Motes Played/synopsis
And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights of the Ode clade is a skunk who is not only keenly focused on play, but who has leaned into a sense of childhood. She often presents to the world as a kid anywhere from five to twelve years old. She is also a set and prop designer for Au Lieu Du Rêve, the theatre company that Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself of the Ode clade helps run, and spends some of her free time painting images from her dreams: prosaic landscapes obscured by ultra-black shapes that she describes as 'holes in the world'.
After finishing one of these paintings, Motes spends some time talking with A Finger Pointing and her partner, Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps of the Ode clade, about what sorts of problems she has run into with this childlike identity. Given the 18 year old age limit for uploading, for there to be a child on the System is inherently transgressive, and this has led to some contention within the Ode clade, with some of them concerned about the optics of this behavior, and how it reflects on the rest of the clade. This, combined with the fact that A Finger Pointing and Beholden are in a relationship — intraclade relationships being something of a taboo up until recently — has made for some arguments over the years, and some gentle encouragements to keep these explorations to safe spaces. The most strife seems to have come from the family dynamic that Motes, A Finger Pointing, and Beholden live in, with Motes considering the others as her parents, calling A Finger Pointing 'Ma' and Beholden 'Bee' while they call her 'Dot', short for dóttir.
This is confirmed when I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass of the Ode clade visits. Dry Grass is a member of the sixth stanza, whereas Motes, A Finger Pointing, and Beholden are members of the fifth. Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver of the Ode clade, the first member of the sixth stanza, has instructed the rest of her up-tree instances to cut contact with the fifth stanza due to them taking in Sasha. Sasha used to be The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream of the Ode clade until twelve years prior, and boy howdy does Hammered Silver hate her. Dry Grass explains to Motes that Hammered Silver has been quite upset at A Finger Pointing over several things over the years, but that Motes herself has been a particular point of contention for Hammered Silver, and that she's not actually supposed to be talking with her, but she promises that she won't stop, that she'd sooner tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself.
Motes occasionally goes out into the world as a more adult version of herself — which she calls Big Motes, as opposed to Little Motes — looking to be a slender twenty-something with a real flower-child aesthetic. She does this primarily to go to concerts or to more adult venues where she occasionally meets others to have anonymous flings. After one such fling where she gets bit to hell by an otter, she returns to find Sasha working on an upcoming production. They talk about Hammered Silver and her opinions on the rest of the clade, how she lives with her first up-tree instance A Weapon Against The Waking World of the Ode clade as husband and wife. This is aggravating to Motes, given Hammered Silver's reaction to her own family dynamic, but Sasha explains that Hammered Silver treats this as a role in a play, as though she is merely acting, despite the fact that Waking World very much treats the relationship as real. Sasha also explains that A Finger Pointing has spent many years shielding her and the rest of the fifth stanza from the politics of the rest of the clade, aiming to let them live in peace. She mentions that, as part of this, she had been meeting up with Hammered Silver regularly until she was cut off, but was required, some decades back, to never talk about Motes. She comforts Motes about this and brings her back to her family.
Later on, Motes plays with Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire of the Ode clade, her best friend. Both share an identity of littlest or youngest, though in Warmth's case, it is more tied to being the last line claimed and one of the most up-tree Odists from the root instance. Ey's small and young while not leaning quite so hard into play or childhood. They eventually chill out in a field and talk about what they've been doing, with Warmth working on reproducing food from the Artemesians as described by Codrin Bălan on the Launch Vehicle Castor. They talk about what it means to transgress — Warmth has an indeterminate gender and cycles through pronouns within even a sentence which it views as inherently transgressive; and is Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled of the Ode clade's up-tree, and Dear has also been cut off by the sixth and seventh stanzas.
Shortly after, Motes has a nightmare wherein her root instance, Michelle Hadje, who had died some decades earlier, tears her down for both her fascination with death and for her childish identity, then forces her to kill herself. She awakes and spends the rest of the night sharing a bed with A Finger Pointing and Beholden. They talk some of processing the dream when morning comes, but mostly, they comfort her. After they head out for the day, Motes visits with Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress of the Ode clade, her cocladist and 'sister'. Slow Hours has a reputation of being a bit of an oracle, though much of this is based around finding trends in others' lives after having read an enormous amount for her role as script manager for the theatre. She talks through the dream with Motes and tells her that the others in the clade such as Hammered Silver aren't done with her, even if they say they've cut contact, but she reaffirms the fact that Motes is just living her life earnestly and intentionally.
