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Third Floor Common Room, Tuesday Evening

As promised, on Tuesday evening Kate came to the common room, armed with a soda bottle, chocolate, some fruit that she still had from the luau, and a dvd copy of ~~meta for~~The Breakfast Club.

She had chosen the movie after careful consideration from a vast array of high school movies. It seemed to be the best one when it came to showcasing the stereotypes she had lived with at her old school. And it had a young Judd Nelson, which didn’t hurt, either.

Kate set up the dvd, grabbed the remote, and sat down on the sofa with the best view of the TV. Then she munched idly on pieces of exotic fruit while she waited for Leto.

[OOC: Kate is here to watch the movie with Leto, but she’s completely botherable, and the post is of course open for all your common room evening needs!]

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Leto was actually quite curious to see what these high school movies were all about, although he hoped they were not like British comedy. He had had enough of the latter in Mitchell's TV class.

He brought a bow of dried fruit from his room - luckily Arthur hadn't eaten them all - and sat down on the sofa next to Kate.

"You realise my expectations are now quite high?" he said, smiling.

Kate snorted. "Too late for me to do anything about that now. All I can do is show you the movie and hope some of your expectations are met," she smirked.

She showed him the dvd cover. "This is what we'll be watching. Five kids, who all represent different high school stereotypes, spend a Saturday in detention together."

He took the cover, grinning. "So, the archetypal high school students. Will you describe them?"

"It's probably best, because the movie kind of relies on them being instantly recognizable," Kate noted.

"So, okay. First we have the princess and the jock," she said, poking at the two corresponding characters on the cover. "They're the popular people, so they pretty much rule over the school. Her family is rich, so she's influential, and he's an athlete, which for some reason makes him popular too." She shook her head and laughed. "I've never understood how that works, but that's just the way it is. It's better to be good at sports than to be good at academic things."

"Intelligence doesn't give status?" Leto asked. "Is the purpose of the schools to raise soldiers?" Because in that case it would make sense. "What about the others?"

"You have to remember that all this is coming from the other students' perspective. Of course the grown-ups think being smart is a good thing, or at least most of them do," Kate said, pointing at the kid in the middle. ”Which brings us to the brain, or the geek. He’s the kind of student who actually studies hard and cares about doing well at school, which gets him respect in certain circles, but not from any of the other kids in detention."

She pointed at the last two characters. "And then there are the two misfits, the criminal, and the recluse. The criminal’s a troublemaker, always rebelling against something and trying to start fights. And the recluse, or the freak, is almost deliberately weird, which makes others stay away from her."

She smirked a little. "And this is me being brief. There's a lot more I could say."

"So the studnets don't agree with their elders on what behaviour is desirable?"

Welcome to teenage culture, Leto.

He nodded at her description. "And which category would you place yourself in?"

"No, they really, really don't. And you'll see soon enough that especially in this movie, adults are pretty much the enemy, especially the principal, and some of the parents."

She didn't really have to think about her category. "I'm the freak. Only not as deliberate in weirding people out as the one in the film."

"That's... interesting." Leto frowned a little when Kate described adults as enemies. "So, let's watch the movie." He shot her a glance. "A freak by choice or by nature, or both?"

"Both, I guess," Kate mused. "I am what I am, but it's probably also a choice, because I could also choose to hide it."

She pressed play on the remote and took a piece of chocolate. "These are my favourite opening credits ever," she noted. Kind of weird, considering they consisted of yellow text on a black background. "It's because of the song," she explained with a little smile, popping the chocolate into her mouth.

[Oh, I haven't heard this song in years and years...]

Leto nodded, listening to the song with a look of concentration on his face. He was probably taking this a little too seriously.

Kate was silently mouthing the words to the song. She didn't even really know why it was so special to her, but it was.

She glanced at him, and chuckled quietly.

Leto smiled back, raising a eyebrow. "What is funny?" he asked, placing a hand on her arm.

"There's gonna be scenes in this movie where that expression you just had is appropriate," she smirked. "The opening credits is not one of them."

"You said you liked it!" Leto told her, leaning back against the sofa. "I wanted to understand why."

"If you figured that out, you'd know more than I do," Kate pointed out. "I don't know why it affects me so much."

The David Bowie quote was on the screen by now:
...And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through...

"Just like I'm not really sure why that quote sounds so good to me," she added, gesturing at the screen.

Leto looked at her. "Because it expresses how you perceive your situation well?"

Kate grinned. "Okay, that was a bad example, because yeah, pretty much."

Gaze moving towards the TV screen again, Leto said: "But how do these people perceive their future? Do they expect their values to change and become like their parents? Or do they expect to become something else?"

"That's going to come up later, but basically, they're all afraid they're gonna turn out like their parents," Kate answered, watching the kids gather at the school and the detention start.

"They don't want it to happen, but they're worried it will."

"It is possible for people not to follow in the footsteps of our fathers," Leto replied. "That is one thing that sets us apart from animals. But the hard part is always identifying which choices that needs to be made differently."

He glanced at Kate, then turned back to the TV.

"What is it about their parents that they fear they might become?"

"Everyone in this film has pretty bad parents. They're all different, but all bad," Kate said, shrugging lightly.

"The brain's parents want him to study even harder, the jock's dad wants him to be tough, the criminal has a violent dad, the princess thinks her parents only use her to get back at each other, and the recluse thinks her parents don't care about her," she listed. "I can understand why they wouldn't want to grow up to be like that."

"And there are no other adults whom they can talk to for advice? No sayyadina?" He wasn't sure of the best term for that here.

She tilted her head and frowned at hearing an unfamiliar word. "No what? ...Um, I guess there probably is a guidance councellor at the school, but that doesn't really help if they don't have any trust in adults. It's a teenage cliche that 'grown-ups just don't understand'."

"Why wouldn't they understand? They have been young themselves and should be able to offer guidance to young people about to enter adulthood," Leto said, frowning. "Of course, young people might think they know everything better and have little patience - and they might be right in some ways - but is there really no middle ground?"

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Third Floor Common Room, Tuesday Evening

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