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mina_de_malfois) wrote2007-09-04 03:39 pm
mina_de_malfois) wrote2007-09-04 03:39 pm
Entry tags:
2.11 Mina de Malfois and the Fictional Decks (part two)
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.
PrinceC’s condo, when we got there, proved distressingly posh. Not that I allowed that to intimidate me--after all, I am a BNF--but it is a bit quelling when one notices that the concierge is more expensively dressed than oneself. Warr1or looked unimpressed, maintaining a calm which, though no doubt born of obliviousness and ignorance of class distinctions, I somewhat envied. It was a relief when Warr1or unlocked PrinceC’s door and we stepped inside. At least here we had privacy, so no one could observe my mild distress at the implied expense of our achingly tasteful surroundings. I schooled myself to remain expressionless with the stern reminder that really, there’s nothing impressive about sponging off one’s parents, is there?
And it was rather interesting to poke around a bit and see how PrinceC lived. Not that I looked through his medicine cabinet or anything, but I did peek into his bedroom just long enough to notice the gold-and-red striped pajamas with the lion crest that lay neatly folded on his bed. And I couldn’t help but admire the antique computers lying about the place--the desktop in the study was particularly well-restored to its Victorian elegance, though the one in the guest bedroom was almost as striking, and had the added distinction of a black-bordered handwritten note assuring guests that it was entirely at their disposal.
The place was remarkably neat for a bachelor pad. There were, to be sure, tools and cogs scattered across a lot of the available work surfaces, as though a tribe of watchmakers had been squatting there just prior to our arrival, but otherwise all was shipshape and well-ordered. Warr1or had brought in our luggage, and after leaving mine in the guest room he took up residence on the largest sofa, clearing a space on the long, low table that stood in front of it. From his battered leather knapsack he pulled a shockingly state-of-the-art laptop, and I stared. It was very fifteen minutes from now, that laptop. I’d been vaguely expecting agricultural implements or perhaps camping gear, and now I was seized with a sudden urge to go through the rest of his luggage and see what else it revealed. Maybe I could offer to unpack for him? No, that would only make me sound like the most insipid, girliest member of the Famous Five, and next thing you knew I’d be saddled with the cooking or some ghastly thing.
'Miss Mina,' said Warr1or politely, interrupting my train of thought, 'if you could step into the bedroom and log on, I could introduce you to the Dread Pirate Roberta and get the mission underway. Then,' he added apologetically, ‘I need to crash for a while.’ I felt a pang of guilt; he’d been awake all night on my behalf. The least I could do was help him out with his in-game mission. I hurried to the vintage keyboard, and quickly located Warr1or in Sanguinityspace.
We picked our way through the docks, Warr1or carefully steering me around or over the zombies. There seemed more of them than ever, and in worse shape, too. One jittered robotically towards us, pointing and stuttering, 'No U. No U. No U,' before collapsing in a sparking, oozing heap. 'Has there been some sort of massive outbreak?' I asked, revolted.
'Cat mac fever,' Warr1or said grimly. 'Very virulent. Yet another reason, Mina, you should be careful who you associate with.'
I rolled my eyes at that, then clutched his arm and shrieked at the creatures crowding the docks. Honestly, I thought, what was wrong with me? I resolved to recheck my avatar’s settings at the next available opportunity; I didn’t fully approve of this shrieking and clutching.
'Those are aliens,' Warr1or said calmly, and quite unnecessarily. I could see that. Most of them were classic greens and greys, with long rubbery fingers and huge black eyes. Mildly eerie, but not worth shrieking at, and certainly not necessitating those condescendingly reassuring arm pats Warr1or was bestowing on me.
'I can see that,' I said through gritted teeth. 'Why are they here? How do aliens fit into Sanguinity?'
'They don’t,' he said, shrugging. 'They’re from some other MMORPG. It crashed, and someone patched them over here until it’s fixed. Entirely illegal, and I don’t know why the creators haven’t put a stop to it. But to be fair,' he added scrupulously, 'they’re well-behaved, and they’re not disrupting gameplay.' He was right about that. Now that I’d stopped shrieking, I could see they were chatting away amiably with the regular players, and signing up for quests and things.
