diff --git a/content/draft/007.md b/content/draft/007.md index 9cc3508..fc09f9f 100644 --- a/content/draft/007.md +++ b/content/draft/007.md @@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ Sasha smiled and patted the back of that hand. "Of course. If I am able to sooth ----- -To fall in love with a cocladist is to engage in a radical form of self-love. To fall in love with a cocladist is to find the ways in which perhaps you *are* your type. To fall in love with a cocladist is to accept that you are large; you contain multitudes. To fall in love with your cocladist is to recognize that your hyperfixations define, in part, your sense of self, and that if you expand beyond one, then perhaps you are more than just one self. +To fall in love with a cocladist is to engage in a radical form of self-love. To fall in love with a cocladist is to find the ways in which perhaps you *are* your type. To fall in love with a cocladist is to accept that you are large; you contain multitudes. To fall in love with your cocladist is to recognize that your hyperfixations define, in part, your sense of self, and that if you expand beyond one hyperfixation, then perhaps you can be more than just one self. A Finger Pointing forked all nine of her up-tree instances in systime 3, back in the early days when it still cost to fork. She had plans, though, and she had a way around those costs. She forked once, leaving her and her new instance with half of her original reputation, less than it would cost to fork again, and then her new instance simply granted the reputation back to her, enough to fork once more. She had a way around those costs, for in those days, back before the reputation market had patched out that particular glitch, her up-tree instances did not need reputation beyond hers. She had plans. She had ideas for her particular joy. She would lean into theatre, build a troupe made up of just herself, for surely there were ten roles that needed to be filled in running a theatre. @@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ There was If I Walk Forward, Time Rushes On, the dancer and choreographer. There was If I Stand Still, The World Moves Around Me, the stage manager who dabbled in lights. -There was And The Only Constant Was Change, an actor with a penchant for death scenes and just plain strange bird. +There was And The Only Constant Is Change, an actor with a penchant for death scenes and just plain strange bird. And they all acted, and they all promoted, and they all taught and helped as techs and loved each other. They were all hedonists, to the last, because A Finger Pointing was a hedonist, one who wanted to enjoy life to the fullest and to be everybody's friend. @@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ She spent time with them all, yes, but the benefit of diving deep into music is At some point, though they disagreed on when — was it five years later? Ten? Each argued passionately for one, and then the other — they *became* dates. -There was sense of aromancy in A Finger Pointing that grew after she forked. She never could say where from; perhaps it was simply that she would rather have been friends with anyone than foster a particular friendship with one person. And yet there was something about Beholden. Something fulfilling, perhaps, or complementary, or a self-love that rose above all others. +There was sense of aromancy in A Finger Pointing that grew after she forked. She never could say where from; perhaps it was simply that she would rather have been friends with everyone than foster a particular friendship with one person. And yet there was something about Beholden. Something fulfilling, perhaps, or complementary, or a self-love that rose above all others. And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the most part, reveled. Yes, they had their spats. Yes, they had their flings besides, and the occasional relationship, all negotiated and cherished and bound up in compersion. But always they had each other. @@ -294,7 +294,7 @@ No letter came. The next meeting was canceled: "I am not feeling well." -Fair enough, there were days when A Finger Pointing did not feel well, were there not? Sickness, a thing of the past, nonetheless still appeared psychosomatically, or perhaps Hammered silver was going through one of the spells each of the Odists had been left with, those little bits of overflowing when being oneself became too much and overrode whatever it meant to exist and the world was too noisy to see and too bright to hear. Perhaps Hammered Silver was overflowing. +Fair enough, there were days when A Finger Pointing did not feel well, were there not? Sickness, a thing of the past, nonetheless still appeared psychosomatically, or perhaps Hammered Silver was going through one of the spells each of the Odists had been left with, those little bits of overflowing when being oneself became too much and overrode whatever it meant to exist and the world was too noisy to see and too bright to hear. Perhaps Hammered Silver was overflowing. The next meeting was canceled: "I am still unwell." Well, okay. At times The Only Constant would be taken out for weeks at a time, desperately clinging to life despite death a thing of the past. A Finger Pointing sent a get-well-soon note and a dichroic rose to her home sim. @@ -475,7 +475,7 @@ And so, at that point, their friendship ended. They went a year without meeting, There was no more love between them. The trust had been broken. They met to keep tabs on each other. They met to ensure that the other was not living outside the bounds of society in some abhorrent way. They met to spy on each other. -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, use the paint of which to spell out renewed love for those who remained in her life. +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. ----- @@ -533,4 +533,4 @@ Better to show what she could. She stepped quietly into the room and climbed up There was more she could say — so much more — but for some reason, words failed her after that. Words and will both failed her, and so she simply lay there with Motes, replying to Beholden's gentle, inquiring ping with a soothing one of her own. She had told Motes that she loved her, as she never tired of doing so, and that was enough. -She lay there until she felt Motes slowly relax beneath her arm, heard her breathing slow, and then for a while after. +She lay there until she felt her *dóttir* slowly relax beneath her arm, heard her breathing slow, and then for a while after. diff --git a/content/draft/008.md b/content/draft/008.md index 0a7a982..79c40d2 100644 --- a/content/draft/008.md +++ b/content/draft/008.