Madison Rye Progress

Took me a bit to find a way to photograph the blue without it looking gray.

Some may remember a painting like this from Qoheleth:

The painting: a landscape, perhaps the prairie just outside. A cloud-dotted sky, nigh photorealistic. And in the middle, a black square.

Not just black paint, but a black that seemed to eat light. A black the hurt to look at. It made Ioan uncomfortable.

“I think I see why you approached me,” ey said. “You are interested in the story, and want someone who lives and breathes stories.”

That grin widened, and was joined by a swish of a tail. “Precisely that. There is art to be had here. It is stressful and, if my suspicions are correct, it bears a message beyond just…what, a jape? A jab at the clade? There is a point to be made here.”

“The amount that you seem to differ from the rest of your clade is surprising. Are there no other artists?”

“Oh, we are all artists of a sort. Actors, mostly. A few sim designers. One of the other stanzas' lines painted this,” it said, nodding to that unnerving black square. “But yes, we are all quite different. Perhaps you will see some day.”

They also make an appearance in Marsh:

The three of them lived in a narrow brownstone of sorts, full of the dark wood and plush carpets that I knew well from Marsh’s house, though the walls were lined — in some places all but completely covered — with paintings. The vast majority were of landscapes skillfully done in watercolor or acrylics, but each of which was interrupted with a shape of black so deep that it seemed to eat any and all light around it. Beyond just reflecting zero light, it pulled greedily at light that even got close.

These paintings are by And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights from the fifth stanza and are based on recurring dreams.

Motes dreamed.

She dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, her mind wandering over her past, there in the dark, there alone, after A Finger Pointing left, there in her extra soft bed with her overstuffed duvet and all of her stuffed animals.

At some point, hours or days or minutes later, she slept and dreamed true. She dreamed that she was sitting in a field of well-tended grass that was nonetheless dotted liberally with dandelions, speckled with bumblebees. She dreamed that she had all the wonder of a child and that the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it, and just above, just in the distance, a hyperblack rectangle, a hole in the world that hungrily devoured all of the light that it could, lingered, and it was neither good nor bad, and even with its insatiable hunger, the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it.

And then she awoke.

Motes has an entire book about her coming soon! Keep an eye out~

I have a lot of these!

Took me a bit to find a way to photograph the blue without it looking gray.

Saaaaberstream.

Heck, there is a lovely plural ask game going around that sounds fun~ So fun I just wanted to answer them all right away. I am bad at following directions and full of skunks.

1. What is your collective name and why? / Whats the meaning behind it, if any.

   Skunks& or Skunkcetera. Not really something I use all that much, honestly, just that most people call me 'Skunks' by default. My partner called me 'The Skunkstack' at one point and it was cute as hell.

2. Do you have any introjects? What types (fictives, factives, OCtives etc) (mainly?)

   Technically 100% fictives. In reality I have adopted fictive names and personalities for aspects which preexisted

3. If you're comfortable, whats your origin?

   I do not really know, nor particularly care to. Just not a thing that is important to me ^^

4. If you're comfortable whats you member count?

   Eight!

5. If you have introjects what is the source you have the most from?

   100% cladists from the Post-Self setting.

6. How long have you known of your system / When did you form?

   Hhhh this is the question that is most interesting to me, honestly, because there was a long, long period of...I will not say denial, except perhaps in that I denied myself permission. I have joked in the past about "I am not plural! I am not plural! I shout as I shrink down and turn into a pile of skunks" as a thing, but really, the concept of plurality for me goes back to my early experiments with role play in 2000 or so. My characters were not me, but they were not not me.

   This grew a bit more poignant whenever my character would shift. When I moved from Ranna to Makyo, there was a sense of perhaps plurality in serial? They were different people. The same sensation has driven statements like "Matthew died in 2012, but Madison was not born until 2014".

   Fast forward a few more years and I was working on ally, which is a very plural project, and yet I did not feel like I was...again, the language fails. I did not feel like I was permitted to be plural, though not by anyone, even myself. I made it all the way through writing four other books with heavy plural undertones, constantly questioning, and it was not until midway through last year that a few long (long) conversations led to me finally just diving right in.

7. Do you have any nonhuman alters/headmates?

   They are mostly skunks! Hold My Name is more coyote than skunk, and Dry Grass is basically human.

8. If you have an innerworld, what's it like?

9. Any insystem relationships?

   Beholden and Dry Grass have a sort of parental/caregiver/guardian relationship with Motes, but they are all generally friends.

10. Does anyone IRL know you are plural?

    My partners, a few friends.

11. Most common genders in the system / Is there a wide range of gender identities?

    They are all feminine. Hold My Name and What Right Have I are trans, Rye is, like...demiwoman?

12. Do you have any littles or middles?

    Motes, kind of, sometimes.

13. Any members have their own playlists? Share them! (/nf)

    • Beholden — (Spotify)
    • Dry Grass — (Spotify)
    • Hold My Name — (Spotify)
    • Motes — (Spotify)
    • Rye — (Spotify)
    • Slow Hours — (Spotify)
    • True Name#Convergence — (Spotify)
    • What Right Have I — (Spotify)

14. How common are system roles? / Do you use them?

    I guess I mentioned the guardian/charge dynamic between Motes and Beholden/Dry Grass, but beyond that:

    • Slow Hours: the poet
    • Beholden: the hedonist
    • Hold My Name: the trickster
    • Motes: the joyous
    • Rye: the storyteller
    • What Right Have I: the devoted
    • Dry Grass: the technician
    • True Name#Convergence: the leader

15. Have you made any system roles or terms (shared or personal?)

    I guess I answered that above :P The roles I have seen elsewhere do not feel useful to me, I suppose~

16. If you have a host(s), if they want to, introduce them!

    Slow Hours would probably be the closest, if only because she was the first (ish). She is, however, too tired to do much introducing at the moment~

17. If you have a protector(s) or caretaker(s), if they want to, introduce them!

    Beholden, Dry Grass, True Name, Hold My Name are protectors, while Rye, Motes, and What Right Have I are generally the ones eing protected. Slow Hours sits somewhere in the middle and off to the side.

18. Do you have any sub/side/sisasystems?

    I have joked that Hold My Name is a sub-system, but that really was mostly a joke.

    Unless...?

19. What terms do you prefer and what terms do you hate?

    I will be honest, not keen on 'headmate', but it is so common, I just live with it. I would prefer 'member', and I like 'aspect', but it is too overloaded. I would rather just be called several skunks.

20. How easily do you introject?

    Varies wildly. Rye just sort of...moved in when I was sick, and it took like fifteen minutes of writing What Right Have I for her to just show up. The others less so.

21. Free question! ask whatever :)

    I suppose I would ask: do your different members have different greetings? Because for some reason, that struck me. They all say hello in different ways.