MP edits

motes-played/book.tex

@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@
 
   \begin{verse}
   She died at play, \\
-Gambolled away \\
+Gamboled away \\
 Her lease of spotted hours, \\
 Then sank as gaily as a Turk \\
 Upon a Couch of flowers.

motes-played/content/001.tex

@@ -274,7 +274,7 @@ Motes frowned and pulled apart the logic, doodling pink spirals onto her fingerp
 
 ``Is this that stupid optics thing again?''
 
-``I do not know. Certainly in part, though it is also in part because, if you are her, then you could not be her child. It is another form of an intraclade relationship.'' She hesitated, then added, ``It means that she has the capability to become like you, yes? That all of us have\pagebreak\ that within us, yes?''
+``I do not know. Certainly in part, though it is also in part because, if you are her, then you could not be her child. It is another form of an intraclade relationship.'' She hesitated, then added, ``It means that she has the capability to become like you, yes? That all of us have that within us, yes?''
 
 ``Oh god,'' Motes said, laughing. ``I cannot imagine Hammered Silver as a kid. She would be one of those prissy, stuck up girls who is the daughter of the PTA president or something.''
 
@@ -294,4 +294,4 @@ Dry Grass nodded, expression serious. ``It absolutely is. She has gotten quite u
 
 Motes huffed, nodded. ``Good. If you stop talking to me, I \emph{will} cry.''
 
-``Perish the thought!'' Dry Grass laughed and leaned over to\pagebreak\ hug her cocladist, careful of her nails. ``I will not. Do not worry, my dear, you are stuck with me for a good while yet. I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself.''
+``Perish the thought!'' Dry Grass laughed and leaned over to hug her cocladist, careful of her nails. ``I will not. Do not worry, my dear, you are stuck with me for a good while yet. I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself.''

motes-played/content/003.tex

@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ She picked up the speed into an all out sprint. Her pursuer darted off at sharp
 
 The two ran directly at each other, weaving slightly to make their way around the occasional tree.
 
-It was Motes who caved first, ducking down onto paws and knees at the last second before the critter, who deftly leapfrogged over her with a dopplered giggle.
+It was Motes who caved first, ducking down onto paws and knees at the last second before the critter, who deftly leapfrogged over her with a Dopplered giggle.
 
 ``Gotcha!'' ey cried, scampering off to the forest.
 

motes-played/content/004.tex

@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ She carefully poked her nose into the room, turning the handle to the door as qu
 
 Sighing in relief, the skunk nodded and padded into the room, closing the door behind her. She had to feel her way to the bed in the dark. The dark, which seemed to press in against her, bearing rapidly distorting memories of the dream. \emph{To think that I could be this disgusting,} echoed in her head. \emph{\ldots lurid visions of youth\ldots{}}
 
-There was a part of her that strived to convince the rest that the voice in the dark was not that of A Finger Pointing—despite the lilting, everlasting humor that showed even in sleepiness—but that of Michelle/Sasha, her root instance who had ever loved her, now more than fifty years dead. \emph{It is her waiting with a dagger,} that fraction of her promised. \emph{It is her waiting with yet more cruel words.}
+There was a part of her that strove to convince the rest that the voice in the dark was not that of A Finger Pointing—despite the lilting, everlasting humor that showed even in sleepiness—but that of Michelle/Sasha, her root instance who had ever loved her, now more than fifty years dead. \emph{It is her waiting with a dagger,} that fraction of her promised. \emph{It is her waiting with yet more cruel words.}
 
 But then there was the bed, and then there was the hand holding up the covers to welcome her in, and then there were the arms envelop her, and then there was the feeling of a face—a human face—an unshifting face—her cocladist-\emph{cum}-mother's face—pressed against the back of her neck, and then there was the clumsy addition of Beholden's paw draping over her side, her other cocladist-\emph{cum}-mother clearly still more asleep than awake.
 

motes-played/content/006.tex

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ And so, there was a time at which she did not play, did not surround herself wit
 
 And yet, even before that, before Motes, before the System, before getting lost, Michelle had played, had she not? She had been a kid, yes? Michelle, even before getting her implants and becoming Sasha, had been five, had been six and seven and eight.
 
-\secdiv
+\secdiv\pagebreak
 
 Michelle played as well. She painted, too, back then.
 
