intotheout (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2018-05-14 10:26 am
intotheout) wrote in fandomhigh2018-05-14 10:26 am
Entry tags:
Library, Monday
So it was summer. Like, officially and everything. At least as far as Fandom was concerned. It was pretty cool and rainy out right now, but it was still summer, and Tip wanted to be outside doing summer things.
Instead she was in the library, watching the books rearrange themselves into a "summer reading" display.
"Mark Twain's great and all," Tip said, as the books stacked themselves into a pyramid and flung themselves up onto the display table. "But the man apparently never learned how to write a girl in his life."
The books paused, looked at each other, then turned back towards the stacks. In moments, books by Barrie and Baum came trundling out of the shelves. Tip sighed.
"How about some written by girls?"
The books seemed to sigh, then one of the whistled, and a book by L.M. Montgomery came dashing out.
"If I try to ask for some black woman authors, you all are going to go on strike again, aren't you."
The books went back to ignoring her.
[open!]
Instead she was in the library, watching the books rearrange themselves into a "summer reading" display.
"Mark Twain's great and all," Tip said, as the books stacked themselves into a pyramid and flung themselves up onto the display table. "But the man apparently never learned how to write a girl in his life."
The books paused, looked at each other, then turned back towards the stacks. In moments, books by Barrie and Baum came trundling out of the shelves. Tip sighed.
"How about some written by girls?"
The books seemed to sigh, then one of the whistled, and a book by L.M. Montgomery came dashing out.
"If I try to ask for some black woman authors, you all are going to go on strike again, aren't you."
The books went back to ignoring her.
[open!]
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Well, Astrid guessed this place was rich enough to maybe have a computer system in place. She was mostly just confused because it didn't seem like a strange question to ask in a library, but apparently the other girl thought differently.
"Or if you know where I could find," she took a second to glance down at the list in her hand, neatly printed titled and names on several sheets of stapled together loose leaf paper, picked a couple at random, "Dostoevsky or Chinua Achebe? Or..."
She shrugged, forking the list over. "Any of these, really. I'm not picky about where to start."
Really, considering there were 400 books there, they could probably just go to a shelf at random, pull one out, and it would be on the list.
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“Wow.” Tip was suitably impressed. She turned to the computer and started looking up call numbers for the first couple books. “This is one hell of a summer reading list.” She skimmed through it. “Don’t suppose there’s any Nnedi Okorafor on here? Or at least Toni Morison or Alice Walker?”
Tip was going to get SOMEONE reading black ladies this summer, dammit!
China Achebe was a good start, though.
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Considering that author had been born only three years before Astrid, probably not.
She craned her neck, though, to try to get a better look at what was on the computer when a curious thought struck her.
"Hey, can you look up Ingrid Magnussen, too?"
She highly doubted a small New England boarding school rich enough to afford a nice computer unlike anything Astrid had really seen before would bother stocking books by artsy indie poets from California, but...she couldn't help but wonder.
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Oh ye of little faith, Astrid! This was Fandom, after all.
"Well, you should definitely check Okorafor's work out. She's one of my favorite contemporary authors. Lots of fantasy and magical realism. Oh, and if you don't have any Octavia Butler on there, you totally have to read her stuff too. And --" Tip cut herself off with a blush. "Okay, I could recommend black female authors for years. But Okorafor and Butler are two of my favorites." She shook her head and let her fingers hover over the keyboard. "I can look up anyone you want. How's 'Magnussen' spelled?"
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"With an E-N," she offered. "M-A-G-N-U-S-S-E-N."
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Tip nodded, typing the name into the search system. "I've got . . . a listing for a late 20th century American poet. Does that sound right?"
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Then she just sort of marveled a little, because what even was this place? "Yeah, that sounds right. She's actually in there?" she asked, leaning even closer because it felt like something she needed to see to believe. "Really?"
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"Yup." Tip turned the screen so Astrid could get a look. "I take it you know her?"
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Astrid thought about lying, about just saying she was a fan, but she realized that idea wouldn't fly just as soon as she had it. Even if the news of murdering California poets didn't exactly make the headlines all the way out there, their relationship was right there in her own surname.
"She's my mom," she admitted with a weird swell of pride that was anchored with a distinct sense of embarrassment. "It's pretty cool that they have her work, though."
Cool, until she remembered some of those deeply personal and mortifying poems where she had served as a muse. Then she just wondered if anyone would notice if those books suddenly went missing. Or, at the very least, a few choice pages of them...
