1.6 Mina de Malfois and the ConFanLitCon Con
Disclaimer: These stories and characters are the sole property of the author. 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: All rights reserved. All other reproduction, transmission, or storage, in any format, is prohibited unless the author is contacted beforehand and grants specific written permission. The author may be contacted at mina_de_malfois@yahoo.com.
temaris is podcasting podcast episodes one through seven.



‘I hope you don’t mind my contacting you directly. But I just have to know,’ concluded the politely worded email from some fan I’d never heard of. ‘Do you know what the money is being used for?’

In my personal experience of online fandom, that sort of question never leads anywhere good. I felt a degree of apprehension, enhanced in this case by my complete inability to place this person. I decided that, before I responded, a little research was in order.

Arc was away for a couple of days. For an archivist, she does an unseemly amount of gadding about.

‘It’s spring,’ she’d said when I’d hinted mildly that perhaps she might want to spend some time at home. ‘Then longen folk to go on pilgrimages.’

Not that I needed her for this, anyway. A little online sleuthing was all that was required. There was nothing much on the ‘Dread Lane’ discussion boards, just a few cryptic warnings: ‘Shh, don’t talk about you-know-what here,’ and ‘BalletChic will kill anyone who spoils the surprise, guys.’ Intrigued, I decided a visit to ‘the Girls’ Dormitory’ was in order. I usually avoid it, the way I avoid leper colonies and the more squalid sort of madhouse, but if the inmates were plotting, I needed to know.

There was lots of buzz on their message boards--'she says it will be ready in time for ConFanLitCon, are you going to be there?’ kind of stuff--but nothing really coherent. BalletChic’s livejournal revealed nothing to the casual observer, either.

But I’m nobody’s fool. I’ve had plenty of experience with untrustworthy fangirls of BalletChic’s type, believe me. I’d long since learned how to handle their sneaky, secretive ways. I maintain a sockpuppet journal just for these types of situations, and naturally my sock had cosied up to BalletChic when she first appeared on the scene. And sure enough, when I logged in as my sockpuppet, I saw a friendslocked post on BalletChic’s journal.

I read it and was perfectly flummoxed. I won’t quote the entire thing, but the gist or heart of the matter was that BalletChic had made an announcement that she was collecting funds for a present for ‘the foremost author of Sanguinity fanfiction.’ She’d helpfully included a link to her paypal account so people could make donations. There were glowing paragraphs full of praise and positive criticism below the link.

For the space of an hour, I honestly thought I’d misjudged the little blighter. I even felt badly about it. Maybe she wasn’t such a vile creature after all, I mused as I sponged off in the tub. Maybe, I thought, lying back in the scented foam, she had hidden depths.

I was, of course, being too kind. If I have a flaw, it’s that I’m too willing to believe the best of others. Because once I’d dried off and dressed, and went back to reread her friendslocked post, I saw my error at once. Buried amongst the paragraphs of drivel about contributions to fandom and literary style was the giveaway. ‘I’ll personally present our gift,’ she’d written, ‘at the Third Annual ConFanLitCon.’

Of course, as all of my true fans and readers were aware, I’d had to disappoint them by letting them know I wouldn’t be attending the Third Annual ConFanLitCon. I hadn’t attended the first two, either. I hadn’t, if you must know, been to many cons since hitting BNF status. I’m not comfortable with being photographed, and I couldn’t get the time off work for ConFanLitCon 3 anyway. Not, of course, that I’d mentioned either of those two reasons to anyone. If my readers have built up a certain image of me, far be it from me to spoil that image by encouraging speculation about why, exactly, I don’t like to be photographed. And if that image is of a member of the social and economic elite, free of the drudgery of mundane employment, well, what was the harm in that?

No, I’d hinted that I was expecting important guests at the Malfois Estate during the weekend of the con, and couldn’t be away from the manor. So it couldn’t, you see, be me that BalletChic was planning the surprise present for, even though the phrase ‘foremost author of Sanguinity fanfiction’ would naturally suggest me to anyone reading it.

I had a sinking feeling I knew to whom she was applying my accolades. BalletChic, you see, was one of the most persistent of PrinceC’s fangirls, and it was entirely within the range of possibility that she’d decided he led the pack in our fandom.

I was thisclose to leaving her an indignant comment when I remembered that I was logged in using my sockpuppet account. A sockpuppet is only useful for spying purposes if it is, so to speak, pristine and unnoticed. For all I knew, BalletChic was the unpleasantly suspicious type who recorded IP numbers. Better not to risk it.

I did, however, once I’d carefully logged out of my sock account, reply to the email from the fan who’d obviously been led into believing this gift scheme was targeted at me. It seemed only fair to reiterate that I wasn’t going to be in attendance at ConFanLitCon, and so could not possibly be the recipient. I confess I allowed a hurt tone to creep into my email.

This had exactly the effect I’d expected it would: soon the web was alive with indignant posts from my fangirls, who wanted to know how BalletChic could be so wrongheaded. An equally lively pool of PrinceC fangirls sprang up to argue the point, but there was disunity within their ranks. Some had begun to question publicly just how much money BalletChic had raised, and exactly how she intended to spend it. And why, they began to wonder, did she get to present it alone? Shouldn’t it be done by a joint committee? Squabbles broke out over who deserved to be on the committee.

