First Floor Parlor [Saturday evening]

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

Celia had grown tired of the strange coldness of the room she shared with Eleanor -- it came and went, in patches and bursts, and something about the room made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. As much as she loved the architecture and design of the house, and as much as it was almost a relic of home...perhaps it had been left too long on its own.

Still, there wasn't much she could do about it, so Saturday night found Celia wandering out to the parlor and tucking herself onto a couch to watch the television. She flipped through channels, since that was really all she knew to do, yet, until she stumbled across some sort of bizarre medical show, in which people conducted interviews about something called a botched plastic surgery.

Celia paused as a woman described how her nose had turned out completely wrong, and how new doctors would be correcting the prior doctor's mistake. Celia only had long enough to realize that they were going to show the surgery before the channel abruptly changed to some sort of advertisement.

Without her doing so.

The advertisement was not nearly as interesting as the surgery -- there was a man telling her, in a very extended sort of way, why she ought to own something called a Ninja Blender. But she'd leave it, for just now. She wasn't messing with the remote again, for the moment. Either the television was acting on its own (bad) or there was something else at work (also bad.)

[open, omg! hat tip to nobloodymessiah for Botched, which sounds like a horrifying/awesome show.]

Comments

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Why did you change the channel?" Eleanor asked, from her position in the doorway. She'd just been wandering by, but, well. People giving themselves new faces. It was darkly fascinating, and reminded her of the Medical Pavilion in Rapture.

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

"I didn't," Celia said, frowning at the remote, still. "It did that on its own. Is that common?"

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps you bumped the remote control without meaning to," Eleanor offered, strolling in to take a seat on the nearest chair. "I've done that before. Or maybe the technology itself had a momentary glitch. These things can be so temperamental."

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

"I don't understand them at all," Celia sighed, warily plucking the remote back up and trying to pick back through the channels to find the one with the fascinating surgery show. She slanted a look at Eleanor, in the meantime. "Did you have fun at your first Independence Day? I'm assuming, anyway."

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"I did," Eleanor laughed, clapping her hands together in barely suppressed glee. "I'd heard of fireworks, but I never imagined -- the whole sky exploding like that. I've never seen anything like it."

She glanced back at the television before adding, "We didn't celebrate American holidays, in Rapture. For that matter, I might technically be a British citizen, via mother. I wonder if that makes it inappropriate, for me to enjoy the Independence Day festivities."

If so, that would make it even more delightful.

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Some people get squeamish at that sort of thing," Joker chided gently, as he wandered up behind her. Synchronized wandering! "Or else lose their faith in humanity. Maybe a little of both."

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Why has this cost you your faith in humanity?" Eleanor asked, giving him a curious look. "People want to be different, and some pay good money for it. It can't always go well."

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Not the part where the surgeries didn't go well," Joker clarified. "The part where they wanted to have them at all. You haven't seen the things people will do to themselves in the name of beauty. It's messed up."

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

Eleanor raised an eyebrow at Joker, and held it for a long moment.

"You think I haven't seen what people will do to themselves, in the name of beauty?" she asked. Her tone was light, but there was a sharp edge underlying it. "You think I would be surprised, the lengths to which people will go."

Tread carefully, Joker.

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

Joker took in the few moments of plastic surgeons with a sigh. "Well, it's good to know that Beverly Hills hasn't changed much in the past hundred and fifty years. Add a celebrity with a drug addiction, and it'll be just like TV back home."

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

"This is -- wait, this sort of surgery is normal?" Celia asked, horrified, as she flipped back to the correct channel again. So irritating and so unsettling, simultaneously. "It's not just some oddity that's being broadcast for television?"

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Well, most people don't put it on television for everyone to see, but... yeah." Joker shrugged apologetically. "I mean, plastic surgeons do important things, too, like fixing people's faces after horrifying accidents, but for everyone of them, there's like a hundred people who just don't like their nose. And thousands who want fewer wrinkles and bigger breasts."

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

Celia blushed bright red, because Victorian, but she was more puzzled than anything else. "Is there no longer any dignity in just aging gracefully?" she wondered indignantly. "People age. Just because science can answer vanity's call doesn't mean it should."

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"There's plenty of dignity in aging gracefully," Joker replied. "The problem is, most people don't have any dignity. I mean, the only new part here is the medical science. Ponce de Leon didn't get lost in a swamp looking for a fountain of soothing bubbles, you know."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

If Elsa was shimmying a little closer to Joker after entering the room, hair down and eyes wide, it was because he seemed the one most likely to understand what in the world people were watching in here.

She pointed at the screen.

"What."

It appeared to be something that wanted very much to grow up to be a nose someday.

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Welllll... She went to a surgeon to get her nose fixed, and they did that to it instead. These surgeons, I think, are going to fix the other surgeon's horrible mistakes." Joker shrugged. "And it's on television because everyone loves a good train wreck. Welcome to the modern era."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"This is not actually instilling me with much faith in modern surgical techniques," Elsa volunteered, once she had managed to parse most of that. "Or people in general, I think."

Train wreck indeed.

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Well, it's not meant to instill you with faith in people in general," Joker pointed out. "'Cause people are nuts. As far as surgery goes? The problem isn't with the techniques, because they're pretty damn good. The problem is that any surgery has a tiny amount of risk, and there's a lot of unnecessary surgery going on."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa was looking slightly perturbed as she made her way into the parlor. She had wanted to try to get an early sleep tonight, to perhaps to into town tomorrow to get away from this place and all of its eerie quirks, but something had taken to hovering over her head whenever her eyes were closed and she had half a mind to see if perhaps there was enough room to grab a nap on the sofa, at least.

Yes, she had taken the time to dress herself properly before heading down, though her hair was hanging in a loose braid over her shoulder. Pinning it all up again just to try to get some sleep seemed silly, at best.

"What in the world..."

She wasn't certain what that was on the television there, but she was half wondering if maybe she had been better off with the eerie feeling back in her room.

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Plastic surgery gone wrong," Eleanor shared, from her position on a nearby chair. "People wanted to make themselves prettier, and the results were, to be charitable, suboptimal."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"I... see..." Elsa stared in horror at the screen for a moment, and then inched her way over to a chair not far from Eleanor's. "And somebody thought that this needed to be recorded for posterity and shared with the entire world?"

Television still baffled Elsa, somewhat.

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Have you ever seen something so horrifying that, while you don't necessarily want to look, you can't look away?" Eleanor asked. "A gruesome accident, perhaps, or a painful or humiliating conversation at the next table."

It seemed to be a very human impulse, to look closer at a trainwreck.

"It's being recorded for posterity for the most crass of reasons: money."

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

"I have no idea what's wrong with it," Celia greeted Elsa with a sigh. "I think the television may have some sort of desire to sell me something called a blender, because it keeps coming to this advertisement."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"Or perhaps it's as confused as I am about what was on before?" Elsa fidgeted with her braid for a moment, staring at the television before looking back at Celia. "I think blenders are a tool people use to prepare food."

She knew that much, at least. It was good to be able to make some sense of the situation.

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

"'Prepare' seems like an awfully gentle word for what that looks like," Celia said, staring at the television in surprise. "'Pulverize' maybe. 'Liquefy.'"

She shook her head, bewildered. "The prior program was on badly-gone surgeries, which was significantly more interesting, though no less confusing."