Work Text:
you have no idea when the first one appeared.
-that's a lie. you do that a lot. [(sometimes you don't even know you're doing it.)] this time you do.
you don't know specifically when the first one appeared.
-better.
you were young. toddler. when you were learning to speak. you know because your relatives are always waxing nostalgic about it, how you'd toddle around and make them enter elaborate guessing games of colors and numbers and words to gain the prize: a story about your little-girl creation, (your very first original character,) a princess with gold and pink hair with eyes made of diamonds and skin dusted with silver. but you never told them that; you told them her name, made her traits into a name, and told them superficial little tales of flight and unicorns and sugar-sweet stereotypical fantasy. because those are the things little girls are meant to think about.
you don't know if you were already hiding the real stories, making up a short, stupid little one to replace it because no one would expect that. no one expected epics. no one expected more than a few actions, a line of dialogue, and a lot of bright colors and simple names. you don't know if you were already starting then, or if that came later.
-true. you don't know. not a lie.
the first time you remember is kindergarten (or was it first grade?), when you're five(six?) years old and the teacher gives out a prompt. write something about autumn.
so of course you start a mystery, maybe a kidnapping or maybe an angry dryad, but the girl in the story is alone and looking in the woods for her mother, feet crunching on colorful leaves,- and the teacher calls Time's up!
you improv. this story will not be read aloud. you won't allow it.
and that's when it begins.
-probably.
you write original fiction all the time, for 'Language Arts' class (soon to become English class). it's not hard. the prompts aren't difficult; it's that you flesh it out too much, have too little time for the final product. they tell you to think it out, but when you do, your words spill over the edges of the papers and you can't get it right. it's unfair, you think, and it's not enough time, you tell the teacher. i have too much, you tell the next one.
they aren't paid enough to care, really. they just want you to keep up your grades (As and the occasional B) and if that means leniency on writing projects that are rarely complete, well. they give it to you.
you're fairly certain they like you, and that's why.
-it's easy to like a kid who's practically trying to endear herself to the teacher, eh?
you write your first fanfiction the summer after fifth grade. you're ten and your pants stick to your legs with sweat, but shorts haven't been an option since third grade; your shirt clings to your neck and the stains under your arms feel cold and horrid, but you can't just wear tanktops because girls can't show underarm hair and you haven't been shaving in months because it stings and itches.
you write about a quest, and a metal dragon, and two boys who have been terribly hurt, and how they're friends.
-they could be something more, if you wanted it that way. but you aren't ready for noncanon slash ships yet.
the others you write are, for a long time, a very different fandom, and you write about very different things. one- he's tortured to insanity; two- he's an angel; three- he might be hallucinating, or everyone else might be blind, but he doesn't know and frankly neither do you; four- he's a prince on the run, in a heavy AU, and most of the galaxy is after him.
you never publish them anywhere. you show one to a friend, though.
the first three are in notebooks, because you didn't have a computer then. the fourth is a google doc, and it has only ever been shared with that one person.
-you want to write more for it, but it's been a year and you can't. not now. it's practically passed.
you keep going. fandoms pass; you're still in them, but you leave writing behind for one and settle into another two. you clean up your first fanfiction, and you get an account, and you publish.
--blood drips down shaking arms behind your eyes, and fire curls affectionately around brown fingers, and tears drip onto the dark earth.
you receive a comment about a sequel.
you start writing one.
it is a success. you keep writing.
you move to another site.
|you hide so many stories. you like them, but you're ashamed of them/don't like them enough to publish/aren't done/don't think the readers will pick it up. you hide, and you continue some of them.|
you keep writing the sequel, until you don't, because there's something else there now. something much, much bigger. something better than anything else you've ever written or conceived before.
-liar.
no. that's not a lie.
-best fanfiction, then.
okay.
so. it's there. and it's long. and you start.
