Concordia discors

[I know it isn't Tuesday, but I thought I'd do this one early, in case anyone else out there could use some extra distraction today.]


The holidays were upon us, but not to worry. I had all my shopping completed, and had solved most of my fandom-giving needs by converting some carefully-hoarded cash into points and paid accounts for my nearest and dearest.

Other people had been majorly stressed over finals, but not I. I’d had other worries. It was time for our quarterly Sanguinity reports, and I was anxiously awaiting my points statement. The St. Schol's exams had been vigourous, but not impossibly so, and I intended to reward myself with lots of gaming during the break. I should have some nice, peaceful evenings for it: most of the students went home for the hols. The campus kept up hot and cold running mail-service and meals for the rest of us. In fact, I’d had a package from PrinceC on the afternoon I finished my last exam.

‘I didn’t wish, Lady Mina, to risk offending you by uploading this to Penn’d Passion’s RPF section until you’d seen it,’ ran PrinceC’s black-ribboned note, ‘so I had it privately bound for your perusal.’ He’d sent me a gift wrapped volume of a Cafe Press-enabled zine of his fanfiction. I was touched, notwithstanding my natural apprehension about anything that could be considered suitable for PP’s Real Person Fic section. On the one recent occasion I’d ventured into that particular den of iniquity, all the highly rated and wildly popular stories had featured Josh, most often portrayed improbably boning a Gay Unicorn. I still hadn’t fully recovered: I had some retinal scarring. Whatever PrinceC had written, I consoled myself, it couldn’t possibly compare.

A half-hour later I let the copy of Angst and Cheese slip from my nerveless fingers, and let the cold chills overtake me as I stared blankly into space. ‘You all right?’ Jen asked, breezing into the room. I nodded weakly. In truth, two hundred pages of extremely graphic hurt/comfort featuring myself and PrinceC had left me suspended between nausea and arousal, but I didn’t feel like talking about it. Jen pounced on the abandoned-in-every-sense book, and raised an eyebrow at the cover art. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t imagine who he’d got to draw that for him.

‘PrinceC crossed the boundary into RPF?’ she asked, sounding amused. I nodded numbly, and she chuckled unsympathetically. ‘Don’t get hung up on it,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he likes you too much to really mistreat the fictionalised version.’

It was true that the worst the fictionalised Mina had had to endure was witnessing a car accident--the fictionalised Ciyerra had been hit and hospitalised, traumatising the f. Mina and providing an excuse for the f. PrinceC to demonstrate his kindness by taking her home and whipping up some noodles. I brightened slightly.

‘Are you going home for the holidays?’ I asked. Watching Jen pack, I almost regretted having decided the nearly-empty dorm would be preferable to crashing with my mum and sisters. Almost, but not quite.

She looked evasive. ‘Not exactly home, no,’ she answered, closing her suitcase and easily lifting it and a large brown box. ‘I’ll be with friends. Oh, wait.’ She stopped in the doorway and set her stuff down long enough to retrieve a silver-wrapped package from the box. She tossed it to me. ‘It’s a cd of filksongs,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry; most of them aren’t about you. I thought you’d enjoy the Weirdling Minstrel’s Sanguinity.’

After she’d left I drifted to the window and watched as she reappeared below. The driver of the over-full car stepped out to stuff her suitcase in the trunk. He looked, at least at this distance, suspiciously familiar. I was almost certain I’d seen him on IMDb.

I wondered how everyone else was celebrating the hols, or even which hols they were celebrating. I’d asked PrinceC, not that his answer was enlightening. ‘Mostly we keep up my mother’s family’s customs,’ he’d said. ‘They’re a lot more observant than my father’s side of the family.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I’d said encouragingly. ‘So what sort of celebration do you have?’

‘’We’re very traditional,’ he’d told me. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, really.’

Traditionally what, though? I wondered how rude it would be to ask. ‘How so?’ I typed, opting for vagueness.

‘Oh, you know, we do all the usual things. We spend the twelve days hosting parties and watching the original series, and Aunt Susan makes her Gladst and Uncle Peter usually drinks too much Chech’tluth. And there are round-robin letters from the relatives that can’t be there; some of them spend months creating art and fic for those.’

There was a longish pause. I had no idea what to say. He misinterpreted my stunned silence. ‘We’re not fundies or anything,’ he assured me. ‘I mean, we don’t stick just to the original series. My parents are quite critical about canon, even--they participated in the Gaylaxian letter-writing campaign, you know!’

I assured him it all sounded lovely, but really, after that conversation I’d been a bit afraid to go around asking anyone else. Who knew what murky fannish depths I might uncover if I kept prying? Clearly for some it really was AWOL, and one best left undisturbed by idle questions. I mean, what if I caught Arc indulging in some orgy of unheard-of Tolkienistic revels? I’d be mortified.