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -## Beholden — 2362 +# Beholden — 2362 Beholden never quite understood play. @@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ Or tried to go alone, as always there was someone willing to go with her, asking The only time she accepted the company was when Dry Grass, fresh out of her meeting with Sasha, did not so much volunteer as, wiping freshly-shed tears from her face, ask Beholden if they could go for a walk together so that she could talk. That Beholden had already slipped on her hoodie, had already drank a glass of water, was already heading towards the door suggested that this was a form of volunteering, but Dry Grass certainly deserved as much as anyone the chance to talk through the position she had found herself in, so Beholden reluctantly said yes. -The two walked in silence, both looking down more at the sidewalk as it passed beneath their feet than around them, both processing in their own way. +The two walked in silence, both looking down at the sidewalk as it passed beneath their feet, both processing in their own way. "Hey, uh," Beholden said at last once they had made it halfway through the neighborhood, halfway around the usual loop. "Are you okay? I mean, things are awful, but are you feeling okay?" @@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ Dry Grass nodded. "So it took me a lot of getting used to." She hesitated, looked down to the gravel as she kicked a foot through it. "I am a little ashamed to say that I backed off from her for a while when she did that. I took a lot of walks like this or went out to clubs on my own to...well, to not be around her. I loved her even then, but it felt like too much. 'Bee' is a compromise that felt on the edge of comfort at the time, though now it feels really good when she calls me that. She was so patient with me." Drawing her attention back to Dry Grass, she smiled, adding, "She calls you 'Ma 2.0', did you know that?" -Dry Grass blinked, then burst out in laughter, laughing until once more the tears flowed down her cheeks, holding herself still on her swing with feet planted firmly on the ground. +Dry Grass blinked, then burst out in laughter, laughing until once more the tears flowed down her cheeks, until she sobbed, holding herself still on her swing with feet planted firmly on the ground. Beholden waited in silence. She knew well the mechanics of a hysterical laugh-cry — she had at one point recorded A Finger Pointing falling into such and chopped it into little slivers of half-recognizable samples and haunted an entire album with it, so beautiful had she found it — and while her and Dry Grass's relationship did not include a whole lot of hugging, she still nudged herself to the side far enough to rub at her cocladist's shoulder until the tears once more slowed and she was once more able to breathe but for a few few aftershocks of chuckling. @@ -144,17 +144,17 @@ Beholden laughed. "To her? Or as yourself?" "Oh, to her!" she said, smirking. "Though who knows, maybe I would give the slide version a go, myself." -The conversation of good things continued — Motes designing the playground, Warmth In Fire designing the chalk lines that followed the two of them as they ran around, A Finger Pointing and Beholden sitting on the stoop of their home to watch the sun set while skunks played in the grass — until they grew weary of the swings digging into their backsides and hunger started tugging them back toward home and what joys they had built began to fade in the face of the immediate past. +The conversation of good things continued — Motes designing the playground with it's slide that led to a hidden world of ghostly forests if you believed it would, Warmth In Fire designing the chalk lines that followed the two of them as they ran around, A Finger Pointing and Beholden sitting on the stoop of their home to watch the sun set while little ones played in the grass — until they grew weary of the swings digging into their backsides and hunger started tugging them back toward home and what joys they had built began to fade in the face of the immediate past. With each step, a bit of color once more seeped from the world and a bit more worry once more gnawed at Beholden's gut. -Lunch, despite being a sauce served over rice, was all the same dry and ashen in Beholden's mouth as she struggled with so many swirling feelings, so many spiraling thoughts around what had happened. +Lunch, despite being a sauce served over rice, was all the same dry and ashen in her mouth as she struggled with so many swirling feelings, so many spiraling thoughts around what had happened. Still, she managed to clean her plate, managed to straighten herself up for the meeting with Waking World, managed to only yell at him a little bit. She managed as best she could as they did their best to learn what paths forward they had. She tamped down her emotions throughout, press-fit them into place within her so that they would not spill over into the world around her, bottled them up, wrote a label on the jar, and set it on a shelf high in her mind to deal with later, right next to all of the other jars about which she had promised the same. -She had to, at least for now, at least for the time being. She would need to reckon with the person that she had built herself up into. She would need to deal with all of the compromises that she had made in order to be Beholden. She was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps! Sound and music director for the troupe! She was lead sound tech! This was the cost of engaging so closely with what had once been her dearest friend's specialty. Michelle acted, and later taught. AwDae was the sound engineer. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. While the others within the stanza, within the clade may dance with em as they moved through the System, she, of all them, was perhaps one of the most entangled with em. It was Beholden who was with AwDae on her quiet walks, Beholden who was with AwDae, drunk under the stars, Beholden who was with AwDae when she was working. Or playing. Or crying. Or laughing. Or indulging. She could never escape em, try as she might, and so, from time to time, a woman needed a break from grief. +She had to, at least for now, at least for the time being. She would need to reckon with the person that she had built herself up into. She would need to deal with all of the compromises that she had made in order to be Beholden. She was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps! Sound and music director for the troupe! She was lead sound tech! This was the cost of engaging so closely with what had once been her dearest friend's specialty. Michelle acted, and later taught. AwDae was the sound engineer. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. While the others within the stanza, within the clade, may dance with em as they moved through the System, she, of all them, was perhaps one of the most entangled with em. It was Beholden who was with AwDae on her quiet walks, Beholden who was with AwDae, drunk under the stars, Beholden who was with AwDae when she was working. Or playing. Or crying. Or laughing. Or indulging. She could never escape em, try as she might, and so, from time to time, a woman needed a break from grief. It was her fragility, and the only way she knew to reinforce herself was through setting such emotions aside. She would need to confront that, but not just yet, not with so much before her. @@ -170,9 +170,9 @@ So she set her mind to caring for her love. It was as she had always done. It wa She pressed those emotions down and instead lingered on love. She lingered on her devotion to A Finger Pointing, on her protectiveness of her charge. She lingered on those good memories as best she could to keep the very air from tasting desiccating, to push away the feeling of sand gritting between her teeth. -Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, carefully withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them. +Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, carefully withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them, hot as they were. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them. -And then, exhausted by day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her *dóttir*, by worry over her boss — "not your boss" the common refrain — she carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight. +And then, exhausted by day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her *dóttir*, by worry over her boss — "not your boss" the common refrain — she just as carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight. She could not do it, could not push her way into engaging with these feelings, these emotions. Not yet. Not tonight. diff --git a/content/draft/009.md b/content/draft/009.md index 97fd378..d223bbb 100644 --- a/content/draft/009.md +++ b/content/draft/009.md @@ -6,13 +6,13 @@ She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of She thought of the way that play defined the Motes that she had become, the way it had shaped the way she interacted with the world, the way it shaped her very form. She thought of how Au Lieu Du Rêve had accepted readily just how well it fit her self-definition. She thought of the family that she had built up around her. -She thought of play and, as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes. +She thought of play as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes. She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remembered dandelion flower crown atop her head, and made her way out to the rest of the house. There was silence there, and emptiness. There was the place to herself in the warm sunlight of a late morning, some three days after first she fell on the playground. There was the comfort of familiarity set beside a hollow feeling in her chest. -Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, a view without a snout, movement without a tail, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling and hot. Perhaps a day for a mimosa. +Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been moments before, a view without a snout, movement without a tail, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling and hot. Perhaps a day for a mimosa. *An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...* @@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to "I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill that hollow space in her chest. "I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but...but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?" -Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes's hair behind her ear, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist's shoulder. "That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years." +Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes's hair behind her ear, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her shoulder. "That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years." Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella. @@ -148,9 +148,9 @@ As the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave an She made her way out of the house and wandered to the center of the neighborhood. She left the automatic chalk lines going, letting them be the fuel that propelled her forward, let their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a careful reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness. -The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea. +The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve kept for its own community. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea. -In the bowl of the 'U' sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a "community center" which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit... +In the bowl of the 'U' sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a lake with a paddle boat, a "community center" which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit... And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the 'U' sat the playground. What was initially intended to be Motes's haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one's face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective. diff --git a/content/draft/010.md b/content/draft/010.md index dfc8c38..e46f44f 100644 --- a/content/draft/010.md +++ b/content/draft/010.md @@ -52,7 +52,8 @@ Panting, Motes scooted so that her back rested against a spire of rock to get as There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That is definitely a you thing." -She mulled over this, tallying up the various anxieties she had felt over the years, the worries she had expressed or let color her actions, all the times she disappeared from youth, from play, from this form. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?" +She mulled over this, tallying up the various anxieties she had felt over the years, the worries she had expressed or let color her actions, all the times she disappeared from youth, from play, from this form. Despite her desire to let Big Motes handle such things, a question began to gnaw at her, a desire for feedback. +"Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?" "All this?" @@ -108,7 +109,7 @@ At home, she dashed to the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water, laughed at It was a night for good food and terrible movies. -Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden. +Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst, and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden. Ioan grilled *frigărui,* kebabs loaded up with Carpathian seasonings, and *mititei,* yet another sausage. diff --git a/static/css/motes-played.css b/static/css/motes-played.css index 3cc5927..6b07656 100644 --- a/static/css/motes-played.css +++ b/static/css/motes-played.css @@ -35,6 +35,11 @@ ul { list-style-type: revert; padding-left: 2rem; } +hr::before { + content: '★'; + display: block; + text-align: center; +} .hero { font-family: "Gentium Plus", serif;