@@ -81,8 +81,10 @@ She owned playfulness because life is play. She owned it because it was so easy
 It changed the way that her cocladists and friends treated her. They started ruffling her hair as That It Might Give had, trying to get her excited. They started playing with her in the auditorium, hiding to jump out and startle her or running up to tap her on the shoulder and shout ``You are it!'' before running off to the dressing rooms to change for their role. They started doing all of the good things that one does with kids and none of the bad things. After all, if they needed Serious Motes, they could still talk to her like the fifty year old woman that she was, right?
 
 She liked that.
+\vspace{0.5em}
 
 \secdiv
+\vspace{0.5em}
 
 Slow Hours, Motes's big sister, had once had it said about her by Deny All Beginnings, town crier to her town scryer, ``It seems so often to me that you have the criss-cross pattern of a schoolyard tool imprinted on your face, no doubt hurled at at you by a god.'' She explained this to Motes that there was some contemporary interpretation of the Greek god Apollo hurling a dodgeball at the unwitting to bless them with the gift of prophecy.
 
@@ -215,7 +217,6 @@ But even as she tested those boundaries and always respected them when they were
 It was a bit, and she was committed to it. She was an actress, yes? She had a part to play, yes? The kid? The child? The daughter and sister, yes? It was method acting over the course of a lifetime. She committed to the bit and convinced herself as best she could to forget how to uncommit, and that, in itself was lovely.
 
 \secdiv
-\pagebreak
 
 Motes dreamed.
 

motes-played/content/007.tex

@@ -404,7 +404,7 @@ And so, A Finger Pointing accepted her up-tree's merge just as blithely.
 
 The effects were both subtle and dramatic.
 
-They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated. \emph{That} was the drama.
+They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her\pagebreak\ sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated. \emph{That} was the drama.
 
 This was the dissociation. This was the derealization. This was the world around her ceasing to make sense, as though in a dream. As though in a dream because she \emph{did} live in a dream, did she not? She lived in the consensual dream that was the System, yes? It was hyper-dreaming, then, it was understanding a dream within a dream.
 
@@ -420,7 +420,7 @@ She wished dearly that she could do so now.
 
 ``I am tired, Beholden.''
 
-``I know, love,'' the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her.
+``I know, love,'' the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her.\pagebreak
 
 She could still comprehend, at least, and could still see Beholden there beside her, a look of tired concern painted on her face.
 
@@ -466,7 +466,7 @@ And thus it was an expectation one might fall short of. It was a standard one mi
 
 At some point in the past—there were so many admonitions against joy that she could choose from!—A Finger Pointing's friendship with Hammered Silver came to an end. The most visible of these was perhaps when Sasha joined Au Lieu Du Rêve as stage manager in systime 231, five years after she had become Sasha. That was when Hammered Silver had moved beyond cutting off Sasha herself and the entirety of the eighth stanza for their politicking, the first for their spying, and part of the ninth for their mere association, and had included the entirety of the fifth stanza.
 
-For the rest of the fifth stanza also bore this expectation, this standard, this trust that there was within all people something worth friendship, some kernel of joy, and none of them shunned Sasha, either.
+For the rest of the fifth stanza also bore this expectation, this standard, this trust that there was within all people something\pagebreak\ worth friendship, some kernel of joy, and none of them shunned Sasha, either.
 
 Cutting contact is one hell of a way to end a friendship, yes?
 
@@ -480,7 +480,7 @@ And at some point back in the mid 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept o
 
 For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besides. Going years back, back even to the late 2100s, this reveling in play that Motes brought to the fifth stanza had built in A Finger Pointing a sense of her place in the order: her role was a maternal one. A reveling in care, in the type of friendship that flowered in a particular dynamic.
 
-She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. ``But that is my job,'' she reasoned aloud when she became more open about this protection. ``That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?''
+She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. ``But that is my job,'' she reasoned aloud when she became\pagebreak\ more open about this protection. ``That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?''
 
 The first time Motes called A Finger Pointing `mom', there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and hurts, inquiries and boundaries, tears and tears and tears. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now. Not yet.
 
@@ -520,8 +520,12 @@ There was no more love between them. The trust had been broken. They met to keep
 
 That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received that letter, the one that she tore up and burned to ash, cried over and then, determined, used the paint of which to spell out renewed love for those who remained in her life.
 
+\vspace{-0.5em}
+
 \secdiv
 
+\vspace{-0.5em}
+
 The dissociation had before long defined her life, her existence.
 