Bored and lonely, I headed online, and immediately gave in to that irresistible urge to go look at the most recent horrid thing to have been brought to my attention--in this case, Penn’d Passion’s RPF stash. I noted with pride and horror that PrinceC/Mina fic was now nearly as popular as Josh/actorfic. A number of even less likely pairings were represented, to say nothing of the threesomes. There was also a note from Arc pinned at the top of the page; it asked that anyone wishing to submit an anon fic do so via the ‘request for privacy’ queue, which, she promised, they would make every effort to respect. I wondered what sorts of things people didn’t want their usernames attached to--given the things they were willing to put their names to, it was baffling in the extreme.

By now caught up in full-blown trainwreck syndrome, I did a search for all the fics containing my name, and promptly regretted having done so. PrinceC had, as he’d promised, withheld his contribution to the field of Minafic, but seemingly no one else had. I found PrinceC/Mina, Josh/Mina, Rabbit/Mina--of all the unlikely things!--and others too embarrassing to mention, including a multi-chapter fic in which I was run over by a motorcycle and Josh and Rabbit rekindled their romance over my bleeding body. At that point I decided I’d had a long enough immersion in squickitude, and headed in-game instead.

When I walked into the Manor kitchen Ciyerra was sitting at the table crying again. She’d been doing that a lot lately. She was in spirit form, but since we’ve all also seen her walking around in-game as a normal person, or as normal as Ciyerra’s ever going to manage, that’s a lot less creepy than it used to be. Stasia was polishing the silverware and making soothing noises--whether to comfort the dessert forks or to shut Ciyerra up I can’t really say.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

Ciyerra solidified for a minute to talk to me. ‘It’s livejournal,’ she gulped. Well, I didn’t like some of their recent changes either, but it didn’t seem worth dissolving in tears over. I pointed this out.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean it’s my friendslist at livejournal.’ Therein, I well knew, lay plenty of potential for sorrow, so I pulled up a chair and prepared to listen to a tale of woe and bitchery.

‘I decided to do a friendslist cull,’ she explained. ‘I just had too many people on there to read them all, and some of the ones I was reading were writing things I didn’t approve of, so I felt it was really necessary. You must know what that’s like, Mina.’ She looked up at me through lashes heavily bedewed with tears. Stasia made the admiring noise of one aesthetically pleased by an artistic icon or avatar, but then, Stasia collects Candybar Dolls, so her tastes might trend a little downscale.

And frankly, I didn’t ‘know what it was like.’ When I defriend someone it normally means I’ve found out I can’t bloody stand them. Otherwise, if you’re on my friendslist you’re on there until you defriend me, and that’s that. I mean, people are probably aware I never so much as glance at my friendslist most days, because I’d never have time to do anything else but read it. I don’t hold with snubbing other people because I don’t have time, though.

‘Were the people you defriended upset?’ I asked gently. Perhaps she’d never thought about how harsh a defriending could feel, in which case this would be a valuable learning experience.

‘Some of them were,’ she admitted. ‘But, you know, I gave them a ‘comment if you want to stay’ post, so I don’t see why they’re complaining now. But most of them,’ she burst into tears again, ‘didn’t even notice!’

I suppressed a smile. ‘Maybe a few people were away from the computer that day?’ I suggested.

‘It wasn’t a few,’ she sobbed inconsolably. ‘It was over three hundred.’

I was a tad confused. How could someone--even someone ‘dead’--defriend over three hundred people without there being any notice of it, anywhere? I knew she hadn’t done anything wildly attention-whorish lately, but surely she wasn’t utterly invisible.

‘Had you been on their friendslists long?’ I asked. Her wailing increased, rendering her completely incomprehensible.

‘She wasn’t ever on their friendslists at all,’ Stasia told me quietly.

‘What?’ I asked, not sure I followed this last bit.

‘They were people she’d friended along the way, but who never friended her back,’ Stasia explained. ‘She finally decided to drop them, because they hadn’t ever responded to her comments by mutual-friending, but they didn’t respond to that either. Look on the bright side,’ she said more loudly, addressing Ciyerra, ‘at least you’re no longer close to the 750 friends limit, so you can add more people now. A lot of LNFs wish you’d friend them back.’ Ciyerra gave the anguished roar of someone who doesn’t want to friend back LNFs, then faded back to ghostliness and disappeared completely.

‘The girl’s an incurable loon,’ I said, with more honesty than tact.

‘She’s a sensitive, delicate, artistic soul,’ Stasia insisted, clasping her hands together and dreamily dropping her chamois. ‘I bet lots of real artists are just like her.’

‘If lots of artists were just like her, the galleries would be empty and the psych wards would be full,’ I said. ‘Actual artists have to emerge from the abyss of self-induced grief long enough to paint something.’ But Stasia continued to look starry-eyed.

