Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening

[always_someone]

So, it had come up in conversation last week that Sabine either didn't like or just hadn't really been exposed to any horror movies. Which had kind of surprised Norman - not liking them was one thing, but it was hard to envision a life without ever having seen one before, given just how much of his own life had been spent parked in front of the television watching them himself.

So today, he'd ordered Chinese food (and apparently Ching Tai had messed up the order and sent him triple portions of everything), hauled out his movie collection, and made his way to the third floor common room, where he was perusing his options.

Well... there was Zombie Nation, Lonesome Dead, Doc Zombie, Brain Eater, Space Zombies, or the classic, My Baby Was a Zombie...

Norman grimaced a little as he looked the selection over.

"I really am Gothy Spice."

Sigh.

[OOC: Open common room! Links contain minor cartoon gore on movie posters that are totally ParaNorman canon.]

Comments

[seriesofbaddecisions]

And here was Sabine, ready for an education in horror movies.

"All right, what've you got?" she greetedhim.

[always_someone]

"I have more chow mein than I think I could eat in my life," Norman offered. Which wasn't what she'd been asking, no, but it seemed important to go there anyway. "Please take some while we contemplate the options."

He looked back at the DVD cases and sighed.

"Looks like our options are political zombies, cowboy zombies, professional zombies, hungry zombies, more zombies, and zombies."

...

Yeah, he was trying not to blush too hard as he realized that apparently he was a complete dork.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

Meanwhile, Sabine didn't care about any dorkiness. It was kind of endearing.

"I'm leaning towards zombies," she said, taking a seat and reaching for a plate. "I kind of want to see what cowboy zombies look like."

[always_someone]

"They're pretty rugged," Norman offered, reaching for Lonesome Dead and pulling the DVD out of the case. "I mean... more rugged than cowboys usually are. Or zombies."

There was a whole lot of bonus ruggedness that tended to happen when you combined the two.

"Have you watched any cowboy movies at all?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Nope," she admitted. "Never had chow mein, either, so today's going to be full of new experiences."

[always_someone]

"No better time to have sloppy noodles than watching a movie about cattle rustlers who eat brains," Norman said, grinning. "I'd say you're in for a treat, but all of these movies are kind of terrible."

Which was half the reason he liked them, probably.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I don't see how that means it's not a treat," she smiled. "I've decided there's some good In terrible TV."

[white_oleander]

It was partially Astrid's faint attempts to see if anything interesting was going on in any of the common rooms that evening before resigning herself to the roof for a good roof-moping session, which she felt she hadn't done in a while, that led her into the third-floor common room, but, if she were honest, it was mostly her free-food senses tingling a little. She poked her head in curiously, noted the people already there, the movie collection, the Chinese food that confirmed the suspicion she had from the hallway.

"Movie night?" she guessed.

[always_someone]

"Movie night," Norman confirmed, and lifted one of the far-too-many-containers of Chinese food up in offering. "You're welcome to join us if you like noodles and don't mind terrible zombie westerns."

[white_oleander]

"I love noodles," said Astrid, who now that she had an invitation to do so, would be honing in on those immediately, "but I'm not familiar enough with terrible zombie westerns to know if I mind them or not. So I guess I'll find out."

She made a cursory look through the boxes before grabbing a bowl and fishing some food out into it.

"I didn't even know that there were zombie westerns."

[always_someone]

"Oh yeah, they'll make zombie movies about pretty much anything," Norman replied, glancing at the other zombie movies he'd brought along. "... Really, pretty much anything. You're welcome to go through them if you want. Some of them are weirder than others."

[white_oleander]

And Astrid did want to go through them, moving closer and having a seat, taking a bite of food before reaching for a few pieces of the collection so she could admire the art. Loud, garish, tasteless, kitsch.

She loved it.

"Weirder than zombie westerns?" she asked. "But, I mean, I guess if there'd be zombies now, why not then? Maybe all the Bubonic Plague was really just a medieval zombie outbreak that history went and skewed with science."

[always_someone]

"I mean... maybe," Norman replied, pausing to consider that over another mouthful of noodles. "With or without a magical element, do you suppose?"

He'd only been aware of the magical kind, himself. But most of his movies tended to skew toward science.

[white_oleander]

"Mmm, good question," Astrid murmured it a little as she tried to decide which she liked best; it was a toss-up between Space Zombie and Lonesome Dead. "I'd probably go with science, but it would probably be chalked up to magic."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"We're educating me," Sabine explained.

[white_oleander]

"Oh, sure," said Astrid with a small smile at her roommate, "take all the fun out of it by putting it in the context of education."

From the girl who would literally just stay in a museum all day if she could.

"Count me in on that, too, then," she added, eyeing the boxes for the movies a little closer. "I've never really seen any of this stuff before."

They...sounded...different?

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"There's a zombie theme," Sabine said, unnecessarily, because of the boxes. "I've decided that the worse it is, the better."

[white_oleander]

"Hmm," Astrid drifted closer so she could pick up one of them and inspect it a little, "kind of like some of the old double-features my neighbor would take me to sometimes, but I don't remember many of them having zombies. Mostly giant apes and vampires."

Michael had been obsessed with Faye Wray, all the Golden Age starlets. As she flipped the box to read the back, Astrid idly wondered what he might be up to these days.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Maybe we can do the... giant apes and vampires next," Sabine suggested, totally unaware that Halloween was a thing and these would be on anyway soon. "This is a giant gap in my knowledge of things here."

[unusual_sith]

Lana went looking for people she knew, and found one of them here, stopping in the doorway to nod. "Hello. Am I intruding?"

[always_someone]

"Not at all," Norman replied, waving a polite hello. "We've got movies and we've got food, feel free to make yourself comfortable and get something to eat."

And try not to judge him too hard on the zombie habit.

[unusual_sith]

"Thank you." Lana came in and looked over all the food before picking something up and sniffing it, then looking for a fork. "Is there an occasion?"

[always_someone]

"The occasion is mostly that Sabine hasn't seen scary movies before," Norman admitted. "And then the Chinese place sent way too many noodles."

Which was not a complaint. Norman would be fine having too many noodles until they were gone or they went off, whichever came first.

[unusual_sith]

"I don't know that I've seen many, either, apart from documentaries," Lana said. "Holos, obviously, not noodles."

[always_someone]

"You never know," Norman said, grinning a little. "These could be very rare noodles. Delicacies."

You could tell because they were served in cardboard.

"Which means this is totally your chance to remedy that." A beat. "With the-- holos? Movies. There's nothing really... holo... about these, I don't think."

Heck, this one was just barely in color.