fandomhighdorms | Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening

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Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening

Well, around five on Thursday evening, Topher learned that Portalocity officially sucked harder than he had ever suspected, because they'd somehow managed to jostle his luggage on his return trip from Africa badly enough that his laptop screen was cracked.

He had other laptops, yeah, but this one was the fastest, so until he could replace it tomorrow, he grabbed an HDMI cable, hooked it up to display on the TV, and checked his email there. And then some forums. And then his Facebook and some tracked tags on Tumblr and... look, he had a lot of stuff going on, okay? He doubted anyone was going to say anything.

After a while, he began wondering whether there was anything else he was supposed to do tonight. There was some work for Peter he still had to do, of course, but that kind of thing probably merited more privacy than a common room TV screen. There was... oh, right, wasn't he supposed to talk to that Tomato girl?

Not Tomato. Another vegetable. Or maybe plant. Was Venus Fly Trap a name? No, wait, she wasn't a superhero, that didn't sound right.

But Topher was comfortable, and he didn't want to talk to Lettuce when he could just hang out on the couch here. Internet-stalking her was almost the same thing, right? Sure, it took a little more effort since he had to actually check the school database for a list of names first in order to find out what her actual name was (and Topher personally thought Tomato would've been a better choice, but hey, that was Olive's parents' fault), but before long he had a few searches going.

Hmm. There was a surprising amount of dirt on this girl, Topher had to say. Including something called freeolive.com, which brought him to a video.

"I really hope this isn't a creepy valkyrie thing," he said aloud, eyeing it dubiously before hitting play.

[[this common room brought to you by request of

dirtiest_skank, of course. please beware spoilers for easy a within, but it is open!]]

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Oh hay, a soap opera starring someone from this school?

It was a grainy image of Olive on the screen, obviously taken with a middle-quality webcam, and shot in her bedroom in Ojai. She was wearing a perfectly mundane purple tank top, probably looking very much like how people in Fandom usually saw her.

"The rumors of my promiscuity have been greatly exaggerated," she began. "I used to be anonymous -- invisible to the opposite sex. If Google Earth were a guy, he couldn't find me if I were dressed up like a ten-story building. Pretty cutting edge stuff, huh? A high school girl, feeling anonymous? 'Who am I, what does it all mean, why am I here, blah'?" Olive made a face. "But don't worry -- this isn't one of those tales -- though it sure started out that way. And then it changed very quickly when I started lying about some really personal things. So let the record show that I, Olive Penderghast, being of sound mind and...below average breast size, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Starting now. And what better way to share my private thoughts than to broadcast them on the internet? "

She sighed, pulling up a handwritten sign. "So here it is -- Part One: The Shudder Inducing and Cliched, However Totally FALSE Account of How I Lost My Virginity to a Guy at Community College."

[In this segment, Olive details how she told Rhiannon she had a date with a guy who 'goes to college with her brother,' whose name is George, and that's why she can't go camping with Rhi and her nudist hippie parents. In actuality, she explains, she spent the weekend in her bedroom doing nothing productive and listening to a card that plays 'Pocket Full of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield. She explains that because Rhiannon filled in her own details after the weekend, she assumes that Olive totes had sex with George. ("I don't know why I did it. I guess it was because this was the first time I'd ever felt superior to Rhi. But I kept piling on lie after lie -- it was like setting up Jenga.") Then, unfortunately, their conversation is overheard by the ultra-conservative Marianne Bryant, who went on to spread the story around the school. ("Marianne Bryant is the secretary of the student council, chairman of the Orange Blossom Dance committee, and the president of the Cross Your Heart Club -- a club dedicated to shoving their beliefs down your throat.")]

"Now Marianne had a new cause célèbre -- me," Olive sighed, rolling her eyes and pulling up another sign. "Which brings us to Part Two: The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude. Which...is really just my obnoxious way of saying that lies travel fast. And boy, did my terminological inexactitude accelerate with velocity."

