How To Be Civilized, Friday, Period 3

[1000yearstoolate]

"Welcome back," Seivarden said, standing in front of the class. "Today we're going to watch an entertainment, which is what is called a movie on Earth. This one is quite popular, a historical drama, and I'm showing it to you to give you an idea of civilized behaviour."

 

It had taken her a while to choose. Some students would likely be too excited about something romantic, while others would be too happy with anything with lots of space battles. Since Radchaai politics bothered a lot of people here she had avoided historical dramas involving a lot of that.

 

She had settled on one where a spaceship goes mad when its beloved Captain dies, even if it had some space battles.

 

"This one is set before the Lord of the Radch came to power, so I just want to point out that spaceships aren't this unreliable these days."

 

She pressed play.

 

The plot went like this:

A brave Captain from a prestigious family left her beloved to go to battle on her ship named Ineluctable Ascendancy of Mind Unfolding (the whole name was repeated every time the ship name was mentioned). The Captain and her crew of Lieutenants were introduced in the first scenes, and a few ancillaries, human bodies connected to the ship's AI, could be seen in the background. Then there was an impressive battle scene with a lot of ships and a lot of explosions, and the ship was damaged and later boarded. The Captain was shot and the ship, mad with grief at the death of her beloved captain, sent the enemies out the airlock and had her own crew locked up "to protect them". The rest of the entertainment showed another brave Captain chasing the mad ship through the galaxy, eventually catching up with it, saving the crew and blowing up the ship.

 

And in all of this there was a lot of drinking tea, some polite conversation and some polite but insulting conversation, and. Everyone used female pronouns and should anyone care, it was difficult to tell the biological sex of a lot of the characters.

 

"There's tea, of course," Seivarden said, gesturing at the tea set.

 

[Wait for OCD OCD is up]

Comments

Sign in

[1000yearstoolate]

Watching an entertainment.

Re: Sign in

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae Borowski

Re: Sign in

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

Tisarwat

Re: Sign in

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina Argentum

Re: Sign in

[scoffs_at_tradition]

Shuri

Re: Sign in

[unusual_sith]

Lana Beniko

Listen to the introduction

[1000yearstoolate]

It's short.

Watch the entertainment

[1000yearstoolate]

And react if you want to.

Re: Watch the entertainment

[thishouseishaunted]

In an impressive show of commitment to a bit, Mae -- with the handwavy help of Nina and Summer -- had managed to acquire herself some jello gloves. They were even pretty stable! For jello. That was worn on the body. Which was to say, they lasted a good ten minutes into the movie before goopy, tea-infused jello started dripping from her hands.

This was a terrible idea, Seivarden. Why did you even suggest it?!

Re: Watch the entertainment

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden didn't want to interrupt the entertainment, but she whispered to Mae: "I want to talk to you afterwards."

Judging by her expression she wasn't going to compliment Mae on her gloves.

Re: Watch the entertainment

[thishouseishaunted]

It was very sad how Seivarden couldn't appreciate creativity and ingenuity.

"Okay," Mae whispered back. She looked down at her desk, then back up. "Do you have any paper towels?"

Re: Watch the entertainment

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden crossed her arms and gave her a look before turning away.

Re: Watch the entertainment

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was doing a pretty good job at not giggling, she really was, but once they started dripping...

Well, at least she kept her giggles quiet?

Re: Watch the entertainment

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was watching the entertainment.

She was! Really!

She was just, like, watching both entertainments. That is, the drama Seivarden had for them and Mae's amazing glove choices.

Re: Watch the entertainment

[unusual_sith]

It wasn't a bad movie; Lana supposed she could accept the idea of a ship AI gone mad, and otherwise this seemed like fairly standard fare.

She was, however, continually thrown out every time they mentioned Ascendancy; she kept expecting Chiss to show up.

And none of it was distracting from the amusement that was Mae's gloves. There was an awful lot of laughter being bled into the Force.

Discuss

[1000yearstoolate]

"Any thoughts?" Seivarden asked when the movie had ended. "What did you think of the civilized behaviour?"

Re: Discuss

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina pursed her lips a little, wondering if she ought to ask. As far as she'd been able to tell there hadn't been a single guy in the whole movie and, like...

"Um, like, I'm sure it's dreadfully uncivilized of me to ask," Nina said apologetically, with her gloves and her tea. "But are there no guy Radchaai? Everyone, like, seemed to be a girl............."

Which wasn't a terrible thing, but she wasn't sure if that was a deliberate choice of the drama, or if it was a culture thing, or if they just didn't have guys in general.

Re: Discuss

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden just looked at her for a moment.

"What makes you say that?"

Re: Discuss

[bookbeltof_love]

"I mean, like, everyone was using female pronouns???????????????" she asked, confused. "Like, if someone says 'yeah, she's got this' then aren't they talking about a girl?????????????????"

Re: Discuss

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden sighed.

"They are people. Citizens. Radchaai don't care about gender and I know people here find that hard to wrap their heads around, but no, they are not girls."

She had expected some kind of question like this.

Re: Discuss

[unusual_sith]

"Don't you ever shorten your ships' names?" Lana asked. Yes, that was what had stood out to her.

Talk to the TA

[1000yearstoolate]

If she's here.

Re: Talk to the TA

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

She was there! And feeling very glad she'd already seen this particular entertainment (well...Tisarwat hadn't seen it, but Anaander had, which meant that Tisarwat could remember having watched it at some point), because it was very distracting to try to focus on in it in attempt to ignore the fact that one of her classmates had worn gelatin for gloves.

And it was particularly cruel of Seivarden to wait until after class to confront Mae about it, because that would be a conversation Tisarwat would have loved to have eavesdropped in on. Maybe if she just took her time leaving class after the entertainment....

Talk to Seivarden

[1000yearstoolate]

Who is here.

Re: Talk to Seivarden

[thishouseishaunted]

"What's up?" Mae said, once the movie was all done.

Yes, she knew what was up. What was up was very sticky right now between her fingers.

Re: Talk to Seivarden

[1000yearstoolate]

"I've had enough of your attempts to be funny," Seivarden snapped. "Clean up the mess and get a pair of real gloves for next week."

Re: Talk to Seivarden

[thishouseishaunted]

[could have sworn I responded to this!]

"I did ask for paper towels," Mae pointed out. "And you didn't like my 'real gloves', either."

OOC

[1000yearstoolate]

If you have any questions about the entertainment just ask.