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Love is a choice. Lack of love is also a choice. She is defined by her children, and sometimes her beauty in which her husband had married her for, and perhaps the small fleeting gesture of kindness that she may give to her children before inevitably becoming the sole symbol for all the cruelty that exists in the world as she lies bleeding on the floor with a sword through her breast.
Her last words are what define her memory. Mothers are defined by the love they give their children.
However, nobody knows that once upon a time, that Mother was also a daughter who liked to walk in the gardens barefoot despite the scolding of her nanny, a girl who told the butler that she wanted to be a waitress when she grew up because they had always been so polite to her and their uniforms were very pretty, and a lady who set a horse free just so she wouldn’t have to suffer through a drab social event that she wasn’t even meant to be invited to.
There are only Good Mothers and Bad Mothers. There are only Mothers who love their children and Mothers who spite their children. There are only Selfish Mothers and Selfless Mothers. There are only Mothers who are Main Characters and Mothers who are Nonexistent. There are only Mothers who cry and Mothers who don’t cry.
It should be distinctly distinguished that she is a Mother who cries; no, not a woman who cries, but a Mother who cries.
She has sacrificed her identity when she gives birth. She is no longer human. She is simply a Mother. You may think that a Mother is a human, but a Mother is not. A Mother is a device. When will a Mother get to become a human? When will she be allowed to co-exist with her Daughter or Son in harmony?
And if that child was taken away from her, would she stop simply being a Mother altogether? Or does that burden still live within herself?
She is Misunderstood, and Evil. She is intelligent, cunning, and yet, she lacks a certain social awareness. She is to be hated, but only by those who breathe the same air as her—she is designed to be loved by the Audience. The Readers. You.
The Villainess smiles, but she is merely a Puppet of the Witch who crafts her story. She is told the answers, and she repeats what she is told. She cries when she is told to cry, shouts when she is told to shout, and she is told that she is the main character of this new Narrative, this “second chance” given to her by the Witch.
Surely, she will be loved by the audience that will certainly resonate with her difficult circumstances. But then—at what point does the Villainess become the Protagonist?
Things come easy to her. The Witch ensures this. The men call her interesting. Everything is perfect. She is not a Villainess anymore. She has become that which she hates the most. The Witch doesn’t give her a choice.
Yet, she calls herself a Villainess because it’s the only label she knows how to define herself. She tells herself that she is evil at night to keep the frightening existentialism that the Villainess no longer exists, only leaving a Protagonist behind. The Narrative bends under her will. The Witch wills it so.
How can such a world bend to one’s will to such a degree? It’s not exciting, nor does it bring her any glee. The Villainess knows that everything that’s been given to her can be taken away just as easily, without any warning. When the Readers turn against her, and a new narrative is crafted by a Witch (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same Witch), she will lose this illusion of control brought onto her.
They all have different stories. The one thing they have in common is that they seek to find the definitive ending to their stories. Whether that’d be fulfillment of revenge, or to marry the one they love, or to live a slow life in the countryside, or to return to their place of origin.
Why should a Villainess be allowed to dream? Why should they be given a second chance to fulfill the dreams that they’ve overlooked? A second chance to live instead of merely surviving?
(A price is always paid. When no price is paid, the one who reaps the benefits will never be able to live in peace, knowing that the price will be taken away forcibly away from them one way or another.)
There is no end.
Regression after regression, the Regressor doesn’t know any differently. She is unaware that she is a Protagonist of a Narrative crafted by a Witch, so she believes there won’t be an ending.
The funny thing about regressions is that they tend to lose meaning after a certain point. First regression, second regression, third regression, the readers don’t have the attention span to keep track of them. For the Regressor, they are all equally traumatizing to her. They are lifetimes spent wishing, dreaming, and withering away. Her past lives don’t belong to her anymore. They are different people—strangers, even. She transforms into someone she doesn’t recognize.
The Regressor is lonely. She makes friends, and perhaps finds a husband, but she knows it’ll be taken away from her when the story ends. There is no guarantee that she will finally have her peaceful ending after the ending that is shown to the Reader.
