.
Princess Elizabeth was the first to play and the first to win. Her goddess became Zorina, of Life.
The Second Princess was the first to lose. There is a story we’ve heard that says her goddess still walks the earth today, solemn, lost, looking for something she never had: freedom.
When Princess Creiddylad won two hundred years after Princess Elizabeth, her goddess was granted power over death, Morgana was her name, all because Creiddylad stained the world red with her Rite. She would do anything, anything to win. And she did. Of course she did. We all are supposed to win.
The Second Princess was the outlier. The Second, The Sixth, The Ninth, and The Tenth.
And now Paget. The Fifteenth.
They are the failures. The numbered mistakes. The ones that were never supposed to happen. They’re the ones whose names you don’t learn in school, whose portraits you will never see in the halls of your church or hear the choir sing songs about them. No one will give their children their names, after their triumphs and successes. No one will pray to the goddesses who stood by their sides as they lived and as they died.
No, the only people who know their names are the princess and her goddess themself. Only us.
Because to us, they’re the warnings. This is what will happen if you lose, the priestesses say. They’re examples of everything that we could become.
Everything that we did become.
It was never supposed to happen like this.
When Amalthea and Apollonia initiated the first Rite, no one was ever supposed to die. But somehow, The Second Princess did.
And then there were more than two options.
It was no longer just win or lose, the Rite became live or die. But to us, they mean the same thing.
And that's why we’re here.
We are the failures, the mistakes. We are the ones whose songs you will never hear and whose names you will never remember.
But we will make sure that you remember theirs.
Because they were more than the just Princess and her Goddess. They were children. They were creators. They were the outliers who saw their world as more than just something they had to fight to stay in. For them, it was beautiful. Wonderful, even. They were lovers, content in each other's arms. They sang and they danced and they drew and they smiled. They laughed like honey.
We never laughed.
But in the end, after the Rite was over and all that was left was blood and tears and screams, when their laughter were just echoes and their smiles just shadows, she still had memories of being happy with her.
That’s more than what any of us could ever say.
And for that, she is not one of us.
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at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
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my ideal timkon don't get together until they've both already done some queer realizations and dated other guys a little bit, in part because on tim's end, i think he's been in love with kon since he was 17, but at 17 tim didn't even know he was bisexual, forget anything else. and his feelings for kon were so big but also so constant that he didn't even realize they were there or significant because they've always been there and been huge. for years. so he putters along and does his time in the torment nexus (the closet) and languishes a bit but slowly starts to figure it out.
meanwhile kon dates someone, mostly like omg im dating a guy this is ALLOWED !??!?! and its pretty lowkey and casual and doesnt last bc like . super identity issues, right. kon would Never just tell someone, but secrets and casual relationships dont last long etc etc. but just the entire principle of kon dating someone and then being like yeah idk im not really feeling it like hes nice and all but i think hes more interested in like… yknow, my hot bod, than me. its whatever tho. and tim just being SOOOOO mad that someone would date kon and not absolutely adore him. tim will not be unpacking why hes so mad about kon having a shitty boyfriend. obviously its just bc kons his bestie and deserves better. (😶)
so he's just grouchily tinkering on some upgrade for his car to get the grumpy energies out. like WHATEVER! (angrily turns socket wrench) he's not saying kon should dump the guy or anything (angrily turns socket wrench) but he's just SAYING, kon can do BETTER!!!!! (angrily turns socket wrench) and kon DESERVES better!!! kon deserves someone who will treat him RIGHT!!!!! (angrily turns socket wrench) like if TIM was gonna fuck kon he wouldn't do it like a goddamn quickie and just fucking leave (angrily grabs the next size socket and scoots further under the car) like kon OBVIOUSLY doesn't like that so why won't this guy GET THAT!!!! (angry tinkering noises) if he's that shallow he can go find himself a sexy body pillow to screw!!! leave kon alone!!!!
and cassie sitting on a chair nearby is just like. sorry what was that? "if i was gonna fuck kon"? did you just say--hey tim? hey. can you go back a step?
and tim's just. obviously this is a hypothetical everyone considers about kon. look at him he's . you know. besides, tim's just talking as his best friend who wants the best for him! ugh stop trying to read into it cassie, that's not the POINT--
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