mina_de_malfois (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mina_de_malfois) wrote2007-12-21 08:54 am
mina_de_malfois) wrote2007-12-21 08:54 am
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3.1 Mina de Malfois and the Problem Images
Happiest of Solstices to you all!
Sorry to have been so long hibernating, but it was a very comfortable rest home. Even the walls were upholstered.
As a result of my having been away longer than I'd really intended, I'm about to dick around horribly with the posting order. This one's okay, but the next update will be 3.3, and then 3.2 will go up sometime after it.
This is a [belated, as of time of posting] birthday present for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jackiejlh.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. No specific 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.
‘You look a million miles away,’ she said with a gentle smile. I thought that was rather rich, coming from someone who exuded ‘distant,’ and if she’d been a contemp I’d have urged her to deal with the remote in her own eye before criticizing mine, but with Arc--Ms. Silverman--somehow one just doesn’t. I’d love to be able to joke with her, but I somehow can’t. ‘Are you worrying about the ‘art exhibit’?’ she continued, inverted commas dropping audibly and daintily into place. I nodded an admission that I was. ‘Still seeking the bubble? I’d advise you not to,’ she said calmly. ‘If you’re damned to everlasting fame, you might as well make up your mind to enjoy it.’ She was gone before I could respond, her heels clicking crisply yet oddly quietly as she crossed the floor to her office.
But not worrying about my reputation wasn’t easy, in the face of Ciyerra’s latest creative burst.
Perhaps I’d better back up a bit. The new scholastic year had gotten off to a reasonably good start. The single room in Cersei House I’d been issued as a direct result of my important new job was less a perk than a godsend, removing me as it did from Jen’s immediate reach--although, oddly enough, I’d been waking on a damned near nightly basis from tangled dreams, and many of them included my former roommate.
Online, though, events were eventing. I’d returned from Wands Across to find that Ciyerra was MIA from Malfois Manor. She was, Liz informed me worriedly, in something of a snit over the Wands Across auction. I gloated briefly over that news, but it was fleeting and futile gloating, because Ciyerra, damn the wench, proved predictably incapable of discreet jealousy. Barely any time at all elapsed before word trickled through the fanosphere that the talented dollfie artist was staging an art show, having simultaneously booked space in a virtual gallery and on the walls of some sordid little community college. Luckily the school--which, I might add, I politely refrained from mocking publicly, however much the certainty that it was her Alma mater privately amused me--was far enough out of state that I had every excuse not to be in attendance, but there was no excuse that could possibly cover off my not putting in a virtual appearance, so I gamely tagged along with Liz.
Taking a page from my book, Ciyerra wasn’t in evidence at her own exhibit, which instantly made me wonder if she was present but incognito. She’d roped Mrs.Sev and Darla into hostessing, and it was gratifying, I confess, that they both immediately abandoned the other guests on seeing me and crossed the floor to gush over my presence there. I naturally assumed this was due to my inherent BNFness, but as it turned out, there was a less pleasant but more proximate cause.
Ciyerra might not have the talent her deluded fans credit her with, but I can’t deny she has some sort of creative power, and being miffed at me seemed to bring it well to the fore. Mingled with my shock and horror and unspeakable embarrassment when I saw her latest dollfie works, I mean to say, I also felt a distinct flicker of what might almost, were I feeling it about anybody sane, be characterized as admiration. She’d invented, or possibly stolen from somewhere, an entirely new genre of art. She’d branched out into dollfie RPF, or maybe RPP: real person portraiture.
Unfortunately, she’d taken as her subjects PrinceC and myself. Even had I not recognized the clothes her dollfies wore, the captions would have adequately driven home Ciyerra’s point, and what a bizarre, catty, vindictive little point it was.
I was staring, my avatar frozen in place, my realworld self turning steadily crimson with mortification, at a wall arrayed with photographs of posed BJDs, all dressed and arranged and labelled to make it utterly, undeniably clear that she’d intended to depict our arranged-by-auction embrace at the con.
