Edits, finished majority of Idumea

marsh/content/006.tex

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-The rest of the day was largely spent hunting for friends and tallying losses. The Marshans and a few of their assorted partners — minus Dry Grass — set up camp in Marsh's study, widened slightly by Pierre, who also held ownership permissions over the sim.
+The rest of the day was largely spent hunting for friends and tallying losses. The Marshans and a few of their assorted partners --- minus Dry Grass --- set up camp in Marsh's study, widened slightly by Pierre, who also held ownership permissions over the sim.
 
 It raised a question that dogged me for a few minutes, cropping up now and again as I got in touch with more of our friends. What happened to objects and sims owned by individuals who had disappeared? If what Serene had said about her up-tree instance held true, the sim that she'd been working on remained. ``When an instance quits, all of their items disappear,'' she explained. ``But should an instance crash, that is not considered quitting. They remain in a core dump somewhere. That the sim remains indicates that she did not quit, but the ownership record is now invalid. I will need to file to have it revert to me.''
 
@@ -8,9 +8,9 @@ This new study was expanded to include a few more desks and tables. Hanne and I
 
 For each person we managed to contact, we asked them a set of questions that Sedge and Dry Grass had come up with. Finding out how many of their cocladists had gone missing, as well as any friends or loved ones that were now unreachable. We collected some of that information for ourselves, building a better picture of how our friends group had been impacted, but all were directed to the official survey that had been set up by the Odists.
 
-Truly official, as well. Dry Grass had had her systech privileges restored — as was evidenced by a floppy, felt witch hat she would occasionally summon, a physical token of her official capacity — but she had also taken on a leadership role in this project beyond simply being a tech. She had pulled some strings to leave their post pinned to the top of several of the largest central feeds. Responses were already pouring in as more and more people woke to the realization that missing friends and family. While Dry Grass assured us that such had been done in the past, none of us had ever seen such a thing before.
+Truly official, as well. Dry Grass had had her systech privileges restored --- as was evidenced by a floppy, felt witch hat she would occasionally summon, a physical token of her official capacity --- but she had also taken on a leadership role in this project beyond simply being a tech. She had pulled some strings to leave their post pinned to the top of several of the largest central feeds. Responses were already pouring in as more and more people woke to the realization that missing friends and family. While Dry Grass assured us that such had been done in the past, none of us had ever seen such a thing before.
 
-``It is a part of the long peace that your lives are so boring,'' she had said with a sigh. ``Or was, at least were.''
+``It is a part of the long peace that your lives are so boring,'' she had said with a sigh. ``Or at least were.''
 
 While our data gathering was productive when it came to learning about our own circle of friends, it was a drop in the bucket compared to what the others were accomplishing. Sedge and Dry Grass in particular seemed to be on a roll of information gathering. They had set up their own little side room of other instances just collating data, running them through various perisystem tools, and just generally trying to get a better picture of what had happened.
 
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ She snorted. ``No.~I love you, but you'll just wind up reminding me of it. Any f
 
 We both spent a few minutes puttering about, getting ourselves some water and poking through the exchange for a bottle of wine to have ready for when others arrived.
 
-\emph{If} others arrived, it turned out. There were a few maybes, with Sedge saying that she wanted to focus just on the work and not split her attention any. Both Pierre and Vos declined, saying they would rather stay together and focus on their own problems — certainly understandable. Few of my friends sounded appealing to have over, which also held true for Hanne, who wound up only pinging Jess and Warmth In Fire out of her circle of construct artistry friends. Both gave a definite maybe.
+\emph{If} others arrived, it turned out. There were a few maybes, with Sedge saying that she wanted to focus just on the work and not split her attention any. Both Pierre and Vos declined, saying they would rather stay together and focus on their own problems --- certainly understandable. Few of my friends sounded appealing to have over, which also held true for Hanne, who wound up only pinging Jess and Warmth In Fire out of her circle of construct artistry friends. Both gave a definite maybe.
 
 Of those I pinged who surprised me by saying yes, Lily was at the top of the list.
 
