fandomhighdorms | Third Floor Common Room, Late Saturday Night

Entry tags:

Third Floor Common Room, Late Saturday Night

It had been a terribly long day, but Eleanor couldn't sleep. The excitement from traveling five time zones and four decades, perhaps, or the nervous energy from not being on the run for the first time in days. She wasn't sure how to relax, and had wandered into some sort of communal space.

She hadn't watched television in years, although she hadn't realized the surface had quite so many channels. There had to be something on, with this many channels, didn't there?

And so, it was around midnight, and Eleanor Lamb was watching a program quite inexplicably titled OCTO ER. It seemed to be fashioned around the lives and times of a number of cepholopods working in a deep marine emergency room, though the plot seemed less concerned with medical emergencies than it did which octopodes were having carnal relations with each other.

Octopodes? Octopi? Maybe she'd wait for the show to mention it, and see which term was canonical.

(SO SO OPEN. Someone teach this girl that soapy dramas require popcorn! OCTO ER 4EVA. Idea hatched from a particularly hilarious typo to

furnaceface back in, erm, October.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Eleanor glanced up, and did a double-take, but a small one. Her roommate was some sort of alien; this boy just had dramatic markings on his face. She supposed one got used to it very quickly.

"I can't say I mind, but I don't know what that is," Eleanor said cheerfully. "I just came in to watch the television myself. If I'm not supposed to be here, tell me, I can go."

She wouldn't know what happened to the Cuttlefish, but she could live with that. Mostly.

"It's fine," Evan promised. "You have just as much right to be here as I do. I was just going to heat up some food and be on my way."

He opened the fridge and started poking through its contents. He had some leftover soup in here somewhere...

"... Is there anything good on?"

"I don't know if I'd call it good," Eleanor said, "but I'm watching something about marine cephalopods operating some kind of hospital, and I can't seem to stop watching it."

It wasn't Shakespeare, or Marlowe, but she really was curious about whether or not the reef squid had survived the marlin attack.

"... Cephalopods in a hospital? How is that even..."

He was going to have to abandon his soup quest for a moment to look back over at the screen.

"Is that a cuttlefish wearing scrubs?"

"He's the attending," Eleanor said easily. "He keeps getting passed over for promotion, so he's started building up resentment. And he suspects the blue-ring octopus of cheating on him, but really, she's just busy with work."

"Then he should know better," Evan reasoned, locating his soup at last and setting it down on the counter. "The hours that people in medical professions are expected to work are long and exhausting. When would she have time to cheat on him?"

You know... as an octopus and all.

"She doesn't," Eleanor said emphatically. "She gives of herself tirelessly to this hospital. It's taking such a toll on her. They're starting to draw in dark bags under her eyes. And still he has to be jealous. It's not becoming in the least."

"He sounds totally horrible, considering he's got 'cuddle' right there in his name," Evan noted. "Does she at least have friends?"

"Calamary is probably her best friend," Eleanor said, "but she gets so little screen time. They're too busy trying to play up whether she'll dump the cuttlefish and get back with the reef squid."

Evan plunked his soup into the microwave and hit a few buttons.

"This sounds like the weirdest soap opera ever," Evan observed, wandering over to watch for a minute while his food warmed up. "Is the reef squid any better for her, at least?"

"I'd say that he is," Eleanor said emphatically, "but then I don't know their whole history. I imagine some viewers want the blue-ring and cuttlefish to work it out, since it's been so tumultuous, but doesn't she deserve better by now?"

"I'm pretty sure she's earned it," Evan agreed. "Nobody needs to constantly contend with unnecessary jealousy, not even cephalopods."

"I'll admit, I'll be very disappointed if the show ends that way," Eleanor nodded. Clearly, at three episodes in, she was a connoisseur of the fine points of this television program. "I don't see why there's such a focus on who she dates to begin with. She's a grown cephalopod with an good career. They shouldn't reduce her life to romance."

"I guess that's how this kind of show usually works," Evan suggested. "I mean, I don't watch much TV, but that kind of seems like that's what people are watching this for."

A beat.

"Or maybe just sheer ludicrousness."

"I'd mock them, but I seem to be growing fond of it myself," Eleanor said. "I think deep down, people always want to hear stories."

"Yeah," Evan agreed, smiling faintly. "But some stories are way better than others."

A beat.

"Oh, that nautilus is actually kind of cute." A beat. "Um. For a nautilus."

WHAT WAS HE SAYING?

"This is what happens," Eleanor noted. "You start by thinking it's the most ridiculous show in history, and then you consider that nautilus to be rather fun, and the next thing you know, you're watching a marathon."

"This is a marathon?" Evan considered the screen, and then reluctantly made his way back to the kitchenette as the microwave went ding. He was still craning his neck a little so that he could keep watching as he collected his soup, though. "Oh, man. The last time I came in while people were watching a marathon of something, I wound up watching Mister What episodes for almost the entire night, and I had to work the next day."

... He still had to work the next day, but somehow he thought (mistakenly) that OCTO ER would be easier to escape.

"You have to work?" Eleanor asked, a curious tone in her voice. "I wasn't sure ... I haven't paid for my tuition, yet. What sort of jobs do they assign?"

"Oh, they don't actually assign any. I'm working in the library mostly just to keep busy." Evan gave her a little smile. "I really like books, you know?"

He scuffed his toe against the floor as he brought his soup back over to the TV.

"You can work if you want some spare spending money, but I still haven't had anyone so much as mention tuition to me. I think the school has some kind of rich benefactors or something to keep it going."

There was a subtle, but perceptible, shift in Eleanor's demeanor. Her back straightened, slightly, and she pulled in.

"Benefactors?" she asked. "What is it that they want?"

Edited 2014-01-06 04:49 (UTC)

Evan noticed that, yes. It was difficult to miss for a kid who had spent the last couple of years folding into himself.

"I think they just want to pay it forward. I'm pretty sure they used to be students here, too."

"Altruism," she said, her tone a touch bitter. She laughed, but there wasn't any mirth in it. "There are few things less trustworthy than someone hiding under the cloak of altruism."

Eleanor? Your issues were showing.

"Ah." Evan chewed his lip for a moment, and then nodded a little. "I was once, um... hurt. A lot. By some men that kept saying, over and over, that they were just teaching me, just showing me the way things were meant to me. It got... really ugly."

He was vaguing this one up a notch. And then some. And for good reason.

"So... I know to take altruism with a grain of salt. I mean... I'm not just going to blindly accept anyone's idea of 'help' again. Not after that. But this place is..." He frowned a little more, groping for words. "I think Fandom would keep going, with or without people throwing money at it. The island has a mind of its own. It wouldn't let go of what makes it Fandom so easily."

A pause, and then he was burying his face in his hand.

"And now I sound like a crazy person."

"No, you don't," Eleanor said quickly. "Not at all. I ... I understand, what you mean."

He and Raven both had been willing to expose themselves, in ways she still couldn't imagine doing; that made him brave, not crazy.

Thinking of Raven made her connect a few other dots. She doubted if the boy was an alien, he'd look quite so human; he was human, just with some unusual features.

"Are ... you a mutant?" she asked. And then, remembering her conversation with Jeff, "... Is it rude if I ask that?"

Third Floor Common Room, Late Saturday Night

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)