Only--and there is not enough cringe in the world to cover off how I felt about this--she’d gone above and beyond, or rather below and beneath, because as one progressed along the wall one approached a sort of zenith of shockingness. The photos got less and less safe for work, and less and less, I might add, accurate. It was bad enough to be rendered speechless with squick at a collection of portraits of dollfies embracing passionately in front of a crowd of little witnesses. It was worse to read some of the captions: ‘PrinceC purchases Mina de Malfois’ affections at Wands Across,’ the first one said, and the point was reiterated many times beneath the deeply ludicrous art. But it was somehow still worse again to realize that they weren’t even factual, and that they attested to a level of intimacy we’d never--well, I’d never--dreamed of. He’d certainly never put his hand there, and I’d never, well, reciprocated. We’d have been arrested. Fans might rather let loose at cons, but they don’t, I’m relatively sure, tolerate public displays of quite that nature. And the photos went on from there, hard though it was to fathom, extending into even more purely imaginary depictions of us in a hotel room, and to admittedly less fictitious scenes of the two of us with Lord Henri Antoine Silvestre de Gravina. On sight of those I wondered briefly if PrinceC had betrayed my confidence, but dismissed the thought as unworthy. The boy had been raised on the maxim that ‘what happens at the con stays at the con,’ so doubtless what happened in virtual encounters was equally sacrosanct in his eyes. Still, the shots of his dollfie avatar being led merrily down the rimrose path by the dissolute Lord de Gravina were shockingly...remniscent.
Mrs.Sev and Darla and Liz had discreetly melted away, though with many a backward glance to make sure I hadn’t actually died of shame. I appreciated their concerned looks, but I was beyond immediate help. I tried to pull myself together and take what comfort I could from the slender and, so far as these things went, attractive ball-jointed doll Ciyerra had used to represent me, but instead of feeling better I began to feel slightly jealous of the damnable thing. It wasn’t terribly consoling that she was flatteringly slender, at least not in the face of my present indignation.
A masculine hand on my virtual forearm made me jump. ‘Miss Mina,’ Warr1or said, looking disturbing solemn.
‘Warr1or,’ I said calmly, even as I blushed from head to toe again. ‘How’s the het archive coming along?’
‘It’s going as well as it can, considering that I have stalkers and enemies on every side,’ he assured me, and then said much too fervently, ‘but that hardly matters in the face of your distress.’
Yes. Well, I wasn’t too chuffed at being a dollfie porn star, it’s true, but that hardly seemed adequate cause for overheating Warr1or and introducing that familiarly fanatical tone into his persona, so I tried to look unconcerned. I opened my mouth to claim that Ciyerra’s art wasn’t that bad really, but he was already in full flight.
‘I tried my best to save you,’ he was saying, all valiant and crazy. ‘But PrinceC kept outbidding me. I’m truly sorry, Miss Mina. It must have been so shocking and upsetting to you, having to kiss two different men within a week. If there’s anything, anything, I can do to relieve your anguish...,’ he left off, too choked with emotion to continue. I hadn’t the heart to point out he was increasing my discomfort considerably, though by now even my avatar was cringing. His avatar’s eyes shone, possibly just with his standard lunacy but I think with tears, which implied ominous things indeed. I considered comforting him by reassuring him that the experience hadn’t upset me in the least, but decided firmly against this. It was surely safer to have Warr1or weeping over my sullied virtue and nonexistent sensibilities than to have him denouncing me as the con bicycle.
‘I blame PrinceC,’ Warr1or said abruptly. I shut my eyes in momentary thankfulness. ‘He goes too far.’ Warr1or frowned, looking conflicted. ‘It’s probably the negative influence of his friends. That congoing crowd can’t be trusted.’ I’d thought much the same thing myself, once upon a time, but I’d had to revise that a bit now that I’d begun to be counted as one of them. And come to that, wasn’t Warr1or part of the ‘congoing crowd’? A much bigger part of it than I was, technically, since I’d seen concrete photographic evidence he’d been to lots of the things. There seemed no safe way of saying so, though; Warr1or’s a dear, and he certainly has his unexpected moments of appeal, but he’s not, let’s face it, even a little bit stable, and I wasn’t feeling up to dealing with yet another display of his temper.
More and more people were pouring in, twittering and squeeing over Ciyerra’s latest travesties, and even buying the things. I excused myself and went in search of Liz, only to meet her coming in search of self. We both agreed my presence was probably overheating the enkindled, and left immediately. But the exhibit stayed popular for days and days, and it was mildly nauseating to contemplate. Who knew what those pictures were inspiring. And it was at this stage that Arc found me sunk in gloom and reshelving, and offered her singularly impossible-to-follow advice that I not worry about my reputation. How could I? Already I was being accused in some quarters of damaging the reputation of the entire Sanguinity fandom, not to mention scaring off future players, by behaving so wantonly. Funnily enough, no one had called PrinceC on his behaviour.
