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Community Center Class: Modern Earth Entertainment

Today's food was set out, along with sodas and a spot for Kaidan's inevitable tea. There were also a decent-sized stack of burgers and fries from Mooby's, which were Peter's attempt to be thematic.

"Welcome again." He waved everybody toward the food. "I've gone with something that's hopefully appropriate. Today we'll be watching a film that was pretty popular and important about forty years ago. It's not without some problematic parts, but hopefully there's enough good to enjoy, and so long as you keep the things you throw at the screen down to non-harmful ones," throw popcorn, not burgers, people, "it's all good."

He glanced toward Amaya ~~if she was there~~. "There's more singing and romance in it, but there's also some car building and maintenance and things, so hopefully it won't be too dull."

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Ready to sing!

Amaya Blackstone

Kaidan

also Fenris and you can keep your playing with yourself jokes to yourself :p

Fjord who totally sees you playing with yourself, Zed

Eat food and say hi!

Clearly, the only good thing about this movie was going to be the choice offering of food to go with it. Amaya could never be one to find fault in offerings of meat, be they on a stick or placed between two pieces of bread.

As he'd suggested last week, this week's monstrositea is a Teajito. A nice roasted green mate, simple syrup, muddled mint, lime wedges floating in.

"Okay, interesting," Peter decided after he'd had some. "How close is this to a mojito?"

"Substitute rum for the tea, add some sparkling water to make it fizzy," Kaidan grinned, "Pretty much the same. This has caffeine in it instead of alcohol."

"Neither of which makes a difference to me." Peter took another sip. "I think I like it."

"It's not bad," Kaidan agreed, "Kind of refreshing."

Fenris had been invited by both Peter and Amaya, Fjord had spoke of it. It sounded baffling. So of course tagged along when Fjord went. He let his eyes skip across the people, noting the few he'd met.

He investigated the table of food, head tilted a little to the side. He took a glass of tea. He didn't trust the cans to not be more undrinkable beer. The rest was nothing he could readily identify as 'edible'. A puzzle.

"Hi, Fenris." Peter gave him a wave and a smile. "If you don't know what the rest of this is," he could interpret that look, "it's popcorn, potato chips, and pretzels, which are snack foods you eat with your fingers, and hamburgers and french fries. The hamburgers have beef in them." Supposedly; this was Mooby's. "The fries are fried potatoes. And the drinks are various sodas - fizzy and sweet non-alcoholic drinks."

"Hello, Peter," Fenris said politely. He shook his hair out of his eyes, "I do not know what any of this is, except the fried meat on bread." He gave the hamburgers a dubious look. It smelled more or less like meat, anyway.

He took one anyway. "Thank you for explaining. These are..social foods?"

Non-alcoholic drinks? Well, he wasn't sure that beer had been alcoholic.

Peter nodded. "Group foods for casual parties. When there's not an actual meal, but you're being hospitable. Except for the burgers - those are more meal type foods, but they seemed to go with the movie's name."

Fenris took the information in and filed the knowledge away. This world's version of hospitality. Different, but not bad.

He examined the burger. "What is the..sauce? Red, yellow..?" The colors were near blinding. If he saw them in the wild, he'd avoid whatever it was just on principal. Peter had, however, called this food, so it was unlikely to be poison.

"Oh." Peter looked. "Probably ketchup and mustard. Ketchup is mostly tomatoes and sugar, I think, and mustard is...mustard? It's a plant."

He was so the wrong person to ask about this.

Probably not poison. Fenris nodded and took a tentative bite. It was strange but not bad. Tangy meat. Odd.

"You mentioned you were hiring at your flower shop? What..needs doing there?" he asked, between bites.

"At this time of year, mostly taking care of the plants," Peter said. "Making sure they have water, fertilizer, soil - whatever each kind needs. We also get orders, sometimes for plants, mostly for cut flower arrangements, and we need to put together the arrangements and send them out. The same thing for customers that stop by."

He thought about it. "The instructions for everything are written out, but I could also read them into a recorder if it'd help. You'd have to learn to use a computer and a phone, but the phone's pretty easy, and I had to learn the computer, too."

Another week of this, and here was Fjord, having found something at least loosely resembling a routine around here.

It was as close to a comfortable situation as he'd found on this island so far. And the food was a definite draw.

Even if he didn't entirely trust that tea. It was definitely green.

It's the word!

By the end of the movie, Amaya was going to be side-eying Peter very hard. 'Some' car building and maintenance was a very generous assessment.

Plus...sure, he'd warned them about 'problematic,' buuuuut....

"That makes two in a row," she murmured, "where a girl winds up changes herself to fit some preconceived notions of what I suppose the love interest is supposed to find attractive..."

And considering most of the class was men, she felt she needed to point that out, and was starting to feel a little disappointed with you, Earth Entertainment. And coming from a woman in a traditionally male occupation from a world where most jobs for women fell into being princesses, witches, or wenches, that was certainly saying something.