[In this segment, Olive details how people were now paying attention and it was sort of nice, even if it was because everyone thought she'd had sex with a guy at college. ("Remember how I told you Google Earth couldn't find me if I was dressed up like a ten-story building? Well, the next day, it could find me if I was dressed as a crack on the sidewalk.That's the beauty of being a girl in high school -- people hear you have sex once, and bam! You're a bimbo. I really didn't mean for the lie to put me on the map, but I gotta admit -- I kinda liked being on the map.") She also tells a brief anecdote about how this is the second time that her sex life has been the talk of the school -- the first being in eighth grade, when she and Todd had been chosen for 'Seven Minutes in Heaven,' and she'd lied and told everyone they'd made out so he wouldn't be viewed as a wuss when they walk out having not kissed. Aaaand she rounds things out by talking about how they were studying ~~the meta for~~ The Scarlet Letter in English, and wasn't that how things always went? And she also does a terrible British accent.

And then Olive called a girl a 'twat' in class for calling her out as a skank, and was sent to the principal's office, and thus given detention alongside a boy named Brandon, who was beaten up for being gay and got detention for calling the principal a fascist.]

"The next day, things took a turn for the scandalous," Olive said onscreen with a smirk. "Which brings me to Part Three: A Lady's Choice, and a Gentleman's Agreement."

[In this segment, THE LONGEST ONE SORRY BECAUSE MOST OF IT IS NOT TOLD VIA WEBCAST, Olive explains that Brandon proposed that they "go out" to keep the bullies off him, and maintain her reputation. Olive's response was that she doesn't do anything half-assed, so once she caved, they "hooked up" at Melody Bostick's party. ("Brandon and I showed up when it was in full swing -- I borrowed a dress from my mom, Brandon borrowed a jacket from me, and we put on a little show.") They made fake sex noises behind a door, Olive shoved her panties in the keyhole so no one could see that they were just jumping on the bed, and Brandon emerged a man. ("Maybe this is going to sound stupid, and it's not like I was expecting fireworks, or a string quartet or anything, but I always thought that pretending to lose my virginity would be more...I dunno. Special? Judy Blume should have prepared me for this.") But then, Olive got a call the next night from Rhiannon, who called her a ho and was indignant that Olive hadn't told her. As a result of this fight, Olive went out and bought a bunch of lingerie, and sewed little red A's onto them, per their current material in English. ("People thought I was a dirty skank? Fine. I'd be the dirtiest skank they'd ever seen.") Confessional Olive is also going to take a moment here to hold up some photos of herselfwearing some...outfits, in case anyone had missed what she meant.

Olive goes on to say that she made this her regular wardrobe, while people around her questioned it/prayed for her. ("I didn't know what they were so upset about. I put an A on my wardrobe just like they'd asked. Maybe it was because I was wearing clothes that were two sizes too small.") And it was all just going to be a prank, until she was approached by a boy to do the same thing as she did for Brandon -- and that he'd pay her. And she took pity on him, just like with Brandon. ("It should come as no surprise that the rumor I was soliciting sex for money spread around the school faster than...well, the first rumor about me spread. And for people who knew the truth, I was open for business. And whether I liked it or not, I had a lot of customers. Bill Lorre gave me a hundred bucks from Best Buy so he could tell people we hooked up behind the library. I got fifty dollars from TJ Maxx so that Eric Linger could say we got it on during chemistry. Ninety dollars from Panda Express so that Bryan Dukes could tell people I showed him mine but he did not show me his.") She also details that she wishes her life was like an eighties movie, and that this would turn out to be quirky and fun.]

"So, if you're still with me -- and I'm hoping most of you are," Olive said, looking a bit doubtful about this point as she held up another sign, "this brings us to Part Four: How I, Olive Penderghast, Went from Assumed Trollop to an Actual Homewrecker."

