Fourth Floor Common Room [Thursday night]

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

Olive had woken today to discover that, tragically, she did not still taste of oranges. She did move past this -- she'd kind of hoped it was a permanent change because hi, oranges tasted nice and Olive occasionally had a slightly dirty mind -- and had gone to class and everything.

But then a whole new tragedy had occurred.

She was parked in front of the television with a bottle of nail polish and bared feet, fully prepared to have an evening of politics and pedicures. But every time she tried to watch the DNC -- she really, really wanted one of the celebrities coming tonight to yell at a chair, shut up -- it was in Spanish. On CNN, on NBC -- all the news channels were, inexplicably, only broadcasting the convention en español.

And so Olive, nail polish forgotten, was trying to parse together what she could, based upon three years of public school Spanish. "Barack Obama has a...help for the February?"

Olive had never been gifted at foreign language, no.

[totes open, and bless you, craftyladyparts, for the prompt.]

Comments

[notconflicted]

Currently, Sia lived next door to a wannabe- if not actual- bounty hunter who was considering turning her in for a reward, and so far going home before anything could happen wasn't feasible at the moment. That meant her next best option was to basically stay in public where there were witnesses.

"What are you watching?" she asked, more confused by what was happening here than actually interested in it.

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"Politics," she said, frowning a little. "I can't find it in English though so I'm just trying to kind of figure it out based on context clues and what little bit I actually understand. I'm pretty sure public education has failed me, though, because nothing quite makes sense to me."

[notconflicted]

"This is why your planet needs protocol droids," Sia said, taking a seat. "You can get the gist of what they're saying from body language, too."

Trust her on that.

[pursuedthestars]

There was no one in his common room and Jim really didn't feel like entertaining himself so he went up a few floors, spotted someone familiar and ambled on in.

"Is the television broken?" Jim asked, brow furrowing at the unfamiliar language. "Or are my ears still messed up from the fire drill?"

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"No, for some reason we can only get the convention in Spanish," she said, sighing. "Everything else is in English. There's a Molly Ringwald movie on that I could be watching but I'm trying to like, enrich my mind."

[pursuedthestars]

"Convention?" Jim asked, leaning over the back of the couch to get a better look at what she was watching. "Convention of what? Clowns? That'd be awesome. A convention of Spanish speaking clowns!"

[notconflicted]

"Hopefully the first thing, since the second would probably mean a clinic visit," Sia said.

[pursuedthestars]

"Definite pass on that," Jim said, rubbing one of his ears for good measure. "That mean you're hearing the weird words too? Unless it's an epidemic of ear related injuries, that probably means it's the television. Good news there."

[ultron_junior]

"TV decided you guys needed a Spanish lesson," Victor informed him. "I'm not sure why it's using a political convention to do it, but..."

He shrugged.

[pursuedthestars]

"Even if they were speaking something I understood, I'd still take a pass on this," Jim admitted, giving his head a shake. "Seems kinda boring. Politics and all."

[ultron_junior]

Victor hesitated by the door for a moment, following the speech for a few sentences before he realized what was a little odd about it.

"I didn't know John Kerry spoke Spanish," he commented. "Is this a Univision dub or something?"

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"We can only get the DNC in Spanish," Olive said, shaking her head as she craned her neck to smile a hello at him. "I've messed with all the settings and I'm pretty sure it's just a Fandom thing? So I'm getting like every fourth word. It's interesting."

[ultron_junior]

"Oh, right, I once got only telenovelas," Victor told her. He paused to listen a bit more. "He's not saying anything you wouldn't expect. Democrats good, Republicans bad, pair of bunny slippers to everybody if Obama gets reelected..."

So maybe one of those things was not a direct translation.

"Hi," he added, and took a seat.

[notconflicted]

"Univision?"

Sia was learning all sorts of new things tonight.

[ultron_junior]

Victor smiled a little. "Spanish-language network," he explained. "Sometimes they translate important news stuff. But I think this one is just Fandom."

[craftyladyparts.livejournal.com]

"I'm not the only one who has no idea what they're saying, right?" Jessica asked as she walked in and realized what was on and what language it was in.

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"I'm getting like a third of it," Olive told her. "I'm way better at Spanish when they speak slower and I can see it written down, so...mostly I'm guessing."

[craftyladyparts.livejournal.com]

"I'm going to have to rely on their broad hand gestures unless you change it to English," Jessica said.

[ultron_junior]

"Um, I understand it perfectly," Victor told her. "Your ears are broken."

So he was maybe a little smug about apparently being the only bilingual person in the room.

[craftyladyparts.livejournal.com]

"Nice try," Jessica said. "But I know Spanish when I hear it. I just don't understand it."

[notconflicted]

"You may be in the majority there," Sia told her. "Congratulations."

Because she had no clue.

[craftyladyparts.livejournal.com]

"Hooray, I'm not alone!" Jessica cheered. "We should get medals."

[nonelikemesince.livejournal.com]

Sometimes even Anakin realized that he'd been absorbed in a project way too long. Sure, the program he'd written to compile and sort HoloNet news of interest to him was working really well, but there was always room to improve it, and that had taken up most of his day, and . . .

Well, he'd surfaced, that was the point, and gone in search of food.

"What are we --" He didn't need to understand the language to recognize what was going on. "Oh."

Anakin sounded less than thrilled. Personable, wasn't he?

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"I'm waiting to see if someone'll yell at inanimate objects on TV," Olive said, waving at the newcomer. "But I don't understand what they're saying so I'm reliant on Victor for translations at the moment. Hi!"

[notconflicted]

"It's more interesting trying to figure out what they're saying by body language," Sia told him. Especially when she had only a vague grasp on the issues here.