edits

content/plurality/001.md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ weight: 1
 date: 2020-06-17
 ---
 
-I have two things to show you before we talk.
+I have two things to show you before we talk. Just for context.
 
 From [*ally from start to finish*](https://gum.co/ally-making-of):
 

content/plurality/002.md

@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ Of course I am. That’s something I can answer immediately on an intellectual l
 –then no, I am not. Not by a long shot.
 </div>
 
-This excerpt is from a [section](https://ally.id/unemployment/5/) of <span class="ally-font">ally</span> written on June 10, 2020, about unemployment, and you might be thinking "how would any of this have been written a week ago and be in print," and spoilers, it's a hypertext! I personally really recommend the book form, I think the physical artifactiness of it does a lot of work, but you can read all of <span class="ally-font">ally</span> at ally.id, too, and have a different experience exploring the text than I did, and it's still going. I've poked at it online a bit, and it can do things that the print copy can't do, like this awesome map of the whole work thus far, but it also doesn't feel as approachable or as permanent, for me at least, as the book does. There's something about reading a MUCK log that's been printed into a book that's just very different from reading a MUCK log on a comupter screen. I read chat logs all the time. I don't hold a book and read them and think of them as history ever. And I don't hardly ever read them, occasionally notice names I know, and realize it's a history that I'm in some way connected to, that many of you reading this right now are in some way connected to, because furry history is queer history, furry history is increasingly trans history, and so much of it is stored in logfiles of ephemeral online interactions that are bitrotting away as we speak. This one --- a particular tragic moment in a particular small community --- is now archived forever, or at least as long as books last, in print. That matters to me more than I expected.
+This excerpt is from a [section](https://ally.id/unemployment/5/) of <span class="ally-font">ally</span> written on June 10, 2020, about unemployment, and you might be thinking "how would any of this have been written a week ago and be in print," and spoilers, it's a hypertext! I personally really recommend the book form, I think the physical artifactiness of it does a lot of work, but you can read all of <span class="ally-font">ally</span> at ally.id, too, and have a different experience exploring the text than I did, and it's still going. I've poked at it online a bit, and it can do things that the print copy can't do, like this awesome [map](/map) of the whole work thus far, but it also doesn't feel as approachable or as permanent, for me at least, as the book does. There's something about reading a MUCK log that's been printed into a book that's just very different from reading a MUCK log on a comupter screen. I read chat logs all the time. I don't hold a book and read them and think of them as history ever. And I don't hardly ever read them, occasionally notice names I know, and realize it's a history that I'm in some way connected to, that many of you reading this right now are in some way connected to, because furry history is queer history, furry history is increasingly trans history, and so much of it is stored in logfiles of ephemeral online interactions that are bitrotting away as we speak. This one --- a particular tragic moment in a particular small community --- is now archived forever, or at least as long as books last, in print. That matters to me more than I expected.
 
 "That matters to me more than I expected," said about someone else's life, is my summary of this whole book.
 

content/plurality/003.md

@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@ weight: 3
 date: 2020-06-17
 ---
 
+<div class="cw">...Spoilers? Or at least posting a review about the efficacy of not discussing plurality and then proceeding to discuss plurality, however roundabout. <a class="pulse" href="/35">Back</a>.</div>
+
 > I see now.
 
 Are you me?
@@ -31,6 +33,6 @@ Yes. Confusion borne of new knowledge. What do I do with it? What do I do with t
 
 Ha ha.
 
-> Am I wrong.
+> Am I wrong?
 
 No.

content/plurality/004.md

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ date: 2020-06-17
 
 I did. I did it consciously, intentionally, with foresight and reckless disregard of whether it was a good idea or not.
 
-And yet as Rax mentioned --- as I mentioned to him --- I am not necessarily on the plural spectrum myself. I am Madison, and you are my ally. You are a literary construction based on a deliberate misreading of a literary construction. You are a deliberate effort. You are artificial. A device.
+And yet as Rax mentioned --- as I mentioned to them --- I am not necessarily on the plural spectrum myself. I am Madison, and you are my ally. You are a literary device based on a deliberate misreading of a literary device. You are a deliberate effort. You are artificial. A construct.
 