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"Fandom's library has everything," Tip assured her. "Like . . . an interdimensional Library of Congress. I'd never heard of her before, but I've only just gotten started reading poetry." And she'd never been big into true crime of any sort. "Is it weird having a semi-famous mom?"
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Usually. It really depended on the day.
"If it's weird, I wouldn't know any better."
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"Makes sense," Tip said with a shrug. "My best friend back home is pretty well known among his people, but he's almost never around them, so we barely even notice. I guess being a writer explains why she's got you doing all this reading though, huh?"
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She still missed those times she would steal away to her neighbor's apartment when she wanted to watch something, and wondered if anyone here would have a passion for silver screen starlets the way Michael had.
"What's your friend famous for?" The other girl had phrased it in a weird way--his people--that definitely sparked her curiosity. Besides, Astrid never felt comfortable talking about herself much and was ready to deflect the job elsewhere.
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"You should tell her we're in a golden age of television," Tip suggested. "It won't convince her, but it's a grade-A brat response." She shrugged. "The first thing you need to know is that my best friend is an alien. His people got chased across the galaxy by a bunch of other evil aliens, and when they landed on Earth he accidentally tipped them off to their location." She smiled a little. "Then a year or so later, he got elected president of their whole new planet, so hey. Bygones."
Sorry, Astrid. Tip was figuring your big sib would have covered some of this stuff already.
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Which made her wonder exactly why they decided to send her there. Maybe Ingrid Magnussen was never her real mother; maybe Astrid was never her real name, she just obsessively plucked it out from several of her poems.
"Oh," she said, because what else did you say to that? "I mean, president of a whole planet is a bit more prestige than a semi-famous poet."
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The man who'd been President of the US before the invasion had refused to come back when the aliens all left, for instance. That was probably why the only people who really wanted it were awful.
Tip pulled out her phone. Astrid was taking this pretty well, so it seemed like a little showing off was in order. "You want to see a picture? The Boov are pretty funky looking."
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She shrugged, momentarily distracted by the sleek device the girl had in her hand. "Sure."
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And then there were the multitude of questions that went along with a girl who apparently thought she lived in a game and was best friends with one of the characters.
Questions that would, of course, remain unasked.
"He's..." Astrid pushed through all her questions to think of something to say, "kind of cute, actually."
Frogs. It reminded her of digging up frogs with the boys.
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Astrid was going to lose her shit when she met Sidon, wasn't she. Or Peridot. Or any of the other non-humans, but those two worked well as extremes.
"My name's Tip, by the way. Well, Gratuity, but just about anyone who's not a teacher calls me 'Tip'."
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Yeah, those had been fun.
"I'm Astrid." She thought she was, anyway. "And a weird, half-smooshed frog isn't too far off, either."
Better half-smooshed than fully-smooshed.
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Bill, Tip's tiny bee-shaped robot friend, took off from his perch on her hair and wrote an excited screed in the air between them.
"This is Bill," Tip said. "He says hi."
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Was this girl just totally loaded? Did her parents work for NASA or something? The tech here was just nuts.
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She actually kind of was? The joys of selling a flying car to GE. Not that Tip's mom let her anywhere near the "slush" fund for anything frivolous.
And, no, that wasn't why Tip had a tiny robot. It was why she could afford the smart phone, though.
"He takes some getting used to," Tip said with a small laugh at Astrid's expression. "You know, like the rest of this island. You're taking it all pretty well in stride, though. What's your world like?"
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Too good, really.
She shrugged. "I'm from LA," she offered. "I know people say that it's pretty much like an entirely different world out there, but really it's...not."
From here, maybe, yes. From the rest of normal society, though...
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So, probably 'regular' Earth, then, Tip noted. She was starting to wonder if Astrid was actually adjusting well, or just ignoring the stuff that didn't fit into her worldview.
She almost couldn't even blame her for that, if it was the case.
"LA, huh?" she said. "I haven't made it out that way yet. J.Lo and I did a big roadtrip after we first met," to get to the Boov enforced 'human preserve' but she was trying not to break Astrid's brain too much, just now, "but we only got as far as Arizona. I'm from Pennsylvania, myself."
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Tip shrugged. "It's not that different from here, at least weather-wise. We don't live in the city anymore -- that part I miss. Suburbs are gross. But at least around here Baltimore's right over the causeway when I want to city it up."
Not that she bothered most of the time. Suburbs might be gross, but going downtown took, like, time and money and effort. Staying in and reading the trashy romance novels her mom sent her and texting with J.Lo was basically always easier.