A few weeks later, Motes is taken down by a high priority sensorium ping which appears as a jolt of adrenaline, leading to her falling while running and bloody. Along with this comes a letter from Hammered Silver, who states that she has learned that Dry Grass has been visiting the fifth stanza and Motes specifically for some time, and has thus cut Dry Grass off from the rest of the sixth stanza, placing the blame squarely on Motes. This leads to Motes 'overflowing', something akin to a prolonged panic attack or brief manic episode that manifests differently for each Odist. In Motes's case, it leads to her withdrawing from anything resembling play, to the point where she winds up all but catatonic. While down and out, she remembers much of her past, how she was struck by a memory of getting paint on her pants in kindergarten after getting paint on her overalls while working on a set, how that led to hear leaning into play, which then led to her leaning into presenting herself as a kid, which led eventually to her treating A Finger Pointing and Beholden as her parents. At each step of the way, a boundary is set when a suggestion comes from elsewhere that she not do these things, but she gently tests at the limits, eventually finding ways to go be a kid with others who have done similar, talking with those around her about family dynamics and finding comfortable engagement with that.
While Motes is down and out, A Finger Pointing manages the fallout of Hammered Silver's flurry of letters, for both she and Dry Grass have received one, all quite insulting. She helps Dry Grass move into the same neighborhood that houses most of the fifth stanza as well as friends, lovers, and other members of Au Lieu Du Rêve, and then sets up a meeting with Sasha to determine whether or not Hammered Silver is at all at threat to anyone involved, to which Sasha says not at all. Waking World, meeting with them later, explains that Hammered Silver just wants them to hurt, and they all agree that she was quite successful: Motes was left bloodied and catatonic, Dry Grass was cut off from her own stanza, and A Finger Pointing and Beholden were retraumatized.
Throughout this time, A Finger Pointing remembers back to her past, from all the way back to when she had been forked from Michelle and adopted the role of actor and director, through when she had gotten in a relationship with Beholden, to when she allowed Motes to explore childhood and the family dynamic. All along the way, Hammered Silver had met with her for lunch on a regular basis while often peppering her with letters decrying what she or others around her had done. While she had initially considered Hammered Silver a friend, A Finger Pointing eventually conceded that she was just too much of a bitch and the meetings had turned into ways to spy on each other.
The meetings eventually become overwhelming and A Finger Pointing asks Beholden to take her home. After resting, she sends a message to Hammered Silver expressing her pain and receives a snippy reply that they will go back to silence and leave each other alone. She returns to comfort herself and Motes, despite the latter's unresponsive catatonia.
At one point in the past, A Finger Pointing had merged in an instance who quit mid-crash and was left with nigh constant dissociation. This has led Beholden to being a caretaker for her in turn, which she does gladly, given how devoted she is to her. What Beholden isn't able to do, however, is really process emotions, and so she winds up having a few angry outbursts during the proceedings. She spends some time talking with Dry Grass, recounting how it was that she wound up accepting her role both as A Finger Pointing's partner and Motes's guardian, as caretaker for both of them, and spends some time processing the big feelings she has about both A Finger Pointing's vulnerabilities and finding Motes bloodied and overflowing without knowing why. She eventually sets them aside as always.
Motes comes out of her catatonia a few days later and decides that she isn't ready to engage with little-space yet until she's had a chance to process her pain, so she chooses to be Big Motes. After reuniting with Beholden and A Finger Pointing and learning what happened, she says that she will take two weeks to work on her feelings before reengaging with the world as Little Motes. Later, she has therapy with Sarah Genet, who has become a therapist for the Ode clade. They talk about where all of these feelings may have come from, given that the thoughts around her transgressive nature have been dogging her heels for weeks now. Motes realizes that Dry Grass may have actually kicked everything off by actually telling Hammered Silver to go fuck herself.
A few weeks later, Motes goes out to play once more as Little Motes. She talks with her friend Alexei about what had happened, and he comforts her, confirming that he's experienced similar strife in his time on the System. Afterwards, she returns to the neighborhood where there's a small party going on. She eats way too much and spends time with her family, eventually getting confirmation from Dry Grass that her telling Hammered Silver to go fuck herself was, in fact, the cause of the trouble. Motes reassures her, though, that Hammered Silver is just being a b-word and that things are okay now. At the end of the night, she walks home sleepily and, on a whim, goes down the slide for just a little bit more play before bed.