'We do have a huge amount of bandwidth here at Sanguinity,' I told Warr1or, sounding, I hoped, as if I knew what I was talking about. 'We might as well host them here. It never hurts to be hospitable, right?'
'Sure,' he said agreeably, and stopped walking. A freshly painted pirate ship bobbed gently at the dock. Warr1or took my avatar’s arm and helped her up the gangplank, and she allowed him to, which revolting behaviour made me wonder again what was wrong with her. Perhaps, I thought with a particularly shrewd burst of insight, it isn’t my settings that are skewed at all. Maybe Warr1or’s settings are configured too high on something-or-other, and it affects the way other avatars react to his.
As we were going up the gangplank a number of young persons of assorted sexes and genders were making their way reluctantly down. The Dread Pirate Roberta, masked but unmistakable in her captain’s hat, was brutally shoving them off. 'Go on, leave,' she said, herding the last ones off even as they tried to fawn on her and cling loyally to their canons.
'Bit hard on the callow youth, aren’t you?' I remarked.
'Those are under-age love monkeys,' she said, and I made an appalled face. 'Not mine, other people’s,' Roberta said crossly. 'I don’t mind rescuing them from their tormentors, but I don’t really like them and I don’t want them hanging around forever. Can’t you fucking read?' she screamed at a pair of nearby stevedores who were wrestling a large and unwieldy metaphor off the ship. They rolled their eyes and ignored her, even though they were clearly in danger of herniating themselves the way they were going at it. There's just no helping some people.
Warr1or stiltedly introduced us, wished us every success with our mission, and remembered to turn back at the bottom of the gangplank and rush up to hand me a slip of paper. 'Memorize that,' he said sternly before logging off, and I duly committed the sign and countersign to memory. The note burst into flame and vanished when I tossed it aside, and Roberta snorted, as though underwhelmed by this display of secrecy. She shouted a few instructions to her crew, and as we set sail I clung to the railing and looked around. Aside from the extraordinarily well-maintained canons, the most noticeable feature was the collection of treasure chests clustered near the door of the captain’s quarters. Some of these had been thrown open to display the burnished gleam of heaps and heaps of old, but evidently carefully polished, pennies. Odd.
We were well out to sea when a bizarre noise assailed my ears. At first I naturally thought we’d sailed into a flock of onomatopoeic ducks, because it sounded like a chorus of voices saying, 'quack, quack, quack,' but when I listened more carefully this resolved itself into 'wank, wank, wank.' I peered curiously over the railing, and found a pack of ninjas grappling up the side of the ship.
'I say, you should probably do something about this,' I said to Roberta helpfully, but she gestured impatiently for me to be quiet. A tactical what-d’you-call-it, clearly, because she and her crew let their assailants climb all the way up before neatly stepping forward, drawing their swords, and chopping them off at the black-clad elbows. The ninjas plummeted gracefully backwards, leaving grotesquely realistic trails of blood drops, and sank tidily out of sight. They fell silently, too, not screaming or anything, which just goes to show you how stealthy those ninjas can be. 'Ship wars are so tiresome,' Roberta said, coolly unperturbed.
Soon enough we were anchored alongside a well-concealed dock. I could see a short but twisted path leading through a garden of yellow roses and up to the door of a sort of fortress; presumably Warr1or’s sign and countersign would get me in. I said as much to the Dread Pirate, and she snorted again, even more derisively.
'If it doesn’t, step back and I’ll blast a hole through the wall,' she said impatiently. I saw the problem: caught up in the heat of battle, her blood fired and whatnot, she’d forgotten these people were on our side. I reminded her, as tactfully as poss.
'Side?' said Roberta, rolling her eyes. 'What part of ‘mercenary’ are you unclear on? I don’t give a damn about either of their stupid sides.'
