Motes minor edits

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

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ It goes beyond interests or chosen profession (or, well, ``profession''; this \e
 
 This includes all sorts of different aspects of personality. A Finger Pointing remains her flamboyant, dramatic self just as Motes leans hard into these feelings of childhood. I wanted to explore something like this in more detail.
 
-Finally, I have been fascinated with the idea of childhood for years. It is not the supposed purity\footnote{I find `the purity of childhood' personally unnerving. It strikes me as an aspect of the oft-maligned purity culture. Kids can be mean. They can be \emph{cruel.} They are creatures who act upon their base desires, for better or worse. I think this, in combination with its laws-for-thee-none-for-me attitude, has led to the ``corruption'' of children becoming a talking point of the right, those bastions of that very same purity culture.} of it, nor is it necessarily that my own was bad. What it \emph{was,} though, is less than ideal. It feels like my childhood is something that happened to someone else. It is a thing that happened to Matthew, not to Madison. I never got to live a childhood as Madison, good \emph{or} bad.
+Finally, I have been fascinated with the idea of childhood for years. It is not the supposed purity\footnote{I find `the purity of childhood' personally unnerving. It strikes me as an aspect of the oft-maligned purity culture. Kids can be mean. They can be \emph{cruel.} They are creatures who act upon their base desires, for better or worse. I think this, in combination with its laws-for-thee-none-for-me attitude, has led to the ``corruption of children'' becoming a talking point of the right, those bastions of that very same purity culture.} of it, nor is it necessarily that my own was bad. What it \emph{was,} though, is less than ideal. It feels like my childhood is something that happened to someone else. It is a thing that happened to Matthew, not to Madison. I never got to live a childhood as Madison, good \emph{or} bad.
 
 Honestly, I have little desire to do so now. It is not out of a desire to be a literal kid, myself, that I wrote \emph{Motes Played.} I wrote it because that idea in particular—that someone would wish to just\ldots go be a kid because they can and because it felt good—is fascinating to me. Motes decided that her role was to be the kid, the One Who Plays, and so she leaned hard into that.
 
@@ -112,10 +112,10 @@ If I sound at all bitter, then, it is because I have made something that I am pr
 
 I resent that I need to be rightfully anxious. I resent that, by creating something in this idea-space, I run the very real risk of, at worst, having my personhood negated when I am declared problematic, a groomer, a pedophile, \emph{persona non grata.} I resent that I do not need to consider whether I will be labeled these things; I am all but sure I will. I mentioned above that I have already had a conversation that touched on this. It led to someone reducing their engagement with the Post-Self community.\footnote{Which is valid! Curate your engagement. Stay healthy with your media consumption. The Post-Self community explicitly welcomes a come-and-go, curation-friendly approach in all our spaces.} I resent that I risk losing readers, friends, loved ones. I resent that the oft-misused ``death of the author'' is only applied to the works one enjoys and derided otherwise, and so in this case, I will be reduced to my roughest edges and discarded by those who do not enjoy works such as these. The work that I put into it will be ignored in the face of this one fact regardless of my feelings on what I have accomplished.
 
-I resent that one way I could avoid such readings are to make Motes miserable, to deny her happiness in her identity, do take from her her pride in herself and her growth. I resent that I might well be lauded for changing the ending of the book to have Motes give up, have her follow Hammered Silver's suggestion to put away childish things\footnote{The Odists are famously Jews; why is she quoting 1 Corinthians? But then, I suppose Paul was famously a Jew, too\ldots} and become other than she had been. I resent that a `solution' in my straw-reader's mind would be to replace joy with shame.
-
 I resent that, if I claim that \href{https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReallySevenHundredYearsOld}{Motes is nearly 300 years old} at the time of this story, I will be accused of trying to weasel my way out of grooming accusations, regardless of the fact that dealing with grooming is part of her character and the plot. I resent that if I claim that the headmate upon which Motes is based is actually 38 at time of writing, just like this wretched body,\footnote{Remember that mention of sciatica? Yeeeah\ldots} and has simply leaned into feelings of kidcore, a portion of my identity will be declared wicked and manipulative. I resent that, no matter how loudly I say that I am aware of the broader context of CSA in the wider world, how abhorrent I think that is, none of that will matter in the face of that same imagined wicked and manipulative aspect. I resent that, no matter how nuanced my arguments on consent are\footnote{Many of those who \emph{do} engage with interests and kinks often considered problematic think about consent and those potentially problematic aspects \emph{far} more than most, even those who dislike them, I guarantee you.}—even within this very work!—the work itself will be declared, yes, wicked and manipulative.
 
+I resent that one way I could avoid such readings are to make Motes miserable, to deny her happiness in her identity, do take from her her pride in herself and her growth. I resent that I might well be lauded for changing the ending of the book to have Motes give up, have her follow Hammered Silver's suggestion to put away childish things\footnote{The Odists are famously Jews; why is she quoting 1 Corinthians? But then, I suppose Paul was famously a Jew, too\ldots} and become other than she had been. I resent that a `solution' in my straw-reader's mind would be to replace joy with shame.
+
 It is, as Motes puts it, annihilation. It is the opposite of reclamation. Rather than taking the bad and finding a way to reclaim the good in it, it is taking a thing that is good and making it not just bad, but reprehensible. It is taking things that one enjoys and not making them less enjoyable, but making them shameful.
 
 I resent that.