An even worser trend loomed on the horizon. A handful of fandom’s deep thinkers had taken it into their heads to post extensively on the subject of what it meant that dollfie-Mina was incredibly thin while, they added with wholly unnecessary accuracy, anyone who’d seen me at the con knew I wasn’t particularly. By some small mercy no photos of me surfaced to illustrate these arguments; those seemed as satisfyingly nonexistent as though some supernatural force had erased them from the internet and banned cameras from the con. But still. That was my body they were pawing over in their well-meant politicization of the issues, and I didn’t much appreciate it. I don’t care how much they were claiming to be supporting me; I wanted them to shut up about how much healthier and more realistic I was. In my bleaker moments I began to wonder if I were developing dollforexia myself.
My very own fangirls were saying deeply discouraging things about my personal appearance, too. They seized on the whole ‘plump Mina’ thing with an unholy glee. I know my body doesn’t have quite the same diamond-hard and diamond-clear perfection as my mind, or for that matter as my fanfiction, but I hardly think I deserved to become the locus of a tiresome flab fetish. Fic was being produced--disrespectful fic. It dwelt lovingly on bulges I didn’t even have, damn it.
I was sitting in my room one night, trying to distract myself with porn from a creeping urge to measure my own thighs, when my second-floor window slid smoothly open. It was Jen, wearing a lot of khaki and a camera on a strap.
‘Ami Jenever, Girl Reporter,’ I sneered, trying to look and sound as though people climbed in through my bedroom window every night.
‘I thought,’ Jen said with an unsettling grin, ‘you might want to pose for a few photos.’
‘Pardon?’ I asked, aghast.
‘To resolve your body-image problems,’ she said coolly and heartlessly. ‘I excel at stills, you know--I’ve learned from the very best. I thought we’d fling a few devastatingly gorgeous shots of you online, and let the evidence speak for itself.’ She saw I was hesitating, and added soothingly, ‘You’ll have right of refusal on every picture, I promise, and I’ll destroy the negatives of any you don’t like. Seriously, Cara Mina, I’m good at this. Let it be my gift to you.’
Perhaps, I reflected, Arc had been right. She usually was. Perhaps I should spend less time worrying about my reputation. Except...she had encouraged me to enjoy my notoriety, hadn’t she? And I’d never had a picture taken of myself that I really liked. It was tempting to see if Jen’s image-management skills actually did extend to film. And it would mean I wouldn’t have to post a word in response to the chubfic; there’d be hard evidence of just how fictitious the fics were, so I could stay mum, right? Which when you thought about it amounted to the same thing as worrying less about my reputation, or at least posting less in defence of it.
Jen was smiling in a way that suggested she was reading my dithering all too accurately as agreement. ‘Yes?’ she prompted, still poised there on the window ledge.
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
Sorry to have been so long hibernating, but it was a very comfortable rest home. Even the walls were upholstered.
As a result of my having been away longer than I'd really intended, I'm about to dick around horribly with the posting order. This one's okay, but the next update will be 3.3, and then 3.2 will go up sometime after it.
This is a [belated, as of time of posting] birthday present for
jackiejlh.Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. No specific 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.
‘You look a million miles away,’ she said with a gentle smile. I thought that was rather rich, coming from someone who exuded ‘distant,’ and if she’d been a contemp I’d have urged her to deal with the remote in her own eye before criticizing mine, but with Arc--Ms. Silverman--somehow one just doesn’t. I’d love to be able to joke with her, but I somehow can’t. ‘Are you worrying about the ‘art exhibit’?’ she continued, inverted commas dropping audibly and daintily into place. I nodded an admission that I was. ‘Still seeking the bubble? I’d advise you not to,’ she said calmly. ‘If you’re damned to everlasting fame, you might as well make up your mind to enjoy it.’ She was gone before I could respond, her heels clicking crisply yet oddly quietly as she crossed the floor to her office.
But not worrying about my reputation wasn’t easy, in the face of Ciyerra’s latest creative burst.
Perhaps I’d better back up a bit. The new scholastic year had gotten off to a reasonably good start. The single room in Cersei House I’d been issued as a direct result of my important new job was less a perk than a godsend, removing me as it did from Jen’s immediate reach--although, oddly enough, I’d been waking on a damned near nightly basis from tangled dreams, and many of them included my former roommate.
Online, though, events were eventing. I’d returned from Wands Across to find that Ciyerra was MIA from Malfois Manor. She was, Liz informed me worriedly, in something of a snit over the Wands Across auction. I gloated briefly over that news, but it was fleeting and futile gloating, because Ciyerra, damn the wench, proved predictably incapable of discreet jealousy. Barely any time at all elapsed before word trickled through the fanosphere that the talented dollfie artist was staging an art show, having simultaneously booked space in a virtual gallery and on the walls of some sordid little community college. Luckily the school--which, I might add, I politely refrained from mocking publicly, however much the certainty that it was her Alma mater privately amused me--was far enough out of state that I had every excuse not to be in attendance, but there was no excuse that could possibly cover off my not putting in a virtual appearance, so I gamely tagged along with Liz.
