fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

The weather was nice, the school wasn't currently under attack from forces not of this universe and they were still in Iceland. Oh yeah, it was day one of the rest of the newbies' lives.

Welcome to fandom, kiddos. Try not to trip over left over sombreros from Thursday!

[~~Please wait for~~ OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible.]

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"For what it's worth, that make two of us," Jim offered. "And you probably have your work cut out for you, so I'm sorry for that."

At least he was honest, right?

"I mean, I've never been to Earth before." He'd never heard of Earth before. But admitting something like that felt kind of stupid. "I already had some guy roll his eyes at me because I didn't know what a plane was."

Still didn't, for the record.

George let that sink in for a few seconds before nodding. "Okay," she said. "I can work with that. Um, I'm from here, so I don't ... know ... offhand what you're gonna know or not, or whatever, but ... yeah. A plane's a big ... vehicle thing that flies? Like a boat or a car but in the air? Unless you don't ... have those where you're from."

In which case she'd back up further from there.

"Do you ... know where Earth is?" she asked. "You sound like maybe ... you've at least heard of it?"

That was helpful.

Jim made a mandatory scrunchy-face at the mention of cars. Nope, no clue what that was, either. But a boat made enough sense, at least.

"It's nowhere near Montressor, I know that much," he offered. "Aside from that, sorry, I guess we just don't have star charts reaching this far out, back where I'm from." Which made him feel kind of stupid, so he backpedalled a little bit to the part of the conversation that had made at least a tiny bit of sense to him. "So a plane is just kind of another word for a ship?"

"I've never heard of Montre....wherever," George said, helpfully. "And it's like a ship but it flies."

Wait.

"Do your ships fly?" she asked. That might be a useful place to start. "Like, those kind of ships? I meant the ... ocean ones."

"Um... really big, come with sails, steer them with a big wheel? Of course they fly. What, yours don't?"

Great. Earth was apparently technologically constipated. Jim was going to have a wonderful time here.

"... no?" George said. "The sail ones are for water, and planes go in the air, and then there are, like, space ships? For going to other planets or ... whatever? But those don't have sails on them. Just big ... fucking ... I dunno, rocket things?"

Edited 2011-05-07 12:16 (UTC)

"Well, ours have rockets too, obviously." Jim shook his head a little in disbelief. "It doesn't make sense to make three different vehicles for that sort of thing. I mean, it isn't like a ship can't float if it has to make a water landing, or something."

He hesitated for a moment, and then perked a little before rooting around in his bag for... Well, for his guilty pleasure, really. He had his Treasure Planet storybook, with the holographic pop-ups, tucked away behind some socks and stuff. Sure, it was for little kids, but at least when he opened it up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmA1N1HBCPQ), it would help illustrate what he was talking about, a bit.

"You know, like these?"

[Very handy, having a canon where the first three minutes are literally exactly what Jim is showing George. Makes finding reference simple!]

George was going to talk the whole way through that lovely bit of introduction. It wasn't that she wasn't listening -- she was -- it was that she felt the need to comment on it.

"Okay, wasn't expecting the pop-up ... of ... 3-d whatever," she said. "That narrator kinda sounds like the movie trailer guy."

Jim probably had no idea what that even meant.

"What the fuck, that guy just had six eyes. Your pirates are lizard-things!?" Because that was seriously important information. "If this is space, how are any of those people breathing? ... Oooh! Gems!"

"... Well, Flint was. I mean, they're not human, but most people out there aren't." Which got a weird little glance around, because this place seemed to have a massive human majority.

Consisting of... well... everyone.

"And of course they're breathing. It isn't like the atmosphere just stops once a spacer hits the Etherium, you know."

...

"Movie trailer guy?"

~~Actually, the narrator had been Tony Jay, which instantly made him the most awesome. Ever.~~

"... Okay, ours does," George said. "The atmosphere? Kinda stops. Like, not even that far out or anything. So no, we don't put rockets on our ships, because that'd be dumb, because everyone would suffocate. Spaceships are all closed-in. Planes, too, but that's mostly because you're going fast, not the ... breathing thing."

She was so helpful.

