The deck, Friday afternoon

[intotheout]

Tip was feeling restless and cooped up, and she wasn't about to go back up to the roof of the dorms any time soon -- thanks for that, Peridot -- so she headed out onto the deck, instead, bringing her notebook and pencil with her so she could practice drawing comics to send back to J.Lo.

She managed to get half of the outline of the shape of the deck onto paper before she got bored and frustrated and ended up doodling what looked a bit like some sort of flying vampire jellyfish in the corner instead.

Maybe she should just stick to writing.

[Open!]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

"Hey," Dante called, stepping out onto the deck. "Look who's bored this time."

... okay, the answer was also him, but whatever.

[intotheout]

"Bored," Tip agreed. "Frustrated. I knew being in space could be boring, but I thought it was only the big empty parts between planets."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, at least Baltimore has dance clubs," Dante sighed, even if that probably wasn't what she was talking about. "What're you drawing?"

Not that he was desperate for a distraction, or anything like that.

[intotheout]

Tip looked down at her page and sighed. "A flying vampire jellyfish. I guess." She shook her head. "J.Lo's people tell all their stories in comics, so I was trying to practice for my letters home to him." She tossed the notebook aside with a huff. "Turns out I'm a terrible artist."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. He picked out a chair and sank down on it, leaning over to eye the notebook. "He can't read?" he said. "'Cause you could just write and doodle or some shit."

[intotheout]

"He can," Tip said. "I taught him." It was a damn sight easier teaching him than teaching Peridot was turning out to be. "Not, you know, super well, but well enough. It's just -- he's on Earth all alone. So it's just -- nicer to try and do it his way."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, but how useful is it gonna be if you're so bad an artist that he can't read that?" Dante said.

He flipped through a few pages of the notebook, just to see if there was anything else.

"Sorry, just wondering."

... He wasn't actually trying to piss her off.

[intotheout]

That was precisely what she was worried about. Nicely pinpointed, Dante.

Though, really, it wasn't a lack of basic skill that gave Tip trouble. She was perfectly capable of drawing representations of things, and there were plenty of recognizable, if awkward and not well proportioned, little cartoon drawings of things like islands and space ships and trees in her notebook. They just weren't as good as J.Lo's, or the pictures in her head.

"It's still nice to try," she said finally, pulling her knees up and folding her arms over them, and thunking her chin down on her forearms grumpily. "Haven't you ever heard 'it's the thought that counts'?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"...Sure," Dante said. He shrugged faintly, looking something approaching apologetic, though not quite there yet. "So he's from a species of comic book fanboys," he said. "That's kinda interesting."

Weird. But sort of cool.

[intotheout]

"Sure." Tip shrugged. "If you'd call humanity a species full of bibliophiles."

Which wasn't entirely inaccurate....

[rebelseekspizza]

"Bib-what?" Dante asked immediately.

[intotheout]

Tip smirked faintly. "Book lovers," she said.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Right."

Yeah, never would have come up with that in a million years.

"Well, schools sure as fuck think we should be biblio-whatevers," he posited.

[intotheout]

"You're not into books?" Tip asked.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. "I know people who are," he said, "But nah. More a movies and video games kinda guy."

And by video games he just meant mostly the retro ones where you hit people a lot.

[intotheout]

"What kinds of movies?" Tip wasn't much for most video games. Watching actual aliens blow each other out of the sky duking it out for your planet made even Asteroid a little hard to watch. She played the ones on her phone where you fed and bred weird little animals, and that was about it.

But movies were still fun.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante thought about making a crack about it being movies that weren't exactly PG-13, but then he took another look at Gratuity and thought better of it. "You know those old action movies? Like the one with that robot guy who goes back in time to try and kill that girl?"

[intotheout]

Tip shrugged and nodded. "I used to watch stuff like that on cable sometimes when I was little." The thing about growing up more responsible than your mother: you kind of skipped right on past PG-13.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Those were pretty cool," Dante said. "Never got to watch much more than like, whatever's on the basic networks or YouTube or whatever. But that. Oh, and that one with reptiles on a plane was pretty funny."

[intotheout]

"That one was ridiculous," Tip agreed. She may have harbored fantasies about sneaking snakes onto alien ships at various points during the invasion. "You don't go to the movie theater in town or anything? It seemed like the kind of art house place that shows old stuff like that."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Never really thought about it," Dante admitted. "Back home the movie theaters are just those places that charge you like fifteen bucks to watch a bunch of superheroes punch each other in the face."

And Dante hadn't been a huge fan of superheroes before a friend decided to superhero herself to death.

[intotheout]

"I think my world missed most of that trend," Tip said. "We got some lead up, but then, you know. Actual aliens. Kind of sucked all the wind out of the imaginary superheros."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, no, it's wall to wall superheroes back home," Dante said, snorting. "Lot of stupid, 'saving the world from the--' well, evil aliens, I guess."

Movies in Limbo City did not actually try to be smart or critique anything. That wasn't what they were for.

[intotheout]

Tip rolled her eyes. "I'm sure we're in for plenty of those, once the movie houses finish getting back on their feet." She wasn't looking forward to it, no. "I'll have to check out the place here, next time I'm in town. See if they're showing anything good."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Let me know if they play anything old with explosions in it," Dante said, settling back. "I'd be down for that."