Taking a page from my book, Ciyerra wasn’t in evidence at her own exhibit, which instantly made me wonder if she was present but incognito. She’d roped Mrs.Sev and Darla into hostessing, and it was gratifying, I confess, that they both immediately abandoned the other guests on seeing me and crossed the floor to gush over my presence there. I naturally assumed this was due to my inherent BNFness, but as it turned out, there was a less pleasant but more proximate cause.
Ciyerra might not have the talent her deluded fans credit her with, but I can’t deny she has some sort of creative power, and being miffed at me seemed to bring it well to the fore. Mingled with my shock and horror and unspeakable embarrassment when I saw her latest dollfie works, I mean to say, I also felt a distinct flicker of what might almost, were I feeling it about anybody sane, be characterized as admiration. She’d invented, or possibly stolen from somewhere, an entirely new genre of art. She’d branched out into dollfie RPF, or maybe RPP: real person portraiture.
Unfortunately, she’d taken as her subjects PrinceC and myself. Even had I not recognized the clothes her dollfies wore, the captions would have adequately driven home Ciyerra’s point, and what a bizarre, catty, vindictive little point it was.
I was staring, my avatar frozen in place, my realworld self turning steadily crimson with mortification, at a wall arrayed with photographs of posed BJDs, all dressed and arranged and labelled to make it utterly, undeniably clear that she’d intended to depict our arranged-by-auction embrace at the con.
Only--and there is not enough cringe in the world to cover off how I felt about this--she’d gone above and beyond, or rather below and beneath, because as one progressed along the wall one approached a sort of zenith of shockingness. The photos got less and less safe for work, and less and less, I might add, accurate. It was bad enough to be rendered speechless with squick at a collection of portraits of dollfies embracing passionately in front of a crowd of little witnesses. It was worse to read some of the captions: ‘PrinceC purchases Mina de Malfois’ affections at Wands Across,’ the first one said, and the point was reiterated many times beneath the deeply ludicrous art. But it was somehow still worse again to realize that they weren’t even factual, and that they attested to a level of intimacy we’d never--well, I’d never--dreamed of. He’d certainly never put his hand there, and I’d never, well, reciprocated. We’d have been arrested. Fans might rather let loose at cons, but they don’t, I’m relatively sure, tolerate public displays of quite that nature. And the photos went on from there, hard though it was to fathom, extending into even more purely imaginary depictions of us in a hotel room, and to admittedly less fictitious scenes of the two of us with Lord Henri Antoine Silvestre de Gravina. On sight of those I wondered briefly if PrinceC had betrayed my confidence, but dismissed the thought as unworthy. The boy had been raised on the maxim that ‘what happens at the con stays at the con,’ so doubtless what happened in virtual encounters was equally sacrosanct in his eyes. Still, the shots of his dollfie avatar being led merrily down the rimrose path by the dissolute Lord de Gravina were shockingly...remniscent.
Mrs.Sev and Darla and Liz had discreetly melted away, though with many a backward glance to make sure I hadn’t actually died of shame. I appreciated their concerned looks, but I was beyond immediate help. I tried to pull myself together and take what comfort I could from the slender and, so far as these things went, attractive ball-jointed doll Ciyerra had used to represent me, but instead of feeling better I began to feel slightly jealous of the damnable thing. It wasn’t terribly consoling that she was flatteringly slender, at least not in the face of my present indignation.
A masculine hand on my virtual forearm made me jump. ‘Miss Mina,’ Warr1or said, looking disturbing solemn.
‘Warr1or,’ I said calmly, even as I blushed from head to toe again. ‘How’s the het archive coming along?’
‘It’s going as well as it can, considering that I have stalkers and enemies on every side,’ he assured me, and then said much too fervently, ‘but that hardly matters in the face of your distress.’
Yes. Well, I wasn’t too chuffed at being a dollfie porn star, it’s true, but that hardly seemed adequate cause for overheating Warr1or and introducing that familiarly fanatical tone into his persona, so I tried to look unconcerned. I opened my mouth to claim that Ciyerra’s art wasn’t that bad really, but he was already in full flight.
‘I tried my best to save you,’ he was saying, all valiant and crazy. ‘But PrinceC kept outbidding me. I’m truly sorry, Miss Mina. It must have been so shocking and upsetting to you, having to kiss two different men within a week. If there’s anything, anything, I can do to relieve your anguish...,’ he left off, too choked with emotion to continue. I hadn’t the heart to point out he was increasing my discomfort considerably, though by now even my avatar was cringing. His avatar’s eyes shone, possibly just with his standard lunacy but I think with tears, which implied ominous things indeed. I considered comforting him by reassuring him that the experience hadn’t upset me in the least, but decided firmly against this. It was surely safer to have Warr1or weeping over my sullied virtue and nonexistent sensibilities than to have him denouncing me as the con bicycle.
