The Age of War
When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.
A few years ago, Livejournal was very much like the film Dangerous Liaisons: a week wouldn't go by without someone's reputation being ruined thanks to an indiscretion; private letters were cut & pasted made public; anonymous poison pens smeared the good names of innocent flirts; tempestuous love triangles overspilled into public quarrels; alliances were made and broken; and so much hair was pulled out in the comment section of harmless posts that one could easily start a wig factory.
What happened? Where did LJDrama.org go? Nowadays, it's all kisses, hugs, dinner dates, film dates, picnics, nostalgia, sensible posts here, there and everywhere. Did we all grow up? Or did we just get tired of fighting? Have we lost our enemies, or do they still plot behind closed doors? If Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil were alive today, she'd be disappointed. We are as bored today as we were years ago, but we are not putting our boredom into good use and waging WAR! Women, in particular, the undisputed Queens of LJ Treachery, are not putting their time to good use by dominating the male sex and avenging their own. Without duels to observe, I feel like my own skills are getting rusty. I crave bloody medium-rare steaks.
I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.