Concordia discors

This has been extensively prodded by betas, and I hope it reads as "LOL Mina" and not "LOL racism." If it fails in that aim the fault is my own, much as I might like to blame someone else. Also, of course, a bit more of the backstory suggested in 1.13 emerges...


I’d been chatting with Warr1or, which as always was an informative experience, just not necessarily informative in the direction he intended. He’d been warning me against Josh Amos again, in vague and foreboding terms--beware the ides, kind of thing--and admitted himself that he didn’t know what it was, exactly, that made him so distrust Josh. ‘I just don’t,’ he kept saying. ‘I think he’s someone whose influence will corrupt and tarnish you, Mina. And our fandom has had enough degeneration.’

I knew, but carefully refrained from mentioning, that that was an oblique reference to PrinceC. ‘Like PrinceC. He just has it so easy,’ Warr1or burst out, thereby proving how ineffective carefully refraining can be. ‘He follows idiotic fads, and no one calls him on his affectations. He’s had every privilege, but ordinary hard-pressed fans embrace him. And he indulges in flirtations with real-life yaoi--and yet he could afford to buy that kiss, and I couldn’t stop him.’ He broke off.

‘It was hardly unpleasant,’ I pointed out logically. ‘For me, I mean. I didn’t actually require rescuing.’

‘I know,’ Warr1or said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been your Archivist--I know you adore her, and that kind of admiration is an entirely different thing. And she’d have had sense enough to know where to draw the line. She's got dark hair, too, that's reassuring--it's not like she's some shallow, popular redhead. But that cad, that fool of a boy...and he’s a Booter, Mina, have you forgotten that? You have too much of that sort of influence in your life already, if you ask me.’

I hadn’t asked him, but he swept on irregardless. ‘What you need,’ he wrote pompously, ‘is a steadying, balancing influence in your life.’

Luckily I had email from Arc just at that juncture, so I was able to excuse myself and escape the confines of IM. I’d noticed earlier I’d had a puzzling influx of some hundred-odd emails, but hadn’t gotten around to opening any of them to inquire further into the oddity. I went straight to hers now.

‘Mina,’ her message ran, ‘I appreciate your taking my opinions so very much to heart, but you’ve quite overexcited poor Seldom. Just a head’s up: he’s wandering the campus, looking for you. He claims you’re uniquely placed to help him with his thesis.’

My heart sank. I wasn’t sure exactly what the first part of that meant, but the latter definitely suggested Seldom had twigged to my being Someone in fandom. Perhaps he’d seen me with Jen at some point, and recognized her as Razzberry Martini; heaven knows that would uniquely position me to help, not just with his thesis, but with any number of monographs on abnormal psychology. Had there been any photographic evidence of Razz, though? I couldn’t remember any.

And then I went through my inbox, and learned that if there hadn’t been before, there certainly was now.

You know, my instructions to Jen had been perfectly clear, or at least clearish: post these pictures, and don’t mention photoshopping. How hard is that? I’d never guessed--no reasonable person could have guessed--that I’d needed to add, ‘Oh, by the way, post them as Ami Jenever, please.’ So I was a tad gobsmacked, and temporarily unable to summon my innate British ability to keep a stiff upper lip, to find that she was staging the triumphal return of Razz Martini, and using me to do it. That is, she had created a shiny new journal and posted, as many gleeful LNFs had chosen fit to inform me, a few highly performative photographs featuring the two of us. Looking at those photos in this scary new context, I couldn’t help but see that we looked like extremely close friends indeed. No wonder poor Seldom was overheated, and him an innocent grad student who probably didn’t get out much.

I felt uncomfortably exposed to fandom’s gaze. It would take something pretty serious to distract them from this. Luckily for me, I had just the thing. A racism debate had been brewing in a fandom I was tangentially involved with. I’d been steering clear of the discussion, but perhaps I should weigh in on that now, thereby signaling that my absorption in lofty, important issues precluded my wasting time and attention on mere personal gossip. Yes: that would do nicely.

This did demand consultation, though. Naturally I wanted to weigh in on the right side, and I was almost certain I knew which one that was, but in my casual reading of the situation I’d noticed that the other side had arguments that interested me as well, for personal reasons. What balance should I strike between righteous indignation and my sneaking sympathy for the fans who felt the blonde characters were also undervalued? I’d better, I decided, do the sensible thing and ask Arc what she thought. Surely she’d know what was the correct position to take.

I know what you’re going to say: you’re going to dismiss my hesitation to weigh in decisively as mere fear of being dogpiled. That’s not bloody fair, you know. It seriously underestimates fandom when wrongheaded people argue that we’re swayed and bullied into conformity. I happen to believe that fandom, for the most part, weighs the soundness of arguments and, no less crucially, the elegance of their expression and the reputations of the people making the arguments, and on that basis judges individual fans’ positions on the issues of the day.

And after all, people do make blonde jokes, and I can personally assure you there’s a depth and seriousness to the hurtfulness of that which shouldn’t be underestimated. But then, I do frequently want to nailbat Gwen Stefani right in the face, so maybe blondeness is trumped by other considerations.

When I got to Arc’s office--breezing through the archive with the brisk efficiency of someone on a mission, and collecting a gratifying number of envious and curious looks from my fellow research assistants--Xena was there, opening her mail. ‘My uncle’s sent me another set of Rosary beads,’ she said, holding up something pink and pretty for inspection. I reached for them admiringly, and then stopped just short of actually touching.

‘Oh. Do you mind my handling them?’ I asked, scrupulously polite.

Xena gave me an odd look. ‘No, why would I?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘I thought possibly they were for Catholic hands only,’ I explained.

