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mina_de_malfois at 01:32pm on 28/11/2006 under memoirs
mina_de_malfois at 01:32pm on 28/11/2006 under memoirsDisclaimer: This is a work of fiction. No resemblance is intended to any person or persons living, dead, or online. No BNFs were harmed in the making of this fic.
Permissions: All rights reserved. All other reproduction, transmission, or storage, in any format, is prohibited unless the author is contacted beforehand and grants specific written permission. The author may be contacted at mina_de_malfois@yahoo.com.
The problem with writing these memoirs is that one never knows what to put where--it’s a bit like cloistered virgins writing slash, really. I mean, in fandom as in mundane life, many things develop all at once, even if you’re only aware of one development at a time. Take Sanguinity’s rising tide of RPF: I was all set to tell you about it, but on further reflection it seems to me that the roots to all that lay in a slight misunderstanding that arose concerning the relationship between self and Josh--it produced minor hysteria among the shippers, but then again, what doesn’t?
It began with Rabbit, really. She was the first to assign ulterior motives to an entirely innocent fannish friendship. But I suppose it was partly my own fault that she decided to count me amongst her mortal enemies. Only partly: after all, Rabbit has a large contingent of mortal enemies, mostly made up of her former bestest friends, so clearly the common element is Rabbit herself, and I do use the word ‘common’ advisedly.
I can trace the start of her peevishness towards yours truly to that lunchtime when I raced like a mad thing up to my room to toss a parcel onto my bed. I’d checked the mail after a hurried lunch and found a package from Arc that just fit into my mailbox. Half an inch more in any direction and I’ve have had to pick it up from the house mother, not a chore those of us without masochistic urges relish, so it seemed the better part of wisdom to bring it up to my room at once, leaving the box clear for future mail.
I couldn’t resist opening one end for a peek at the contents on my way up. It was brimful of little gifts from my fans, mostly notebooks and pens by the looks of things--at Arc’s suggestion, I’d quietly but firmly been stating my preference that they not gift me with large or expensive things. She’d said, and I couldn’t but agree, that it was taking unnecessary advantage.
Anyway, I threw the box onto my bed and raced off to class, and I just didn’t notice the gift that was already there, so that later, when I found it in all its carefully-wrapped splendour, I assumed it had fallen out of Arc’s parcel. After all, the rest of the contents had scattered across my bedspread, and it didn’t occur to me to try to squeeze them back into the box. No one packs as efficiently as Arc. It’s futile even to try.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The next bit happened because Jen was asleep--or possibly just pretending to sleep--on her bed when I got back to our room that afternoon. Sprawled out on her back, she honestly did look like a guy, and a not-undishy one at that. Specifically, you know, she looked rather like a slightly scaled-down version of PrinceC, only with different hair. I gazed at her for a while, lost in thought. Long moments drifted past. I suppose I must have been overtired or something--although I was settling into my classes beautifully. The only one that worried me at all was the ‘media studies and cultural practises’ course, and the problem there wasn’t academic so much as social. It dealt with fanac, including fanfiction. I felt in constant peril of being outed. I was walking that knife edge between displaying a thorough knowledge of the subject and betraying myself as a practitioner. Let’s face it: when it came to fanfiction studies, I was more akin to the thing on the slide than to the scientist peering down the old ‘scope. There was only one other person in the class who struck me as overtly fannish, and she was one of those Age-of-Sail-and-Austen types.
I rather resent Austenfen, you know. They’re lovely people and all, and exquisitely polite, but it’s my opinion they have an unfair advantage. They can publish their fanfiction. They don’t even have to go through the motions of renaming characters after themselves and changing deatheaters to demons: they can just flat-out admit they’ve written a three-volume sequel to Pride and Prejudism and go ahead and offer it for sale. Come to think of it, ‘phans’ have the same excuse--the copyright on their source material is past its best-by date. It’s almost enough to make one want to dust off some sort of antique canon oneself.