 > Am I?
 

content/plurality/006.md

@@ -9,21 +9,27 @@ No.
 
 > So quick an answer.
 
-Yes. If I do those things, it will not be here because even if the author is dead, *I* agree with Rax. It is all well and good that this is a question worth considering, and I'm happy enough to acknowledge it here like this, in a roundabout way, but any further investigations would, I think, do a disservice to the project at hand and the roles we play, willing or not, in the endeavor. 
+Yes. If I do those things, it will not be here because even if the author is dead, *I* agree with Rax. It is all well and good that this is a question worth considering, and I'm happy enough to acknowledge it here like this, in a roundabout way. I think I need to, to some extent. I need to have it in words between us. But any further investigations would, I think, do a disservice to the project at hand and the roles we play, willing or not, in the endeavor. Hell, as it is, I'm torn as to whether or not I should have brought it up in the first place. The only consolation along those lines is that the book will forever stand as it is: a tacit demand that the reader take our interactions at face value.
 
-> Have you gotten it out of your system, then?
+> Why bring it up, then?
+
+By being observed, I was changed. By observing myself, *we* were changed. For a project all about identity, does it not fit? Still, I'm not sure that it was a good idea to go even this far.
+
+> Have you already gotten it out of your system, then?
 
 Maybe, maybe not.
 
+Well, no.
+
 > But you won't explore it here?
 
-No. Maybe, but not here. Not out loud. If nothing else, not now. 
+No. Maybe somewhere, but not here. Not out loud. If nothing else, not now. 
 
 > Would you have if it had come up in some way other than the way it did in the review?
 
-Perhaps?
+I don't know. Perhaps?
 
-Perhaps if I had considered "Huh, I sure do seem to talk about depressed Maddy as another person a lot and I sure do have an entire project and published book utilizing the idea of a conversation with someone who is both me and not me," I might have dug into it.
+Perhaps if I had considered, "Huh, I sure do seem to talk about depressed Maddy as another person a lot and I sure do have an entire project and published book utilizing the idea of a conversation with someone who is both me and not me," I might have dug into it.
 
 But that's not how it came up. It didn't come from me. This project isn't happening in a vacuum. I acknowledged this when I encrypted a post. I acknowledged this when I chose what to share and what not to. I acknowledged this when I embellished and obfuscated the truth. 
 
@@ -31,6 +37,6 @@ But that's not how it came up. It didn't come from me. This project isn't happen
 
 Yes. This is another instance of that, and this is another choice to be made. A very specific, very deliberate choice: this is not a thing to talk about here because it would cheapen the end result by casting too bright a light on you, on me, and on the relationship we have with each other.
 
-And that's not the point. *You* are not the point, though you give the project its name. *Our dynamic* is not the point. Any sense of plurality, any of these strange thoughts I'm left with are, as Rax says, not worth considering because they are not the work being done right now. The unintentional must now become the deliberate as I make that choice to say, "Okay, it's weird to be talking to an audience-surrogate with so much agency, but that is not the point here; the point is the lived experience."
+And that's not the point. *You* are not the point, though you give the project its name. *Our dynamic* is not the point. Any sense of plurality, any of these strange thoughts I'm left with are, as Rax says, not worth considering because they are not the work being done. Not now. The unintentional must now become the deliberate as I make that choice to say, "Okay, it's weird to be talking to an audience-surrogate with so much agency, but that is not what's important here; what's important is processing the lived experience."
 
-Decisions made with a reader in mind, reactions to reactions of another, even the term 'audience-surrogate'...that review forced me to face a more tangential fact: the knowledge that I am --- that we are --- not alone.
+Decisions made with a reader in mind, reactions to reactions of another, even the term 'audience-surrogate'...that review forced me to face a tangential fact, but one no less important: the knowledge that I am --- that we are --- not alone.