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ There was a long pause, followed by the sense of a sigh. \emph{``Okay. I'll prob
 
 I could hear the smirk in her voice. \emph{``Right. I'll keep my mouth shut if I start to feel like biting her head off.''}
 
-So it was that we cycled the weather outside to a comfortable spring-time evening, set up a table with various small foods and a few different bottles of wine, and waited for everyone to trickle in.
+So it was that we cycled the weather outside to a comfortable springtime evening, set up a table with various small foods and a few different bottles of wine, and waited for everyone to trickle in.
 
 Cress and Tule were the first to arrive, Dry Grass appearing between them a few seconds later, still wearing her witch's hat, which she quickly waved away. All three of them looked exhausted, but brightened visibly at the spread laid out for all to snack on, quickly loading up plates of bruschetta and glasses of icy rosé.
 
@@ -96,9 +96,9 @@ The next to arrive were Warmth In Fire and Jess, both of whom launched themselve
 
 I'd met Jess a few times before at dinner parties or the like, and she definitely shared Hanne and I's fondness for snarky banter, and was just as prone to falling into witty repartee as we were.
 
-For some reason, though, I'd yet to actually meet Warmth In Fire beyond the brief introduction we'd had in the field. Despite Dry Grass's average height and soft build, Warmth In Fire was quite short and wiry. Where Dry Grass was comfortable to move through life at a steady pace with measured speech, the skunk was spunky and energetic, speaking quickly and smiling readily, quick to hug — I received my own after Hanne — and quicker still to fork to accomplish such affection. They seemed to live in a pleasant sort of transgression, from the constantly shifting pronouns to the almost childlike performance that nonetheless seemed to be performed with a wink and a nudge, as though ey knew just how subversive such kid-like vibes could be.
+For some reason, though, I'd yet to actually meet Warmth In Fire beyond the brief introduction we'd had in the field. Despite Dry Grass's average height and soft build, Warmth In Fire was quite short and wiry. Where Dry Grass was comfortable to move through life at a steady pace with measured speech, the skunk was spunky and energetic, speaking quickly and smiling readily, quick to hug --- I received my own after Hanne --- and quicker still to fork to accomplish such affection. They seemed to live in a pleasant sort of transgression, from the constantly shifting pronouns to the almost childlike performance that nonetheless seemed to be performed with a wink and a nudge, as though ey knew just how subversive such kid-like vibes could be.
 
-Hold My Name, in contrast, stood tall and confident. She leaned more on Dry Grass's steady nature, though seemed perfectly content to keep up with Warmth In Fire's speedy intensity, at one point scruffing an instance of the skunk — who was nearly a meter shorter than her — to pull it into a bearhug. She was also visibly and effortlessly transfeminine in a way that I attempted to live into in my own trans identity. I liked her immediately.
+Hold My Name, in contrast, stood tall and confident. She leaned more on Dry Grass's steady nature, though seemed perfectly content to keep up with Warmth In Fire's speedy intensity, at one point scruffing an instance of the skunk --- who was nearly a meter shorter than her --- to pull it into a bearhug. She was also visibly and effortlessly transfeminine in a way that I attempted to live into in my own trans identity. I liked her immediately.
 
 Last of all, nearly an hour after we started, most of us a few drinks in, Lily stepped out onto the patio. She moved stiffly, awkwardly, and only nodded a greeting, wordlessly picking out a few of the \emph{hors d'oeuvres} and pouring herself an over-full glass of a sweet wine.
 
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ A few seconds passed before she smirked and shook her head. ``Well? Come on, ent
 
 I breathed a pent-up sigh of relief at the chuckles from around the table.
 
-``I will tell you a joke, as a way to break the ice,'' Dry Grass said.
+``I will tell you a joke as a way to break the ice,'' Dry Grass said.
 
 Lily laughed, though it sounded somewhat forced. ``Alright. I want to hear what counts as a joke to your clade.''
 
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ At that delayed payoff, the rest of us laughed in earnest. Warmth In Fire, halfw
 
 ``Okay, okay, I'll give you that one,'' Lily said, still grinning. ``That was pretty good. Still atrocious, but at least the good kind of atrocious. I'm sorry for the other night.''
 