I guiltily caught myself staring at Jen, and hurriedly turned my eyes from my prone and unconscious roommate to browse that week’s Fandom_Gossip. As always when you’re trying to distract yourself from someone, I hit upon an immediate mention of the person. ‘Josh Amos has gone missing--and not for the first time,’ the first item purred. ‘Rumour has it the handsome lad disappears regularly, and for good reason.’
I clicked the links provided, and found several bland-ish posts wondering where Josh was when he wasn’t at cons, and then several other posts (ranging from impassioned to hysterical) berating the original posters for posting. Josh’s whereabouts, I gathered from the second set of posts, were Not To Be Discussed. It was dangerous, disrespectful, or criminally irresponsible to ever ask where he was. He had, they shrilly insisted, very good and important reasons for being unreachable.
This hush was imposed, the hints ran, either because his nearly-famous status required secrecy in order to protect the privacy of the actors and directors he hung out with, or else because he was on the run from his family, which was comprised of international art thieves, diamond smugglers, actual mafia bosses, a religious cult, or survivalist terrorists. Each post from the secrecy police claimed to know the truth, but none of these verified truths agreed with the other, and it wasn’t safe to post any actual evidence.
I snorted quietly as I skimmed the final links to a couple of meta-posts analysing the morality, legality, and history of fannish requests for location concealment. For someone on the run, ‘Josh’ was sleeping pretty peacefully.
I didn’t intend any harm when I updated my livejournal. I’m a big fan of secrecy, believe me. Nothing could have tempted me to out Josh or reveal his whereabouts, and even if I had been tempted, the fiercely worded St. Schol’s rulebook would have put an abrupt stop to any inclination of breaching my roommate’s privacy in even the slightest degree. But all that fannish interest in the absurd secrets of someone who wasn’t even, let’s face it, a real BNF set my teeth on edge. I couldn’t resist tweaking the hysteria, just a little.
‘Apparently Josh Amos hasn’t been in regular contact with anyone else,’ I wrote breezily. ‘Just one of the perks of BNFdom, I suppose. And speaking of perks, I have to offer heartfelt thanks for the following.’ And I listed the various little gifts I’d received, lavishing praise over each and thanking each fan by username. I even remembered to thank the Directress for sending me a contraband copy of Witless of Gor: a Patricic Rim fanfiction. Then I got to the last item.
The little package in metallic-blue wrap had no gift tag or note of any kind, just a single band of silver ribbon across it lengthwise. I undid it carefully, and found myself confronted with a second layer of wrap: silver, with a metallic blue ribbon around its width, and still no note. Very mysterious, and utterly enchanting. I momentarily suspected PrinceC, but his gifts were always accompanied by letters or poetry. So after listing everything else I concluded my lj entry with warm thanks for the anonymous generosity of whoever had sent me the exquisitely double-wrapped gift, which I described without any idea that I was throwing fuel on an irrational, jealous flame.
When I unwrapped the second layer, the gift turned out to be a paperback. I stared in horror at the back cover. Someone had shaved a Rodent of Unusual Size, and taught it to wear clothes!
No, wait: that was an author photograph. I flipped the book over. Ah. For some reason, one of my readers had seen fit to send me Soul of a Rutter, another in the series of spy novels (‘based on the t.v. series!’) by every fan’s least favourite profic author. I paused to reflect solemnly on the endless nuance and subtlety of which the English language is capable. Consider the wide and tragic chasm which lies between the phrases, ‘a novel based on the critically acclaimed t.v. series’ and ‘the critically acclaimed novel based on a t.v. series.’ Of such sadnesses are born great resentments and much wank.
