Concordia discors

Disclaimer: 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. 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.



It’s just as well I went to bed feeling confident of victory, because when I made it home from work and logged on the next day, intending to leave a politely worded comment on Warr1or’s eljay urging him to leave off the sexual slurs, I found he’d updated with a veritable screed of insanity. It was as if he’d nailed the Ninety-Five Symptoms to fandom’s front door, and then gone off to eat worms, as is traditional.

Someday, when I have an idle hour to fill, I intend to cross-stitch myself a sampler and hang it on the wall above my computer, after the manner of the pioneers. At the top I’ll set my most oft-uttered prayer: Thank you, internet, for letting me observe so many crazy people from a safe distance.

But I digress. I was looking, as I say, at an impassioned rant by Warr1or. If I was correct in my assumption that Josh Amos was a spy, sent among the fen to report back to the Powers That Be, what, I wondered now, would he make of this?

‘I am a proud Sanguinity fan,’ Warr1or had written, ‘but my devotion to the one true canon and to my fellow fans cannot extend itself to include those who, with wilful perversity, debase, degrade, and besmirch the manly, vigorous honor of Pierce and Jab. I refer, of course, to the unnatural filth that is P/J slash. Surely it is self-evident to anyone possessed of a soul or a glimmer of intelligence that only evil personages would stoop to slash Pierce and Jab.'

'Naysayers may argue in vain that P/J slashers are not deliberately embarking on their chosen course of wrongness. Perhaps the apologists, who no doubt do not resemble Satanic cannibal child-diddlers in any respect, would like to argue that the elevation of base, dirty lust over pure, loving friendship is not wrong but merely ‘different.’ They are wrong to make that argument. God, the dictionary, and common sense are on my side, as Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien would attest had they the misfortune to live in this irreligious debauched age. It is useless to plead for mindless tolerance when all points of view opposed to, or even slightly different from, my own are so self-evidently sick, wrong, jejune, perverse, and nauseating. She is a fool who even tries it!'

'Pierce and Jab exemplify a warm, caring, spiritually correct friendship. Perhaps this is what drives the P/J slashers to soil the purity of the text with their twisted, abhorrent interpretations: never having known true friendship themselves, the slashers are driven to frenzied, jealous, furtive attempts to sexualize this portrayal of a higher, more meaningful relationship. I pity and scorn them.'

'Do not let my natural, healthy outrage mislead you into weak-minded efforts to label me homophobic, or you will surely feel my wrath! While I have not the privilege to speak professionally for the one true faith, my thesaurical and entirely logical devotion lend me the authority of the spiritually correct, and from this lofty position I can assure you that you are, once again, wrong. I myself am not averse to writing slashfic about the drunken, abusive, mentally ill members of the de Gravina vampire clan, at least not in such cases when it has been clearly demonstrated in canon that the vampire in question lacks family support, a normal father figure, a sound upbringing, or any notion of friendship, patriotism, or religion.'

'So you see it makes no sense to say I am homophobic. I won’t say that everyone who has ever suggested otherwise is a Fascist, elder-murdering mealy-mouthed Liberal spinster with a festering skin disease and an urge to prostitute herself as a cheerleader. Draw your own conclusions. I will just point out how unlikely, and upsettingly unexpected, it would be to have a manly yeoman farmer turn out to be gay. Real life may abound with such unlikely upsets: true art does not, and Sanguinity is art.'

'But, sadly, just as an immoral musician may so taint his compositions that all who listen to him are compromised, so, too, in its translation to the internet has Sanguinity been tainted. The dissolute, slyly suggestive performances of the Voices have, it is abundantly clear, hastened the corruption by encouraging P/J slashers to ply their filthy trade. The Voices have prompted a new era of fannish debauchery.'

'To help me prove my point, not that Truth requires proof other than its own rightness,’ Warr1or concluded, ‘I ask anyone who reads this to link me to as many examples of explicit P/J slash as can be found--the more lurid the better. Thank you.’

Well, that was certainly special. I cringed briefly at the thought that the Voices were probably laughing themselves sick at Sanguinity fans right now, but then common sense prevailed. There was, after all, no reason to assume they’d take Warr1or’s opinions as representative of the entire fandom; there was no real reason to assume they’d even see, much less read, his post. Warr1or wasn’t a BNF, or even an MNF. Surely his ranting would go unnoticed by anyone who mattered, and with any luck his friendslist would shower him with links, leaving him submerged in P/J slash and too preoccupied to cause trouble.