~and down the rabbit hole you go,
and you go with your eyes wide open,
and a smile stretching your lips apart~
it's that one first. it comes slowly.
then there are more ideas, bursting fireworks in your brain, curling along your synapses. you have a Plot.
you have an idea for something else.
you write that one too.
then it's another. your Protagonist, your chosen one, is something new, something forged in gold and fire but comes out sooty and unwanted. you smile, and memorize his shape, and throw him back into the flames. you look for a new mold.
you get one, and this one is gold and fragile and soaked in ruby-scarlet.
you grin.
more, more, more.
your reality bleeds and shifts and tears, and other worlds come through the cracks. you see them, out of the corners of your eyes, in your mind and in your dreams. you feel them under your skin and curled inside your bones.
you do not control what you see, what is given to you. you don't control what comes and goes, who you are given to work with and what they are.
you control every action they take, every relationship they embark on, every sound or word that comes out of their mouth. you control every breath in and out of their lungs, you control the very atoms of their body, you control every nanosecond of their life and of their death. they surprise you sometimes, of course, but you can always edit those surprises.
you control everything about them.
but they control you too.
[no matter how hard you try to pretend they don't]
[they do]
[you know it]
[you joke about fanfiction eating your life, but it's true, isn't it, that the worlds bursting inside your brain are taking the room meant for schoolwork and family and memories of real life]
[you joke about that too, tell your sister that your memory is so bad because you remember every bit of your Plot]
[--and even you don't know if that's a lie.]
the lines keep blurringblurringblurring away, watercolors smeared across your sister's canvas from four years ago, the world streaked in crystalline lines across the car window when it rains, light and color hazed dots across your vision. you listen to music in car rides, turned up so loud you can't hear anything else, and you slip into other realms where the music is gone and you can hear, hear the shouts and sobs and thoughts. the labored breaths of some, and the ecstatic cheers of others.
you slide your fingers along the back of his neck, rub at his curls, and he melts against your fingers. you pull away, erase the past ten seconds, and he is tense and quiet and you are nonexistent.
you smile.
when things are bad, you kill, and you destroy, and you think about all the ways everything can go /wrong, wrong, wrong/ badly~ because sometimes, you need your creations to suffer in your place. because you're busy, or you're in public, or you have obligations, and killing one of your children is easier than having another damn breakdown.
-what does that say about you, hm?
it reminds you about your resolution to never have children.
-fair, but... not what i meant.
you know. you don't particularly care.
=rude=
+i know+
remember the blood, you think to yourself, bored out of your skull. remember the blood?
scarlet stripes down a brown back, crimson drops scattered over the earth, liquid ruby gurgling from a slashed throat, thick red dripping out between desperate fingers.
you don't smile, but you don't cringe either. not anymore.
----and you hold the kitchen knife in your fingers, and you look at the light sliding down the blade, and you put the edge to your wrist. no pressure, just resting it there.
your mother's footsteps on the stairs, and you slip it into the butcher block, and you reach back into the dishwasher.----
there are so many, now, and you're losing track as they weave together, the Plot slipping toward the light at the opening of the tunnel, the ending far more clear than the middle and beginning-middle and end-middle. you know how they leave, but not what leads them there- at least, not everything.
you slide your fingers over the keyboard, press buttons, and open the tab. create new.
begin.
{{{think, see|hear, take, write, writewritewrite, think, take, remember, rinse and wipe and repeat and rinse and wipe and repeat and}}}
\\because nothing really ends, because the universe recycles everything, don't you know, so it never really ends, it just transforms is all, and you'll never really leave either, but eventually you will//
::do it. come on. do it. it's not hard.::
:|it'll hurt her. i can't.|:
::not like you'll be around to see her hurt.::
:|i might. no one knows.|:
::do it.::
:|no. not yet. i'm not finished.|:
and you are so goddamn tired, all the time, except when it's dark and you're in the cold outside and no one can see you smile when you remember
wake up. come back. stop it. it's not real.
liar.
you know it's not real, right?
...
right?
just because it isn't a physical part of our reality doesn't mean it isn't real somewhere.
