Marsh stories, contract; Motes Played thoughts, primer; Ask cover

motes-played/content/thoughts.tex

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+\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 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.
+
+What exactly does that mean, though? How does that play out in her head and her heart?
+
+Our initial take on it was actually fairly negative. We decided that she had some very prescriptive ways of thinking about motherhood. There is caring, yes, but there are also Ways in Which the World Works. After all, Hammered Silver is one of the two who cut her entire stanza off from the eighth and part of the ninth stanzas, as well the Bălan clade. Later on, this also included the first and then, once they took on Sasha as a stage manager, the fifth stanza.
+
+However, we wanted to toy with those feelings of motherhood more directly. How does she deal with the lack of children on the System? How does she deal with her own feelings on motherhood? We decided on coming up with a good side and a bad side:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\tightlist
+\item
+  \textbf{Good side:} Hammered Silver is keenly focused on family dynamics as a whole and ensuring that these remain supportive in a place where they might otherwise be neglected. This was expanded after the advent of AVEC, where she campaigned to help keep families united after a member uploaded.
+\item
+  \textbf{Bad side:} This problem was expanded vertically to include a very prescriptive definition of family, as she bought thoroughly into the taboo on intraclade relationships. This led her to view \emph{all} family dynamics within clades with distrust and anger.
+\end{itemize}
+
+Well, we already know that there are intraclade relationships sys-side. There always have been, of course, though not always out in public. There have even been intraclade relationships within the Ode clade (and beyond just the stated examples in the Cycle), such as between Beholden and A Finger Pointing.
+
+Not only that, but there were already family dynamics in the clade, with Motes treating A Finger Pointing and Beholden as her parents, Slow Hours as her sister, A Finger Curled and Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres (two long-lived up-trees of A Finger Pointing and Beholden) as her weird gay aunts, and Dry Grass as Ma 2.0.
+
+Boom, automatic conflict.
+
+I wrote in a flurry, finishing a chapter a day most days over a two week span, working at a similar speed to how \emph{Toledot} came into being. Hypomania be like\textasciitilde{}\footnote{Okay, but having sciatica for two months probably helped.}
+
+Editing took a bit longer, mind, but was still a nice process, thanks to my partner who read each chapter aloud to me. Given how much the story means to em as well, it was a joy for both of us. I also got a few beta reads from within \href{https://wiki.post-self.ink/wiki/The_Post-Self_community}{the Post-Self community} which were, for the most part, really kind and understanding.
+
+The last step on my end is typesetting and final editing pass (which I usually do on the typeset book), getting ready for publication, and getting a cover. I am already chatting with \href{https://furaffinity.net/user/astolpho}{Astolpho} about that last bit, and he sounds interested.
+
+\section*{The story}
+
+I knew that the response to \emph{Motes Played} would be complicated from before its inception. Its inception was bound up in that very complication. That complication is part and parcel of the book, after all: Motes is an adult --- as everyone is, sys-side --- and many around her would prefer that she look and act like it.
+
+I knew that the response would be complicated, that it would make readers uncomfortable, would make friends or loved ones have some big feelings. I had those big feelings, too. Even after writing the book, after typesetting it and building the ebook (admittedly a mostly automated process), I struggled with the fact that I had written this thing and was thinking about putting it in front of others. There are no works of mine that are not expressions of vulnerability, but each is vulnerable in its own way. \emph{I} was uncomfortable! Funding it with the \emph{Marsh} Kickstarter was a way to force the issue for myself, to pit my pride in what I had accomplished against my fears.
+
+So anyway, I hit publish.
+
+\section*{Okay, but why a kid?}
+
+There are a few reasons why I wrote this book. First and foremost is simply that it was fun. I love the approach that a lot of children's books take with language. All of that repetition lends an almost hypnotic air. You keep reading the same idea over and over being stated in different ways with different antecedents and each one adds a little bit more color to the situation. They slowly change the mood of whatever they are building toward. It is alluring as a writer.
+
+It was also fun to play around with all of the differences that spring up through cladistics. We know Dear is the best worst fox and May Then My Name is a cuddlebug and True Name is a politician and E.W. is a Sad Boi, but if we start prowling through the other stanzas, what do we find?
+
+Well, we know that A Finger Pointing is a theatrician. She is one of the administrators of Au Lieu Du Rêve, the little troupe she started in the early days of the System, but which has grown to a group several hundred strong. This speaks to all sorts of roles that one might pick up, some of them informed by their names and some not. Beholden gets to deal with all of the sound and music, If I Stand Still deals with lights, and Motes gets sets and props
+
+It goes beyond interests or chosen profession (or, well, ``profession''; this \emph{is} the System, after all). Years bring with them individuation, and each of these cladists begin to shift as well. Just as May Then My Name is not True Name, neither is Motes A Finger Pointing. A lot can change over time.
+
+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{Why we do not think of `the purity of childhood' as an aspect of the oft-maligned purity culture is beyond me. Kids can be mean. They can be \emph{cruel.} They are creatures who act upon their base desires, for better or worse. The ``corruption'' of children, thus, is a talking point of the right, those bastions of purity culture, and to watch my own far-left cohort slip into that as a part of the ways in which they perform leftism, even if only on instinct, is disheartening, but then, in a personal essay on media literacy, I repeat myself.} 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.
+
+I wanted to play with the whole idea, too: I wanted to play with the sorts of uncomfortable feelings that many experience when confronted with adults engaging with the world as children. I wanted to talk about how someone who spends so much time in little space deals with the fact that others hate her guts for it.
+
+\section*{Now, about those big feelings\ldots{}}
+
+I do not need to wonder whether the reaction to \emph{Motes Played} will involve big feelings from others. Such has already been proven to me before it was even published.
