At the end of it all, The Void returned, now white as fallen snow. It swept across The Great Canvas, consuming all in its path.
In the destruction, there was absolute chaos. In the emptiness that followed, there was absolute order. Both found harmony, in the end, and everything was still. Silent. At peace, forevermore.
Battles long past, alliances forged, the endless struggle of order and chaos, all lost to time, like footsteps in the snow.
So ends The Great Canvas. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Link leads to 2022's r/place, which may contain some images that might offend you]
This is the way creation ends/ Creation ends, creation ends/ This is the way creation ends/ Not with a war, but in silence...
Controversy for controversy's sake killed some of it. Marketability killed more. Entrance fees, as always, were a suppurating wound in every muse's theoretical body. But what really killed innovation was what made art bloom in the first place.
Money.
They say the love of it is the root of all evil, and they have a point. The need of it strangles time. Those with a lot of it can never have enough, and those without it can never find a way to have any. When the myth of "just working harder" holds sway, there is no time for dreams.
When the struggle is for the next meal, for the ability to access shelter, to be able to afford transit to the workplace, it's no surprise that the next big idea is in the hands of those who have no ideas beyond a bigger market share. Watch in horror as imagination, creation, and art die under the mill-wheel of profit.
The ideas of the past sustain it for a while. Taking that which already exists and making new versions. Updating it for the modern era. Add zombies. What if they were vampires? What if it was a normal world instead of a magical one? Would it still work if it was an office environment?
In that poor soil, anything innovative is crushed under the pressure to get more. More audience. More market share. More merchandise. Every single cash cow is milked dry, bled dry, and then rent asunder for all its parts.
When those who bar the gates rely on what has gone before to estimate what will succeed next, there is no room for a new idea.
For a time, there are small spaces where a new idea might flourish. Where someone is willing to take a chance on something bizarre. And when it succeeds? It's snapped up by the bigger fish.
But those with the time to have ideas grow fewer and further between.
The future used to be gleaming chrome and flashing lights. Now? The future is white. So very, very white. White walls, white furniture, white clothes, and an awful lot of white people, too. Bleached to pristine perfection, sifting through the pale ashes of what used to be culture for a glimmer of colour.
It's all gone, now.
Those who have, have everything they could want. Those who don't get a life of punishment for daring to be born in the wrong caste. Those who have, believe they earned it - and sneer at those who are clearly not doing enough.
It's easy for a person clothed in ivory to sneer at someone clothed in rags. To call them 'lazy' and 'greedy'. To scoff at how easy it is just to have the seed money that's more than what any of the have-nots could earn in three lifetimes.
One of those Haves is trying to work on a screenplay that mashes up Romeo and Juliet with a comic-book universe in which death is a temporary annoyance at best. The obstacle, of course, being the very tragedy inherent in only one part of the source material.
The stylus tapped on the screen. "What if," said Verimdya, "it was a potion that took their powers away? Or granted it?"
"M'm?"
Verimdya looked up. "I'm working. What is it?"
"M'm, I was wondering if you had time to read the letter? Only. It is time sensitive, m'm." It was Claire or something. One of the people Verimdya hired to keep her spotless white carpets bright and shining.
"I don't have time to read everything." Verimdya sighed and put the stylus down. "What is it all about? Another of your relatives doing something you can't get away from? You lot are always so inconvenient."
Claire-or-something said, "I'm dying, m'm. Clinic said I had a month when I wrote the letter m'm. Thought I'd have time to train the replacement, but... It's been a month and I ain't seen nobody new, m'm. I don't know how much longer I've got."
Complain, complain, complain. Was it all they ever did? "Do you have any idea what an inconvenience this announcement is? Finding someone to replace you isn't the hard part, it's making certain they won't steal anything."
"Yes'm." Claire-or-something wavered in her place. "I'm sor--" She fell. Right there in her office. There was a hideous gurgling sound and a very unpleasant smell.
Ugh. So rude. Verimdya called the police on her, and had to step over the inconsiderate lout just to answer the door. It took them hours just to tell her that Claire-or-something had died on the spot.
Gross.
Now she had to get her carpet replaced as well. Verimdya cut off Claire-or-something's wages and terminated the severance pay as revenge. Then she had to move her activities to the reserve study, which had worse light.
Now. What kind of tragedy could she use for her script?
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / igter]
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