Aapollon★

Vic leaves the room and Grace, sitting on her bed, shellshocked. Shit.

But this is not the time for a freakout.

Focus. Forget about facing the sharks without Vic’s coat of varnish on her, forget about getting out there to be a piece of ass, again, this is about the job. She is the job, this is about the job. Except, this time it’s not. But who even cares at this point anymore. Out of the room, into that dress, agent.

Grace rushes into the dressing room, still in ratty sneakers and sweats, her pouch with cosmetics clutched tight. Everyone is a-bustle here, minutes away from squeezing into their dress and running around half-naked. On the far end of the room, the girls from table five are clustered around their vanity mirrors, setting the finishing touches to their faces and bitching at each other. In front of her she can hear Mary Jo say “...she is NOT making the top ten...” Then the redhead turns, sees her, stops. Takes in the mess that is Grace without Vic’s makeup on her face.

“Overslept my beauty sleep”, she pushes out as she scrambles around Mary Jo to sit down. Grace Hart has less than ten minutes to put a metric ton of stuff onto her face, hopefully only her face. Gracie Lou would have been done by now. Shit. From her side, she hears Sheryl say: “… do you need help?” but she is too distracted, digging, digging through all the mystifying small containers she now wishes she had paid more attention to. Now, which one of those is lipstick?

She must have said the last one aloud, because it is followed by several gasps from behind her. Grace barely has time to move a muscle before she hears Sheryl’s distressed voice, calling out “Ladiiiiies?!!” and the women set on her.

Mary Jo is on her left, brushing her hair. Karen and Leslie are behind her, also doing things with brushes. Hawaii has taken off to requisition all kinds of items from across the room for them, and Sheryl has taken out a sponge and is dabbing her cheek with it. They are all yelling at each other, moving around Grace like her chair is the centre of a small whirlwind. This should be like the time in the hangar, or with Vic, everyone fussing about her person, but it’s not. No-one is getting paid for this, she dumbly realises.

No-one paid them to put their hands on her face and into her hair. No one paid them for their time. No-one paid them to make Grace one of them. It is like a magic trick.

[a] Crumbs

Sugar used to be heady like cough syrup and honest like his mother's sugar-on-margarine-bread. Tart like juice from canned fruit after the Fourth of July. Sticky and stale, like half a cotton candy without a date. Now it just tastes like two spoonful in his coffee at 2 AM in the kitchen.

Sometimes he wonders what this world will feel like once he really wakes up. He feels himself drifting through it, not quite a ghost but a lone carnival-goer.

[b] Rush

In this new century, everything is too sweet. It burns his tongue like hot sugar.

At night, places, faces run together, run through his hands. At work nobody knows or everybody knows. It makes no difference, they all know his body can survive anything.

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(Kida encounters a strange creature. A rewriting of the first meeting at 00:40:00.)

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The Duwer before them was pale as cloth, thin as a twig and shivering like a branch.

They had found him on their way home from scouting the wreck of the Great Light Bridge, passed out against a rock. His appearance had taken them by surprise, so far away from the others of his kind. An easy quarry. Thenook had been for capturing him, Coor’en had refused to touch him, and Kida had been torn between disposing of the threat and just poking at the first new thing encountered since she could remember. The latter thoughts she kept to herself. They were unbecoming. But Yadlagoneh, was the Duwer something new. His legs were encased in cloth, his feet trapped in leather and his eyes were armored with small circular shields of glass. When Thenook had nudged at the glass with the end of his spear and the whole contraption had moved, they all had breathed out in relief – the glass bits were part of a harness mounted on his nose, not an actual part of his face. That would that have been disgusting, but not unexpected. The Duweren Megidesh had so far been seen doing a great number of mystifying, astonishing and disgusting things, while they had thought themselves unobserved.

The jostling of the armor had woken him, however, and so Kida had learned another thing about this being: he was apparently very bad at getting away, trying as he was to scramble backwards into the rock they had him found leaning against. If this was a warrior, then surely the other people above must have lost their strength as much as Atlantis had, because Kida could have killed this man with her little toe. The little toe of her left foot. Maybe even so while being blindfolded.