No wonder she didn't care for the mushy stuff.

"I know." Peter gave her a rueful shrug. "Unfortunately that's a lot of entertainment. It's something Earth is still working on. Some films closer to the current year are better, but they're less likely to be something everyone refers to frequently. What kind of things would you like to see? I'll see if I can specifically find something like it."

Well, considering that all the explosion ones that Amaya liked seemed to make a good deal of the class a little morose and mopey, she felt she couldn't just outright say that. So she gave it a little thought, trying to consider what might be a good middle ground between all that excitement and adventure and...this garbage.

"Weapons," she concluded with a nod, because that was good and open with some wiggle room, she figured. "Something with weapons is always good. And some sort of quest or journey, one that doesn't involve having to change who you are in the end. Where someone's bold confidence in exactly who they are is what gets them through whatever non-romantic toil they're faced with!"

Peter thought about that, nodding slowly. "Okay, I'll look around and see what I can find."

Apologies to the class for the Lord of the Rings marathon to come.

Which was still likely to bring plenty of interesting comment out of the current peanut gallery all the same.

"Thanks, Peter," Amaya smiled faintly, "but don't feel like you need to go out of your way just for my sake. If I minded too much, I wouldn't be coming back. If you happen to find anything that fits the bill, though, well...so be it."

Peter smiled. "I'm here to show what modern Earth is actually about. I know it's got things like this, but it's also got things you'll enjoy, and you're a friend. I don't mind trying to find something that works."

He grimaced. "I hadn't remembered quite how bad this one was, either. Especially after last week's."

"Maybe try to veer away from the teenage-themed ones?" Amaya suggested lightly with a bit of a grin. Revisiting her teenage years on a random weekend around here was bad enough without it being in her entertainment, too. "Although none of those performers looked much like they were teenagers, anyway."

"They didn't, did they?" Peter shrugged. "I don't know. I'll try to stay away from the teenagers for a while."

Kaidan didn't even make it all the way through the movie. When the grossest lyric in the movie came across, he visibly choked and gagged into a near retch. Then he got up and quit the room.

Nope.

If anyone needs a Kaidan, he's standing in the hallway outside imagining how many ways he wants to tear the main male character into pieces.

Fenris watched the movie. "I was told this sometimes happens here. People randomly breaking into song. Is this a warning of what to watch for?"

Oh, of all the movies for a new person to be stuck with...! Although, when she thought back to the very first movie they ever had....no. No. This one was much worse than that first one.

"Please don't let this one sway your opinion against the class," Amaya leaned in to whisper, though her whispers really weren't nearly as quiet as she thought they were. "They're usually better than this. I think Peter's just trying to torture us this week."

It was the only logical explanation she could think of to excuse it.

'Some' car maintenance! Ha! And just about as long if not more having a whole musical number about hairstyling, too!

"I have no opinion at all of yet," Fenris murmured back, "I just do not understand why.. the singing."

He shared Amaya's opinion of that. "Were they all bitten by gremlins? How many gremlins would it take, do you think, to make them all sing like that? Could none of them fight? They're wearing armored leather."

"Armored?" Amaya scoffed, sounding almost offended by the suggestion. "No way. Detective Diaz wears one of those, and trust me, those leather jackets aren't protecting anyone from anything, not even gremlin bites." Just ask Diaz; sure she'll be happy to tell you! "But I don't think that's what this is, anyway. I think...there might just be...places out there in this world where that," she failed to keep down a snarl, "is just...normal."

He glanced down at his own armor, "I was trying to be charitable, though I agree."

Fenris pulled a face. "..Let's never go to those places."

"Agreed!" said Amaya, with a wholehearted pump of her fist, and she laughed, just a little. "On another note, though, glad to see you made it, Fenris."

"Thank you, and thank you for also inviting me," he said politely, "It is nice to have familiar faces here."

"Of course," Amaya said with a nod. "That's part of what drew me to it, too. Can't go wrong with a bunch of people whose company you don't terribly mind, eating food and watching films...even if the quality of the films is sometimes...questionable..."

"We don't have such things," he waved a hand at the ..film, "where I'm from. Plays, certainly. This?" He shook his head.

"That's what I was expecting when I was first told about it," Amaya admitted. "Well, more a puppet show than a play, but you gets used to it after a while. It helps, too, that most of us are as equally confused by," she repeated his gesture toward the screen, "that as the next."

"That does help," Fenris admitted, "Were it only myself, I'm not sure I'd stay. This is.. much .. singing.."

Fjord once again spent the entire movie just kind of staring in rapt... something.

He had no idea if he liked what he was seeing or not. But the car was growing on him, at least.

He's here as usual!

Feel free to throw popcorn at the idiotic bits. Because nothing says "cute high-school romance" like date rapey song lyrics.

AUGH SHORT HAIR NOOOOO

..except, hiiiii

It is going to happen eventually! It's canon!

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Community Center Class: Modern Earth Entertainment

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