edits, publication of Motes Played

motes-played/content/001.tex

@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ And so Motes played.
 
 She sat atop her stool, one of her feet perched up there with her so that she could rest her chin somewhere while she painted. A palette sat on an infinitely positionable nothing beside her. A canvas sat on an easel, rickety and well-loved, before her. A brush sat in her paw, and paint sat on the brush. A thin, black rectangle sat on that canvas, as did a mountainous landscape. Music sat in her ears, chirpy and glitchy to offset the serenity of the scene in a new way.
 
+\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_01.png}\pagebreak
+
 She hummed. She sang. Her tail fwipped this way, flopped that in time with the music. She painted and painted and painted until the painting was finished—there was no guarantee of when that would be: the painting would be done when it was done, as it now was—and when it was finished, she stopped.
 
 Slipping off her stool, she stumbled clumsily to the side, laughing at the sudden rush of pins-and-needles to her backside and the base of her tail. She inserted a step in her list of things to do before cleaning and plopped down onto her belly, using the remainder of the ochre paint in the brush to doodle the face of a fennec fox on the hardboard floor of her studio. It was one of thousands by now, and they had long since started to overlap.
@@ -164,7 +166,7 @@ And so she kept it under wraps for years and decades.
 
 First it was the feelings she kept to herself. She alone knew them, and then her stanza alone knew them, but no one else.
 
-Then, it was the appearance that she kept to herself. While, shortly after happening on these feelings, she had built herself into an image of youth parked squarely in her early twenties, a human who dressed in flower-embroidered jeans and blouses, who so often wore a flower crown in her hair, who embodied flower-child, she now spent weeks and months tuning various aspects of her shape, of her sensorium. A skunk like so many of her cocladists, rather than a human. Shorter, yes, but that is not all that makes a child. Shorter, proportionately different, clumsier, less developed in all ways aside from mental acuity. Just a kid.
+Then, it was the appearance that she kept to herself. While, shortly after happening on these feelings, she had built herself into an image of youth parked squarely in her early twenties, a human who dressed in flower-embroidered jeans and blouses, who so often wore a flower crown in her hair, who embodied flower-child, she now spent weeks and months tuning various aspects of her shape, of her sensorium. A skunk like so many of her cocladists, rather than a human. Shorter, yes, but that is not all that makes a child. Shorter,\pagebreak\ proportionately different, clumsier, less developed in all ways aside from mental acuity. Just a kid.
 
 She alone knew this shape, alone in her room, alone in her apartment, alone in her studio with the doors securely shut and the premises swept. She alone knew what she looked like, and then her stanza knew, but precious few others.
 

motes-played/content/002.tex

@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ Tonight, Motes played in hedonism. A night at a restaurant out on the town, wher
 
 Tonight, she played drunk: a beer with the dogs, drinks made fizzy with champagne and sweet with floral liqueurs at a pop-up bar, then fruity drinks served in tall glasses with taller straws at the venue before the headliner started, the thump of the bass from the opener echoing up through her feet, pressing at her chest, leaving a warmth in her belly that verged on sensual. Tonight, between sets or whenever she felt like she needed a break, she would waft back to the bar and order a vodka soda or some other ridiculous drink meant more to hydrate than taste good.
 
+\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_02.png}
+
 Tonight, Motes played as hard as ever, letting that warmth that was building low in her belly be her guide as she latched onto a dancing partner, a solidly built mustelid of some sort—an otter? A mink?—who wound his way through the crowd in a fluid motion that was dancelike even when the music had stopped. It was a night for letting him dance closer and closer as the sets progressed, a night for letting him press a pill to her lips and beneath her tongue. It was a night for letting him push his whiskery muzzle up beneath her chin, letting him show her just how sharp his teeth were against her throat, for pressing close enough to feel just how thoroughly he shared in her excitement.
 
 Tonight, she let him take her home. Tonight she let him pin her to the bed, paw on her shoulder and teeth on her throat. Tonight, she let him draw blood.

motes-played/content/003.tex

@@ -112,6 +112,8 @@ A grin was growing on the other skunk's face.
 
 Bad sign.
 
+\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_03.png}
+
 Figuring there was nothing for it, she gathered up a spoonful of the fluff, complete with a few pips, said, ``Onetwothree\emph{go!}'' and stuffed it into her mouth\ldots then immediately raced to swallow it. ``Mmnglhfnnf!''
 
 Warmth bust into a fit of giggles and forked several times in quick succession, the crowd of em breaking into a wild applause, complete with standing ovation and shouts of `Bravo! Brava! Bravissimo!', before quitting.

motes-played/content/004.tex

@@ -60,6 +60,8 @@ None of this was supposed to happen. None of this was right.
 
 Michelle/Sasha straightened up and said, almost bored, ``Well? Indulge, my dear.''
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_04.png}}
+
 With no recourse, Motes drove the blade into her own neck, an agonizing slowness that played itself out in a death she had experienced before, she had surely suffered in its own, consensual way.
 
