fandomhighdorms | Fifth Floor Common Room; Wednesday Evening [ 12/01 ].

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Fifth Floor Common Room; Wednesday Evening [ 12/01 ].

Ariel didn't know how it got started; Ariel didn't know where it came from.

But Ariel might have been a little bit in love.

She had been in the kitchenette, trying to decide what to put on a sandwich for lunch (so far, it was lettuce, ketchup, and bacon on wheat), when the television clicked itself on and the magic began.

It was...

INCREDIBLE. Even better, it didn't stop. It just kept playing, and playing, and Ariel knew, somehow, it wasn't right, but she just could not get enough of it. There may have been some bouncing on the couch and some dancing, and eventually singing along, and Ariel desperately wanted to go and see if they carried whatever Giga Puddi was at the general store, but she couldn't bear to leave it.

The sandwich was long forgotten. There was only Puddi.

PuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddiPuddi....

[[ I'd like to dedicate this oh-so-open and special post to 4chan. 11/30/10. NEVER FORGET. ]]

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So Quinn had gotten into the habit of using the 5th floor kitchen instead of her own because, in her unscientific survey, it tended to have a more reliable supply of diet coke.

She was mesmerised by the TV for a long moment before blinking and turning to Ariel. "... they're singing about pudding."

Just in case Ariel had missed that.

"Giga pudding!" Ariel said in something similar to a squeal. "It looks just like what they served at my birthday party back home, but I bet it tastes fifty times better. I want to go see if they have it at Turtle & Canary, but I just can't stop watching it. It's amazing! They're just so happy!"

That took almost as much staring as the TV.

"I would ask if somebody drugged you," Quinn said, "But you're kind of just always like that. Pudding excites you?"

[OOC: *apologizes for Quinn being Quinn*]

"Giga pudding," Ariel repeated, since Quinn seemed to have trouble getting that important part. "And the music! And the people having parties and clearly loving it. Look, that office guy's day is so much better because of the Giga pudding."

"I have no idea what Giga is," Quinn frowned. "Is it special pudding that makes you skinny with glowing skin?"

She selected her cola and sat down. "It's an ad," she added. "Of course the people in it are happy."

And possibly drugged.

"I don't know about skinny with glowing skin," Ariel said, tilting her head and scrutinizing the people digging into the pudding a little closer, "but you've got to admit, it does look like a lot of fun to share with friends, and this song! I bet the television could shut off right now, and I'd still keep hearing it."

For most people, that was not considered a good thing, but that's why Ariel was Ariel.

"I think that's the whole point of the song," Quinn said. She was resigned; it wasn't actually possible to talk Ariel into a rational level of enthusiasm, so she was just going to go with it. "And ... I guess it'd be fun? I'm not really a big pudding person. It reminds me of cafeterias."

"Maybe that's the problem, then," Ariel said with a smile. "It should remind you of parties like in the ad. It definitely seems a lot more fun. And I actually like the cafeteria here; it's different from what I'm used to."

"What are you used to?" Quinn asked, abandoning the ad conversation since it was just making her feel crabby and vaguely hungry. "It seems like a lot of little things make you really happy."

And Quinn abandonment of it meant Ariel just had to keep one part of her brain still on it, thus the slight bouncing in her seat as she answered.

"It's just really different back home than it is here," she said. "Different food, different things. Plus, I've never been to a real school before, though I've seen one."

They did have schools of fish, after all.

"It's the princess thing, you know. Private tutors, banquets instead of cafeterias, that sort of thing."

"I get it, except for where I kind of totally missed the princess thing," Quinn said slowly. "Like, a your-dad-is-a-king kind of princess?"

Seriously, was she supposed to know this?

"King of All He Surveys, yeah," Ariel said with a soft, somewhat proud smile. She definitely wasn't going to deny that she appreciated her privilege, even if she did feel constrained by it quite a lot. "It can be really cool, but it's also kind of a bummer, because you're expected to act a certain way and do certain things, and I...don't act that way very often. It's not a big deal! I mean, this is, like, a totally different kingdom here. I'm just a regular girl here."

"Everybody's a regular girl here," Quinn said, though she still seemed more than slightly impressed. "You spend all your time at home working for a certain reputation and then, bam, you come here and have to start all over."

[OOC: ... sigh, LJ. Sigh.]

Bruce was coming back from some evening training when he heard some horrifying nose coming from the common room. He was forced to stop in.

"What on Earth is that?" he had to ask.

[OOC: You are a horrible person. *shakes head*]

"Giga pudding!" Ariel answered, in the middle of more bouncing in her seat on the couch. "I don't know; it just started playing on the television, but it's incredible. Look how happy they are! Giga pudding must be the most amazing thing ever, and it even looks like food we have back home!"

