update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/mitzvot/034.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Ioan had never been one for bars. Ey knew that there was an enormous variety of them, that doubtless some would play to eir aesthetic and likes --- the one at the base of the System Central Library came quite close --- and that not all of them subscribed to the "if it's louder, that means everyone's having more fun" school of design.
 
-There was just something about the idea. Too much that took place in bars was, at best, confusing. At worst, it was distressing. Ey had no desire to be around the types of drunkenness that bars seemed to attract. May had a list of types of drunkenness she'd gotten from somewhere, ey knew, and ey didn't like any of them.
+There was just something about the idea. Too much that took place in bars was, at best, confusing. At worst, it was distressing. Ey had no desire to be around the types of intoxication that bars seemed to attract. May had a list of types of drunkenness she'd gotten from somewhere, ey knew, and ey didn't like any of them.
 
 Still, this is where Jonas had requested that they meet when ey messaged him.
 
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ Ey posted the cap of eir pen and nodded for Jonas to continue.
 
 "Because you love to hear yourself talk," ey said. "And because Zacharias is right. This is almost cartoonishly evil, and villains love talking about their grand schemes. I'm ready for your monologue."
 
-Jonas raised his eyebrows and a slow grin spread over his features. That feverish glint ey'd seen last time shone through for a moment before it was suppressed again. The idea that Jonas might be losing it made em anxious. *Stretched too thin, maybe?* ey thought.
+Jonas raised his eyebrows and a slow grin spread over his features. That feverish glint ey'd seen last time shone through for a moment before it was suppressed again. The idea that Jonas might be losing it made em anxious. *Stretched too thin, maybe?*
 
 "You see, this is why I like you, Ioan," Jonas said. "The whole Bălan clade, that is. You hit that sweet spot between patient and impatient where you can stay calm, but you don't just wait forever."
 
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ Zacharias frowned, but Jonas was already nodding, "Got it in one. That's right a
 
 "Suddenly we have to prove our greener grass to those phys-side."
 
-"Right. The direction that we need to take with Lagrange can't just be the same old one we've been taking before. In this, True Name and I disagreed." He shrugged, rocking his glass gently back and forth on the table before taking another sip. "She wanted to continue on her path of subtlety, I disagreed."
+"Right. The direction that we need to take with Lagrange can't just be the same old one we've been taking before. In this, True Name and I differ." He shrugged, rocking his glass gently back and forth on the table before taking another sip. "She wanted to continue on her path of subtlety, I disagreed."
 
 Ey snorted. "Disagreed? You tried to assassinate her, Jonas."
 
@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ Ioan rolled eir eyes.
 
 Jonas laughed. "Oh?"
 
-"Yeah. A few reasons." Ey started ticking off points on eir fingers as ey spoke. "First, True Name didn't start down this path in the last few years that we've been learning from Artemis; she was a mess when she first got in touch with us with Codrin#Castor's first letter during convergence, so things were already in motion then. Second, The Guiding Council on Pollux is almost twenty years old now, predating the arrival of the Artemisians by nearly ten years, and I think that's because third, you--" Ey nodded to Zacharias. "--apparently dropped everything on her across all three systems at the same time not that long after the launch. You two got more openly together on Pollux, and as far as Codrin#Castor can find in the perisystem, you quit shortly after telling her there. End Waking thinks --- and I agree --- you're trying to push each of the Systems in a different direction politically. Maybe you think having different political environments is more stable across societies separated by distance and time. Maybe it's some giant experiment. Who knows. It's your long game."
+"Yeah. A few reasons." Ey started ticking off points on eir fingers as ey spoke. "First, True Name didn't start down this path in the last few years that we've been learning from Artemis; she was a mess when she first got in touch with us with Codrin#Castor's first letter during convergence, so things were already in motion then. Second, The Guiding Council on Pollux is almost twenty years old now, predating the arrival of the Artemisians by years, and I think that's because third, you--" Ey nodded to Zacharias. "--apparently dropped everything on her across all three systems at the same time not that long after the launch. You two got more openly together on Pollux, and as far as Codrin#Castor can find in the perisystem, you quit shortly after telling her there. End Waking thinks --- and I agree --- you're trying to push each of the Systems in a different direction politically. Maybe you think having different political environments is more stable across societies separated by distance and time. Maybe it's some giant experiment. Who knows. It's your long game."
 
 The longer ey spoke, the more serious Jonas's expression grew, and by the time ey finished, he'd leaned back in his seat. "Well then," he said. "I suppose I don't have much more to add, then, do I? I have my conversation with True Name cut out for me."
 
@@ -210,7 +210,7 @@ True Name nodded. "If nothing else, I think that it will buy me a quiet retireme
 
 The conversation wound down from there, and as evening dimmed into night, they fell into silence. The fire was kept low, only enough light and warmth to keep the dark at bay.
 
-Eventually, with eir lower back hurting and May starting to nod off, they made their goodnights. True Name gave May and em a hug around the shoulders and a nose-dot to the cheek in turn and padded off to her tent. End Waking stated that he was going to watch the fire for a while longer and then head to bed himself --- he'd set up a tent of his own a ways off from True Name's for this fork to sleep in --- leaving May and Ioan to walk back to the house together in the dark.
+Eventually, with eir lower back hurting and May starting to nod off, they made their goodnights. True Name gave em and May a hug around the shoulders and a nose-dot to the cheek in turn and padded off to her tent. End Waking stated that he was going to watch the fire for a while longer and then head to bed himself --- he'd set up a tent of his own a ways off from True Name's for this fork to sleep in --- leaving May and Ioan to walk back to the house together in the dark.
 
