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mina_de_malfois at 02:13pm on 17/04/2007 under memoirs
mina_de_malfois at 02:13pm on 17/04/2007 under memoirsI know it hasn't been two weeks yet, but I'm just a pixel-stained technopeasant who can't say no. Next update: April 23rd. Not that I'm claiming for a moment that this is of professional quality, unless the professional in question is a fanthropologically-inclined psychiatrist, but it's the best I can offer. We'll return to our regularly scheduled every-second-Tuesdaying in May.
Disclaimer: 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: Mina de Malfois is an original fictional creation. These stories and characters are the sole property of the author, but she lends them out for fanfic and fanart. A list of Mina de Malfois/Sanguinity things by other people can be found here.
The bars Liz had named were indeed, it turned out, located in Sanguinity’s youth section. I confirmed this when my avatar, striding along beside PrinceC, came to an abrupt and undignified halt as she crashed into an invisible glass wall.
‘Lady Mina!’ PrinceC said, hurrying to my side. ‘Oh, Blood, I’d forgotten you’re over twenty-one. You can’t get in here.’
“What?” I asked, dazed.
‘There’s a protective barrier around this area,’ he explained. ‘Adults can’t get in here. Some of the bars I can’t even get into--they have an ‘18 and under’ policy.’
‘Then how is Ciyerra getting in?’ I asked, annoyed. ‘She’s my age, and not just in the real world; her Sanguinity profile clearly lists her as an adult.’
PrinceC looked bewildered. ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted.
There was a cynical laugh from a nearby alley, and Josh stepped out of the shadows. ‘I’m amazed,’ he said, smirking. ‘Are you serious? Neither of you know how to cross age barriers?’
I didn’t like what I thought were the implications of that. PrinceC looked equally affronted, though whether by the suggestion that we’d willingly hang out in the underaged sections of Sanguinity or merely because Josh knew something he didn’t I couldn’t say.
‘Why,’ I asked coldly, ‘would you expect either of us to know how to breach an age barrier? What possible reason could we have for lurking around the children’s section?’ If he brought up Bound for Detention, I vowed, I was going to exact some form of terrible revenge.
Josh looked amused. ‘Because, dear Mina,’ he said, placing an overly-familiar arm across my shoulders, ‘it’s an absolutely ideal place to acquire fans and disciples.’
I shrugged out from under his admittedly attractive arm. ‘I’ve never needed to go trolling for fans,’ I informed him. ‘My legions of fangirls seek me out, not the other way around.’
‘Well, whatever brings you here,’ said Josh, failing to admit that he’d played any part in this, ‘you’re very lucky that you ran into me.’ PrinceC snorted. Josh looked him up and down thoughtfully.
‘You’ll just need a simple age patch,’ he said. ‘It will hardly alter your appearance at all. Just plug the code I’m emailing you into your userinfo.’ PrinceC looked highly reluctant to plug anything of Josh’s anywhere. ‘I have something special for us, Mina. After all, we need disguises; PrinceC only has to shake off a few months. Unless you’d like to change,’ he offered PrinceC with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Can I offer you a change of sex, or species?’
‘No, thank you,’ said PrinceC firmly, and Josh snickered.
I didn’t entirely trust Josh, especially now that his extremely OOC concern for Ciyerra’s well-being stood exposed as a scam of unknown purpose. But somehow my suspicions failed to stop me from inserting his code into my profile, and PrinceC must have done the same, although he grumbled about the immorality of illegal hacks.
‘So upright and honest,’ Josh said, leering at PrinceC. ‘A perfect boyscout. If unauthorized alterations bother you, you can always wait here while I escort Mina wherever she’s going.’ PrinceC, to my enormous relief, refused; this all felt dangerous enough without being alone with Josh.
We all, by common consent, rebooted, and I reeled in horror. PrinceC was, as promised, largely unchanged, but Josh and I had been dramatically reconfigured as young cat-eared otaku. Josh’s hair was electric blue. Worse yet, mine was pink.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Josh added casually, ‘the rules are different in the zone--you can relax your grammar and spelling. In fact, you kind of have to.’ As he spoke we stepped through the barrier and into teenland.
‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘It’s the covers you and I are using; PrinceC is safe. But if we sound too literate, the disguise will fail, and you’ll look like yourself. So while we’re in the clubs, try to utilize some netspeak.’ That speech hadn’t been in netspeak, and I watched in fascination as his avatar flickered between otaku-kid and the usual Josh.
‘Why netspeak?’ I asked, though I already understood. I just liked watching him shimmer.
‘The game expects u 2,’ he responded. ‘Liek I said, r hax will fale if we’re 2 literate. r default is dum. Teh youth areas r zoned for netspeak neway, so we cn walk ok and stuf in here.’
So that was how it worked, I mused, irritated by this evidence of cloaked-and-bearded Grammar Nazism. The childsafe areas of Sanguinity, having been designed for teens, didn’t punish poor grammar with drunkenness. An interesting idea, but a bit discriminatory, no? ‘What happens to fully literate teens who loathe netspeak, or who start using proper grammar?’ I asked, nettled on their behalf. (I am ashamed to record, even for posterity, how I actually typed that speech.)
‘They can lose the bunny ears and stuff, and sometimes extremely literate youths cause the barrier to malfunction and they gain access to all the XXX parts of Sanguinity,’ Josh claimed, then transformed back into the blue-haired stranger with a quick, ‘Cum on!!!’ And that, dear reader, is quite enough illiteracy to be going on with. I’ll give you the clean version, and you can imagine us typing like idiots for the duration of this scene, if it’s all the same to you.
PrinceC rolled his eyes and twitched his wolf-ears in annoyance. ‘Shows how much he knows,’ he said, while Josh led on. ‘That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The barrier is meant to fail for literate players--the game is designed to encourage new players to abandon netspeak. The increased access to adult areas is a perk for intelligent teens. And it doesn’t,’ he added hotly, ‘extend to x-rated regions when you’re under eighteen. It only lets you enter areas that are safeguarded against explicit sex. The Creator has more sense than Josh gives her credit for.’
I wondered briefly whether all these barriers were meant to protect the kids from the adults, or vice versa. I hate to exclude people, but quite honestly I don’t hang out with young fans all that often. I prefer the company of adults. And the last thing I need is to be accused of leading someone’s child astray. I’d rather steer clear until they’re all grown up and have gone astray on their own. It was making me nervous just being here on the wrong side of that barrier. Perhaps, I thought in a moment of cringe-inducing clarity, this is how Arc feels about me, because of the whole student-staff divide.
We entered, against my better judgement, the Sordid Angel. My swift prayer that no one I knew would be there was immediately kicked to the curb when I saw Stasia dancing wildly, part of a circle of girls that centered around Rabbit. I was about to suggest to PrinceC that we leave, but at that exact moment some guy said, ‘PrinceC! Who’s the girl? Hottie!’ and I remembered: no one could recognize me.
‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’ I asked, and made my way across the dance floor, unobtrusively joining the fringe of Rabbit’s circle.
What can I say? My avatar was hot. Josh had done well by me; I made a mental note to thank him. I was accepted into the ring around Rabbit without comment. Rabbit herself even danced her way towards me, smiling with a degree of friendliness that should, in retrospect, have worried me. ‘I saw you walk in!’ she yelled over the music. She wrapped her arms around me and ground her avatar against my back. Several girls screamed and cheered in mock, or at least I hope it was mock, arousal, and the usually sweet-tempered Stasia glared at me. ‘And I know the guy with you is Josh,’ Rabbit whisper-hissed in my ear, ‘so now I’m wondering: who the hell are you?’
‘Who wants to know?’ I countered, leaning my head back against her shoulder.
‘His former fiancee,’ she said coldly, but without dropping the smile for an instant. Anyone watching would have assumed she adored me.
‘His...what?’ I gasped, stumbling to a halt. I turned to face her. Her friends danced on around us, either oblivious to the tension or, more likely, used to watching Rabbit smilingly eviscerate people on the dance floor. ‘Wait, what? You were going to get married? Where, in Canada or something?’
‘No,’ she said, tossing her hair. I opened my mouth to argue, but I didn’t get a chance. ‘You’d better not be thinking of spreading lies and rumours about him.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ I protested, though I thought ‘lies’ was a funny way to describe the truth. ‘I just...I mean...are you sure?’
