Fourth Floor Common Room, Wednesday Morning, WTF?

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa absolutely needed to go over to this Happy Place with the dancing mouse and all of the rides and hats that everyone had been talking about. And she planned on making Squall take her, later on.

But right now, she was curled up in the fourth-floor common room, watching the ... absolute strangest movie she'd ever seen. It was like a trainwreck; she couldn't quite look away.

It was a disaster movie, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was that was supposed to be ending the world: the prostitutes, the ice cream treats, the zombies, the midgets, or the brass instruments. Apparently it was supposed to be the brass instruments, since they had top billing, right there in the title:

Death by Flugelhorn 2: Jazz Solo from Beyond the Grave.

This was a sequel? How did the first one ever get made? Why did people watch this?

More importantly, was there enough popcorn? Because she was going to stick to this movie until it made some kind of sense, and that could take hours.

(This was inspired by a completely insane Twitter conversation that started as "I misread 'comet' as 'cornet,'" and spun into madness from there. Fry said it needed to be a common room flick, and thus, it is. SO SO SO OPEN.)

Comments

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa was, to be honest, relieved that Stephanie understood the violent pull that the movie had.

"I know, right?!" she said quickly. "I can't stop watching. I have no idea who anybody is. I don't know who the good guys are. I'm not sure who's trying to end the world and who's trying to save it. I can't even figure out if the prostitutes are the zombies or if the other people are the zombies or if there are just competing groups of zombies. I think maybe some of those trumpets are bringing people back from the dead. That much I got."

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"I hate when that happens," Stephanie deadpanned, flopping onto a patch of the floor and kicking her feet up in the air behind her. "Pesky cursed brass instruments. If they're not bringing people back from the dead, they're drowning anyone who hears their music in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, or giving people an uncontrollable urge to dance the Charleston, or . . ."

She squinted at the TV. "Oooh! Hey! Maybe they're fighting over who gets to end the world and who gets to save it?"

[angelo_wings]

"Do you think they're cursed?" Rinoa asked. "I hadn't even considered that. I'm not used to musical instruments being cursed. Rare artifacts, sure, but if you pick up a rare artifact and carry it around, you're kind of asking for trouble."

Or you should at least empty out your knapsack when you developed rashes and started gnawing on people's ankles.

"That would be an awesome movie," Rinoa decided. "Competing teams trying to save the world. One gets bitter and decides to end it. And then the one trying to save it fails, so the one ending it has to come back around to the good side and help undo what they did."

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"I was actually mostly kidding," Stephanie admitted. "Cursed musical instruments aren't a dime a dozen or anything. The Middleman reference was just irresistible. If they were, every high school ever that had a band could've accidentally ended the world by now."

. . . oh, maybe that was what had really happened to the multiverse. Never mind the Crisis. HA. Anyway.

She snickered. "It'd have to be a movie. If it was on TV, it'd be a never-ending vicious cycle, and a ridiculous reality show, and Bruce would probably get stuck watching it on the fifth floor TV every day."

[angelo_wings]

"My mother always said some pianos just felt off," Rinoa said. "But I don't think she meant they were cursed. Just that they weren't made as well, or something like that. I've seen some of Bruce's problems with the fifth floor TV before. Did he make it angry somehow? I told him he should try apologizing to it. I don't know if he ever did."

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"Not that I've ever seen," Stephanie remarked. "Your mother's a musician?"

That was kind of cool. She might be a tiny bit jealous.

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa flashed a quick smile at the other girl.

"She was a lounge singer in a hotel in Deling City," she said. "The war was on, so most of the patrons were soldiers. That's how she met my dad."

When she said it like that, she had to admit it sounded romantic. Which she hated doing, because she still loathed her father, even if she was reluctantly starting to admit that maybe -- maybe -- he wasn't the complete bastard she made him out to be.

Maybe.

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Stephanie smiled back, if a touch uncertainly since she'd noticed the past tense; not that she'd leap to any conclusions there, but.

"That sounds kind of sweet," she answered, since from her point of view that was exactly what it sounded like. "How about you -- are you musical at all?"

[angelo_wings]

"I'd probably think it was sweeter if my dad wasn't such a jerk," Rinoa admitted with a laugh. Much safer territory, right there. "Maybe I'm just too hard on him. I can play piano, but I don't sing very well. What about you?"

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

A flash of sympathy showed in Stephanie's face. "I know the feeling. My dad's a grade-A total slimeball, which is not me being hard on him," she admitted. "Me? I'm the last person you want to hear singing. I'm more of a sports gal myself."

[angelo_wings]

"I'm sorry," Rinoa said. "We should form a club, about our dads. I don't think mine's a slimeball, so I probably have it better than you. He just decided to turn into a robot and become a total jerk, and act like I wasn't even there."

To be fair, Rinoa's father had not been very good at coping with grief.

"What is yours like?" she asked. "Unless you don't want to talk about him. We can make this room a Dad-free zone."

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"I don't mind," Stephanie said quickly. "But I'm pretty sure nobody needs to hear all the sordid details of his repeat trips to jail, so we can totally make it a Dad-free zone. Besides, this movie's more . . ."

She had to pause and squint at the screen.

"Did the color guard just get into the mix?"