God's a teenage girl, huh?
i'm not a girl.
sure. that's what matters.
how do you know this world doesn't have a God? or gods? that they aren't just creative kids with nothing better to do?
you don't. that's the fun.
the best part is the struggle, because even that is orchestrated by you.
/you ever wanted to destroy any of it? all of it?
|no.
-liar.
you open your eyes, and they are balls of blue Light, Grace sending little lightning bolts through your tearducts, and you grin.
you open your eyes, and they are flat gold discs, pretending to be stronger than they are, and they glow gently, and you bite your lip and remember the blood.
you open your eyes, and they are almost liquid, golden-amber-honeyed orbs that give off plenty of light and seem not entirely attached to your body, and you wiggle your fingers and remember the wings.
you open your eyes, and they are frozen ink, smooth crystal sphere made of solid shadow: you remember Her, and you are torn between smiling and letting tears drip down your face.
you open your eyes, and there is nothing, and you snap your fingers.
you open your eyes, and they are lambent glass balls, laid carefully into your skull, gold light swirling gently within the clear casing, and you smile slightly.
you open your eyes, and they are silver whirlpools of wisplight, and you shut them.
you open your eyes, and they are black, and there is nothing there for you.
you open your eyes, and the rest of you is strange and wrong, and you shudder (you don't need more of that, thanks).
you open your eyes, and you are drifting midway through a wall, noncorporeal and transparent, eyes the brown they were when you died, and you slip away.
you open your eyes, and you see All.
you open your eyes, and there is a glowing blade at your throat, and your eyes look too much like your father's.
you open your eyes, and you are a child, and you run.
you open your eyes, and they are violet, and thorny vines twist around your arms, and you smirk as your eyes flicker brokenly.
you open your eyes, and they are the green of young plants, and you run.
you open your eyes, and they are soft and brown, and you see the years of scarring lacing your arms like tattoos.
you open your eyes, and the iris is goldbright and all else is shadowdark, and you Remember, and you smile, and you raise your arms and open your mouth and tip back your head.
you open your eyes, and they are honey-brown, and mother's hand is on your shoulder.
Get up, so you do.
you remember, and you Remember, and you Plan. you Plot.
you curl your fingers around hunks of universes, steal them, take people and places and things because every story begins with a NounSubject don't you know and then you take actions subject TV d.o./subject IV IO/ subject LV PN/PA and you take moremoremoremoremore because it's never enough until it's over,
and you're playing with immortality far too often,
so it isn't gonna be enough for a very long time.
deafen the body and blind the eyes so all you do is See and Hear and Touch and Tell
you enter the first universe. you snark and reveal, and you keep them from thinking about the full ramifications, because it won't work if they think free will is an illusion if they realize the truth of the world if they understand that it is because it's not fun if they're puppets, if they thinkknow that they're puppets.
you are god, and God, to them. the other gods, the world full of them; even they are your marionettes, glass and light and thought shaped into beings, and all of them your slaves no matter the power they hold. you find it funny, that you've never liked monotheism, but simply by being a writer, you've created that in every story you will ever write.
-not all of them. not really. only the fiction.
the ones based on you, the ones about you- they are controlled by someone|thing else, too.
it's some kind of irony, dramatic or bitter or something, you aren't sure. you've always had trouble remembering the differences between ironies.
[why are you the only one who knows?]
you are tired of being alone.
chris is different. she likes your villain, and she pushes you into making them a real character, not just the shadows in the back of their mind. you give them a special privilege for it: they join that world (or they will, anyway) as a love interest/identity placeholder for him. it's fun.
then she convinces you to write an alternate timeline of that story where she dies.
and that's even better.
chris is a very special snowflake. she's going to stay that way.
{(pain makes good characters. that's why you do it. pain breaks dull, mundane beings into better ones, cracks their glass shells and lights the spark inside them, makes them someone you want to watch. someone you want to follow. someone, maybe, you want to love. /someone you want to kill, maybe, because pain isn't always a force for positive development./
pain makes everyone more ~interesting.
that's why you do it.