 She died then, whimpering ever more weakly, blood staining her paw and arm and front in an outsized torrent, and as her panicked eyes drifted shut one last time, she awoke with a start, already sobbing.
@@ -80,7 +82,7 @@ Sighing in relief, the skunk nodded and padded into the room, closing the door b
 
 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.
+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,\pagebreak\ her other cocladist-\emph{cum}-mother clearly still more asleep than awake.
 
 And then she finally was able to relax.
 
@@ -182,7 +184,7 @@ Motes pawed up at her cocladist's hand on her ear. ``Well, okay. That is fair. N
 
 ``You see? You do understand. Now. Tell me what is on your little skunk mind.''
 
-``I had a dream last night,'' she said, beginning slowly. ``And I already talked about it with Ma and Bee, and I think I sort of understand the ways in which it is wrong. Like, we talked about the fact that it was just a dream, and that it was probably spurred by how much I have been thinking about that sort of thing anyway, and that, since I cannot tell why I started thinking about all of this stuff, what I need to do is to start thinking back and remembering what might have happened that started the thoughts before.''
+``I had a dream last night,'' she said, beginning slowly. ``And I already talked about it with Ma and Bee, and I think I sort of understand the ways in which it is wrong. Like, we talked about the fact that it was just a dream, and that it was probably spurred by how much I have been thinking about that sort of thing anyway, and that, since I cannot tell why I started thinking about all of this stuff, what I need to do is to start thinking back and\pagebreak\ remembering what might have happened that started the thoughts before.''
 
 Slow Hours nodded quietly. ``Start at the dream, then, and we will talk from there. I am sure that I will infer what you mean by `this stuff'.''
 
@@ -236,7 +238,7 @@ Motes shook her head. ``I never really talked to them, even going way back—I d
 
 ``And sometimes it feels transgressive in a bad way?'' Slow Hours asked when Motes drifted to silence.
 
-``Yeah. It feels like I am doing something wrong. That is what I got out of the dream. It was not just that I was doing a bad thing, but a \emph{wrong} thing. A bad thing might be naughty, but a wrong thing is me fuc-- messing up. It is me making a mistake. \emph{Being} a mistake.''
+``Yeah. It feels like I am doing something wrong. That is what I got out of the dream. It was not just that I was doing a bad thing, but a \emph{wrong} thing. A bad thing might be naughty, but a wrong\pagebreak\ thing is me fuc-- messing up. It is me making a mistake. \emph{Being} a mistake.''
 
 Her cocladist smiled sadly and reached out to take her paws in her hands. ``I could tell you a million, billion, trillion times that you are doing as you say and just living like yourself, that you are not doing a wrong thing, that you are not a wrong person, but I do not think that is what you need to hear, is it, Speck?''
 

motes-played/content/005.tex

@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@ Motes stopped playing.
 
 She stopped playing because, some weeks later, she was out with some friends, some of the others who had decided to give up on grown-up life now that they were here, now that they were decades old or centuries, now that they were functionally immortal. She stopped playing because, as she sprinted full-tilt after a handful of friends, dodging around benches and trees, seesaws and swings, a bolt of panic struck down her spine with an electric intensity and made her tumble into the gravel, made her skid through the pebbles until she crunched up against a jungle gym, left her nose, paws, and elbows bloodied. She stopped playing because for a long minute, she could not breathe, though whether from the adrenaline pulling her nerves taut or the pain in her snout or from the air being knocked out of her, she could not tell.
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_05.png}}
+
 She stopped playing because, as she slowly pushed herself upright to a sitting position, tears already springing from her eyes, an envelope slid nonsensically from the air and fluttered to the ground before her. She stopped playing because her name—her full name, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights of the Ode clade—was printed on the front of the envelope in a handwriting that was painfully familiar because it was her own. It was her own and it was A Finger Pointing's and it was Beholden's, it was Slow Hours's and Warmth's and Dry Grass's, and it was the handwriting that flowed from the hand of every Odist even after hundreds of years.
 
 She stopped playing because she had a guess as to who this was from, and that only led to a second spike in anxiety, for while the first had been from a top-priority sensorium ping, this came from fear, from terror. She stopped playing as Alexei hollered, ``Motes!'' and started to run back to her. She stopped playing as she rolled to the side out of the sim and into her studio.

motes-played/content/006.tex

@@ -66,6 +66,8 @@ They are two different ways of moving in the world, and yet they end in the same
 
 Motes fell into friendship as a kid. She fell into friendship with Alexei. She fell into friendship with Who Walks The Path. She fell into friendship with so many other kids she met at this playground or at that game sim.
 
+\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_06.png}
+
 Fell into and fell out of, yes? For kids fall out of friendship just as easily. They find a similarity and become the bestest of friends with each other and then that turns out to not be enough to maintain a friendship or it turns out that the other kid has another, bestester friend or it turns out that the other kid is actually kind of a b-word. And so Motes fell into friendship with Jonie who was a dog and then fell out of that friendship some few weeks later when Jonie who was a dog called Motes stinky one too many times and she was \emph{not} stinky. She fell into friendship with Khadijah when she went through a rope skipping phase and then fell out of it when the phase ended and Khadijah cried and cried and cried and when Motes tried to rekindle the friendship the bond had already been broken. She fell out of relationships but never as many as she fell into and relationships lasted years or decades.
 
