Elves

Love is blind and knows no gender. There are four versions of this story.

A Few Collected Findings of Catboy

Hello everybody! This is Catboy. Adrian is caught up in an extended argument this week (and also working on new stories for you) so he did not have time to write a post. It has been a very long time since I have posted, so I have decided to share ten important ideas that I have found in my wanderings. Some of them I have learned myself and some of them I have learned by watching other people, but all of them are helpful in maintaining a cheerful, healthy, and generally-positive demeanor.

10 – Eat food. Not too much. Go out of your way to find some that is tasty and nutritious. Gooey cinnamon rolls are tasty but not very nutritious. Plain chicken breast is nutritious but not very tasty. Fresh fish, well-cooked vegetables, and fruit are both!

9 – People are surprisingly willing to trade all sorts of wonderful things for small green pictures of boring-looking men. Try not to promise to trade someone more pictures than you actually have. Very much sadness comes from thinking that you will get more in the future, and then not actually getting as many as you expected.

8 – All catgirls are pretty, though sometimes this is not obvious until you find the right perspective. This is a good idea to remember and very important, much the way that it is important to walk all the way around a banyan tree, or to take a few steps back and appreciate Kīlauea from a safe and respectful distance.

7 – There is a special kind of tough-pretty catgirl that is especially charming and makes you feel warmer and fuzzier than normal. Be very careful of these, because they are fast on their feet and can hug you with surprising force.

6 – Notice that I have said to be careful, not necessarily to be wary.

5 – Have an appropriate outfit for every occasion, and especially have a distinctive hat if you are a hat-wearing kind of person. Good attire inspires confidence.

4 – Always remember to take breaks for cocoa. Most problems do not feel so bad if you have enough cocoa. If you are allergic to chocolate, take breaks for lemonade instead. Lemonade is tasty both hot and cold, and works much the same way.

3 – Make a special effort to brighten at least one person’s day, every day. It will make your corner of the world a happier place.

2 – Have candy. Offer it freely.

1 – Remember this always: wherever you may wander, there you are.

Ash in Their Feather Dusters

I try to read two or three books a week, though I admit that life sometimes gets in the way and I can only read one. The past two months have been rough, though, and I haven’t had time to do as much pleasure-reading as I would like.

Now that my exam is over, though, I’ve been catching up on my pleasure-reading.

I came across this passage in David Neiwart’s In God’s Country. It’s a book about the patriot/militia movement, interesting mostly in the politics of marginalization and probably relevant to Senator Obama’s recent comments about guns, religion, and xenophobia.

The villagers, he said, knew about the camp, and watched daily as thousands of prisoners would arrive by rail car, herded like cattle into the camps. And they knew that none ever left, even though the camp never could have held the vast numbers of prisoners who were brought in. They also knew that the smokestack of the camp’s crematorium belched a near-steady stream of smoke and ash. Yet the villagers chose to remain ignorant about what went on inside the camp. No one inquired, because no one wanted to know.

“But every day,” he said, “these people, in their neat Germanic way, would get out their feather dusters and go outside. And, never thinking about what it meant, they would sweep off the layer of ash that would settle on their windowsills overnight. Then they would return to their neat, clean lives and pretend not to notice what was happening next door.

“When the camps were liberated and their contents were revealed, they all expressed surprise and horror at what had gone on inside,” he said. “But they all had ash in their feather dusters.”

We’ve all heard this story, of course, one way or the other, but this particular telling of it seems uniquely chilling. There’s something compellingly, disappointingly human about that final detail.

A Little Change in Scenery

Recently I commissioned some character artwork from Kitty of Kitty’s Tavern, and we turned it into a banner for the website. She’s a pleasure to work with. It’s a little bit of an easter egg (I have a script that offers “alternate” banners about once every five or six pageviews, so pay attention).

That isn’t Tybalt, for those of you who enjoy Tybalt artwork, but you can expect to figure out who it is in a future story. Given my slow output that will probably take a while, but I’d love to hear your speculation if you have any.

Sometimes, When You’re Sleeping

Collaborative fiction by Jacqueline du Treilly and Adrian Mailenna