Xena snorted. ‘If that were true, I’d have burst into flames myself by now,’ she said. ‘I’m not exactly up to code myself, you know. I can’t remember the last time I made confession.’ She looked privately amused and added, ‘Well, not to a priest anyway.’ And then she carefully amended that further, to, ‘Well. Not in a confessional.’

‘Nancy,’ said Arc, wincing slightly and holding up one hand. ‘Just stop there, please.’ Xena obligingly dropped the subj., and turned to me.

‘What can we do for you today?’ she asked. ‘Something performative?’

‘No,’ I said firmly, and outlined my confusion as best I could, ending up with, ‘So should I limit my post to explaining that I’m not a racist, or should I also express sympathy for the people who identify with the blonde character?’

Arc made a pained noise. ‘Neither,’ said Xena, 'but if you must do one or the other, go with the first thing.’

‘But why?’ I asked, not really arguing, just wanting clarification. I was beginning to feel a bit blondely oversensitive, really, but I bravely hid this. I turned to Arc for more and better input. She looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable, which was, granted, interesting, but also alarming. ‘I don’t really have anything to add to that,’ she said.

‘Valerie was just mentioning this,’ Xena mused.

‘And what were her words of wisdom?’ Arc asked. I winced at her tone.

‘She didn’t have a handy lesson plan,’ Xena said, a certain something entering her tone as well. ‘For some reason she doesn’t see that as her job.’

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Arc said, sounding more sympathetic, but then seemed unable to stop herself adding, ‘And you’d know better than me what she thinks, I’m sure.’

Xena gave Arc a thoughtful look. ‘You know, I’ve sensed a degree of tension between you and Val for years now. Don’t tell me this is what it is.’

Arc looked, for the first time since I’d known her, utterly furious. ‘Don’t be an idiot. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand, and everything to do with you personally, Nancy,’ she hissed, and her eyes narrowed in a way Adage might well have envied.

Xena blinked, looking entirely discomfited. I was feeling e.d. myself by this point. ‘But, Judy,’ she protested weakly, ‘that was temporary, and it didn’t mean anything to either of us--you can ask Valerie yourself.’

Arc had regained her customary reserved expressionlessness, which under the circumstances was unutterably terrifying. ‘It meant something to me,’ she said quietly. ‘I could handle anything but that. And I did notice that you two stayed in contact, even during the times you and I lost touch.’

I was beginning to devoutly wish myself anywhere but here. The ninth circle of hell; the Patricic Rim; the polar ice caps, which might well be less chilly than this office: anywhere. I broke in awkwardly to drag the conversation back from whatever brink it was hovering on. ‘So what should I do, then?’ I asked. ‘What am I supposed to say? How do I balance the two things?’

‘The two things aren’t remotely equivalent,’ Arc said patiently. ‘There has never been a period of history in which blondes were captured, confined, transported, and forced to live in brutal, degrading conditions.’

‘Not that one doesn’t have fantasies,’ Xena said, and waited. Arc didn’t bother to rebuke her.

‘And as well as not having had that history, blondes don’t endure systemic devaluation,’ Arc went on tonelessly. Xena murmured something that sounded like, ‘Quite the contrary,’ but Arc continued to ignore her. ‘It’s a matter of cultural capital, Mina.’

‘It is?’ I said, a bit fogged.

‘Look,’ Arc said. ‘There are more lawyer jokes than there are jokes about, say...’ She paused to find an example.

‘Fast food employees,’ Xena said, and I glared in her general direction. Some people are so insensitive to class issues.

‘Fine,’ Arc sighed. ‘Yes. But being a lawyer is still a privileged position.’

‘Which has to take the sting out of the thing, a bit,’ I said, beginning to get what she meant. ‘So you’re saying blondeness comes with perks, and those outweigh the sneers?’

‘Something like that,’ Arc said.

‘So you really think I shouldn’t say anything?’ I asked.

‘Just listen,’ Xena suggested. ‘When people speak, try, sometimes, to listen. It won’t kill you not to have an answer.’ I wasn’t sure how much if any of that was meant for me, but I thanked them both profusely anyway, Arc slightly more p. than Xena, and left.

And I meant to just listen, honestly I did. Except I was still avoiding all those corners of fandom devoting themselves to wild speculation about self and former rival, so I couldn’t avoid the more serious corners, and when the exact same argument broke out again the next day I’d waded in before I remembered not to. I couldn’t quite remember how to phrase it, though. Had the phrase been ‘cultural capital,’ or was I remembering it wrong? Yesterday’s tension levels hadn’t exactly been conducive to learning.

But I thought I knew how to put it, all the same. ‘Look,’ I typed, ‘if blonde jokes were all that hurtful, there wouldn’t be bleach kits for sale everywhere, would there? But there are, so the value of being a blonde, even a fake one, must outweigh the annoyances.’ All right, that may have lacked something of the scholarly note Arc had tried to inject, but I’m not an acafan, am I? I’m a BNF!

Of course a few particular morons tried to muster arguments to convince me I was so downtrodden I couldn’t even see my downtroddenness, but some people are just born to lose, and there’s no helping them. Most other people saw my point, and lauded its pointiness. Even the next issue of FG got in on the act, remarking that, ‘Unexpectedly, Mina de Malfois took time away from her hectic personal life and emerged as one of the more sensible voices in that fandom.’ I was slightly indignant about that ‘unexpectedly.’ Why, I’d been replete with common sense for ages now. About time they bloody noticed!

And my next act of sensible, I decided, would be to stop avoiding Seldom. Perhaps I could take him to meet Jen, even.

footnotes