She narrowed her violet eyes. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘He has a penis, thank you very much.’
‘He does? You’re really sure?’ I asked, willing to face her prettified wrath if it meant getting a definite answer to this pressing question.
‘Yes!’ she snapped, then regained her composure and her candy-coated smile. ‘I should know. We used to sleep together as children.’
‘You used to do what?’ I gasped, but she just laughed and licked my neck before walking away. Her friends all spontaneously quit the dancefloor and trailed after her.
‘Talking about me?’ Josh asked when I staggered over to where he was standing. I didn’t deign to respond.
‘Ciyerra’s in the lounge,’ PrinceC announced, returning from an apparent reconnaissance mission to the back of the club. He took my hand, and we made our way to the poorly-lit room where Ciyerra sat surrounded by adoring teens. Her worshippers wore unnecessarily revealing clothes topped by long striped knitted scarves, and if that reflected their real-world tastes then I spontaneously renounced all hope of understanding current fashion trends. I felt ancient in the face of such faddish idiocy. I mean, if you’re chilly enough to require an endless wool scarf, then the obvious solution would be to put some bloody clothes on, wouldn’t it? Replace your bum ruffles with an actual skirt, sort of thing.
As we edged our way into the lounge some of those present shot me hostile looks, a phenomenon I thought not unconnected with the admiring and openly lustful looks they all threw PrinceC. He seemed oblivious to all this admiration and lust. ‘Bunch up, you guys,’ he said, and a flock of alarmingly young avatars lept up to make room for us. I realized that, however abhorrently youthful they were to my eyes, these were in fact very nearly PrinceC’s peers. Gads. We sank into an overstuffed sofa, and Josh sat down beside me.
‘Are you a friend of PrinceC’s?’ one of the flock asked me perkily, and I nearly bit my tongue in half to keep from introducing myself. You can’t imagine how trying it is for a BNF of my popularity to go about incognito.
‘She’s my girlfriend,’ PrinceC said suavely but inaccurately, holding up our still-clasped hands. A bit embarrassing, the hand-holding. I mean, all right for people his age I’m sure, but I felt mildly silly. And everyone else, judging from their expressions, now wanted to murder me in cold pixels. Except for Ciyerra herself, who was eyeing PrinceC hungrily but carefully showing no sign of noticing I existed. Her cut direct was flawless, I’ll admit. I snuggled in vengefully against his right arm.
footnotes
Disclaimer: 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: Mina de Malfois is an original fictional creation. These stories and characters are the sole property of the author, but she lends them out for fanfic and fanart. A list of Mina de Malfois/Sanguinity things by other people can be found here.
The bars Liz had named were indeed, it turned out, located in Sanguinity’s youth section. I confirmed this when my avatar, striding along beside PrinceC, came to an abrupt and undignified halt as she crashed into an invisible glass wall.
‘Lady Mina!’ PrinceC said, hurrying to my side. ‘Oh, Blood, I’d forgotten you’re over twenty-one. You can’t get in here.’
“What?” I asked, dazed.
‘There’s a protective barrier around this area,’ he explained. ‘Adults can’t get in here. Some of the bars I can’t even get into--they have an ‘18 and under’ policy.’
‘Then how is Ciyerra getting in?’ I asked, annoyed. ‘She’s my age, and not just in the real world; her Sanguinity profile clearly lists her as an adult.’
PrinceC looked bewildered. ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted.
There was a cynical laugh from a nearby alley, and Josh stepped out of the shadows. ‘I’m amazed,’ he said, smirking. ‘Are you serious? Neither of you know how to cross age barriers?’
I didn’t like what I thought were the implications of that. PrinceC looked equally affronted, though whether by the suggestion that we’d willingly hang out in the underaged sections of Sanguinity or merely because Josh knew something he didn’t I couldn’t say.
‘Why,’ I asked coldly, ‘would you expect either of us to know how to breach an age barrier? What possible reason could we have for lurking around the children’s section?’ If he brought up Bound for Detention, I vowed, I was going to exact some form of terrible revenge.
Josh looked amused. ‘Because, dear Mina,’ he said, placing an overly-familiar arm across my shoulders, ‘it’s an absolutely ideal place to acquire fans and disciples.’
