Third floor common room, Tuesday afternoon

[tigerundercover]

After getting thoroughly drenched and rather spattered with watermelon bits in class today -- that crinoline was never going to be the same -- Raven came back to the dorms in search of a shower, and decided to forgo her still-mostly-packed clothes in favor of shifting into an outfit right out of the shower. This meant that she could go for an outfit that wouldn't look quite so out of place in this futuristic (to her, at least) world.

It also meant that she was technically lounging around the common room naked, but it wasn't like anyone could tell.

She'd spent the last few days picking out all the things that the future didn't have -- flying cars, colonies on Mars, a cure for the common cold, all meals in pill form -- so now she was looking for some of the neat things it did. Color television! With all sorts of different people on it! Some of them had brightly colored hair! And there were women playing doctors and lawyers and police officers and even soldiers and things!

For a girl who came from a pre-second wave feminism world, this was remarkable.

[ooc: I dunno, open common room! Come save me from the Australian budget]

Comments

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"Hey," Tony said, making a beeline for the pantry. Where he might find more coffee and microwaveable food items.

How he was still alive was a mystery to all.

"Raven, right?"

[tigerundercover]

Raven looked up from the TV -- it was kind of like some of the shows she watched at home, with mom and a dad and some kids, but they were all loud and kind of hilariously angry and almost none of them looked like they'd walked out of a Sears catalog. "Hi," she said. "And you're Tony?" Her first thought, admittedly, was "the guy who made us run yesterday", but she knew better than to say that much out loud.

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"That'd be me," he assured her. "The fitness guy."

[tigerundercover]

"That's a terrible nickname," Raven decided. "You're going to need a new one."

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"It could be worse," Tony replied, starting a pot of coffee. Yes, at this time of day. "Want a cup?"

[tigerundercover]

"Yes, thank you." Raven didn't drink much coffee back home, but when in Rome -- or the future, rather. . . .

She stood up to come over and look at the machine. It didn't look much like the coffee maker Charles' parents used, but it wasn't so different that she couldn't recognize the parts.

"So this is the future," she mused. "I would have thought there'd be robots doing all this stuff, by now."

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

That got him to snort. "Not cost-effective," he replied. "But you can program the pot to start brewing it at a specific time."

[tigerundercover]

Raven sighed. "That's what I heard about moon colonies, too. And I guess jet packs and flying cars and holographic TVs and things. Seems like the only things the future is getting right is not going to war with Russia."

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"Only economically." And there was that time with the Crimson Dynamo... "How far back are you from?"

[tigerundercover]

"Sixty years," Raven said. "I almost didn't believe it at first. So much is still the same."

It honestly hadn't totally and completely set in until she was flipping channels on the TV -- with a remote! -- and had seen all the different types of people on the different channels -- hundreds of channels!

It was maybe a little sad that television was the most impressive thing she'd seen so far.

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"Has anyone shown you the internet?" NO, TONY. NO.

[tigerundercover]

"Is that some kind of protective grid?"

That would be a no.

[hoorayimrich.livejournal.com]

"..." You hurt him, Raven. You hurt him inside. "No. It's... like. Picture a big library that anyone can access or add to. Even the dumb people whose just want to post about how the government is trying to stomp on their gun owning rights or whatever."

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"Hey Raven, how's the 21st century treating you so far?" asked Anya as she poked in the common room. "Found any terrible TV show to obsess over yet?"

[tigerundercover]

"Hi, Anya. Why would I obsess over a tv show?" Raven asked. She'd only just discovered the internet, after all. "And how would I even choose? There's millions of them!"

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"Oh, it's a thing people do," Anya said as it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You'll find something sooner or later, don't worry."

[tigerundercover]

"What show do you obsess over?" It seemed like the obvious follow up question.

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"Me? I actually haven't seen much tv before coming here. I've been sort of busy as of late." Trying not to get killed and being a hero, stuff like that.

"But I did follow one or two telenovelas with my father a few years ago. Extremely cheesy stuff, completely ridiculous characters," Anya said, nostalgia strong in her voice. "So I guess I need to find something myself, too."

[tigerundercover]

"Do you want to join me, then?" Raven gestured to the tv with her remote. "Maybe you can help me avoid any really bad stuff." A lot of what she'd skimmed through seemed like it might be really bad stuff.

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"I'll totally join you," Anya said as she sat down. "Maybe I will! But I think it would be interesting to see what you consider bad stuff and what you don't. I'm not going to judge, but hey, different backgrounds and everything, this might be interesting."

Or terrible, Anya feared it might be terrible.

[tigerundercover]

"There's a lot of nudity," Raven remarked. She wasn't saying that was the bad stuff. "And some of the acting is really terrible."

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

Anya turned to get a better look at Raven for a moment. Yeah, she had expected her to be...scandalized? But apparently that hadn't been the case. "Oh yeah, nudity has sort of turned into a thing. Terrible acting too, but maybe you were looking at reality shows? Those are sort of a weird hybrid of tv shows and supposedly normal people being filmed all day long," Anya said.

"Good if you want to turn your brain off for a moment, but we can do better than Jersey Shore. Any genre you like?"

Television 101 by Anya Corazon, ladies and gents.

[tigerundercover]

"Why would you want to watch what normal people do all day?" Raven asked, honestly confused, then shrugged. "I'm supposed to say I like romance and things," she continued. "But the angry families are hilarious, and I love detective stories and things."

She was a big fan of the anti-hero, really.

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"Because they're not. I mean, who wants to be filmed all the time right? Attention seekers, that's who. So they usually do pretty silly things on screen," Anya explained, half amused, half judging those people.

"Raven, you're not supposed to say anything you don't want, at least not around here. I'm not sure if angry families is a genre though. Comedy? I can certainly point you to a couple of detective stories, although they're both remakes of the same guy that solves crimes. Good stuff though."

[tigerundercover]

"Why would they remake a tv show? Don't tell me they've run out of stories to tell." Remakes? Watching ordinary people? It certainly sounded like they'd run out.