Float figures

content/_index.md

@@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ img {
 
 <img alt="A Little Book for Little Skunks" src="/front.png">
 
+<p class="buy">
+<a href="https://makyo.itch.io/motes-played" target="_blank">Pre-order ebook</a>
+<a href="https://makyo-ink.square.site/product/motes-played/17" target="_blank">Pre-order paperback</a> 
+<a href="/snippet">Read a sample</a>
+</p>
+
 > Motes played.
 > 
 > She played because she *was* play. She played because that was her role in life, because that is just who she was. She played with color, played with life, played with death.
@@ -18,12 +24,7 @@ img {
 > 
 > Motes played, because how could she not?
 
-<p class="buy">
-<a href="https://makyo.itch.io/motes-played" target="_blank">Pre-order ebook</a>
-<a href="https://makyo-ink.square.site/product/motes-played/17" target="_blank">Pre-order paperback</a> 
-<a href="/snippet">Read a sample</a>
-</p>
-
+<!--
 ### Content Notes
 
 This book relies on the plots of The Post-Self Cycle, particularly [*Mitzvot*](https://mitzvot.post-self.ink). It is strongly recommended that you read those works first. They may all be found [here](https://post-self.ink/cycle) as paperbacks, ebooks, and free to read in the browser. If you would prefer to jump right in, spoilers be damned, you can find a primer [here](/primer).
@@ -33,6 +34,7 @@ The tilde (~) is the punctuation mark of whimsy and on this I will not be swayed
 Further thoughts on Motes may be found [here](/thoughts-on-motes).
 
 Contains mentions of rough, but consensual sex with one vague description; blood; adult characters engaging with the world as children, unrelated to sex; themes of familial abuse.
+-->
 
 ## Advance Praise
 
@@ -44,16 +46,25 @@ Contains mentions of rough, but consensual sex with one vague description; blood
 
 ## About the authors
 
-<!--![Print by Forrest Gerke](https://makyo.ink/assets/img/headshot.png)-->
+<figure>
 <img alt="Art by Voksa" src="/echo-hours.png" style="filter: none;">
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://vox-space.neocities.org" target="_blank">Voksa</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
 
-Madison Rye Progress and Samantha Yule Fireheart are a couple of gay nerds living in the mountains with their dog.
-<!--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.-->
+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. 
 
 <p style="text-align: center"><a href="https://makyo.ink" target="_blank">makyo.ink</a></p>
 <p style="text-align: center"><a href="https://cohost.org/hamratza" target="_blank">cohost.org/hamratza</a></p>
 
-Cover by [B. Root](https://roots.works).
+-----
+
+## About the artist
+
+<figure>
+<img alt="Art by B. Root" src="/astolpho-color.png" style="filter: none">
+</figure>
+
+B. Root is a illustrator, 3d artist, and VR enthusiast living in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a rather small lion.
 
 -----
 

content/draft/001.md

@@ -20,6 +20,11 @@ She played because she *was* play. Play incarnate.
 
 And so Motes played. 
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_01.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_01.png" alt="Motes sitting on a stool, painting"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 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.
 
 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.

content/draft/002.md

@@ -10,6 +10,11 @@ Tonight, she played drunk: a beer with the dogs, drinks made fizzy with champagn
 
 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.
 
+<figure class="float left">
+<a href="/mp_02.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_02.png" alt="Motes and an otter. Or mink. Perhaps a fisher?"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 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.
 
 And then it was a night for sitting on his balcony and talking while the waves of whatever drug he'd given her continued to roll through her in languid pulses. "It is like someone is brushing the underside of my skin with satin in the best possible way," she said, and he laughed.

content/draft/003.md

@@ -110,6 +110,11 @@ Motes leaned forward and squinted at the dish, sniffing. It smelled like preciou
 
 "Well, okay," she said, doubtful. She dreamed up a spoon and poked at the...foam? Froth? It was surprisingly sturdy, and although it wobbled, it did not fall over under the touch. 
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_03.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_03.png" alt="Warmth In Fire and Motes looking at a dubious food"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 A grin was growing on the other skunk's face. 
 
 Bad sign.

content/draft/004.md

@@ -58,6 +58,11 @@ In her free hand/paw, this ghost brought into being a dagger, silver-bladed, woo
 
 Motes sobbed. "Please..." she managed at last.
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_04.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_04.png" alt="Michelle/Sasha giving Motes a dagger"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 None of this was supposed to happen. None of this was right.
 
 Michelle/Sasha straightened up and said, almost bored, "Well? Indulge, my dear."

content/draft/005.md

@@ -1,5 +1,10 @@
 # Motes — 2362
 
+<figure>
+<a href="/mp_05.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_05.png" alt="A letter"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 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.

content/draft/006.md

@@ -68,6 +68,11 @@ 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. 
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_06.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_06.png" alt="Motes jumping rope with a friend"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 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 *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.

content/draft/007.md

@@ -298,6 +298,11 @@ She nodded and pushed herself slowly to her feet through a wave of unreality, of
 
 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 *anyone* made, if what True Name and Praiseworthy had to say was true.
 
+<figure class="float left">
+<a href="/mp_07.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_07.png" alt="PTA-mom-lookin', HOA-president-ass bitch"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 And it was not just her, after all, was it?
 
 For better or worse, she was the representative of her stanza. She was a synecdoche: she *was* the fifth stanza. Anything that the stanza did, whether as a whole or individually, she would hear about through those tetchy letters, those little missives Hammered Silver saw fit to send her. 

content/draft/008.md

@@ -100,6 +100,11 @@ Dry Grass smiled, shrugged as well. "Something to talk about that is not my down
 
 Beholden barked a laugh. "Okay, yeah, that is fair." She scuffed a paw against the gravel, thinking. "It was mostly just hard for me to wrap my head around, I guess. I have some of those same desires in me as your whole stanza does, but they were always minimized and pushed to the side. Even boss has way more than I do, right? Like, it is her job to take care of things. She is not really the boss of Au Lieu Du Rêve, she is its mom."
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_08.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_08.png" alt="Two Odists on the swings"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 Holding onto the chains of the swing and nudging herself back a meter or so with her feet, Dry Grass nodded. "I can see that, yes. It is like how I headed into systech stuff because I cared for the System." She smiled faintly. "I was Lagrange's mom."
 
 The skunk nodded. "Yeah, like that. I just have way less of that in me than either you or A Finger Pointing. You are both way better at this than I am. Dot means a lot to me. A whole lot. That we have to have a systech on staff to kick her into forking whenever she dies on stage just kills me. It breaks my heart whenever I see that."

content/draft/009.md

@@ -28,6 +28,11 @@ The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt
 
 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.
 
+<figure class="float right">
+<a href="/mp_09.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_09.png" alt="Pensive burritos"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 What was missing...? Ah! Coffee. 
 
 While there was joy in making her own, she was already down, she was already comfortable, she was already finished with her time in the kitchen, and so she deemed it easier to just wave a steaming mug into being on the low table before her, already dosed with cream and sugar.

content/draft/010.md

@@ -14,6 +14,11 @@ She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wander
 
 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.
 
+<figure class="float left">
+<a href="/mp_10.png" target="_blank"><img src="/mp_10.png" alt="Motes and Alexei on the rocks"></a>
+<figcaption>Art by <a href="https://roots.works" target="_blank">B. Root</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 "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?"
 
 She shrugged and picked at the rock with a claw, worrying loose a thin chip of flagstone. "I still do not *want* to talk about it," she said, then grinned over at him. "But I will anyway."