I shrugged out from under his admittedly attractive arm. ‘I’ve never needed to go trolling for fans,’ I informed him. ‘My legions of fangirls seek me out, not the other way around.’
‘Well, whatever brings you here,’ said Josh, failing to admit that he’d played any part in this, ‘you’re very lucky that you ran into me.’ PrinceC snorted. Josh looked him up and down thoughtfully.
‘You’ll just need a simple age patch,’ he said. ‘It will hardly alter your appearance at all. Just plug the code I’m emailing you into your userinfo.’ PrinceC looked highly reluctant to plug anything of Josh’s anywhere. ‘I have something special for us, Mina. After all, we need disguises; PrinceC only has to shake off a few months. Unless you’d like to change,’ he offered PrinceC with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Can I offer you a change of sex, or species?’
‘No, thank you,’ said PrinceC firmly, and Josh snickered.
I didn’t entirely trust Josh, especially now that his extremely OOC concern for Ciyerra’s well-being stood exposed as a scam of unknown purpose. But somehow my suspicions failed to stop me from inserting his code into my profile, and PrinceC must have done the same, although he grumbled about the immorality of illegal hacks.
‘So upright and honest,’ Josh said, leering at PrinceC. ‘A perfect boyscout. If unauthorized alterations bother you, you can always wait here while I escort Mina wherever she’s going.’ PrinceC, to my enormous relief, refused; this all felt dangerous enough without being alone with Josh.
We all, by common consent, rebooted, and I reeled in horror. PrinceC was, as promised, largely unchanged, but Josh and I had been dramatically reconfigured as young cat-eared otaku. Josh’s hair was electric blue. Worse yet, mine was pink.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Josh added casually, ‘the rules are different in the zone--you can relax your grammar and spelling. In fact, you kind of have to.’ As he spoke we stepped through the barrier and into teenland.
‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘It’s the covers you and I are using; PrinceC is safe. But if we sound too literate, the disguise will fail, and you’ll look like yourself. So while we’re in the clubs, try to utilize some netspeak.’ That speech hadn’t been in netspeak, and I watched in fascination as his avatar flickered between otaku-kid and the usual Josh.
‘Why netspeak?’ I asked, though I already understood. I just liked watching him shimmer.
‘The game expects u 2,’ he responded. ‘Liek I said, r hax will fale if we’re 2 literate. r default is dum. Teh youth areas r zoned for netspeak neway, so we cn walk ok and stuf in here.’
So that was how it worked, I mused, irritated by this evidence of cloaked-and-bearded Grammar Nazism. The childsafe areas of Sanguinity, having been designed for teens, didn’t punish poor grammar with drunkenness. An interesting idea, but a bit discriminatory, no? ‘What happens to fully literate teens who loathe netspeak, or who start using proper grammar?’ I asked, nettled on their behalf. (I am ashamed to record, even for posterity, how I actually typed that speech.)
‘They can lose the bunny ears and stuff, and sometimes extremely literate youths cause the barrier to malfunction and they gain access to all the XXX parts of Sanguinity,’ Josh claimed, then transformed back into the blue-haired stranger with a quick, ‘Cum on!!!’ And that, dear reader, is quite enough illiteracy to be going on with. I’ll give you the clean version, and you can imagine us typing like idiots for the duration of this scene, if it’s all the same to you.
PrinceC rolled his eyes and twitched his wolf-ears in annoyance. ‘Shows how much he knows,’ he said, while Josh led on. ‘That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The barrier is meant to fail for literate players--the game is designed to encourage new players to abandon netspeak. The increased access to adult areas is a perk for intelligent teens. And it doesn’t,’ he added hotly, ‘extend to x-rated regions when you’re under eighteen. It only lets you enter areas that are safeguarded against explicit sex. The Creator has more sense than Josh gives her credit for.’
I wondered briefly whether all these barriers were meant to protect the kids from the adults, or vice versa. I hate to exclude people, but quite honestly I don’t hang out with young fans all that often. I prefer the company of adults. And the last thing I need is to be accused of leading someone’s child astray. I’d rather steer clear until they’re all grown up and have gone astray on their own. It was making me nervous just being here on the wrong side of that barrier. Perhaps, I thought in a moment of cringe-inducing clarity, this is how Arc feels about me, because of the whole student-staff divide.