[Olive explains in this segment WHICH IS ALSO THE LONGEST that her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith, asked his wife -- the guidance counselor -- to speak to her. Mrs. Griffith brought Olive into her office and basically just threw a bunch of condoms at her without really listening. As she was leaving, Marianne caught her and after a brief conversation where Olive was not a total asshole to her, Marianne assumed she had 'saved' her. Their friendship, Olive explains, lasted all of a day, until...Marianne's boyfriend ended up being hospitalized with chlamydia. And under duress, who should he have said gave it to him but Olive? Marianne found Olive immediately and slapped the hell out of her, and Olive ran into Mrs. Griffith, who was freaking out...because she gave it to him. And Olive, in the name of not ruining her favorite teacher's marriage, said that she could totally have chlamydia. ("Maybe it was becoming a habit of mine, to help the downtrodden -- or maybe I just couldn't stand to see my favorite teacher's marriage crumble. But I decided to help.")

And as Olive left Mrs. Griffith's tear-streaked office, she was met with protesters and picketers. ("So I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that these people wanted my diseased ass out of there. The funny thing is, the whole time this was going down, I couldn't help but think how I could've come up with better signs.") And of course, Rhiannon was with the protesters, which was basically Olive's breaking point. She tells us how she ran around town that day trying to figure out if the religion angle had something to it. ("I was used to being by myself, but I'd never felt more alone. So I thought I should at least look into what they were running around thumping about.") Olive spent an afternoon going from a bookstore to look at a bible, to a confessional booth, to an actual minister -- who turned out to be Marianne's dad, so she ran out.

Olive explains she was feeling overwhelmed ("To say this whole thing had taken over my life would be a collossal understatement. I actually reread the book to see how Hester dealt with this, and it turns out she bore her punishment with humble silence. Which...are two concepts that I'm not comfortable with.") but that the next day at school, things were looking up. She was asked out on a date by Anson, one of the cutest guys in school and incidentally, he who Rhi was crushing on. But in the end, he was just trying to proposition her with a Home Depot gift card, and she was driven home by her friend Todd, who worked at the restaurant. As a result of this incident, Olive tried to get her 'conquests' to come out with the truth as a result, with very poor results. She tried to get Mrs. Griffith to tell the truth, too, and when she wouldn't go along with it, Olive ran and told her husband. ("Yeah, Mrs. Griffith was pure evil, but I still shouldn't have done what I did. Mr. Griffith, if you ever see this, I just want to say I was wrong to tell you that, in that way, at all. I shouldn't have done it. And I don't even feel bad for lying for your wife, but I hate myself for telling you the truth. I am so sorry. With my words, even if they were true, I ended a marriage. Looking back on it, that's the thing I regret the most.")

"So it was time to put an end to all this, once and for all, by telling my side of the story, and that's why I decided to do this webcast," Olive said, hauling up a final sign. "So here we go -- Part Five: Not with a Fizzle, but with a Bang. Today we had yet another one of our ridiculous pep rallies. Todd convinced the band to play the sexiest number in their repetoire. I needed to pique everyone's interest enough to get them to go home and log on. I had one outfit left, and I figured about thirty seconds to do it. Plus, I really wanted my own awesome musical number for no apparent reason. And here you all are. Waiting outside the bedroom door for me to kiss Todd, listening to me pretend to have sex with Brandon, paying me to lie for you, and calling me every name in the book. And you know what, it was just like Hester. Except that's the one thing the movies don't tell you -- how shitty it feels to be an outcast, warranted or not."

At this point in the webcast, the grainy version of Olive seemed to see something out her window, and the strains of 'Don't You Forget About Me' could be heard. She dipped offscreen, having a conversation with someone outside her window, and returned. "That's Todd. Not that I owe you guys any more confessions, but...I really like this guy. And I might even lose my virginity to him. I dunno when it'll happen -- maybe five minutes from now, or tonight, or six months from now, or maybe on our wedding night, but the really amazing thing is -- it is nobody's goddamn business."

And with that, she turned away from her camera, and scampered out her bedroom door, leaving the rest of the webcast to dead air.