‘I blame PrinceC,’ Warr1or said abruptly. I shut my eyes in momentary thankfulness. ‘He goes too far.’ Warr1or frowned, looking conflicted. ‘It’s probably the negative influence of his friends. That congoing crowd can’t be trusted.’ I’d thought much the same thing myself, once upon a time, but I’d had to revise that a bit now that I’d begun to be counted as one of them. And come to that, wasn’t Warr1or part of the ‘congoing crowd’? A much bigger part of it than I was, technically, since I’d seen concrete photographic evidence he’d been to lots of the things. There seemed no safe way of saying so, though; Warr1or’s a dear, and he certainly has his unexpected moments of appeal, but he’s not, let’s face it, even a little bit stable, and I wasn’t feeling up to dealing with yet another display of his temper.
More and more people were pouring in, twittering and squeeing over Ciyerra’s latest travesties, and even buying the things. I excused myself and went in search of Liz, only to meet her coming in search of self. We both agreed my presence was probably overheating the enkindled, and left immediately. But the exhibit stayed popular for days and days, and it was mildly nauseating to contemplate. Who knew what those pictures were inspiring. And it was at this stage that Arc found me sunk in gloom and reshelving, and offered her singularly impossible-to-follow advice that I not worry about my reputation. How could I? Already I was being accused in some quarters of damaging the reputation of the entire Sanguinity fandom, not to mention scaring off future players, by behaving so wantonly. Funnily enough, no one had called PrinceC on his behaviour.
An even worser trend loomed on the horizon. A handful of fandom’s deep thinkers had taken it into their heads to post extensively on the subject of what it meant that dollfie-Mina was incredibly thin while, they added with wholly unnecessary accuracy, anyone who’d seen me at the con knew I wasn’t particularly. By some small mercy no photos of me surfaced to illustrate these arguments; those seemed as satisfyingly nonexistent as though some supernatural force had erased them from the internet and banned cameras from the con. But still. That was my body they were pawing over in their well-meant politicization of the issues, and I didn’t much appreciate it. I don’t care how much they were claiming to be supporting me; I wanted them to shut up about how much healthier and more realistic I was. In my bleaker moments I began to wonder if I were developing dollforexia myself.
My very own fangirls were saying deeply discouraging things about my personal appearance, too. They seized on the whole ‘plump Mina’ thing with an unholy glee. I know my body doesn’t have quite the same diamond-hard and diamond-clear perfection as my mind, or for that matter as my fanfiction, but I hardly think I deserved to become the locus of a tiresome flab fetish. Fic was being produced--disrespectful fic. It dwelt lovingly on bulges I didn’t even have, damn it.
I was sitting in my room one night, trying to distract myself with porn from a creeping urge to measure my own thighs, when my second-floor window slid smoothly open. It was Jen, wearing a lot of khaki and a camera on a strap.
‘Ami Jenever, Girl Reporter,’ I sneered, trying to look and sound as though people climbed in through my bedroom window every night.
‘I thought,’ Jen said with an unsettling grin, ‘you might want to pose for a few photos.’
‘Pardon?’ I asked, aghast.
‘To resolve your body-image problems,’ she said coolly and heartlessly. ‘I excel at stills, you know--I’ve learned from the very best. I thought we’d fling a few devastatingly gorgeous shots of you online, and let the evidence speak for itself.’ She saw I was hesitating, and added soothingly, ‘You’ll have right of refusal on every picture, I promise, and I’ll destroy the negatives of any you don’t like. Seriously, Cara Mina, I’m good at this. Let it be my gift to you.’
Perhaps, I reflected, Arc had been right. She usually was. Perhaps I should spend less time worrying about my reputation. Except...she had encouraged me to enjoy my notoriety, hadn’t she? And I’d never had a picture taken of myself that I really liked. It was tempting to see if Jen’s image-management skills actually did extend to film. And it would mean I wouldn’t have to post a word in response to the chubfic; there’d be hard evidence of just how fictitious the fics were, so I could stay mum, right? Which when you thought about it amounted to the same thing as worrying less about my reputation, or at least posting less in defence of it.
Jen was smiling in a way that suggested she was reading my dithering all too accurately as agreement. ‘Yes?’ she prompted, still poised there on the window ledge.
‘Perhaps,’ I said.