fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Saturday Afternoon

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Second Floor Common Room, Saturday Afternoon

Natalie was spending her Saturday the way she sent most Saturdays: studying. Hey, she hadn't been in any of her workshops this week due to her impromptu trip to Montreal. She had to catch up. Never mind that she'd been keeping up with her independent coursework even while at home, and catching up with taught workshops seemed to be limited to absently thinking that if she was going to miss a lecture on one of the seven deadly sins, lust was probably the right one to skip.

But whatever. She could still use this time on working on her Latin wordforms and reading ahead in Economics. And she could do it while sitting cross-legged on a couch in the common room, too. That was quite enough pretending to be social for her, especially since the previous week was still making her wary of specifically seeking people out.

There were some bags of tea and an empty cup on the counter in the kitchen area, but they seemed abandoned now. Natalie was drinking Pepsi.

[ooc: Open, duh!]

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While Evan didn't live down on the second floor, there was that one undeniable fact of the matter, that he had to actually go by the second floor on his way down to most anything that resembled civilization. And, aside from classes, which he'd been pretty quiet in this week, he hadn't really done much in the way of embracing that civilization thing, either. Last week had been weird. That he'd spent it thinking that the crazy pink lady was somehow a good guy just made it weirder. But his Uncle had called him after he'd failed to check in last week, and had told him to get off his butt and go outside, and so that was what he was going to do.

Honest.

Unless he chickened out and decided to slowly work his way up to dealing with more than one person at a time. Which, of course, led him to wander into the common room on his way to the great outdoors, looking kind of sheepish as he realized that the girl on the couch was reading.

"Sorry," he murmured a few steps into the room. "I didn't realize I was interrupting anything."

"This isn't my room," Natalie noted, dryly but not unkindly, just barely glancing up. She was just that close to the end of the current chapter, see. "If I wanted to stay completely undisturbed, I would have stayed in my room."

"Oh." Evan hesitated where he stood, and then shrugged and made his way into the common room, after all. That sounded about as close to an invitation as anyone had ever given him at his last school, and, like she said, this wasn't her room. It was easy enough to hide around here, so long as you kept your door shut. "Well... is it an interesting book, then?"

"Economics," Natalie replied, as if that was really enough to say it all. After a moment, she elaborated anyway. "I've read more interesting things."

But knowing about economics could turn out useful later in life, so, there it was.

Knowing about a lot of things could turn out useful later in life. Evan looked intrigued, even if the subject didn't sound exactly thrilling.

"There are worse things to read about, too," he decided, walking over to get a better look at the cover of the book. "I keep meaning to pick up a textbook on economics once I've worked through some more of my reading list, even if it does make my uncle think I'm crazy."

Natalie actually looked up now. And didn't bat an eye at the way he looked, by the way. This was Fandom, after all.

"They have economics as an independent option here," she offered mildly, holding up the book for that better look. "What kind of a reading list are you working on?"

Evan smiled, leaning in and committing the title and he author of the book to memory. He'd have to pull a copy of it from the library, the next time he went.

"A little bit of everything I can get my hands on," he admitted. "They had a course-load at my last school that was about as varied as the one here, and I don't want to fall behind, in case I end up having to go back there at the end of the summer or something. And that stuff always leads into other topics... I have a bunch of books on evolution back in my room right now, and about Egyptian history, and some fiction for when I need a break from studying."

Edited 2012-08-04 21:23 (UTC)

Natalie nodded as she lowered the book into her lap again. She tended to approve of reading, unsurprisingly. Knowledge was kind of a big thing.

"Most people here don't really do that," she noted. "Studying on their own. And the taught classes aren't exactly much work by themselves."

"Not really, I guess," Evan agreed, shrugging a bit. "Professor Montague's poetry class is about the closest thing to an academic course I've seen so far. Writing haiku and sonnets and things. But there's not really any homework or anything, is there?"

He was kind of lost without homework, truth be told. It kept him busy, putting a practical application to the things he read.

"I went into study hall once, but all of the Professor Madroxes were playing baseball with oranges, which isn't really good for studying."

"Yeah, he's like that," Natalie said, with the same kind of neutrality that students outside Fandom would have used about a teacher who tended to mumble a bit while lecturing, or something else mundane.

They had their own sort of normal, here. "I usually just study in my room. Or here."