She stopped bouncing to turn those wide, dangerously inspired blue eyes on him. "Bruce! You should go down to the store and see if they have any!"

Surely, he would be able to escape the hypnotizing force of the commercial.

Edited 2010-12-02 02:49 (UTC)

"The TV must be acting up again," Bruce mused. Then he realized just what Ariel said. "I'm not getting anything that has a song this annoying."

It was comments like that, Bruce Wayne, that made Ariel really wonder how she managed to date you for four whole days.

And the only response she could possibly dignify that was a pout. A massive, disappointed, you-can't-possibly-mean-that pout of epic proportions.

Edited 2010-12-02 02:54 (UTC)

"Sorry, but that's not going to make me buy anything," Bruce said.

"I'll give you money for it," Ariel said. "I just need someone to go get it for me. Just think, you wouldn't have to listen to the song if you went to get some. Pleeeeease, Bruce?"

If the pout wasn't working, maybe the batted eyelashes would.

"Why can't you get it?" Bruce asked.

"Because I want to watch the ad," Ariel said, nodding to the screen.

Obviously.

Forget that she'd watched it probably fifty times already.

"How long have you been watching it?" Bruce asked.

"...it came on when I was making a sandwich for dinner," Ariel answered, without really answering.

"How long ago was that?" Bruce asked, sticking to his question.

"...um."

Ariel actually couldn't remember so she had to check the clock.

"Ten minutes ago?"

It was actually a bit more, but Bruce didn't need to know that.

"Ten minutes with this song by yourself and you didn't run screaming from the room? You're stronger than I am," Bruce said.

Ariel briefly wondered if Bruce was trying to distract her from getting him to see if the store had Giga pudding, but then she decided she'd just take the compliment and smiled.

"Thanks," she said, "but not really. I like it! You don't think it's catchy?"

"As catchy as a virus, maybe," Bruce mused.

Oh, wordplay.

"That wasn't a joke, now, was it, Bruce?" asked Ariel, with a playful little smirk.

"I joke sometimes. It's usually just very dry humor," Bruce said.

...Ariel wasn't sure if that was another joke, because, considering who he was talking to, it could have been.

"I like when you make a joke," she offered. She'd always been a fan of dryness, after all...

Quinn managed not to start by snarking about Ariel, though it took effort.

"Pudding ad," she said, with a small, ambivalent smile. "Hey."

"It's horrible," Bruce said, shaking his head. "How are you, Quinn?"

"Happy to be back at school," Quinn decided, as a safe answer. "The usual. Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?"

"It was quiet. There were more people here than I expected, but it wasn't terribly exciting," Bruce said. "How was Thanksgiving back home?"

Whether or not she was going to give an answer to the obvious topic, Bruce figured he could get something from her reaction.

Quinn considered her answer for a long moment. She wasn't exactly in the habit of being incredibly forthcoming about awkward topics, but talking around things just seemed ... tiring.

"My family was fine," she said. "Otherwise? I did that thing I told you I might do. I'm feeling pretty good, considering."

She shrugged a little. She clearly wasn't throwing herself at anyone just yet.

"I'm glad to hear you're relatively happy with the decision," Bruce said. "Was it bad?"

"Somebody got punched for something he didn't do," Quinn winced. "But ... it was time. So I guess it could have been worse. Just not how I'd prefer to spend my time at home."

"I can see why," Bruce said. "If nothing else, I'm sure it feels good to be back here for a while."

"It does," Quinn confirmed. "I get a month not to think about Lima, and then it's Christmas break. I can't be too mad."

Bruce wasn't going to ask how well she was going to avoid thinking about Lima when she was apparently friends with Puck here, but he was certainly going to wonder about it.

"Finals are in a couple weeks. That should hold your focus for a little bit, I'd guess."

"Except for where there are no real classes here," Quinn pointed out -- and, given she was used to the low academic standards in Lima, that was saying something. "I had fun in the badass class, but it's not exactly a heavy hitter for my college transcripts. But I have my online classes and all of that."

"You just have to be more discriminating in your class selections," Bruce said. "The Science of Deduction is one of the more intense classes I've ever had."

...said the guy who stuck with tutors for all of his teenage years before coming to Fandom a year ago.

"I wanted that one," Quinn said, a touch wistfully. "Got bounced from it. The teacher lives at the hotel, so I see him at work sometimes. He's interesting."

A jerk. But interesting.

"What else do you have?"

[OOC: Apparently LJ decided posting this last night was against its religion. Sigh.]

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Fifth Floor Common Room; Wednesday Evening [ 12/01 ].

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