I turned my attention to happier matters, and began sending out invitations. I’d decided to host a tea party and strategy session at Malfois Manor, and was inviting every avatar who seemed properly concerned with protecting our fandom from meddling by the Voices and the Powers That Be. Even the Mean Girls were on my mailing list: I’m not one to put personal disputes ahead of broader issues, particularly when I’m winning. Let them eat cake and choke on beautifully precise footnotes, was my new motto.

I set Liz to work making preparations, and she in turn set Stasia to work polishing my silver tea service. Stasia breathlessly promised me she’d spend the evening casting a circle to ensure my party’s success.

The next couple of days passed in a happy blur of planning and RSVPs. Almost everyone I’d invited had said they’d be there. Of course I hadn’t been worried, but even if I had been it would have been needless. By happy coincidence, a profic author notorious for both the amount of time he spent reading fanfiction and the paucity of wit in his anti-fanfic drivel had editorialized in favour of the Voices. I say ‘editorialized in favour of,’ but what I mean is he’d written a fawning, compliment-strewn love letter of an editorial. It was beyond ludicrous to be chastised for writing fanfic by a man who referred to it, and quoted from it, so regularly that he obviously fondled his happy place to RPF-induced fantasies about the Voices, but he’d long been known to hate fanfiction with a deranged energy.

This latest effort meant he was angling for one of two reactions: either he was hoping for a contract to write Sanguinity tie-in novels, or his recent self-googling had failed to turn up enough mentions of his own name and he wanted the fen to berate him. Both possibilities were nauseous, and several previously uncommitted ficcers had instinctively recoiled in distaste and rallied to our cause, promising to show up at my party.

The only refusal I’d had was from Warr1or. I’d invited him because I’d hoped to avoid being targeted as one of his ‘enemies.’ Warr1or’s shippiness tended to polarize his views, not just of fandom but of politics, religion, and dating. I could sense from his latest outburst that he was only too willing to find targets for his relentless anti-slash campaign, and his shipmates were probably encouraging him. I had no intention of converting to Sammichism, so my general policy was to avoid all PB/J shippers whenever possible. Warr1or’s apology--he would be unable to attend, he’d written, because he was busy showing the Voices the error of their ways--came as a great relief. I felt sorry for the trials he’d doubtless endured during his captivity amongst the Tented Tartanists, but still, there’s something uncomfortable about a committed antislash PB/J shipper in possession of one’s IP address. He’d asked for the day off ‘to take care of things,’ and I’d agreed, feeling there was no reason for a Gardener of Uncertain Temperament to put in an appearance at an indoor party. The guests would see the immaculate lawns and gardens on their way in, after all, and could draw their own conclusions about the well-staffed state of Malfois Manor.

And so on the evening of my party, or the morning of my party for those Sanguinites elsewhere on the globe, we were an entirely female gathering. We’d just gotten seated in the front parlour when I heard the front door open abruptly. Stasia, who’d been helping Liz hand round virtual cake, dashed out to greet the late arrival. We heard her collide with something in the hall and stammer apologies to someone who neither answered nor slowed their stride, and then the sliding doors were flung wide. There on the threshold stood a pirate.

Several guests shrieked, and a teacup smashed. My own heart made a sort of attempt to escape via my throat before I recognized the dashing but heavily armed intruder.

It was Xena.

No wonder I hadn’t recognized her, though. She was tanned a much darker coppery amber than when I’d last seen her. The long reddish-blonde hair she’d used to try to conceal under her hat now hung in loose, tangled curls; some locks were wrapped in gold and silver thread, or adorned with tiny beads and bells and bits of ribbon. Her eyes glittered strangely. She looked gloriously, expensively trashed and debonair, and sported a new scar down her left cheek--which served more to draw attention to her cheekbone than to mar it. She was also, I saw with mild annoyance, dripping seawater onto my floor from her velvet jacket. It needed washing--her jacket, not my floor.

‘What’s this, a hen party?’ she asked me with amusement, helping herself to a literal handful of cake. I saw that my panicked guests had backed themselves against the furthest wall. Several were actually managing to flee via one of the windows.

“It is not a hen party,’ I told her indignantly. ‘It’s a resistance movement.’ She grinned at that. I admit my gallant girls had looked more convincingly politicized before they’d started shrieking in terror at the mere sight of Xena, but she still had no business smirking at us. ‘We’re organizing to protect Sanguinity fandom from the encroachment of overbearing industry representatives,’ I told her haughtily. She lifted her non-cake-bearing hand in a dismissive little half-wave.