Honestly, the neutrality was a bit refreshing. Evan wasn't entirely certain what to make of going to a school where most of the other kids spent so much time freaking out about things that were a little different from normal.

"I guess if you're studying in here, at least people come through now and then to remind you to take a break," Evan mused. "What other stuff do you study, if you don't mind me asking? Or is it all economics?"

Natalie lived with her slacker of a boyfriend. She got plenty reminders to take a break or two, just by staying in her room.

"Right now Latin, European lit, and American history," she replied, then shrugged. "But I've done various kinds of math and lit and psych previously."

An all-around nerd, yeah.

Nerds of the world, unite!

"I've studied American history back home," Evan shared, "and tried to continue where I left off here, but a lot of the names and events are different. Now I've got twice as much to study, but it's kind of fascinating to see where the differences are between realities, you know? Figuring out what people on the mainland were doing while back home they were dealing with Skrull invasions or first starting to come to grips with people with powers."

The mainland was kinda weird.

"I don't know what a Skrull is." Probably not that surprising. "But that's par for the course in Fandom. Where I come from isn't identical to the mainland either. But the history seems to be mostly the same."

"Shapeshifting aliens." Evan was all to happy to be educational like that. You're welcome, Natalie. "And it isn't just history that's different. Some of the geography is weird, too. You know, there's no such thing as Wakanda on the mainland? Or Madripoor?"

Why yes, he'd been reading atlases while bored the other day. Why?

"I, um, maybe made some spreadsheets to keep track of the differences. It'll never be done, I'm sure, but eventually I might start comparing to other realities, too. I'm curious, you know?"

"Yeah."

That may have come out a little... more obviously friendlier than most things she'd said so far. Or just said in general. Yeah, she got the curiosity. She had some of it herself.

"I don't know where Madripoor or Wakanda are, either," she added, back to her usual mildness. "But, again, not unusual. Keeping track of it can be educating, too."

It had been brief, but that little bit of extra friendliness went a long way. Evan grinned for a moment, and then nodded, trying to keep from bouncing on his toes.

"There's an Alternate Dimension Explorer's Club at my last school," Evan shared. "Or, at least there was back when Dr. McCoy still had time to run it. This is kind of like the next best thing, since this school doesn't really have something quite like that. I guess all the clubs start up again in the fall, though?"

"They do," Natalie nodded. "And to the best of my knowledge, no, there hasn't really been anything like that, no."

Not that she was an expert. She hadn't done the club thing. At all.

"Might get some people interested if there was, though."

Evan nodded a little. He was pretty sure there was a Portalocity office on the island. It wouldn't be quite the same as all the crazy technology that Dr. McCoy used, but maybe they'd offer discounts if it was for a school group or something?

"I'm not really interested in the fraternity or that sort of thing, but field trips to interesting landmarks in other people's realities could be kind of neat. Or even just learning about them. To give people a better idea of where their classmates are coming from, if nothing else."

Natalie nodded again, just once. "There's a lot of places to choose from, assuming it wouldn't end up just being a bunch of kids from more or less the same kind of modern Earth," she said. "There's a lot of us for who the differences are just in the details."

Hmm... She had a point there, and Evan wrinkled his nose a bit as he tried to think of some way to work around it.

"I guess there are more people who come from one Earth or another than not," he allowed, scuffing a toe against the floor sheepishly. "I wonder if the library has any books on interdimensional travel?"

If they didn't, the Portalocity office would probably have all sorts of promotional materials for tourist traps from every universe imaginable...

"Portalocity probably has a bunch of stuff," Natalie remarked, because, yeah. That would be where she'd go first. "Although it's also more likely to be really touristy. But it's a start."

"Touristy should be okay, so long as there are museums or something," Evan decided, thoughtfully. "I think any place that the school board would approve us going to is probably going to he inhabited by people who have the time and the care to preserve their past. Maybe?"

He hoped so!

"Libraries and things!"

"You obviously haven't met the school board."

Please excuse Natalie for her antipathy towards the board. The treasurer happened to be a creep who seemed to know her.

"But who knows, you might luck out. I'm not sure they care much about our trips."

"Oh..." Well, that was a little disheartening. But then, at his last school they'd been taken on a field trip inside the janitor. So... "Maybe I'd have better luck finding a teacher to screen potential field trips, instead."

Ooh! Like Captain America! Or Thor!

... Probably not Thor.

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