Why is Ciplusius a man?

When C first told me about their book idea, I was honoured. Excited. Inspired. Jealous. That was what I wanted to do.

Hide myself in another’s name, to reveal my true name.

Hide myself in another’s genre, to reveal my true nature.

Hide myself in another’s story, to reveal my true self.

And then when C first let me read their manuscript, the thought occurred to me: without their name on it, written in that style – my style – well, would people think I wrote it? Should I say I didn’t, but knew who had? Should I say I didn’t, and didn’t know who had? Should I say I didn’t…not write it?

When I voiced these questions out loud, C sighed in relief – an actual audible sigh. This is indeed what they wanted, but they didn’t know how to ask. It’s a lot to ask of another writer, and even more to ask of another writer who has experienced success in their career. Such a thing could break them, unmake them, embarrass them, end their success.

But I didn’t care. I wanted that, welcomed that.

All I wanted was to say ‘you don’t know who I am, you’ll never believe who I am, you don’t want to know who I am’.

So, when C asked if I’d mind being ambiguous about my involvement in the book, I said, without any hesitation ‘not at all’.

And so, we forged ahead with our plan, I knew what I would say – or not say – if asked about the book.

But…

No one asked.

Not a single person.

It wasn’t that no one picked up on the possibility that it was mine.

It was that literally no one read it. Not a single copy was sold. You couldn’t give a copy away.

It was so strange. C’s circle knew about it. My circle knew about it. But no one cared. The thing was, seemingly overnight, the genre had gotten stale. So stale that it didn’t matter if it was fresh blood or the best bestselling name writing it, no one wanted to read it. It was effectively cancelled. Both C and I were simply the last to find out.

And so, the book was an utter complete flop, without even being given the chance to flop.

Until G found it, that is. Until G decided it was up to them to make everyone know about it, or, more accurately, know what they thought about it. Know just how bad they thought it was. Not even because they wanted to destroy C’s reputation – or save mine –, but because they thought the genre needed saving. Resurrecting.

Turns out, they had always seen the book as the death knell of the genre. It wasn’t, it was a coincidence that it was cancelled the same week it was released. Possibly the same day. Complete coincidence. But, they held a grudge. For years. YEARS. And then, when they put out some feelers to see if there was any appetite to even read some critiques of the dead genre and they weren’t immediately shot down, they thought ‘this is my chance to make my name’. And so, they tweeted. And, enter the algorithm.

We all saw that tweet. Everyone did, literally everyone. Years after everyone had decided it was to uncool to read a single word of the book, suddenly everyone had read all of it, but through the lens of G’s tweet.

What. A. Knob.

The shocking thing though? That everyone bought it. They had all been there, they knew no such person as ‘Ciplusius’ existed. Not only that, but they all knew the basis of the character of Ciplusius. It had been drilled into each and every one of us in school, for Jupiter’s sake.

But people needed that lie at the time, you know? I get it, I do.

Anyway, as we all know, it wasn’t until G got cancelled too that people took a second to really think it through themselves. So here we are. I just wish C could’ve stuck around long enough to see the book get its due.