Of course, she had never met an outsider before. There had been none in Atlantis before the Mebelmok, and the few times her father had talked about them, he had talked about how he had kept them away. How they were crooked traders. Invaders. Her people whispered stories about them to their children, about beings as ugly as tuyeben, riding on rafts across the sea to grab and steal.

Kida was still leaning forward to catch a look at that little harness on his nose when the Duwer suddenly stopped his mad backwards scramble across the stone, seizing up in pain. He brought a hand to his chest and it came away red. Kida felt her lips part in a grin. He was in pain and he bled red. Maybe poking this new thing would show that it was not that different at all.

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Kerod = heart Duwer = outsider Duweren = outsiders Yadlagoneh! = exclamation Duweren Megidesh = outsiders that use destruction Mebelmok = the Great Flood Tuyeben = Atl. lobster (plural) All vocabulary comes from the Atlantean language Institute. Grammer rules from the corresponding Wikipedia article.

The next time Stephanos comes around to Antonis' workshop laden with wheat and barley to trade for reaping hooks, the year is nearly over. Antonis has spent most of the day tidying his workshop, from time to time wishing he still had Charis for that. Unfortunately, along with leaving his real name and form on Olympus for a while, he had to leave her to guard his workshop. This far from Sparta, most mortals would not have taken kindly to a woman handling weapons. Even less to a woman made out of iron and clay. Now he is sitting in front of the shop in the shade, idly sharpening his engraving tools, when over the cicadas he hears the clanking of pots and looks up. Stephanos has just stumbled into the clearing.

'You seem like you could use a break,' Antonis says, peaceably. That is an understatement. Stephanos looks ready to trip on nothing: his hair is matted to his forehead with sweat, cheeks two spots of red over a pale mouth that seems to have trouble breathing in the sweltering, stagnant air of early Metageitnion. He is laden with urns; his uncle must have sent him for the trade they agreed on.

'I am fine', Stephanos grunts, huffing a little with effort as he walks the last steps over to Antonis and starts taking the urns from his back and shoulders, 'Barley and wheat, as agreed. This one is millet and dried figs. Kopreus has thrown in some for free. Apparently, the hoe you made broke the earth better than any tool he has ever used' 'No surprise there,' Antonis grins up at Stephanos, ' as I am the best' 'Well, this far from the polis even the lame is a dancer', Stephanos replies, albeit without venom. They did part on uncertain terms last time, so Antonis decides to err on the side of caution with his words -- for now. Also, Stephanos has no idea how on spot his comparison is. 'Thank you, I feel even older now.' Antonis stands, dusts off his tunic. 'On a much more civil note: given I just received a gift, may I invite you for hespérisma? I know you are done harvesting, so would they really miss you much? I don't think they would. You would, however, very much miss the very fine wine I have recently gotten from Thásos. It's with cassia. It will also wonderfully go with the figs you just brought. Have some hespérisma with me?'

Stephanos blinks, frowns a little and opens his mouth. On a less beautiful man, it would look dim, Antonis thinks. 'How come you have wine from Thásos? You live in the middle of the nowhere and only trade with farmers who pay you in kind. No offense.' 'A-ha!' Antonis exclaims, 'It seems like you did not expect this! Well, boy from the polis, let's just say that I have some influential friends who would prefer I were not sitting in the middle of nowhere, only trading with farmers who pay me in kind. Sometimes, they try to convince me back and give me nice things. I am not going back, though.'

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Ok, so either he was finally going crazy, someone was pulling a very elaborate prank, or the 'empath thing' had chosen this exact Friday evening for branching out and diversifying to … something else. What the hell? The water pressure was already at the very limit of acceptable, he probably only had five minutes of hot water left, and now this. Just, like, no. So when the singing started yet again as soon as he closed his eyes, Steve reached for the shampoo bottle and aggressively started lathering his hair.

The door clicks innocuously as he closes it behind himself.

