Lemonade, lemonade.
It is so easy to be different. An extra letter to a name; a new shade of blue in your hair; a certain sneer, practiced to perfection countless times in the bathroom mirror, to display.
The rules are simple, like a game. And like a game, cheating is inevitable. As long as you can slip a card up your sleeve without being seen, you are safe, you are God. What they cannot see will not hurt them.
In the hallways, the game starts. Locations are appraised; opponents are studied. Holes and missing pieces are found, and knowledge of the weaknesses is filed away for future use. In order to win the game, you must maintain the facade. Lose the facade and you lose the game. The rules are simple but cheating is inevitable. Players hurt themselves, accidentally, intentionally. Cheating is inevitable. Did anyone see?
Outcasted members of society soon learn that they have formed a group of their own, and in their quest to be unique they all become identical. Independent Desire oozes through the cracks in the fragile formation and enters the main-blood-stream, where it is delivered over and over again until the only way to be different is to be the same.
Fairytales are the same. Repeated over and over, so many times, all with the same message: the good win. The bad lose. Stay in bed, tucked away nice and safe, and the bad men won't get you.
Nobody ever mentions that everyone cheats, and sometimes the bad men find a way to your bed, even though you've been following all the rules, and eventually you cheat, too, if for no other reason that the need for survival.
Somewhere the haughty ruler gazes down on his shivering subjects. Fear pulses through the crowd, a virus without a vaccine: close contact and the end comes quickly. It is impossible to defeat. It is impossible not to try. He does not care about you, they say, but he is so powerful and maybe it is because he knows something you do not. He can dictate your life because he is right, he is right that you are worthless and stupid and your money is better in his hands. Your life is worth more in his golden grasp.
Once upon a time, this little pig blew down the big bad wolf's house while the wicked witch pricked her finger and fell into a deep slumber, and the hardworking orphan girl lost her glass slipper that sparkled in the sunlight and ran away to sing about the colors of the wind. The evil queen asked her mirror if she wasn't the fairest, after all, and the mirror assured her that her beauty was untouchable as the stars in the sky. The little mermaid lived happily ever after in a small cottage obscured by the trees in the forest.
Lemonade, lemonade.
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