-``That was only last night, my dear, though we do seem to be living at a high skew, do we not?'' Dry Grass bowed to her. ``I appreciate it, Lily. I cannot apologize for my clade, but I will all the same do my best to live as a counterexample to the elements within it that rankle.''
+``That was only last night, my dear. We do seem to be living at a high skew, do we not?'' Dry Grass bowed to her. ``I appreciate it, Lily. I cannot apologize for my clade, but I will all the same do my best to live as a counterexample to the stories you have heard that rankle so much.''
 
 ``Yeah, thanks,'' Lily said, more down to her glass of wine than to Dry Grass. ``I was thinking, actually, and part of the reason I wanted to come over and see you on\ldots uh, neutral ground, I guess, is that I had a question about your clade.''
 
@@ -164,31 +164,31 @@ I tightened my grip on my fork, leaving it stabbed into a pile of salad. ``I've
 
 Dry Grass nodded. ``Precisely that, yes.''
 
-``I got super angry,'' Hold My Name said, her comfortable alto dipping back into a tenor, as though the mood demanded less of her transfemininity. ``Like, \emph{really} angry. I had to move back into my own place for a while after, I was so mad. How could she do that? We — the rest of the second stanza — were already unmoored by Qoheleth's assassination, and now Michelle had quit, too. It stranded all the stanzas, leaving behind ten brand new clades.''
+``I got super angry,'' Hold My Name said, her comfortable alto dipping back into a tenor, as though the mood demanded less of her transfemininity. ``Like, \emph{really} angry. I had to move back into my own place for a while after, I was so mad. How could she do that? We --- the rest of the second stanza --- were already unmoored by Qoheleth's assassination only a year before, and now Michelle had quit, too. It stranded all the stanzas, leaving behind ten brand new clades.''
 
 The Marshans winced, suddenly understanding the same of ourselves.
 
-She shrugged, turning her glass of water between fingers. ``I slowly calmed down, but that anger hit again after I learned about all of the shit the eighth stanza did, all of that controlling. There were even hints that Michelle had been nudged to quit by True Name, who I'd already suspected of being behind Qoheleth's assassination. Now I had a target for that anger.''
+She shrugged, turning her glass of water between fingers. ``I slowly calmed down, but that anger hit again after I learned about all of the shit the eighth stanza did, all of that controlling. There were even hints that Michelle had been nudged to quit by True Name, who I had already suspected of being behind Qoheleth's assassination. Now I had a target for that anger.''
 
 I glanced surreptitiously at Lily, who was keeping herself still, tightly under control.
 
 Another glance at Dry Grass showed her watching Lily warily in turn.
 
-The moment of tension passed uneasily, as Warmth In Fire spoke up next. ``I will say as I always do, my dear: your anger is based around a memory that does not fit the reality of the situation. I have met Sasha through my friendship with the fifth stanza, who ever stood up for Sasha, even when she was True Name. I have eaten dinner with her. I have watched the way she smiles. I have watched the distance at which she holds herself from time to time. I have seen the flashes of regret-tinted understanding when topics of the past crop up. She is not who she was, but neither was she who you say she must have been. I cannot even linger in discomfort around her.''
+The moment of tension passed uneasily, as Warmth In Fire spoke up next. ``I will say as I always do, my dear: your anger is based around a memory that does not fit the reality of the situation. I have met Sasha through my friendship with the fifth stanza, who ever stood up for her, even when she was True Name. I have eaten dinner with her. I have watched the way she smiles. I have watched the distance at which she holds herself from time to time. I have seen the flashes of regret-tinted understanding when topics of the past crop up. She is not who she was, but neither was she who you say she must have been. I cannot even linger in discomfort around her.''
 
 Hold My Name sighed, tired gaze level on her partner. This carried the cadence of an old argument, one had dozens or hundreds of times before.
 
 Lily only gripped her glass tighter.
 