The car is a little rusty, but he'll take it. It makes him as free as one can be, after having spent the last two years in a military hospital that shouldn't exist, having three people watch you at all times, even as you piss. They took him to a safe house south of Albuquerque with his eyes bandaged yesterday. There, a silver-grey F-Series, a full wardrobe and fridge, and the fucking Doctor. 'We know you want to leave,' he'd said, 'and since it turns out you're a regular Joe nowadays, we don't really have good reasons to keep you.' And then he'd handed Billy a folder and piece of plastic. 'Regular Joes like you were never meant to get into the crossfire like you did. Consider this an apology from the state. The house is yours now, like the car. Stay out of trouble.' With that, he stepped into the car Billy had come in. Click, wroom, a last flash of white hair disappearing behind tinted windows. The piece of plastic is a credit card. It expires in five years. In embossed letters, it reads 'JAMES WILLIAM BRENNERSON.'

He could start over here; in the folder, there's a forged high school diploma and fucking improbable SATs, as well as recommendation letters from people who apparently exist somewhere and met him. He's got a house now: a bed, a kitchenette and a bathroom covered by a roof. He could put down roots and fill in any template of adulthood; there's nobody to tell him what to do and a supposedly inexhaustible line of credit for the next five years. All Billy ever wanted a lifetime ago, the sudden freedom of choice feels about as free as free fall. There's canned soup and coffee in the cupboards, beef jerky. A couple apples in the fridge. Travel food, nothing which could spoil while he's away. Even preparing this, they knew he'd leave. Maybe they hope he'll drift forever.

Every artist knows that Art(TM) takes time and is personal. And probably many of us content creators have recently felt like that time and effort went pretty much nowhere. Why is that so?

Time and effort are all great; baring your soul, being recognised for your work, connecting to other like-minded and appreciative people all other the world… would be nice! Being present (and 'traded') on 'TikTok-like' platforms/'attention span markets' similar to it, however, has very fast shown us mostly one thing: on these platforms, creators becomes extremely exchangeable; meaning and artist alike transformed into standardised, malleable 'content', there to be recycled and remixed, automatically and endlessly -- patience and dedication have become an useless virtue.

TikTok takes power away from the individual creator, since in its essence, TikTok means that the majority of (mostly passive) users, consuming what is thrown onto their screen, have given away the agency over most of their feed to the algorithm. In contrast, in Ye Olde IG, this was actually in the hand of the users by 'following', and 'liking' (for most parts). This means that the main flow of attention in TikTok/Copy-Cat TikTok (new IG/YT shorts) is not something that the actual content creator has any control over anymore...

Everyone who tries to be 'successful' on TikTok/IG these days more or less tries to 'hack the algorithm', but actually that just means twisting yourself, your sense of self(expression) into curious shapes without ever seeing the twister board, the next colour and or even the other players. The amount of harm done to the psyche, one's sense of self-worth and feeling of competence and autonomy are immense, not to mention other mental disorders caused as a side effect of feeling so utterly helpless.

Since users (i.e. advertiser money) are flowing away from Instagram/Meta since TikTok is the best attention-sucker to ever suck, IG is and will be becoming more and more like TikTok in the future, no matter what content creators are doing or saying. Especially since a model like the above takes bargaining power away from creators (especially those who actually want to be remunerated), which is great for IG/Facebook/Meta.

To come back to what I started with: of course, genuine art (no matter how you want to define 'genuine') and any platform/medium that operate under these laws are fundamentally incompatible. TL; DR: People think TikTok is like an ocean, and everyone is desperately struggling to reach the surface, crawling over each other if need be. But actually it's a mass-produced transparent ball with lots of tiny glittery particles floating in it, the passive users and their attention are the water sloshing around, and the algorithm is shaking the ball merrily to maximise ad revenue.

TL; DR 2: Let me tell you now: you (personally) will not 'hack' or 'beat' The Algorithm(TM) -- The Algorithm(TM) is constantly retrained on PETABYTES of content and user data to 'work', and that means doing exactly what it does.

Heaven is a place on earth 💕

I’m sorry, but Steve, offering his hand and then making a face like “op- no you’re gonna– alright, you’re gonna pet me anyways, mess up the hair, ok”