 It had dampened her hedonism. It had put a stopper on so much of her wild enthusiasm and had led her to so often asking Beholden to take her home when she had so often before outlasted the skunk on their outings. Whereas before she had dwelt in even the excesses of hedonism until she overflowed and locked herself away from it, a self-harm by omission, she now dwelt in the quietudes of hedonism until she overflowed and threw herself with abandon into wildnesses, a self-harm by overindulgence.

motes-played/content/009.tex

@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and se
 
 The full story of what had happened over the last few days between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver was laid bare over the next hour. Not just that, but much of their story going back into the past as well; she even, at one point, dreamed up a stack of all 98 letters she had received over the years, totaling nearly 300 pages.
 
-Both Beholden and Motes were left with more than a few questions. Over the last few years, their down-tree instance had opened up more and more about how much she had shielded the stanza from the political machinations of the rest of the clade around them, all of the ways in which she had strived to protect them, for better or for worse, and yet more of this became clear as she spoke about all of the fuss that Hammered Silver had made over the years.
+Both Beholden and Motes were left with more than a few questions. Over the last few years, their down-tree instance had opened up more and more about how much she had shielded the stanza from the political machinations of the rest of the clade around them, all of the ways in which she had strove to protect them, for better or for worse, and yet more of this became clear as she spoke about all of the fuss that Hammered Silver had made over the years.
 
 When she finished and all questions had been answered or\pagebreak\ deferred, they fell into silence for a long few minutes, the three of them just digesting the last few days each in their own way.
 

motes-played/content/afterword.tex

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
-\chapter*{Acknowledgements}
+\chapter*{Acknowledgments}
 \thispagestyle{empty}
 
-Thanks, as always, to the polycule, who have been endlessly supportive. Thanks as well as to Tomash, Ellen, Andréa, and all the rest of the Post-Self community, who have helped build this lovely world, and to Lilium who made me think most about the impact of my work.
+Thanks, as always, to the polycule, who have been endlessly supportive. Thanks as well as to Tomash, Ellen, Andréa, Faux, and all the rest of the Post-Self community, who have helped build this lovely world, and to Lilium who made me think most about the impact of my work.
 
 Thanks also to Madison's patrons:
 
@@ -36,13 +36,13 @@ Thanks also to Madison's patrons:
 \chapter*{About the authors}
 \pagestyle{empty}
 
-%\begin{center}
-%  \includegraphics[width=2in]{content/headshot.png}
-%\end{center}
+\begin{center}
+  \includegraphics[width=2in]{echo_hours.png}
+\end{center}
 
 %\vspace{-1em}
 
-\noindent Madison Rye Progress and Fireheart are a couple'a nerds living in the mountains with their dog.
+\noindent Madison Rye Progress and Samantha Yule Fireheart are a couple'a nerds living in the mountains with their dog.
 %, who often writes under the moniker Madison Scott-Clary, is a transgender writer, editor, and software engineer. She focuses on furry fiction and non-fiction, using that as a framework for interrogating the concept of self and exploring across genres. A graduate of the Regional Anthropomorphic Writers Workshop in 2021, hosted by Kyell Gold and Dayna Smith, she holds an MFA in creative writing and education from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, IA. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her dog, as well as her partner, who is sometimes a dog.
 
 \begin{center}

motes-played/content/thoughts-on-motes.tex

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-\emph{Motes Played} was written in a few short weeks at the end of December, 2023 and the beginning of January, 2024 in a burst of creativity. The origin for the story actually stems from a conversation that I had with my partner, whose system is named The Lament, on a drive from visiting eir parents down in Vancouver back home to northern Washington. In the span of about four hours, we made our way down through the stanzas of the Ode clade and spoke about what make them tick.
+\emph{Motes Played} was written in a few short weeks at the end of December, 2023 and the beginning of January, 2024 in a burst of creativity. The origin for the story actually stems from a conversation that I had with my partner\footnote{Whose system name is The Lament, which you may recognize from the dedication.} on a drive from visiting eir parents down in Vancouver back home to northern Washington. In the span of about four hours, we made our way down through the stanzas of the Ode clade and spoke about what make them tick.
 
 There are some known quantities. True Name is the politician, A Finger Pointing is the theatrician, Praiseworthy is the propagandist turned arts administrator, and so on. All of the stanzas have been labeled with their basic ideas, of course, and one of those was Hammered Silver being the center of all of Michelle's feelings on motherhood.
 

motes-played/includes/variables.tex

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 \def\EditionsList{10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1}
 \def\Year{2024}
 
-\def\ISBN{XXX-X-XXXXXX-XX-X}
+\def\ISBN{978-1-948743-45-7}
 
 \def\Publisher{PUBLISHER}
 \def\PublisherEmail{publisher@example.com}