-``She is no murderer. Not of Qoheleth, and certainly not of Michelle,'' Warmth In Fire continued confidently, the gravity of their words held in tension with the ineffably childlike openness of her expression. ``Yes, you may hate her, and yet I cannot. Yes, my down-tree, Dear, loathes her, and yet I do not. Yes, Dear's down-tree, Rye, holds her own distaste, but on one thing we agree: she is no longer who she was. We are both suckers for character development. I am Dear. I am Rye. I am Praiseworthy, and Michelle too, but I am also my own person.''
+``She is no murderer. Not of Qoheleth, and certainly not of Michelle,'' Warmth In Fire continued confidently, the gravity of their words held in tension with the ineffably childlike openness of her expression. ``Yes, you may hate her, and yet I cannot. Yes, my down-tree, Dear, loathes her, and yet I do not. Yes, my down-tree, Rye, has complicated thoughts, but on one thing she and I agree: she is no longer who she was. We are both suckers for character development. I am Dear. I am Rye. I am Praiseworthy, and Michelle too, but I am also my own person.''
 
-``I know, Bean,'' Hold My Name said, voice tired. ``You have said this countless times before, and I appreciate the balance that brings, but I am also my own person separate from you. I hate her, you do not. We are allowed to not be alike.''
+``I know, Bean,'' Hold My Name said, voice as tired as her gaze --- and, perhaps, the argument. ``You have said this countless times before, and I appreciate the balance that brings, but I am also my own person separate from you. I hate her, you do not. We are allowed to not be alike.''
 
 The skunk nodded, waiting for her cocladist and partner to continue.
 
 ``I did not even like Qoheleth all that much. I thought he was a putz who had lost his marbles,'' she said, smirking. ``But Michelle--''
 
-Warmth In Fire waved its paw jerkily, a flash of despair washing over eir features. ``Michelle was murdered, yes, but the act of violence took place at the root of her trauma. Of \emph{our} trauma, My.'' The skunk was crying now, quietly and bitterly. ``The act of violence that led to us being so fucked up — beautifully, wonderfully fucked up — and which led to the creation of the System also destroyed someone centuries later because she was never given help. It was her right to quit as she did, leaving us ten clades and not one, but her murderers were all of us who did not help, not some wicked machinations of only one of us.''
+Warmth In Fire waved its paw jerkily, a flash of despair washing over eir features. ``Michelle was murdered, yes, but the act of violence took place at the root of her trauma. Of \emph{our} trauma, My.'' The skunk was crying now, quietly and bitterly. ``The act of violence that led to us being so fucked up --- beautifully, wonderfully fucked up --- and which led to the creation of the System also destroyed someone centuries later because she was never given help. It was her right to quit as she did, leaving us ten clades and not one, but her murderers were all of us who did not help, not some wicked machinations of only one of us.''
 
 At the sudden force of their words, Hold My Name's expression shifted to one of alarm, and she reached out to take up one of her partner's paws. Dry Grass did much the same.
 
@@ -210,17 +210,19 @@ Sniffling, Cress nodded. ``I've been worried about the same. All of my friends,
 
 ``Few have,'' Dry Grass said. ``We almost did, back before the founding of the System, but the whole Lost saga interrupted that.''
 
-Jess, who had been fairly quiet up until that point, asked, ``\,`Lost saga'? Like, all that stuff about people being disappeared? Didn't they all die?''
+Jess, who had been fairly quiet up until that point, asked, ``\,`Lost saga'? Like, all that stuff about people being disappeared by the government? Didn't they all die?''
 
 ``Oh, heavens no,'' she said, chuckling. ``We were among the Lost. \emph{Michelle} was Lost. That is the trauma Warmth In Fire spoke about. That is part of why she was so fucked up.''
 
+At this ey looked quite proud.
+
 ``And, like it said, why we are so fucking weird,'' Hold My Name said. ``\emph{You} certainly are,'' she added ruffling Warmth In Fire's perpetually mussed up mane.
 
 It snapped eir teeth at her, grinning wickedly. I was pleased to see their mood improved.
 
 Hold My Name barely flinched, instead rolling her eyes. ``You see the shit I put up with?''
 
-``Yes, yes,'' Warmth In Fire said. ``You are so put upon. We never hear the end of it.''
+``Yes, yes,'' Warmth In Fire said. ``You are \emph{so} put upon. We never hear the end of it.''
 
 Laughter around the table.