One angry soul had added up the sums mentioned in the comments to BalletChic’s post, and she theorized that BalletChic had raised a huge amount, and that, moreover, she was using the money to pay for her travel to, and attendance at, the con. All hell broke loose at this suggestion. A mob of jealous fangirls began to mobilize, intent on either confronting BalletChic, or at least being present to share in the credit when PrinceC was approached and gifted.

I was starting to regret I wouldn’t be there myself, just to watch.

Warr1or was also among the disappointed, although he was, he claimed, more sorrowful than angered. He posted a kind of open letter to BalletChic on his livejournal, lamenting her failure to live up to his PB/J supported ideals, which he went on to describe at length. ‘In BalletChic, one might have expected to find a chaste, sweetly modest femmefan worthy of respect, friendship, and, eventually, love,’ he wrote. ‘Instead she has revealed herself to be another modern whore, throwing herself at PrinceC’s feet in her eagerness for sexual satisfaction of the basest kind. I will not disparage PrinceC for being the object of her lust, for he may be an innocent victim, but I pray nightly that he will resist. Is there no woman in today’s society who can match the soul’s perfection embodied forth in the character of Sanguinity’s PrincessB?’ And so on and so forth. I won’t reproduce the whole thing here, but you get the idea. The poor idiot was distraught, although in my opinion it would take a team of crack psychiatrists working around the clock to get him to admit what was really upsetting him.

Once the con was underway, I was glued to the screen. Usually when everyone else has flocked off to some event I’m not at, I prefer to ignore it as much as possible, but now I watched eagerly, seizing on each internet rumour, looking for plot developments in the chatter that streamed across my monitor. I wanted to know what was happening, damn it.

And a lot, my informants assured me breathlessly, was happening. BalletChic had art on display in the gallery, and was attempting to sell it. I boggled at the prices named, but according to her friends, she was really talented, so I checked out her online artwork while I waited for the next spate of gossip. Wow: she was talented, at least at first glance. Her site was filled with what looked like oil paintings and sketches, mostly of Jab. I squinted at the screen. There was something odd about her art. Jab looked really, really familiar, but also somehow wrong.

I was just reaching for the keyboard, ready to give voice to my vague suspicions--I have to say, I hate nothing more than talentless people trying to propel themselves to BNFdom--and saw that, in the little while I’d been checking out her posted art, excitement had hit ye olde ConFanLitCon art display. Whoever was in charge of the room had denounced her ‘sketches’ and ‘paintings’ as just so much copying, screencapping, and photoshopping. Confronted by the voice of authority, BalletChic had sullenly withdrawn her art, and several of her friends were reported to be in tears. BalletChic herself, however, was defiant, and said that if they couldn’t rise above traditional labels and categories and appreciate her work, that was their problem, not hers. She didn’t care.

‘And I don’t think she did care,’ Arc told me afterwards, ‘because I think, in her mind, that was less important than her plan to approach PrinceC.’ If Arc was right about that, and she probably was, then what happened next must have devastated BalletChic. I almost feel sorry for her, really.

I had this from multiple sources. To be honest, I’m still reading every eyewitness account I can find. You see, PrinceC was scheduled to lead a session on ‘inter-fandom social interactions and the sense of community.’ Apparently the session was well attended, and most of the attendees were there early, hanging around and interacting socially. A gaggle of them were standing at the front of the room, trying to catch PrinceC’s eye, but he was engaged in conversation with two of the con organizers. (One of them, I’ll tell you in strictest confidence, was Xenalvr.)

And then, everyone says, BalletChic marched in with an enormous box in her arms. Several of her friends have since claimed she looked ‘pale but brave,’ but I think we can discount that as hyperbole. She set the box down in front of PrinceC, and informed him that it was a gift from her ‘personally;’ the howls of outrage from those who contributed money are still reverberating around the net. He, looking by all accounts bewildered, opened the box.

Everyone at the front of the room saw the contents clearly, or is now claiming they did. The people who she’d conned out of donations are claiming this particularly gleefully, and on one level I don’t blame them. It was, you see, a box of sex toys and assorted intimate gadgets, but that’s not even the oddest part. Right at the top there was a sort of binder, with one of her Jab ‘paintings’ on the cover. PrinceC hauled this out first, probably because it was the only object in the box he was willing to touch with un-gloved hands. It was pretty obvious, people have told me, that she’d created the cover art by photoshopping PrinceC’s head onto a screencap of Jab, and then adding herself to the picture, and a big pink banner that read ‘fanfiction.’

You know, if the folks who put together the DSM-IV are ready to publish a major expansion, I bet they could get whole chapters of information just by tracking down BalletChic and interviewing her. I mean to say, what? Imagine doing that. The girl must need her prescription re-adjusted.

Anyway, PrinceC didn’t say anything, and one sees his point. He just lifted this thing out and looked at it, while everybody nearby sort of blushed and cringed in sympathetic embarrassment. Finally BalletChic broke the silence. ‘I hope you don’t object to RPF,’ she said.

‘I don’t mind real person fiction,’ PrinceC told her, pretty gently by all reports, ‘but you’ve gotten the pairing wrong. I’m just not interested in you.’

I think he showed a lot of restraint, there; most people would have panicked and called security, or at the very least turned snide and recommended a good psychiatrist or long-term care facility. But it wasn’t what BalletChic had been hoping for, I guess, because she burst into tears and fled the room, and is reported to have checked out early. No one seems to have actually seen her since.

I have got to start attending conventions.



next: Mina de Malfois and the House of Mourning (part one)