The next issue of F_G went some distance towards explaining the purpose of the gift, though not its origins. A series of links under the heading ‘Plagiarism scandal on the horizon’ revealed that a handful of my more ardent fangirls were deeply upset. Excerpts from the proficcer’s most recent ‘original’ novel were, they argued passionately, lifted from well known fics I’d uploaded several years before. A couple of posts laid out line by line comparisons to prove the point, and by G'hod, they proved it. What was I supposed to do now?
footnotes
next
Permissions: All rights reserved. All other reproduction, transmission, or storage, in any format, is prohibited unless the author is contacted beforehand and grants specific written permission. The author may be contacted at mina_de_malfois@yahoo.com.
The problem with writing these memoirs is that one never knows what to put where--it’s a bit like cloistered virgins writing slash, really. I mean, in fandom as in mundane life, many things develop all at once, even if you’re only aware of one development at a time. Take Sanguinity’s rising tide of RPF: I was all set to tell you about it, but on further reflection it seems to me that the roots to all that lay in a slight misunderstanding that arose concerning the relationship between self and Josh--it produced minor hysteria among the shippers, but then again, what doesn’t?
It began with Rabbit, really. She was the first to assign ulterior motives to an entirely innocent fannish friendship. But I suppose it was partly my own fault that she decided to count me amongst her mortal enemies. Only partly: after all, Rabbit has a large contingent of mortal enemies, mostly made up of her former bestest friends, so clearly the common element is Rabbit herself, and I do use the word ‘common’ advisedly.
I can trace the start of her peevishness towards yours truly to that lunchtime when I raced like a mad thing up to my room to toss a parcel onto my bed. I’d checked the mail after a hurried lunch and found a package from Arc that just fit into my mailbox. Half an inch more in any direction and I’ve have had to pick it up from the house mother, not a chore those of us without masochistic urges relish, so it seemed the better part of wisdom to bring it up to my room at once, leaving the box clear for future mail.
I couldn’t resist opening one end for a peek at the contents on my way up. It was brimful of little gifts from my fans, mostly notebooks and pens by the looks of things--at Arc’s suggestion, I’d quietly but firmly been stating my preference that they not gift me with large or expensive things. She’d said, and I couldn’t but agree, that it was taking unnecessary advantage.
Anyway, I threw the box onto my bed and raced off to class, and I just didn’t notice the gift that was already there, so that later, when I found it in all its carefully-wrapped splendour, I assumed it had fallen out of Arc’s parcel. After all, the rest of the contents had scattered across my bedspread, and it didn’t occur to me to try to squeeze them back into the box. No one packs as efficiently as Arc. It’s futile even to try.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The next bit happened because Jen was asleep--or possibly just pretending to sleep--on her bed when I got back to our room that afternoon. Sprawled out on her back, she honestly did look like a guy, and a not-undishy one at that. Specifically, you know, she looked rather like a slightly scaled-down version of PrinceC, only with different hair. I gazed at her for a while, lost in thought. Long moments drifted past. I suppose I must have been overtired or something--although I was settling into my classes beautifully. The only one that worried me at all was the ‘media studies and cultural practises’ course, and the problem there wasn’t academic so much as social. It dealt with fanac, including fanfiction. I felt in constant peril of being outed. I was walking that knife edge between displaying a thorough knowledge of the subject and betraying myself as a practitioner. Let’s face it: when it came to fanfiction studies, I was more akin to the thing on the slide than to the scientist peering down the old ‘scope. There was only one other person in the class who struck me as overtly fannish, and she was one of those Age-of-Sail-and-Austen types.
I rather resent Austenfen, you know. They’re lovely people and all, and exquisitely polite, but it’s my opinion they have an unfair advantage. They can publish their fanfiction. They don’t even have to go through the motions of renaming characters after themselves and changing deatheaters to demons: they can just flat-out admit they’ve written a three-volume sequel to Pride and Prejudism and go ahead and offer it for sale. Come to think of it, ‘phans’ have the same excuse--the copyright on their source material is past its best-by date. It’s almost enough to make one want to dust off some sort of antique canon oneself.