+=your feelings on them don't matter. the Plot is everything. do what you must to make it happen. delete anyone|thing that gets in the way.=+
-that's the secret, isn't it?
of course. you must be numb if you are to succeed.
-wonder what the other writers in the family'd have to say to that.
they don't understand. they analyse, they don't do what i do.
-that's true.
\\shove your fingers in your mouth, bite down, breathe through the nose, come on, don't you dare scream
that's it, that's better, calm the hell down before you destroy something
there you go//
|bite and fucking bear it, right? just like you've been saying|thinking since you were ten fucking years old. don't stop now. can't stop now.|
sometimes, you almost remember how you got here. you almost remember the first days-weeks-months of slide, the slippery slope that was so damn pretty, so steep and sparkling, that you just had to get on,
and you aren't at the bottom, and you won't be for a damn long time, because your multiverse could stretch forever if you let it
so you keep sliding, and sometimes you hit a ledge and sit high and dry for a while, but you always start moving again,
and when you're still, you're figuring out the ways you can take to the bottom.
you can see the bottom, little specific details glowing neon and burning into your mind|eyes, but the slope itself is mostly clean white. the path behind you is all color and vibrant, events carefully painted in on diamond-clean blankness, and the end is shadowed and smoke-hazed sometimes, in patches, but you know what lies at the close.
but the slick canvas in front of you, below you, leading away from the top|from your old life|from reality|from the world not made of words and bright flashes of scenery and bright-painted glass toys that you broke so you could put them back together again| is white, snowy clean and ready to be scribbled on,
and your throat is hoarse, because you speak and your words are images, spreading over that white, and your fingers are sore and stained ebony from writingwritingwriting, and your erasers are wearing thin,
but you sure as hell can't stop now. you can't stop until you reach the bottom, and that could take years.
you curl into a ball and keep whispering your Plots and you keep skidding along, carried away downdowndown deeper into the swirlingflashingscreamingdarkdarkbright pit of your creation|imagination|((illness))|boredom, and sometimes you smile.
and even you don't know which it is,
but most of the time,
you don't have enough left in you to care either way
people worry about you, and sometimes you understand why, and mostly you don't.
you're fine. you're fine. you're fine.
\/yeah, sometimes everything is too loud and your vision gets blurry and even the air is heavy and the slightest touch could break the seal on your throat that keeps you from screaming, but that isn't important, they don't need to know because they'll worry more and pay more attention and you\|/they don't need that|
you're fine, alright, okay, functioning
they don't need to worry about you
-liar
yeah, like you care, like it even fucking MATTERS that you're lying about that anymore
i think you should keep seeing your therapist.
i think i should too, sometimes.
but she takes the materials away, and i need those to paint the stories. i need them. she can't take them. i can't Create without the paint.
the stories leave you empty, so damn empty, once that piece is done and good and complete and the mania of Creation has worn off, and then you're quiet and shadow and ash for the next few days, because the Creative Spark has left you, has gone out in the wake of this new addition|Creation
but it always comes back, so you soldier through, because there is an end to the tunnel and you need to get there before you can Leave
your sister is obsessed with Hamilton.
you hear Non-Stop, and you loop 4:41 to the end, because the music is your mania and creates your mania too, and you love it.
mania isn't a good solution, but at least it means you're being productive on something.
-truth.
you are so fucking sick of people controlling you.
it's your life, why the hell can't you control when and how it ends?
leave me alone, please.
no.
and it's always there in the back of your head, oily and insidious, and you run toward the pit to get away
they hear it too, most of them, but at least then you have control over what is heard
everyone has an anchor.
you don't know who yours is
-lie
you aren't sure
-close
you want to be sure
-closer
you know who you want it to be
-true
but you can't tell them that, it isn't fair to put that on them, they have enough to deal with and besides they'd worry themself even more over you
-truest
you swallow, staring in the bathroom mirror, knuckles white as the porcelain.