I was taken aback, but tried not to show it. 'Is it true, then,' I asked cautiously, driven on by morbid curiousity, 'that you don’t ship anybody?'
She shrugged. 'I can stomach canon pairings, but I’m not interested beyond that,' she said.
'But,' I groped for a way to express the fundamental wrongness of this, 'pairings are essential, aren’t they? They’re a part of what shapes our response to a text. They’re one of the things that determine what we want to see happen in canon, and in fandom for that matter.'
'Canon unfolds as it should,' she said crisply. 'And as for fandom, what I’d like to see is for fandom to take its hands out of its collective pants and stop scaring the horses and children.' She curled her lip in positively Lucian scorn. 'Other than that, I can’t say I care.'
I couldn’t help but take some of that speech personally, and I left in something of a huff. The Rose people, however deranged they might turn out to be, were at least doing fandom in a sense I recognized.
When I got up to the door I found a keypad and a small screen. 'Sector door/?' it blinked, and I typed in the countersign, 'Codo restor/.' The door swung open beneath its rose-carved lintel to reveal a gently sloping tunnel of rose quartz, which I followed to a well-lit burrow. It was filled with comfortable chairs and tables, and a number of perfectly ordinary-looking people--and one markedly familiar humanoid alien, who gave me an abashed smile--were taking tea and chips. Well, I say 'perfectly ordinary-looking,' but in point of fact I could tell at a glance that they were probably slightly barking and at least halfway around the nearest bend. Fannish, y’know, and of the squeeful delirious type. Obvious candidates for the fandomcult wiki. Still, the room rang with amusing conversation and good cheer. 'Mina!' said a couple of the ones nearest the entrance. 'How nice to see you.'
'Warr1or sent me,' I said, not a phrase I’d ever expected to catch myself uttering. One of them laughed.
'Poor mad dear,' she said affectionately. 'But he does mean well, the darling, and it was thoughtful of him to volunteer to deliver our podcast. Unnecessary, but thoughtful.'
'But...but you’re besieged,' I reminded her.
'Oh, yes,' she agreed happily. 'Isn’t it fun?'
'Fun?' I repeated. 'Isn’t it a ship war?'
'Those are fun, though, aren’t they, once you soothe your feelings with your shipmates and get over being hurt?' she said, smiling. Dotty, obviously.
'But you’ve gone underground, and you maintain strict secrecy, and now you’re putting out a covert podcast,' I pointed out, 'so obviously you take the ship war too seriously, and feel threatened.' This time a bunch of them laughed hysterically.
'Once we got here, we found we preferred it this way,' one explained, waving her hands vaguely. 'We like hanging out with each other, and talking nonsense, and being frivolous. It’s fun. It’s like curling up with a stack of romance novels and a box of chocolates: restorative, and nobody else’s business. The privacy turned out to be a good idea, in the end.'
I strode back to the ship, podcast in hand, feeling disconcerted by the contentedly besieged, and when Roberta cheerfully accepted a clutch of sodden ninjas as passengers on the return trip, first pocketing a hefty fee, I felt even more deeply d. 'Moving right along?' she asked, to a silent chorus of nods. The ninjas proved, to quote one of them, 'armless but earful,' whatever that meant. Once they’d gotten outside a vast quantity of rum and sandwiches, they started being half-decent company. They were almost likable, blast them, and adept at intriguing analysis. The only thing more irritating than a ship war is a ship war that has two somewhat sympathetic sides, at least one of which can’t really be arsed to fight, and as soon as I was safely back at Malfois Manor I logged off and stormed out to confront Warr1or. He’d gotten me all side-y for nothing.
He was asleep on the sofa, still wearing cowboy boots but not, the audacious slippage of the blanket revealed, very much else. He could catch a chill like that, I thought distractedly, and considerately but gingerly began covering him up. I’d never tucked in a fully grown cowboy before. I stepped back to admire my handiwork, and made an alarming discovery: his eyes were open, and he was giving me a puzzled smile. I glared back. 'You completely misled me,' I said, remembering my initial grievance.
