Tales · of · MU

Whoo… did I have some night last night. For those who are curious or concerned, we made it through unscathed. For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, check my blog or simply Google “millard” and “tornado” for details. I’m perfectly fine… was just up all night on red alert.

I have finally finally finally set up a new place for fan art. In order to keep it low maintenance for me, I’ve made a Livejournal community where people can post their work for the delight and edification of all. I’ve already put up three pieces that were emailed to me previously and will be adding more as time allows, but, to the many talented artists who’ve posted their pictures and sketches: feel free to add your own.

In the mean time, enjoy this little moment with Oru and Shiel.

Monday, Calendula 5th (early evening)

“Look what I made!” Oru said proudly as she returned to the room she shared with the kobold, Shiel. Shiel looked up from her stone carving, putting aside the magnifying loupe she used for the detail work to see what her roommate was holding.

It was a necklace made of twisted iron links, with a heavy metal pendant that had an opening like a keyhole in the center. Shiel or Oru would have said the pendant was heart-shaped, but humans and most other races would have likened it more to a four-leaf clover.

“Is that what I think it is?” Shiel asked, her pointed nose crinkling in disgust.

“Yes,” Oru said. “For Moeli. I think I’ve just about got him to agree to ask me to go to the dance on Wednesday. I’m going to wear it for him then.”

“You’re going to put an iron chain around your neck?” Shiel asked. “Voluntarily?”

“Well, it’s an ironworking class,” she said. “It’s not like I had golden chains just sitting around gathering dust.”

“Are bonds of gold really any better than ones of iron?”

“I don’t know why I bother arguing with you. You’re just never going to be happy with anything, are you?” Oru said. She hopped up onto her little bed and set the weighty necklace down on her pillow. “I suppose kobolen don’t wear chains for their lovers?”

“I’m not sure if ‘lover’ is the word to use for somebody who puts you in chains.”

“Oh, for crying… nobody’s ‘put me’ in chains, it’s a harmless little tradition,” Oru said. “It’s just symbolic. Like humans wearing rings on their fingers… what’s that even supposed to mean, anyway? Your neck is important. You couldn’t breathe, or eat, or speak without it. You couldn’t live. What can a finger do?”

“Quite a lot,” Shiel said, turning her attention back to her newest figures.

She had roughed out two dozen kobold warriors with their vests unmistakably open in the front, marking them as female. Even more shocking than the mere fact of female soldiers would be, they had hair growing unshaved out of the tops of their heads.

Her own pate was covered with stubble, as she’d quit shaving it a few days before.

Baldness was more common among all of the goblin races than it was among humans, in both sexes. For those who had hair, it grew only on the top of the head, and was thick and bristly.

Among goblins and hobgoblins, it was considered a desirable trait among women, and they took the time to style it as they could. Oru had taken to wearing hers in three horn-like ponytails that weren’t quite long enough or flexible enough to actually fall over. She secured the ends of them with flower bows. As these accessories normally came in pairs, she mixed individual ones from three different pairs at a time.

The effect was singular, to say the least.

Kobolds, on the other hand, practiced an aesthetic of conformity. All heads were kept smooth. A man who could be assumed to be occupied with more important business than his appearance might get some head stubble in the course of a week… and indeed, that look was considered ruggedly handsome by some… but women who could not keep up their smoothness risked creating a scandal.

Shiel’s little stone soldiers each sported a spiky mohawk of hair, curved over onto one side to cover all but the tip of their left ear.

Oru turned on her little TV and began flipping through channels, but she couldn’t resist trying to score a point.

“Well, at least I got a grade for my chain necklace,” Oru said. “You’re spending hours and hours on those little toys, and what have you got to show for it?”

“Sixteen silver,” Shiel said. At Oru’s confusion, she clarified. “Not for these ones. These are for me. I’ve sold off my extra figures, though, and I’ve already taken custom orders for more.”

“To who?” Oru asked. “That bossy little bunny across the hall?”

“I’m not comfortable with you using that kind of epithet.”

“What, ‘bunny’?” Oru asked. “It isn’t mean. It’s just, they dig in the sides of hills, and are kind of cute and funny and harmless.”

“Well, no, it’s not for her, anyway,” Shiel said. “That loudmouth already has her guhul lamu making an army for her.”

“Oh, ‘bunny’ is insensitive but that you have no problem with?”

“That’s different,” Shiel said. “To get back to the point, Hazel told a horribly skewed account of our battle at a party and suddenly a bunch of human males are interested in it.”

“You know, it seems like everybody else gets invited to parties but we don’t,” Oru said. “Unless you count a bunch of people sitting around eating pizza, which I don’t. I mean a good, proper party, with people outside our dorm.”

“Didn’t you say Moeli asked you to a dance?”

“Not the same thing,” Oru said. “Do you think if we hung out more with the girls on the other floors, that we’d get invited to more parties?”

“I really couldn’t say,” Shiel said. “Do you mind? I’m trying to put some texture here.” She was using a tiny awl to create grooves, transforming what might otherwise have been mistaken for an odd sort of hat into something more recognizable as hair.

“Sorry,” Oru said. She lapsed into silence for all of about two seconds before she spoke again. “You know, you really should get that Steff to help you with the fine stuff. I bet he’d… she’d… um, what do you think is less offensive to call them?”

“I really think Steff prefers ’she’,” Shiel said. “But I haven’t decided if my support for the right of individuals to determine their own identity trumps my outrage at the appropriation of a woman’s struggles by a beneficiary of male privilege.”

Oru tore her eyes away from the black-and-white images within her TV and looked incredulously at Shiel, who returned her gaze unblinkingly.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Oru asked finally.

“A little bit,” Shiel said, smiling.