your eyes flicker like broken stoplights, blackgoldvioletblacksilverbluegreenbrowngonelavenderamberblackyours
you shut your eyes
and you open
and they are the brown everyone else sees
and you breathe, and you don't smile
the pressure between your shoulder blades builds, discomfort curling hot and tight in your belly, and you remember the coppery light of the carved-star wings bursting from your back
you force a smile and breathe, take a sip of water, keep breathing, feel your feathers brush the wall, blink and breathe and Feel
you curl into the wall, looking at the black wall of the bathroom stall, fingernails biting into your palms
you breathe
the silence slides in and out of your lungs, and you don't smile, but you feel so much lighter than you did.
the end, you write
the end, you write
the end, you write
the end, you delete
the end, you delete
the end, you delete
here we go again, you think, and you think about changing the title, but you have enough to do as it is.
you forget to remember until the world gets tossed back into your conscious, and then it burns there, framed in blue fire and refusing to budge until you give it attention, blocking your view of your multiverse.
you growl and give it the damn attention it wants. it's easier in the long run.
(besides... it's interesting.)
-what does all this say about you, huh? all these deaths, all this torture, all this pain... what does it say about you?
why would that matter?
they're here for the story, the worlds you bring to them|Create for them\yourself.
they don't care about you. why would they?
you're human, out here. why would they want to know anything about you?
people want gods and angels and demons, demi-humans, monsters and shadows sheathed in human skin. they don't want a teenager with a laptop who has Creation bleeding through their head, rampaging through their thoughts and life, crushing their academic thought and making the cracks in their psyche all the bigger.
people don't want You. they want your Creations.
so that's what you give.
[-because hiding in your room and your mom's closet helps. right.
right. you're alone, and you're in the dark, and all that's left are the universes streaming in front of your eyes. why wouldn't it be better?]
anchors are overrated.
yet, even though people are most drawn to monsters and their tamers|killers, no one wants to hear that.
keep your mouth shut, yeah? no one wants to hear that shit, kid. keep it to yourself.
i don't want to. people should hear it. people should Understand.
tough shit, kid. shut up and let the sheep follow their system of blissful ignorance, alright? you do your thing and leave them alone.
you read Fahrenheit 451.
you adore it.
how long you gonna pretend you aren't empty, huh?
[[as long as it takes.]]
you feel so goddamn hollow.
and you are so damn sick of it.
|everyone pays prices to get what they want, ryn|
\but did you want it?/
"some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
wrong.
it's not greatness, it is Creation, and it would be so much easier if you knew which you are.
you wonder how many Great authors had this problem. you wonder how many got god complexes because they were gods, just not in their own reality.
you wonder.
-not like it matters, though, really
you are a dirty fucking thief
-kindasortamaybe
you are, because everyone is
-maybesortakinda
nothing is original
-something is|was
how do you write like you're running out of time|how do you write like tomorrow won't arrive|how do you write like you need it to survive
you don't know how Lin-Manuel Miranda got into your head like that, but it's all true.
you're running out of time before you break, you don't know if it will or not (if you'll just give out in your sleep),
you need it to survive because your obligation to these worlds is what keeps you from picking up the knife or the pills and just Leaving
you are (a) God.
they need you to dictate every moment of their existence.
you need them to force you into not taking the Door Out.
there is only one door that is always an option for every human: Death. everyone steps through that door eventually: the only variables are the key you use to open it and when you go through.
you burn that into your bones, ink it into your marrow, let it flow through your blood.
that is yours. you own that.
you smile.
what do you own? what is yours?
you stole them. you stole the original worlds. the original forms of the characters.
but you changed them. and you Created your own, too.
\so what is yours and what is theirs?\
no one wants you here.
-you know.
=why does it matter? you aren't leaving until your Work is finished.
-go deeper.
how?
-stop coming back. stop switching.
how?
|stop coming back.|
[it's easier than you'd thought it would be.]
all you need to do is erase the line, and you were already halfway there anyway
~and the rabbit hole just gets deeperanddeeperanddeeper~
you open your eyes.
you See.
you smile.
-t h e e n d.