'I’m sorry to hear that,' he said, his voice rough and sleepy. 'Is there anything I can do to clarify matters?'
footnotes
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.
PrinceC’s condo, when we got there, proved distressingly posh. Not that I allowed that to intimidate me--after all, I am a BNF--but it is a bit quelling when one notices that the concierge is more expensively dressed than oneself. Warr1or looked unimpressed, maintaining a calm which, though no doubt born of obliviousness and ignorance of class distinctions, I somewhat envied. It was a relief when Warr1or unlocked PrinceC’s door and we stepped inside. At least here we had privacy, so no one could observe my mild distress at the implied expense of our achingly tasteful surroundings. I schooled myself to remain expressionless with the stern reminder that really, there’s nothing impressive about sponging off one’s parents, is there?
And it was rather interesting to poke around a bit and see how PrinceC lived. Not that I looked through his medicine cabinet or anything, but I did peek into his bedroom just long enough to notice the gold-and-red striped pajamas with the lion crest that lay neatly folded on his bed. And I couldn’t help but admire the antique computers lying about the place--the desktop in the study was particularly well-restored to its Victorian elegance, though the one in the guest bedroom was almost as striking, and had the added distinction of a black-bordered handwritten note assuring guests that it was entirely at their disposal.
The place was remarkably neat for a bachelor pad. There were, to be sure, tools and cogs scattered across a lot of the available work surfaces, as though a tribe of watchmakers had been squatting there just prior to our arrival, but otherwise all was shipshape and well-ordered. Warr1or had brought in our luggage, and after leaving mine in the guest room he took up residence on the largest sofa, clearing a space on the long, low table that stood in front of it. From his battered leather knapsack he pulled a shockingly state-of-the-art laptop, and I stared. It was very fifteen minutes from now, that laptop. I’d been vaguely expecting agricultural implements or perhaps camping gear, and now I was seized with a sudden urge to go through the rest of his luggage and see what else it revealed. Maybe I could offer to unpack for him? No, that would only make me sound like the most insipid, girliest member of the Famous Five, and next thing you knew I’d be saddled with the cooking or some ghastly thing.
'Miss Mina,' said Warr1or politely, interrupting my train of thought, 'if you could step into the bedroom and log on, I could introduce you to the Dread Pirate Roberta and get the mission underway. Then,' he added apologetically, ‘I need to crash for a while.’ I felt a pang of guilt; he’d been awake all night on my behalf. The least I could do was help him out with his in-game mission. I hurried to the vintage keyboard, and quickly located Warr1or in Sanguinityspace.
We picked our way through the docks, Warr1or carefully steering me around or over the zombies. There seemed more of them than ever, and in worse shape, too. One jittered robotically towards us, pointing and stuttering, 'No U. No U. No U,' before collapsing in a sparking, oozing heap. 'Has there been some sort of massive outbreak?' I asked, revolted.
'Cat mac fever,' Warr1or said grimly. 'Very virulent. Yet another reason, Mina, you should be careful who you associate with.'
I rolled my eyes at that, then clutched his arm and shrieked at the creatures crowding the docks. Honestly, I thought, what was wrong with me? I resolved to recheck my avatar’s settings at the next available opportunity; I didn’t fully approve of this shrieking and clutching.
'Those are aliens,' Warr1or said calmly, and quite unnecessarily. I could see that. Most of them were classic greens and greys, with long rubbery fingers and huge black eyes. Mildly eerie, but not worth shrieking at, and certainly not necessitating those condescendingly reassuring arm pats Warr1or was bestowing on me.
'I can see that,' I said through gritted teeth. 'Why are they here? How do aliens fit into Sanguinity?'
'They don’t,' he said, shrugging. 'They’re from some other MMORPG. It crashed, and someone patched them over here until it’s fixed. Entirely illegal, and I don’t know why the creators haven’t put a stop to it. But to be fair,' he added scrupulously, 'they’re well-behaved, and they’re not disrupting gameplay.' He was right about that. Now that I’d stopped shrieking, I could see they were chatting away amiably with the regular players, and signing up for quests and things.