+
+So, at the risk of coming off as defensive, let me offer some preemptive responses to those feelings.
+
+First, one must consider the role of art. There are three general ways of interpreting art:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\tightlist
+\item
+  \textbf{Escapist} --- art is simply there to entertain. In the case of something like fiction, it is there to provide a glimpse of some world other than ours (no matter how distant) so that we can experience something other than our wretched, wretched lives.
+\item
+  \textbf{Representative} --- art exists to represent the world as it is. Even things such as science fiction and fantasy represent the tropes that exist within our world, and are used to represent them out of their more complicated context that they might be observed.
+\item
+  \textbf{Instructive} --- art should be used to instruct the audience how to interact with the world. This goes beyond simply teaching them how to do this or that, too: it can be that a piece of art is intended to be an example that one should follow.
+\end{itemize}
+
+These are not hard and fast categories, of course, and a work of art need not fill only one of them. I think it is this last one that a lot of folks get hung up on, though. It is, of course, an exercise in futility that I provide my intentions in an artist's statement, but there is very little about the book that is intended to be instructive: it starts as children's books do because Motes presents as a kid, and it ends as children's books do because, hey presto, Motes presents as a kid.
+
+Instead, I provide a piece of writing which I intend to be escapist --- I have mentioned the joys above --- as well as representative. There are littles in the world. It is just a fact! People of all sorts engage with ageplay in all sorts of different ways. If Post-Self is to be a complete take on a future world, then I do not see why it should not include (thoughtful, sensitive, appropriate) takes on complete aspects of the world.
+
+But even if it were instructive, what are the lessons to be taken away from the story?
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\tightlist
+\item
+  \textbf{Do not trust strangers not to be gross to kids.} Motes is wary of forming friendships with adults unless she already knows and trusts them. Even when she does go out as an adult or engages with sexuality, she will not even give her name.
+\item
+  \textbf{Have a support network to help with the first point.} She relies on others not herself to help spot the things that she misses. Those she keeps close --- A Finger Pointing, Beholden, Slow Hours, and so on --- all strive to protect her, and she trusts in that.
+\item
+  \textbf{Live joyfully but live intentionally.} Motes does not simply throw herself with abandon into ``oh, I am going to be a kid now!'' but instead approaches her goal with intentionality, setting and respecting boundaries, and choosing spaces where such is expected and welcomed.
+\end{itemize}
+
+And here are the lessons that it does \textbf{\emph{not}} teach:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\tightlist
+\item
+  \textbf{It is somehow, in some bizarro universe, okay to groom children, even if those children are adults.} Motes explicitly avoids this and trusts others to help find the ones she cannot see.
+\end{itemize}
+
+Usually, I am stuck on the number three being used to prove points --- hendiatris, bay-\emph{bee} --- but I am not even going to bother including two more points, because this is the only one that has been (and I suspect will be) raised as a concern, even at the expense of any other issues presented within the book. Motes also has a death kink that one of her not-parents loathes. She drinks even when presenting as a child. Beholden is an alcoholic and has destructive tantrums, lashing out at those around her. Hammered Silver is a PTA-mom-lookin', HOA-president-ass bitch\footnote{I am contractually obligated to make fun of her. It is part of being an author.} who abuses her not-husband, Waking World, and Waking World enables a lot of her bullshit.
+
+I do not like the thought that this one sticking point will doubtless lead to strife. I do not like that it will get in the way of people's enjoyment of the work. It is not my responsibility to somehow force readers to enjoy my writing. My responsibility as an author is to present the story.
+
+It is my \emph{right,} however, to defend myself and my work.
+
+\section*{Heading off tone arguments}
+
+If I sound a bit bitter, it is because I am, and it is something I will not apologize for, despite my people-pleasing tendencies.
+
+I began this pile of thoughts by talking about my initial discomfort with the idea of publishing this thing that I wrote. Since then, I have been struck with the occasional flash of such discomfort, but more and more often, I have been struck with a sense of pride. I \emph{like} what I have accomplished. I like that I wrote in this vaguely children's book style. I like that we get Odists interacting with Odists, and that even the narration is written in (admittedly somewhat gentled) Odespeak. I like that I had the chance to lean into not only \href{https://makyo.is/plural}{my own plurality} (Motes, Beholden, Slow Hours, and Dry Grass being headmates at time of writing) but \href{https://cohost.org/hamratza}{my partner's} (A Finger Pointing and Warmth). I like that I got to explore the more populous areas of the System through someone other than the relatively shut-in Bălans. I like that I had the chance to lean into this topic, even! It is fulfilling to write something emotional and difficult.
+
+If I sound bitter, it is because I have made something that I enjoy and yet also feel compelled to defend.
+
+I resent that I will have 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 know I will. I mentioned above that I have already had that conversation. 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 the oft-misused ``death of the author'' is only applied to the works one enjoys, and so in this case, I will be reduced to my roughest edges and discarded. The work that I put into it will be ignored in the face of this one fact regardless of my feelings of what I have accomplished.
+
+I resent that, if I claim that \href{https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReallySevenHundredYearsOld}{Motes the character is nearly 300 years old} at the time of telling, I will be accused of trying to weasel my way out of grooming accusations, regardless of the fact that dealing with those is part of her character and the plot. I resent that if I claim Motes the headmate is actually 38 at time of writing, just like this body, 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{Those who \emph{do} engage with interests and kinks often considered problematic think about them and their 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 I risk losing readers, friends, loved ones.
+
+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 all 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.
+
+If I sound bitter, it is because I am proud of what I have made, and I want to share it.
+
+\section*{That aside\ldots{}}
+
+I remain very proud of \emph{Motes Played.} The story was fun to write, the characters were fun to write (and super meaningful besides; thanks plurality!), the responses were fun to hear, and I really hope that the book itself is received well.
+