 "I'm happy to hear her talking about a future," Ioan said, once they'd cleaned up and made their way to bed, em slouched against the headboard and May in eir lap, slouched against eir front in turn.
 
@@ -252,7 +252,7 @@ Ey grinned. "Well, okay, not stress-shedding, just normal shedding."
 
 She scrubbed a paw at her flank until she came up with a little bit of shed fur to sprinkle over eir front. "Yes, yes. But I can say the same for you, my dear. A year ago, I do not think I could have pictured her giving you a goodnight kiss."
 
-Covering for the heat rising to eir cheeks by brushing the errant fur off eir front, ey shrugged. "I'm used to skunks being all touchy, thanks to you."
+Covering for the heat rising to eir cheeks by brushing the errant fur off eir front, ey shrugged. "That's on you. I'm used to skunks being all touchy."
 
 "Yes, but True Name?"
 

writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.md

@@ -54,11 +54,11 @@ Eventually, however, coffee long gone, they forked. End Waking and True Name's d
 
 The only words they spoke to each other was May saying, "Good luck, have fun, and do not die."
 
-The four forks held hands and paws and with nothing other than a shared shaky breath, stepped from the sim.
+The four forks held hands and paws and, with nothing other than a shared, shaky breath, stepped from the sim.
 
 End Waking immediately flinched, crouched. They found themselves in a boardroom. A large plain of a table, notepads and pens, a second table huddling against the wall with a pitcher of water and a stack of too-small glasses.
 
-And yet it still felt too small --- even to Ioan, who spent more of eir life inside than unbound in a forest, the ceiling was just a few inches too low, the chairs just a few inches too close to the walls. Too small, and yet too long. There was room for a table half again as long, and yet the table was set in one end of the room, leaving the other end empty and unbalanced other than a wheeled whiteboard. End Waking, who hadn't been indoors, never mind in a room too small, in nigh on a century, looked on the verge of panic. His eyes were wide, tail hiked and bristled, paws clenched in a way that reminded em of May.
+And yet it still felt too small --- even to Ioan, who spent more of eir life inside than unbound in a forest, the ceiling was just a few inches too low, the chairs just a few inches too close to the walls. Too small, and yet too long. There was room for a table half again as long, and yet the table was set in one end of the room, leaving the other end unbalanced, empty other than a wheeled whiteboard. End Waking, who hadn't been indoors, never mind in a room too small, in nigh on a century, looked on the verge of panic. His eyes were wide, tail hiked and bristled, paws clenched in a way that reminded em of May.
 
 "I do not know if I can--"
 
@@ -82,9 +82,9 @@ That grin of hers widened, and she nodded. "Quite a bit, actually. We never quit
 
 End Waking stared at True Name as though she was an Artemisian, suddenly having made their way across the light-days back to Lagrange. Hell, Ioan was staring at her like she was an alien. So quickly and smoothly had her anxiety been transmuted into this calm, friendly social efficiency that it was as though the last months had been erased from her features.
 
-There was some other conversation going on here, ey realized. It wasn't just that they were talking pleasantries before a meeting, but that there was some exchange of information that took place on some subtler plane of existence. They were feeling each other out, listening to tone of voice more than the content of words, watching features and postures rather than seeing an old friend. There was some deeper level of communication that ey simply couldn't latch onto.
+There was some other conversation going on here, ey realized. It wasn't just that they were talking pleasantries before a meeting, but that there was an exchange of information that took place on some subtler plane of existence. They were feeling each other out, listening to tone of voice more than the content of words, watching features and postures rather than seeing an old friend. There was some deeper level of communication that ey simply couldn't latch onto.
 
-With that in mind, ey could at least do eir best to focus on the subtler forms of language around the room.
+With that in mind, ey could at least do eir best to focus on the less direct forms of language around the room.
 
 True Name had talked em through the stanza and their roles beforehand, at least. She herself had been focused on the politics, of course, but also acted as consensus builder among the members of her stanza.
 
@@ -100,11 +100,11 @@ To Know One's True Name Is To Know God had settled comfortably into data analysi
 
 To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions had done her best to specialize in the fields of information and game theory, but this had more often come down to simple information security and hygiene. She decided where and how far information traveled.
 
-Do I Know God When I Do Not Remember Myself and Do I Know God When I Do Not Dream worked as a mismatched pair. When I Do Not Remember worked as a propagandist while When I Dream worked almost entirely on the perisystem, translating back and forth for her cocladists and finding the best way to worm her way through the inter- and intrasystem text channels.
+Do I Know God When I Do Not Remember Myself and Do I Know God When I Do Not Dream worked as a mismatched pair. When I Do Not Remember worked as a propagandist while When I Do Not Dream worked almost entirely on the perisystem, translating back and forth for her cocladists and finding the best way to worm her way through the inter- and intrasystem text channels.
 
-Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn't think ey'd be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the stanza and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there to be seen. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.
+Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn't think ey'd be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the stanza and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there to be seen. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Do Not Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.
 
-As it was, ey did eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guesses to be correct to the last. 
+As it was, ey did eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guesses to be correct in each case. 
 
 At last, the parade of bows and greetings out of the way, each of the thirteen --- counting em, Jonas, and Zacharias --- pulled out a chair and sat down, though ey noted that End Waking didn't sit so much as hover on the very edge of his seat. He still looked wide-eyed, feral.