[LAST SEGMENT! Olive explains about the origins of the pep rally stunt, then wraps things up.]

Hey, look what someone posted in the comments! Just in case you really need to see that pep rally stunt to believe it, ahem.

Go on, guess who this might be. Guess.

Please wait for her to ping in, and then you're welcome to respond to her reaction underneath!

Edited 2012-10-18 14:07 (UTC)

*flops*

The OCD is, of course, thanks to Erin, as was this idea. La.

Atton wandered in because... well, it was a Thursday evening, he was bored, and he didn't feel like making his way down to Caritas just yet. He crashed out on the couch with some food that was only arguably his, and eyed the television.

"I didn't realize this was home-vid night."

"It is, in fact, 'historical background about fellow students' night," Topher corrected him. "See?" He pointed at the screen. "Historical background about a fellow student."

Atton gave him the side-eye. "Please tell me this isn't some kind of weird tradition."

Because in that case he'd have to get out of here stat.

"Just for people who are dating Victor," Topher assured him. "I just made it up."

Well, that ruled him out. Forever.

"You're nosy, aren't you?"

Tragic!

"Little bit," Topher agreed.

So Atton had spruced up his meal of stolen-snacks by ganking someone's booze out of the fridge at random by this point, and now he was just kind of hanging around.

"So... that was it?"

Damn, but some people at this school were squeaky-clean.

"I know," Topher said, tilting his head at the screen. "I thought from the title there might've been some shooting at people. Maybe that Catholic girl."

"Want some--" Atton checked the thing he was holding, "...Pringles?"

"Why does that girl look like Olive?" Victor asked, barely glancing at the screen as he wandered in and headed for the fridge.

A second later, he heard her voice and realized it was Olive. Then she said something about sex and he forgot he'd wanted a Sprite. The next thing he knew, he was sitting down, glued to the screen.

He wasn't sure what to make of this yet, but he wasn't leaving until it was over.

"Totally," Topher said, because what kind of weirdo passed up Pringles? "Trade you for some popcorn."

They were considerate kids.

"'Cause her webcam's pretty decent," Topher shared. "She made some webcast for people to watch, I guess."

"Huh," Victor said doubtfully. "Guess if she put it up in public she must not mind people watching."

He didn't sound convinced of that, but it was enough to let him justify continuing to watch it.

Victor doubted Olive had ever been invisible, but whatever. Maybe she was too sharp for Ojai guys. And he winced at the bit about her lie -- it was kind of a dumb thing to do, but he'd met Rhi and got why Olive had done it. Mostly, he was sympathetic to how quickly it had all spiraled out of control.

"That's my opinion on it," Topher said. "It only took a basic search of her name, so."

He stuck his bag of popcorn out in Victor's direction. The kind that came already popped, not the kind he'd had to make himself. He wouldn't go that far. "Popcorn?"

... huh.

It wasn't that Victor was in a position to have some huge moral objection to this. He'd slept with Nico basically because they were sad and needed distraction, and he'd pretty much cheated on her too; if anything, Olive had the advantage, because at least her messed-up sex life was imaginary.

But the fact she'd gotten paid for lying did make him a little uncomfortable.

(He liked the way she looked in the lingerie -- he'd dated a Goth, this should not be a surprise -- but that struck him as less than completely relevant.)

"Maybe we should turn this off," he said, not sounding too sure about it. "This is all, like, ancient history."

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Page 1 of 6

Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening

Arrive!

Part One: The Shudder Inducing and Cliched, However Totally FALSE Account of How I Lost My...

Part Two: The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude

Part Three: A Lady's Choice and a Gentleman's Agreement

Part Four: How I, Olive Penderghast, Went from Assumed Trollop to an Actual Homewrecker

Part Five: Not With A Fizzle, But With A Bang

Deleted Scene

An Unexpected Visitor

OOC

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Re: Part Five: Not With A Fizzle, But With A Bang

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