“Don’t make me throw my love chain at you,” Oru said. “You know, when I first saw her—Steff, I mean—I thought she was brilliant. ‘Look ma, no tits.’ I thought the other races were starting to catch on.”

“I don’t really like the sort of thinking that says breastlessness is the superior state just because it’s ours,” Shiel said, putting her figures aside and swinging her legs around on the chair so that she was facing Oru.

“No? You wear open vests sometimes,” Oru said.

“Well, I like to think I can be proud of who I am without suggesting I’m superior,” Shiel said.

“Isn’t that exactly what you said you hated about that Dee?” Oru asked.

“First, I didn’t say ‘hate’,” Shiel said. “‘Hate’ is too strong a word to be used on an individual person. What I said was that she’s an overprivileged twit who thinks everyone’s inferior to her.”

“Right, but if you don’t think you’re superior, then what exactly are you being proud of?” Oru asked. “Being the same?”

“Not the same,” Shiel said. “But equivalent. Of similar value. I’m proud to be kobold. She can be proud to be a low elf. Every race has things to be proud of, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Even dwarves?” Oru asked.

Shiel turned back to her carvings without a word.

“What exactly did Dee say that pissed you off?” Oru asked after a while.

“Stop putting words in my mouth,” Shiel said. “I didn’t say I was ‘pissed off.’”

“Then what did she say that made you calmly and rationally label her a twit?”

“All I asked was what she thought of the proposition that the only truly equal sexual relationships are lesbian,” Shiel asked. “Since she comes from a culture where such relationships are common, I thought she might have some insight on the subject.”

“And?”

“She said, ‘I have never met a woman who is precisely my equal’,” Shiel said.

“And that’s when you decided that she’s a twit?”

“That’s when I realized she’s a twit,” Shiel said.

“Are you even a lesbian?”

“No.”

“Then why do you care about propositioning them?”

“It’s a sentiment I’ve encountered in my survey of feminist thought,” Shiel said. “Because equality does not exist between men and women, it’s impossible for them to enter into an equal relationship with each other. That’s before you even get into the nature of heterosexual intercourse.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s it like, after?” Oru asked.

“Heterosexual intercourse is by its nature violent, penetrative. It involves one living being infringing on the sovereign boundaries of another.”

“I don’t know,” Oru said. “some of the things that Puddy’s shouted about have sounded pretty violent and penetrative to me.”

“Well, that isn’t really indicative of true womanly love,” Shiel said. “By its very nature, sex between two women is nurturing and reciprocal.”

“That sounds an awful lot like my Uncle Nado,” Oru said.

“He’s nurturing and reciprocal?” Shiel asked, confused.

“No,” Oru said. “But when he wants to complain about the humans up the road doing something, he’ll say, ‘No goblin would act like that,’ and when somebody points out one who does, he goes, ‘No true goblin.’ Anyway, what about two men?”

“What about them?”

“Why can’t they be all nurturing and reciprocal?” Oru asked.

“Because they’re still taking on the role of aggressor and victim,” Shiel said. “Active and passive, attacker and defender.”

“What if they take turns?”

“That isn’t the same.”

“Or if they just rub their things together?”

“Look, I didn’t say this was my theory,” Shiel said. “I’m not even sure I’m getting it all right. I’m certainly not defending it.”

“Not very well,” Oru said.

“I just wanted to know what Dee thought about it.”

“And she told you,” Oru said. “What’s the problem?”

“She said that no woman’s her equal.”

“Okay, but… how are you equal to her?” Oru asked.

“What do you mean?” Shiel asked. “I’m free, aren’t I? How am I not her equal?”

“You’re free to chisel at little rocks for spending money,” Oru said. “Isn’t she like a princess or something?”

“You think she’s better than me?” Shiel asked.

“I think she’s more equal than you,” Oru said. “And I think if the three of us were found in a room over a human body, they’d kill her first and me last. How’s that equal?”

“You’re talking about bourgeois social constructs and rank prejudice,” Shiel said. “Those things hardly come to bear here.”

“So, how are a man and a woman not equal, if we ignore… those things?” Oru said.

“You know, never mind,” Shiel said, turning back to her work once more. “I should have known better than to try to discuss anything important with…”

Oru’s pillow hit her in the back of the head. Her arm jerked forward in surprise, and her awl broke off the hair of the figurine she was holding.

“Hey!” Shiel said. She got to her feet, turning to see Oru thumbing her ear at her.

“I don’t see why you call Dee a twit for acting superior when you have acted like you’re better than me since we arrived,” Oru said. “Just because I don’t spend twenty hours a day gazing about feminism, or because I want a boyfriend, or I wear makeup…”

“You wear makeup?” Shiel asked.

“Not the point!” Oru shrieked. “I’m tired of being treated like I’m stupid because I like being a girl!”

“I… I don’t know what to say,” Shiel said. “That’s certainly not what I meant to imply.”

“You know what Dee does when she actually is being a twit? She apologizes,” Oru said.

“I’m sorry,” Shiel said. “I didn’t mean to suggest you were stupid, or… less than me.”

“Well… you did,” Oru said. She was breathing hard, her wide nostrils flaring. She put a hand on her stomach, which was churning. She couldn’t remember the last time anybody had made her angry enough to yell. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. “But it’s okay. You know better now. It’s okay.”

Feeling dizzy, she sat down on her bed.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” Oru asked. She nodded. “Mmm hmmm.”

Shiel waited until Oru had caught her breath and calmed down a bit before she said anything else.

“Seriously, though, are you really wearing makeup?”

“Not right now,” Oru said. “I never do when I’m going to be forging. But I’ve been experimenting with blush and eyeshadow, and a little lip liner.”

“Um, don’t take this the wrong way… but… we don’t really have lips,” Shiel said.

“Yeah, I tried drawing some.”

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