We entered, against my better judgement, the Sordid Angel. My swift prayer that no one I knew would be there was immediately kicked to the curb when I saw Stasia dancing wildly, part of a circle of girls that centered around Rabbit. I was about to suggest to PrinceC that we leave, but at that exact moment some guy said, ‘PrinceC! Who’s the girl? Hottie!’ and I remembered: no one could recognize me.
‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’ I asked, and made my way across the dance floor, unobtrusively joining the fringe of Rabbit’s circle.
What can I say? My avatar was hot. Josh had done well by me; I made a mental note to thank him. I was accepted into the ring around Rabbit without comment. Rabbit herself even danced her way towards me, smiling with a degree of friendliness that should, in retrospect, have worried me. ‘I saw you walk in!’ she yelled over the music. She wrapped her arms around me and ground her avatar against my back. Several girls screamed and cheered in mock, or at least I hope it was mock, arousal, and the usually sweet-tempered Stasia glared at me. ‘And I know the guy with you is Josh,’ Rabbit whisper-hissed in my ear, ‘so now I’m wondering: who the hell are you?’
‘Who wants to know?’ I countered, leaning my head back against her shoulder.
‘His former fiancee,’ she said coldly, but without dropping the smile for an instant. Anyone watching would have assumed she adored me.
‘His...what?’ I gasped, stumbling to a halt. I turned to face her. Her friends danced on around us, either oblivious to the tension or, more likely, used to watching Rabbit smilingly eviscerate people on the dance floor. ‘Wait, what? You were going to get married? Where, in Canada or something?’
‘No,’ she said, tossing her hair. I opened my mouth to argue, but I didn’t get a chance. ‘You’d better not be thinking of spreading lies and rumours about him.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ I protested, though I thought ‘lies’ was a funny way to describe the truth. ‘I just...I mean...are you sure?’
She narrowed her violet eyes. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘He has a penis, thank you very much.’
‘He does? You’re really sure?’ I asked, willing to face her prettified wrath if it meant getting a definite answer to this pressing question.
‘Yes!’ she snapped, then regained her composure and her candy-coated smile. ‘I should know. We used to sleep together as children.’
‘You used to do what?’ I gasped, but she just laughed and licked my neck before walking away. Her friends all spontaneously quit the dancefloor and trailed after her.
‘Talking about me?’ Josh asked when I staggered over to where he was standing. I didn’t deign to respond.
‘Ciyerra’s in the lounge,’ PrinceC announced, returning from an apparent reconnaissance mission to the back of the club. He took my hand, and we made our way to the poorly-lit room where Ciyerra sat surrounded by adoring teens. Her worshippers wore unnecessarily revealing clothes topped by long striped knitted scarves, and if that reflected their real-world tastes then I spontaneously renounced all hope of understanding current fashion trends. I felt ancient in the face of such faddish idiocy. I mean, if you’re chilly enough to require an endless wool scarf, then the obvious solution would be to put some bloody clothes on, wouldn’t it? Replace your bum ruffles with an actual skirt, sort of thing.
As we edged our way into the lounge some of those present shot me hostile looks, a phenomenon I thought not unconnected with the admiring and openly lustful looks they all threw PrinceC. He seemed oblivious to all this admiration and lust. ‘Bunch up, you guys,’ he said, and a flock of alarmingly young avatars lept up to make room for us. I realized that, however abhorrently youthful they were to my eyes, these were in fact very nearly PrinceC’s peers. Gads. We sank into an overstuffed sofa, and Josh sat down beside me.
‘Are you a friend of PrinceC’s?’ one of the flock asked me perkily, and I nearly bit my tongue in half to keep from introducing myself. You can’t imagine how trying it is for a BNF of my popularity to go about incognito.
‘She’s my girlfriend,’ PrinceC said suavely but inaccurately, holding up our still-clasped hands. A bit embarrassing, the hand-holding. I mean, all right for people his age I’m sure, but I felt mildly silly. And everyone else, judging from their expressions, now wanted to murder me in cold pixels. Except for Ciyerra herself, who was eyeing PrinceC hungrily but carefully showing no sign of noticing I existed. Her cut direct was flawless, I’ll admit. I snuggled in vengefully against his right arm.
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