The unseen epilogue, she lives in fear of returning to the beginning.
(But isn’t that the point of a Narrative? After one reaches the Ending, there is nothing left to do but to return to the Beginning. In that sense, all stories are regressions of their own, only that the same sequence of events happen and none of the characters remember their past regressions.)
(But the trauma still exists, nonetheless. The Readers carry it with them.)
It is easy to be the Antagonist.
The White Lotus smiles. She blackmails, bribes, sleeps with men. She is stunningly gorgeous, but only slightly less than the Protagonist. She has an inferiority complex. She is startingly feminine, in the traditional sense, and is meant to represent the toxic nature of femininity.
Unlike the Protagonist, or the “Villainess”, she is a White Lotus, so she does not require development. Just this is enough. These are the lies she whispers to herself at night, as she awaits her ill-fated end. The Witch never makes it quick and painless. They’re always drawn out, for the Readers’ satisfaction.
She has no room to complain. It’s the second-most prominent role in the Narrative.
And so what if she is to be hated? At least she will live in the memories of the Readers. It is better to be Hated than to be Forgotten. She tells herself she is fortunate. There is no worse fate than to be forgotten, for what is a character if nobody remembers their story?
The Maid is a supporting character, and that is her personality. She is naïve if she is allied on the side of the Protagonist (who may or may not be the Villainess). She acts akin to a baby lamb in the world that looks down upon her existence as equal as the pavement that those of higher class would stroll upon. She thinks the Protagonist is a good person. She sticks around the entire Narrative to exist for the Protagonist, for the Protagonist is their Salvation.
And, if a Maid is meant to only appear in the Narrative for a few scenes, there is no doubt that she is to be ridiculed and humiliated, that she is greedy and reckless, ambitious yet with none of the assets needed to ever fulfill that ambition. These are the only types of Dreams that a Maid will be allowed to have.
A Maid cannot be allowed to Dream. It’s perhaps one of the cruelest punishments, to be so close to the One Loved By All, and yet, not even be allowed to Dream. To watch the One Loved By All dream so freely, and make friends, and live, but to know she can never be one of them.
(A Maid watches the Maid Loved By All with longing eyes, wondering why she wasn’t born as lucky as that fair maiden. They are both Maids. This Maid does not realize that the Maid Loved By All was simply disguising as one of them, for she is the Protagonist, and not a Maid.)
Her Puppets refer to her as the Witch. The Witch doesn’t necessarily have to be female, but that is a discussion for another day. For simplicity sake, the Witch will be referred using “her” pronouns.
The Witch breathes life into her words. Her Puppets dance at her whim. Sometimes, their rhythm is out-of-sync from the tune that the Witch crafts. The Witch doesn’t always notice. It’s the Audience that does.
The Witch is not just a Witch, but a God. A God that cannot be overthrown. Her word is the law. The Power lies in those nimble hands of hers, hacking away at a keyboard, as she clicks away from the utility bill that still needs to be paid off. She lets out a string of curses.
Perhaps it is Karma. The Witch is no longer human as well, the same as the Puppets on her string. Her entire identity has been consumed by the words that the Readers wait for with bated breath. She has also lost her identity to a different world that depends on her existence. One could look at it like ascension.
There’s only one way to overthrow such a God.
You are a Reader.
You read their stories. You keep their lives into existence through memory. If a story is forgotten, those characters cannot be retrieved, and they are dead in every sense of the word. You have the power to kill those characters.
What is the point of a story if not to be read? Why do you, dear Reader, continue to read the stories of characters who live lives that resemble nothing of Reality? Why do you continue to read about their hopes and desires, about their lofty ambitions and determination to see the end, about their Dreams? They, who will never know you exist. They, who are unaware that their stories are being packaged for mass consumption.
It is You who keeps their Dreams alive.
(Even the ones who are not allowed or those who don’t dare to Dream. They are Dreaming because of You.)
(The Witch thanks you.)