'We do have a huge amount of bandwidth here at Sanguinity,' I told Warr1or, sounding, I hoped, as if I knew what I was talking about. 'We might as well host them here. It never hurts to be hospitable, right?'
'Sure,' he said agreeably, and stopped walking. A freshly painted pirate ship bobbed gently at the dock. Warr1or took my avatar’s arm and helped her up the gangplank, and she allowed him to, which revolting behaviour made me wonder again what was wrong with her. Perhaps, I thought with a particularly shrewd burst of insight, it isn’t my settings that are skewed at all. Maybe Warr1or’s settings are configured too high on something-or-other, and it affects the way other avatars react to his.
As we were going up the gangplank a number of young persons of assorted sexes and genders were making their way reluctantly down. The Dread Pirate Roberta, masked but unmistakable in her captain’s hat, was brutally shoving them off. 'Go on, leave,' she said, herding the last ones off even as they tried to fawn on her and cling loyally to their canons.
'Bit hard on the callow youth, aren’t you?' I remarked.
'Those are under-age love monkeys,' she said, and I made an appalled face. 'Not mine, other people’s,' Roberta said crossly. 'I don’t mind rescuing them from their tormentors, but I don’t really like them and I don’t want them hanging around forever. Can’t you fucking read?' she screamed at a pair of nearby stevedores who were wrestling a large and unwieldy metaphor off the ship. They rolled their eyes and ignored her, even though they were clearly in danger of herniating themselves the way they were going at it. There's just no helping some people.
Warr1or stiltedly introduced us, wished us every success with our mission, and remembered to turn back at the bottom of the gangplank and rush up to hand me a slip of paper. 'Memorize that,' he said sternly before logging off, and I duly committed the sign and countersign to memory. The note burst into flame and vanished when I tossed it aside, and Roberta snorted, as though underwhelmed by this display of secrecy. She shouted a few instructions to her crew, and as we set sail I clung to the railing and looked around. Aside from the extraordinarily well-maintained canons, the most noticeable feature was the collection of treasure chests clustered near the door of the captain’s quarters. Some of these had been thrown open to display the burnished gleam of heaps and heaps of old, but evidently carefully polished, pennies. Odd.
We were well out to sea when a bizarre noise assailed my ears. At first I naturally thought we’d sailed into a flock of onomatopoeic ducks, because it sounded like a chorus of voices saying, 'quack, quack, quack,' but when I listened more carefully this resolved itself into 'wank, wank, wank.' I peered curiously over the railing, and found a pack of ninjas grappling up the side of the ship.
'I say, you should probably do something about this,' I said to Roberta helpfully, but she gestured impatiently for me to be quiet. A tactical what-d’you-call-it, clearly, because she and her crew let their assailants climb all the way up before neatly stepping forward, drawing their swords, and chopping them off at the black-clad elbows. The ninjas plummeted gracefully backwards, leaving grotesquely realistic trails of blood drops, and sank tidily out of sight. They fell silently, too, not screaming or anything, which just goes to show you how stealthy those ninjas can be. 'Ship wars are so tiresome,' Roberta said, coolly unperturbed.
Soon enough we were anchored alongside a well-concealed dock. I could see a short but twisted path leading through a garden of yellow roses and up to the door of a sort of fortress; presumably Warr1or’s sign and countersign would get me in. I said as much to the Dread Pirate, and she snorted again, even more derisively.
'If it doesn’t, step back and I’ll blast a hole through the wall,' she said impatiently. I saw the problem: caught up in the heat of battle, her blood fired and whatnot, she’d forgotten these people were on our side. I reminded her, as tactfully as poss.
'Side?' said Roberta, rolling her eyes. 'What part of ‘mercenary’ are you unclear on? I don’t give a damn about either of their stupid sides.'
I was taken aback, but tried not to show it. 'Is it true, then,' I asked cautiously, driven on by morbid curiousity, 'that you don’t ship anybody?'
