fandomhighdorms | 3rd floor common room: Tuesday Night

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3rd floor common room: Tuesday Night

Always on a quest to expand his horizons, Valentine decided to wander into the common room on the third floor, for a change.
He wasn't really expecting anyone to show up at his room in the morning, but he had roped off his side of his dorm room before heading to the common room, anyhow. He was fairly certain that (even though he didn't have a thoughtful bone in his body) it would save a few problems if someone actually wanted to ~~feed him~~ learn to juggle tomorrow.

Right now? He had discovered Television.
And he was enthralled, flipping through the channels with no rhyme or reason.

[ooc: Open to anyone who might want to meander through for your third-floor common room needs. *coughWillcough*]

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Still rather jet lagged from her flight back from Heatherfield, Will had decided to wander out to a common room and maybe watch some TV before trying to sleep. She made her way down to the third floor common room, only to discover that someone else had had the same idea. Someone weird looking too. Seeing as this was Fandom after all, she tried not to stare too much at his weird mask. Face, Mask-face-thing.

"Anything good on?" she asked as she slumped tiredly on to a couch.

Click. Click. Click-Click-Click-Click-Click. Click.

"On?" Valentine glanced toward Will for a moment. "On what?"

No, he wasn't new to this sort of technology. Not at all.

Will rubbed her temples. There was definitely a headache coming on. Stupid planes and their jet engines, and the constant flicking didn't help either.

"The TV. Just pick a show and stay with it; you can't really catch what's going on if you're constantly channel surfing."

"Show?" Valentine stopped clicking and leaned forward to inspect the television. "These are shows?"
He curled back a lip and quirked his head a little.
"Well, what do you know... they're doing things in that little box."

Now that the mystery was gone, he put down the remote and looked at the individual who was keeping his company how.
Ugh. Another person with a nasty improper face.
Which really, at this point, shouldn't be a shock.

Will smirked as she watched the other person get to know the TV. "You're not from around here, are you?"

She blinked as he turned around to stare at her. It was like staring back at a big block of wood, or a creepy doll or something. She looked more closely at him, trying to figure out what his real face must look like under there.

"Nowhere around here, no."

He was getting that "Stared at" vibe. He was starting to get used to it. He had been getting it since he arrived on the island, after all. Next would come the "what's under there" question.

"It's my face."

Might as well nip that one in the bud.

That line just prompted more staring. "Really?"

A thought hit her. "Are you from one of those really different worlds, like Metamoor or Basilade?"

"Really."

And a pause.

"The place I'm from is really, really different, but I've never heard of the ones you're talking about." He quirked his head the other way and leaned back into the couch. "Not that it matters much where I'm from. Equal-opportunity school, or whatever they call someplace as simultaneously diverse and boring as this is."

And now there was confusion. "You find this place boring? Man, you must be from a really crazy world."

"There's nothing crazy about it. It's this place that's odd. All of your books are dead, you take some sick pleasure in drowning your fish, and nobody here has a proper face." He looked at her again. "I haven't seen a single sphinx since I came here. Not that I miss the sphinxes any-- they're dangerous little buggers. But I haven't had anything jump out at me yet."

Well, it certainly didn't sound like any of the worlds she'd been too so far. Will tried to imagine a place where books were alive and fish apparently didn't like water. The sphinxes she could get though -- she'd seen things like them on Metamoor, and they were nasty. "Are there banshees and witches there too?"

"Screaming things and witchy things of all sorts, probably. I just know well enough to stay far away from them." Valentine would have raised an eyebrow at the girl, had he an eyebrow to raise. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," she said quickly. "Just curious."

She decided to change the subject quickly. "So how are you settling in to Fandom so far?"

Valentine looked at her long and hard, hoping that maybe, just for a moment, he'd be able to read her odd expression.
Nope. These maskless faces were still as alien to him as always.
But he didn't much trust the quick topic switch. He seldom did. Unless he was the one doing the switching.
"I'm settling well enough. My roomie thinks that everyone is a secret spy out to get him, and I didn't realize tat the food in the cafeteria won't kill me until about Monday, so there are snags. There are always snags. But there's not much to be done about that." Time for his own subject change. "Have you been here long?"

The mask-face-thing? Still really creepy.

"Heee, sounds like you got stuck with a paranoid weirdo. You should tease him a bit, and see what he does." She stuck out her tongue a little bit at the strange nameless man.

"I'm Will, by the way, and I've been here since the summer," she said, "so about half a year or so. Things here still tend to surprise me and weird me out a bit, so you never really get past that phase."

Okay, the tongue thing? Really, really gross.
Valentine even recoiled a little at this and looked away until he was certain that the offending pink thing was back in Will's mouth, where it most certainly belonged.
"Will. That's an interesting name." Not really. It was pretty boring. "Isn't a will what you write out where you want your things to go when you bump off? You should really try a more pleasant name. Something with a little more passion in it. Like... Valentine."

Will raised an eyebrow at Valentine's freak out over her tongue. This guy must really come from some strange world.