‘Nothing matters more than friendship,’ she proclaimed. ‘That’s why every truly sensitive girl needs to surround herself with people who really care about her happiness.’ She had kind of a point, no matter how emo its expression. One does need real friends, not just a friendslist, or fangirls, or people to shove wishlists at.

Bloody fandom. I glared at the screen. Why did any of us even bother? It was all too obvious Ciyerra’s ‘friends’ had let her down, and who knew what kind of fall Stasia was setting herself up for.

On Christmas Eve I found myself alone, reading fanfiction to pass the time, with my IM window left open in case Arc was lonely and needed to talk or anything.

Instead I got Warr1or. ‘Do you ever feel like everything’s pointless, and nobody understands you?’ he asked. ‘Or as though you’re invisible to the people you care about?’

Well, if I did, I was hardly going to tell him so. I’m fondish of Warr1or and all, but not to the point of soul-baring.

‘I don’t have time for this right now,’ I typed, as patiently as I could manage. ‘I’m waiting to talk to Arc.’

‘I am also waiting to talk to your Archivist,’ Warr1or answered stiffly. ‘I have things to discuss with her privately.’

‘Me, too!’ chimed in an unwanted sparkly pink text, and I groaned out loud at the sight of Ciyerra’s username. ‘I want to talk to Arc too!’ I rolled my eyes, but someone else answered before I could.

‘Why are you people hanging around a message board on the holidays?’ It was, to my deep relief, Archivist12 herself.

‘I just...’ I hesitated, reluctant to say this in front of the others, and then thought, why the hell not? If I had to suffer seasonal angst, I might as well infect them too. ‘I just...dash it all, Arc, I’ve just been feeling that everything is pointless. All this. Fandom. Why do we do it?’

There was silence: no text at all.

‘Is that what’s wrong with you two, too?’ Arc asked, finally.

‘Yes,’ admitted Warr1or.

‘Kinda,’ typed Ciyerra, and her text barely sparkled at all.

‘And you mean to tell me that all three of you, in spite of years of observation of the gap between holiday t.v. specials and real life, somehow expect me to come up with some kind of last minute wisdom?’ Arc asked. ‘That’s what you’re waiting for, a meaningful holiday episode?’

I felt my throat tighten. I couldn’t think of any adequate defence, and neither, apparently, could the others.

‘Okay, but I’m only saying this once,’ Arc said, ‘so listen. You still there, Mina?’

‘Yes,’ I assured her.

‘You’re paying attention, Warr1or?’

‘Yes,’ he answered.

'BalletChic?' Arc continued.

'Yes,' typed Ciyerra. Aha! I thought, but said nothing, and Warr1or remained likewise silent about this admission.

‘Good,’ Arc said. ‘Have you all read the Velveteen Rabbit?’ We all admitted we had. I fervently hoped no one was saving a transcript of this chat. Soppiness looks awful in the cold light of day.

‘Then you all remember the bit about the toys who don’t usually become real,’ Arc went on. I didn’t, actually, until she started listing them; I’d forgotten there were any toys that didn’t make it to real. ‘The ones that break easily, Warr1or; the ones with sharp edges, Mina; the ones, BalletChic, who have to be carefully kept.’

I was holding my breath, and I rather suspected the others were, too. My eyes, I don’t mind admitting, had filled up a bit.

‘That’s why we're here,’ Arc said patiently. ‘To wear off the sharp edges, and repair the breaks, and to keep each other. Here we all are, the staid and the hysterical, the sound and the silly, and it’s almost irrelevant how well we’re getting along at any particular moment: all fans belong in fandom, and we’re all becoming real.’

‘Goodnight, Arc,’ I typed, sniffling.

‘Goodnight, Mina. I’ll see you in the new year. Goodnight, you lot,’ she signed off cheerfully. ‘I have to go approve some anon fics.’

‘Happy Holidays, guys!’ said Ciyerra, in giant pink sparklefont, and I smiled in spite of myself.

‘Goodnight, Mina,’ said Warr1or quietly once the others had left. ‘BTW, I didn’t know what to get you, so I chipped in the last ten points you needed.’ That’s right: it was past midnight. The points reports would be out! He was gone before I could thank him properly.

Though, honestly, I don’t know what could possibly have constituted adequate gratitude. Thanks to the events I’d hosted, the sea voyages I’d participated in, and the generous contributions of both the Tented Tartanists and the Malfois Manor staff, I’d tied with PrinceC for highest point standing in the game. As the current most highly ranked players, PrinceC and I would, the report informed me, be granted one night of bliss with Lord Henri Antoine Silvestre de Gravina himself.

I almost swooned right there in the dorm room. This looked set to be the most erotic and meaningful sexual experience of my life to date.


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