"Yeah, the, uh. The guy who talks over movie trailers? 'IN A WORLD FILLED WITH DINOSAURS, ONE MAN STOOD AGAINST THE ONSLAUGHT.' Or ... don't you know what movies are? Trailers are just ads that usually give away most of the good stuff."

"... No Etherium?" What?

Jim had been sent to school on a crazy planet from which there was no escape. Great. Thanks, Delbert.

"How do spacers breathe when they need to make a long trip? I mean, if you just seal them in, the air would run out sooner or later, right?"

There was another long pause.

"Nope, I can't say I've ever heard of movies before."

Books, George. Books were where it was at, here.

"There's ..." Shit. "There's some kind of ..."

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

"I'm not a rocket scientist," she said. "I don't know what they do for air. But apparently it works or we'd have a bunch of dead astronauts any time someone went into space, so ..."

She shrugged. "So it ... works? I dunno."

If he was that interested, he could look it up.

"Movies are kind of like that pop-up thing," she said. "But on a TV -- a box-thing with a screen? Just ... people acting out things, like plays?"

"Oh... so they're just storybooks," Jim replied, raising an eyebrow a little. He was definitely going to have to look into how in the world people survived out there in space. This place was getting weirder and weirder all the time. "That's not that big a deal, really."

He shut his book and tucked it away into his back again, making sure to bury it under the same socks he'd dug it out from under in the first place. He'd had his copy of Treasure Planet since he was three. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure.

"... Similar," George said. Close enough. "So, uh. I should probably warn you? This place is kind of strange."

'Kind of' being by way of an understatement.

"I kind of noticed, actually." Really, when you were as completely lost as Jim was, a lot of things stood out as strange. "Like how it looks like everyone here is human. What's up with that?"

His mother's best friend was an alien of a rather canine bent, and their best customer at the Benbow had tentacles. Just saying.

George couldn't help raising an eyebrow at that. "I think ... most everyone here is?" she said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we've got a few aliens, and ... other species running around, but ... most Earth people are human. If you don't count vampires and zombies. Is that racist?"

"I don't think it's racist, if they don't think it is and if anyone is welcome. It's just kind of weird." Jim gave her a wry little smile. "I mean, where I'm from, you barely see humans around. Notice how there weren't any in that book?"

He shrugged, hiking his bag up over his shoulder again.

"This is kind of weird, for me."

Edited 2011-05-07 23:26 (UTC)

"I don't think anybody ... discriminates?" she said, haphazardly. "And I didn't really notice anyone in that book except the freaky dude with all the eyes."

He kind of stood out.

"It's gonna get weirder," she explained. "This place ... like, some days it'll rain dessert toppings, or you'll wake up the wrong gender, and it just happens and nobody seems all that concerned about it."

"Uh. What."

HE LIKED HIS GENDER JUST THE WAY IT WAS, GEORGE.

Edited 2011-05-07 23:40 (UTC)

"It's all temporary," she said, shrugging. "You wait a day or two and it goes back to normal. I wasn't, like, originally a guy and stuck like this or anything."

George was remarkably blase about gender-switching, and being an eight-year-old. Being dead made her hard to shock.

Or maybe it was all the apathy.

"That's good to know. I think."

Now he was going to be up awake at night for weeks for fear that he'd wake up the next day with girl parts. Just saying.

"That's still kind of... uh... weird, though."

A lot weird.

"Yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell you," George said, helpfully. "This place is fucking weird. You get used to it."

George already mentioned she was bad at being a sibling, right?

But she was the only sibling Jim had ever had! It wasn't like he knew the difference, here!

"I guess so, huh?" Huh. "Man. Mom won't believe this if I write home about it."

Jim should talk to Reggie some time. They could compare notes.

"Probably not," she agreed. "So is there ... I dunno. Specific stuff you wanna know? Or ... something?"

Totally big sis of the year.

"I... have no idea," Jim admitted. "I've already had someone ask me if Montressor is in Europe," which would apparently become a trend for the day, "and we've established that I kind of have no idea what people do to entertain themselves around here. I guess maybe just giving me a rundown of where things are in town would help, but even if you don't, I can kind of just see what I can see by wandering around on my own, anyhow. It isn't like this island is huge, really."

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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