She shrugged. 'I can stomach canon pairings, but I’m not interested beyond that,' she said.
'But,' I groped for a way to express the fundamental wrongness of this, 'pairings are essential, aren’t they? They’re a part of what shapes our response to a text. They’re one of the things that determine what we want to see happen in canon, and in fandom for that matter.'
'Canon unfolds as it should,' she said crisply. 'And as for fandom, what I’d like to see is for fandom to take its hands out of its collective pants and stop scaring the horses and children.' She curled her lip in positively Lucian scorn. 'Other than that, I can’t say I care.'
I couldn’t help but take some of that speech personally, and I left in something of a huff. The Rose people, however deranged they might turn out to be, were at least doing fandom in a sense I recognized.
When I got up to the door I found a keypad and a small screen. 'Sector door/?' it blinked, and I typed in the countersign, 'Codo restor/.' The door swung open beneath its rose-carved lintel to reveal a gently sloping tunnel of rose quartz, which I followed to a well-lit burrow. It was filled with comfortable chairs and tables, and a number of perfectly ordinary-looking people--and one markedly familiar humanoid alien, who gave me an abashed smile--were taking tea and chips. Well, I say 'perfectly ordinary-looking,' but in point of fact I could tell at a glance that they were probably slightly barking and at least halfway around the nearest bend. Fannish, y’know, and of the squeeful delirious type. Obvious candidates for the fandomcult wiki. Still, the room rang with amusing conversation and good cheer. 'Mina!' said a couple of the ones nearest the entrance. 'How nice to see you.'
'Warr1or sent me,' I said, not a phrase I’d ever expected to catch myself uttering. One of them laughed.
'Poor mad dear,' she said affectionately. 'But he does mean well, the darling, and it was thoughtful of him to volunteer to deliver our podcast. Unnecessary, but thoughtful.'
'But...but you’re besieged,' I reminded her.
'Oh, yes,' she agreed happily. 'Isn’t it fun?'
'Fun?' I repeated. 'Isn’t it a ship war?'
'Those are fun, though, aren’t they, once you soothe your feelings with your shipmates and get over being hurt?' she said, smiling. Dotty, obviously.
'But you’ve gone underground, and you maintain strict secrecy, and now you’re putting out a covert podcast,' I pointed out, 'so obviously you take the ship war too seriously, and feel threatened.' This time a bunch of them laughed hysterically.
'Once we got here, we found we preferred it this way,' one explained, waving her hands vaguely. 'We like hanging out with each other, and talking nonsense, and being frivolous. It’s fun. It’s like curling up with a stack of romance novels and a box of chocolates: restorative, and nobody else’s business. The privacy turned out to be a good idea, in the end.'
I strode back to the ship, podcast in hand, feeling disconcerted by the contentedly besieged, and when Roberta cheerfully accepted a clutch of sodden ninjas as passengers on the return trip, first pocketing a hefty fee, I felt even more deeply d. 'Moving right along?' she asked, to a silent chorus of nods. The ninjas proved, to quote one of them, 'armless but earful,' whatever that meant. Once they’d gotten outside a vast quantity of rum and sandwiches, they started being half-decent company. They were almost likable, blast them, and adept at intriguing analysis. The only thing more irritating than a ship war is a ship war that has two somewhat sympathetic sides, at least one of which can’t really be arsed to fight, and as soon as I was safely back at Malfois Manor I logged off and stormed out to confront Warr1or. He’d gotten me all side-y for nothing.
He was asleep on the sofa, still wearing cowboy boots but not, the audacious slippage of the blanket revealed, very much else. He could catch a chill like that, I thought distractedly, and considerately but gingerly began covering him up. I’d never tucked in a fully grown cowboy before. I stepped back to admire my handiwork, and made an alarming discovery: his eyes were open, and he was giving me a puzzled smile. I glared back. 'You completely misled me,' I said, remembering my initial grievance.
'I’m sorry to hear that,' he said, his voice rough and sleepy. 'Is there anything I can do to clarify matters?'