"Will's short for Wilhelmina," she said, wrinkling her nose, "but I hate that, so I usually go by my nickname. Valentine makes me think of holidays."

And once again, Valentine was back to oozing smug pride.
"Well, who do you think the day is named after?" Really, it wasn't him. But he liked to think it was. "The name's Valentine, by the way. Wilhelmina isn't so bad. Sounds less like you're expecting to shuffle off this mortal coil at any given moment."

"I thought it was named after an saint who got killed..." she mused. "And Wilhelmina's so old sounding. It makes me feel like I'm in the Victorian era or something."

"Well, it's my birthday. And so it's technically my day. Thus making it 'Valentine's day. See how that works?"
He was smirking again. That usually meant that his 'important man' ego was hard at work.
"Which era was the Victorian one, again? Was that before or after the 'in the beginning,' spiel?"

With the mask face, it was hard for Will to tell that Valentine was smirking at all.

"Uh, definitely after the In The Beginning. It was about a hundred or so years ago, when everyone was really repressed. I think my Mom named me after a character in Dracula."

Will was practically speaking in gibberish at this point.
"Repression is bad," Valentine said, staring at her blankly. "Dracula was the guy in the bog, right? With the fish? I think I've met him. Nice guy. Likes fish."

Will ended up returning Valentine's blank stare by this point.

"You've met Dracula? And he likes fish? And he lives in a bog?"

Some Ann Rice inspired dreams about vampires may have started to crumble at that point.

"The Bog of Despair, right." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "At least... I think his name was Dracula. It might have been Ed."
Valentine had returned to poking at the remote in his own special, attention-deficit sort of way.
"Which Dracula were you talking about?"

Will tried to picture Dracula's real name as being 'Ed' and living in the Bog of Despair, and ended up derailing her train of thought.

"I was talking about the one in that famous horror book."

Valentine considered this a moment, and then looked at Will again, once more slightly aghast.
"They killed enough of that breed for it to become famous?" There might have been no expression in his eyes, but the gaping mouth thing must have been some indication as to how disgusting Valentine found this to be.

"They're not killed," she replied, slightly confused by his horror at her statement. "They're just pieces of paper, glued together at one end, and sold to people at bookshops."

"That's just what they want you to believe. Where I come from, you have to catch them in nets before you can read them. And you had better be on their good side, or they'll fly away on you again."

There was more eyebrow raising at that.

"Yeah, I don't think books here do that at all."

"I sincerely hope that's not because someone killed them first."
Reading dead things? Icky.
"So the books here are really just paper, then, hm? No minds, no personality? Just glue and chewed-up tree bits?"

"Pretty much. Whatever 'minds' they have is just what people write into them."

.....
"This place really is stranger than I thought. Next thing you'll be telling me is that fish can swim or that monkeybirds can't fly."

"I'm afraid it's true. And parakeets don't recite poetry on street corners anymore either."

There was nothing wrong with messing with the newbie a little bit.

"Usually it's the chickens, actually," Valentine said casually. "But not much has been going on about the street corners I used to frequent."
When one comes from a place as absurd as, say, the City of Light, it's very difficult to mess with them.
"I'm going to have to get used to this place, I suppose. I'm going to be here a while. So long as dark tentacles of death don't show up here, too, I'm good with it."

The talk of dark tentacles of death reminded Will of Phobos and Nerissa, and some of the other dark villains she'd faced. She frowned at the thought.

"Haven't seen any of those here yet." And it better stay that way.

"Nobody has seen them here, yet. Trust me, that's a relief. The farther away from certain death I am, the happier I'm bound to remain."

He tapped thoughtfully at the corner of his mask.

"So, I really am the odd one out, here, then. I mean, with my face and all?"

Will nodded emphatically at that. "Definitely. Aside from Professor Darth Vader and Professor V who was here last semester, no one in Fandom really wears a mask all the time. It's kinda weird, so it makes you stand out."

Valentine liked standing out. He didn't like being considered weird so much. Weird meant that the reason he wasn't getting good handouts when he juggled was because his audience was avoiding him. Which, for the record, was a bad thing.
"Well... There's not much to be done about it. It is my face. The other students had best be getting used to it."

Aware that she was being rude this time, Will stared more at Valentine, trying to see the seams where the mask-like thing actually merged into his skin.

"Huh."

And, of course, there weren't seams.

"Huh." Valentine sighed. "See anything interesting there?"

And there weren't any seems, which kind of creeped her out.

"Oh, no, not at all."

Valentine looked at Will long and hard before he sighed and leaned back into the couch, looking up at the ceiling.
"If it's of any consolation at all, and I'm certain it isn't, you look as freakish to me as I probably do to you."
Ugh. Faceless types.

"Not really, no," she said quietly.

She could feel the headache from earlier starting to come back. It was probably time to head off to bed.

"Well, it was nice meeting you anyway. I think."

Valentine clicked off the television and stood-- he had big plans for tomorrow anyhow, and it was probably best he be awake when people start showing up for juggling lessons.
"And nice meeting you too."
He offered a smile-- no hard feelings. Mostly.

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3rd floor common room: Tuesday Night

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