I guiltily caught myself staring at Jen, and hurriedly turned my eyes from my prone and unconscious roommate to browse that week’s Fandom_Gossip. As always when you’re trying to distract yourself from someone, I hit upon an immediate mention of the person. ‘Josh Amos has gone missing--and not for the first time,’ the first item purred. ‘Rumour has it the handsome lad disappears regularly, and for good reason.’
I clicked the links provided, and found several bland-ish posts wondering where Josh was when he wasn’t at cons, and then several other posts (ranging from impassioned to hysterical) berating the original posters for posting. Josh’s whereabouts, I gathered from the second set of posts, were Not To Be Discussed. It was dangerous, disrespectful, or criminally irresponsible to ever ask where he was. He had, they shrilly insisted, very good and important reasons for being unreachable.
This hush was imposed, the hints ran, either because his nearly-famous status required secrecy in order to protect the privacy of the actors and directors he hung out with, or else because he was on the run from his family, which was comprised of international art thieves, diamond smugglers, actual mafia bosses, a religious cult, or survivalist terrorists. Each post from the secrecy police claimed to know the truth, but none of these verified truths agreed with the other, and it wasn’t safe to post any actual evidence.
I snorted quietly as I skimmed the final links to a couple of meta-posts analysing the morality, legality, and history of fannish requests for location concealment. For someone on the run, ‘Josh’ was sleeping pretty peacefully.
I didn’t intend any harm when I updated my livejournal. I’m a big fan of secrecy, believe me. Nothing could have tempted me to out Josh or reveal his whereabouts, and even if I had been tempted, the fiercely worded St. Schol’s rulebook would have put an abrupt stop to any inclination of breaching my roommate’s privacy in even the slightest degree. But all that fannish interest in the absurd secrets of someone who wasn’t even, let’s face it, a real BNF set my teeth on edge. I couldn’t resist tweaking the hysteria, just a little.
‘Apparently Josh Amos hasn’t been in regular contact with anyone else,’ I wrote breezily. ‘Just one of the perks of BNFdom, I suppose. And speaking of perks, I have to offer heartfelt thanks for the following.’ And I listed the various little gifts I’d received, lavishing praise over each and thanking each fan by username. I even remembered to thank the Directress for sending me a contraband copy of Witless of Gor: a Patricic Rim fanfiction. Then I got to the last item.
The little package in metallic-blue wrap had no gift tag or note of any kind, just a single band of silver ribbon across it lengthwise. I undid it carefully, and found myself confronted with a second layer of wrap: silver, with a metallic blue ribbon around its width, and still no note. Very mysterious, and utterly enchanting. I momentarily suspected PrinceC, but his gifts were always accompanied by letters or poetry. So after listing everything else I concluded my lj entry with warm thanks for the anonymous generosity of whoever had sent me the exquisitely double-wrapped gift, which I described without any idea that I was throwing fuel on an irrational, jealous flame.
When I unwrapped the second layer, the gift turned out to be a paperback. I stared in horror at the back cover. Someone had shaved a Rodent of Unusual Size, and taught it to wear clothes!
No, wait: that was an author photograph. I flipped the book over. Ah. For some reason, one of my readers had seen fit to send me Soul of a Rutter, another in the series of spy novels (‘based on the t.v. series!’) by every fan’s least favourite profic author. I paused to reflect solemnly on the endless nuance and subtlety of which the English language is capable. Consider the wide and tragic chasm which lies between the phrases, ‘a novel based on the critically acclaimed t.v. series’ and ‘the critically acclaimed novel based on a t.v. series.’ Of such sadnesses are born great resentments and much wank.
The next issue of F_G went some distance towards explaining the purpose of the gift, though not its origins. A series of links under the heading ‘Plagiarism scandal on the horizon’ revealed that a handful of my more ardent fangirls were deeply upset. Excerpts from the proficcer’s most recent ‘original’ novel were, they argued passionately, lifted from well known fics I’d uploaded several years before. A couple of posts laid out line by line comparisons to prove the point, and by G'hod, they proved it. What was I supposed to do now?
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