 She fell into and out of friendships and forgot, perhaps, how to form adult friendships, and so many people she met as Big Motes only passed through her life for a week or so.

motes-played/content/007.tex

@@ -304,6 +304,8 @@ She nodded and pushed herself slowly to her feet through a wave of unreality, of
 
 \secdiv
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_07.png}}
+
 Letter after letter, topic after topic. They became rote. They became routine. They became a signature of Hammered Silver after every little decision that A Finger Pointing made which did not meet her standards. Every little decision that \emph{anyone} made, if what True Name and Praiseworthy had to say was true.
 
 And it was not just her, after all, was it?
@@ -404,7 +406,7 @@ 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\pagebreak\ 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 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.
 
@@ -504,7 +506,7 @@ And at some point back in the late 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept
 
 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\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?''
+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?''
 
 But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit—perished—Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
 

motes-played/content/008.tex

@@ -104,6 +104,8 @@ The skunk nodded. ``Yeah, like that. I just have way less of that in me than eit
 
 Dry Grass winced. ``Me too. I will not show up to a performance if I know that will happen.''
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_08.png}}
+
 ``Really? Shit. I am sorry. At least I am not alone in that,'' Beholden mumbled, nudging herself to start swinging as well. ``It is moments like those when I feel most like she is my kid, though. I feel that family dynamic most when she is at risk, you know? When Slow Hours and I argue about that sort of thing, that is when I feel most protective of her, like my sister is doing something bad to my kid.''
 
 ``Was it always like that?'' Dry Grass asked. ``Did you always feel that?

motes-played/content/009.tex

@@ -24,6 +24,8 @@ Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
 
 The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt so that they offered a pleasant mix of textures, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with an indulgent oiliness throughout. These were layered on top of a pile of even crispier hash browns—the kind that shatter beneath a fork when you try to stab them—before the eggs were laid on top and the yolks punctured so that they oozed out over the mess to add a sauce of their own.
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_09.png}}
+
 A plate laden with two burritos in one hand and mimosa in the other, she made her way to the couch rather than the dining table and settled down with a long, worn-out sigh.
 
 What was missing\ldots? Ah! Coffee.
@@ -118,7 +120,7 @@ The full story of what had happened over the last few days between A Finger Poin
 
 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.
+When she finished and all questions had been answered or 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.
 
 Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. ``What a fucking bitch.''
 
@@ -142,7 +144,7 @@ She shrugged. ``Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later.''
 
 She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, some queer thing too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. ``Yes. Busy.''
 
-As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as\pagebreak\ `Ma' and `Bee', that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comfortable role as their Dot, their \emph{dóttir}.
+As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as `Ma' and `Bee', that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comfortable role as their Dot, their \emph{dóttir}.
 
 When the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes slipped away and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedence over whatever they had had planned at the auditorium for the rest of the day. That they had come home for her, for Motes, was the base of that warmth that had grown within her.
 
@@ -186,7 +188,7 @@ She caught herself in the act of merely shrugging, then shook her head to clear
 
 ``That's sweet of them.''
 
-``It is. I\ldots uh,'' she trailed off. ``The overflow started when I got\pagebreak\ a letter from within the clade. It really fucked me up. Like, \emph{really} bad.''
+``It is. I\ldots uh,'' she trailed off. ``The overflow started when I got a letter from within the clade. It really fucked me up. Like, \emph{really} bad.''
 
 ``And that's why you're Big Motes? Why you didn't say `Ma'?''
 

motes-played/content/010.tex

@@ -10,6 +10,9 @@ She played with her friends. She played with strangers she had seen before yet n
 
 She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wandered off, until the long, breezy morning in this sim sighed its way into the heat of afternoon. She played until the obvious thing to do was to climb up to the top of the tunnel-ridden pile of flagstone to sit at the summit, enjoying the sun with Alexei.
 
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{assets/mp_10.png}}
+
+
 The park was only one part of a small town, only one part of a sizeable sim, but it was a popular destination for those who leaned into childhood on Lagrange for its permissive attitudes and curious inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be families—found or blood—and many of whom were the kids who played here. Alexei lived here with the family he had built: three guardians—one of whom was his great-grandfather by blood—and a sister.
 
 ``I'm glad you're here, Motes,'' he said after they had sat in silence for some time. ``Where were you, anyway? I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but it's just us, right?''

motes-played/content/afterword.tex

@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ Thanks also to Madison's patrons:
 
 %\vspace{-1em}
 
-\noindent Madison Rye Progress and Samantha Yule 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. Together, they have shepherded the Post-Self universe from a simple setting for a few stories to an entire world, working to curate the history and mechanics, as well as building the community that has sprung up around the setting. 
 %, 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}
@@ -56,3 +56,16 @@ Thanks also to Madison's patrons:
 \end{center}
 
 \vfill
+
+\chapter*{About the artist}
+\thispagestyle{empty}
+
+\begin{center}
+  \includegraphics[width=3in]{assets/astolpho-bw.png}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent B. Root is a illustrator, 3d artist, and VR enthusiast living in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a rather small lion.
+
+\begin{center}
+  roots.works
+\end{center}