Yellowface

Perhaps the core idea of this novel wasn’t mine, but I’m the one who rescued it, who freed the diamond from the rough.

And fuck it, I’ll just say it: taking Athena’s manuscript felt like reparations, payback for the things that Athena took from me.

we owe nothing to the dead.

I’m living Athena’s life.

I am the reason why she died.

I can’t help but feel that there is some greater, karmic reason why my writing flow has returned. This feels like redemption. No—like absolution. For if I can write this thing on my own, if I can turn this whole horrible mess into a beautiful story, then . . . well, it won’t change what I’ve done. But it will assign artistic value to it all. It will be a way of revealing the truth without saying it. And beyond anything else, it will entertain. It will stay in readers’ thoughts forever, like a catchy tune or a beautiful woman’s face. This story will become eternal. Athena will be a part of that.

What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered

They’ve got the classic fledgling talent mentality—they know they’re good, or could be good, but they crave acknowledgment of this fact, and they’re terrified of rejection. I remember this mix of feelings well: unbridled ambition, a growing pride that one’s own work might in fact be that remarkable, paired with staggering, incurable insecurity

The netizens who love to argue for the sake of arguing will look for the holes in Candice’s story. The character assassinations will begin. We’ll all get dragged down in the mud, and when the dust clears, all that will remain is the question: What if Juniper Song was right?

And this will become, in time, my story once again.

It’s hard for me to really feel sorry for Geoff. This is, after all, the same man who once threatened to leak nudes of Athena on Reddit if she didn’t back him up against a Locus reviewer. But I can see the truth in his eyes, the pain.

And yet it’s this story that brings me down.