‘Easy there, Miss Author,’ she said. ‘No offence meant. If the fen are revolting, that’s their business. I just need a bed. I promise I’ll stay out of your hair, and I don’t expect to be staying here more than a couple of weeks. Less than that, if I can track down Arc and convince her she needs some downtime.’

She’d taken the stairs--my stairs--two at a time and was completely out of sight and voice range before I’d even begun to wrap words around my many naked objections to her presence. My guests had stopped fleeing and were tittering and smirking. And then Stasia came in, dropped a sketchy curtsy, and announced, ‘Prince Choronzon Erik Vladimir de Gravina.’

PrinceC staggered in, looking dashing but exhausted. ‘I’m looking for Lady Mina,’ he began, prompting dark mutterings from the Mean Girls, and then he caught sight of me.

‘Rough day on the high seas, dear?’ I asked waspishly. My opinion of him hadn’t quite sprung back to pre-Tartan levels.

He ignored this, or perhaps didn’t notice; teenage boys aren’t all that sensitive to nuance. Scarcely adequate to the task of rational discourse, really, I reminded myself sternly, trying not to notice just how well breeched and handsomely booted he was.

‘Mina,’ he said, his voice firmer, and strode manfully across to me accompanied by a chorus of hisses and giggles from the Girls’ Dormitory lot, their responses polarized according to whether their affection for me or their self-insertiness towards PrinceC were uppermost. I looked up at him, telling myself firmly to ignore the tilt of his hat, and not to even think about his sword. He leaned closer, and Liz dropped her tray, shattering a plate. I hadn’t the heart to scold her. Poor dear: she’d been struggling valiantly against her initial poor choice of a sky-high ‘sensitivity’ reading, but it would take a lot of hard-earned ‘sense’ points to erase her slight tendency to inadvertent histrionics. ‘Have you heard what Warr1or is planning?’ PrinceC asked.

I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting Warr1or to come up between us just then. It took me a moment to recall Warr1or’s latest communiqué.

‘You mean the anti-slash rant,’ I said calmly. ‘Yes, I saw it, and it alarmed me too at first, but honestly: what are the chances of the Powers That Be ever seeing it? Miniscule, I should think.’

‘I don’t mean his anti-slash rant,’ PrinceC corrected me. ‘I mean his printed and bound collection of explicit Jammie slash. He’s threatening to send copies to all the Voices, and to everyone listed in the Sanguinity credits. And to this Josh Amos person,’ he added, an extra note of irritation entering his voice.

‘He’s going to mail them hard copies of his slash collection?’ I repeated, horrified.

‘He’s planning to mail them copies of his extremely explicit slash collection, as some sort of protest,’ PrinceC confirmed. ‘Everybody on the docks is talking about it. The minute I heard you were employing him, I came to let you know.’

‘Uh, thanks,’ I said dubiously. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know, really, but I suppose PrinceC was looking out for my interests.

‘We should go talk to him,’ PrinceC continued. Not the kind of invitation a girl feels torn about turning down, that.

‘I am hosting a party,’ I said coolly. ‘I don’t have time to interrogate the hired help just now.’

For the first time PrinceC appeared to notice that there were other people in the room. He apologized, and then somehow managed to persuade me to accompany him to Warr1or’s cottage that evening. This sparked much hushed hilarity amongst my guests, and I’m willing to bet none of their whispered conversations were about the Voices or our anti-coup strategies. PrinceC strode out, and when he was lost to view we resumed our much-interrupted meeting.

I tried to call my remaining guests to order, but they continued to be unnervingly giggly and frivolous, and I caught a few of them composing anonymous RPF on scraps of paper. They tried to deny it, but it was perfectly clear which of them had written it.

And then a fight broke out over lawn care, during the course of which one of them insisted hysterically that another guest had threatened her with a metaphor. Her friends, sobbing with outrage on her behalf, insisted they couldn’t possibly feel safe unless I banned metaphors and hired extra security, and at that point I lost patience with them all. How can you have a serious conversation, let alone organize a resistance movement, with people so steeped in silliness? I coldly informed them that I employed a full-time gardener who owned not only a lawn mower but also hedge clippers and gloves. A whole pack of them fled in terror at this news.

The sensible remainder, having been thus weeded out, lingered for a while to discuss the Voices, but all we could really agree on was that we Sanguinity fans needed to behave sensibly and create the best possible impression on the Powers That Be. It went without saying that this would mean dissuading Warr1or, and I felt more charitable about PrinceC’s proposed mission.