in the car behind the carnival.

[oleanderknife]

A young woman in blue jeans and a lot of silver jewelry is leaning against a wall in convenient proximity to an ashtray-bearing coffee table; she is smoking with the faintly genial, faintly fretful restlessness of someone who has had a very weird Wednesday (and it's not even noon). She smiles, though, in a bracingly confident sort of way

Comments

[risewrong]

"Well, they must've done something nice, at least once," Libby says, im...mediately parking her butt on the edge of the nearest chair. She clasps her fingers together, resting her elbows on her legs. As she talks, her legs swing back and forth, bouncing her hands up and down. "Most people do. Maybe just bring that up instead, I dunno. I guess it's kind of rude, if people're upset, to start badmouthing a dead guy like that." Libby shrugs, what-can-you-do? with raised eyebrows. "I'd probably just keep my mouth shut. Funerals are weird."

[oleanderknife]

"Mmm. If you've got nothing nice to say..." Hasi trails off, lightly, half-smiling, tossing her dark hair (all thirty million miles of it; she has it in a braid, today) over her shoulder. In theory she supposes Cameron had his redeeming features, even if they came with strings attached, and she thinks, briefly, of the group of new girls he brought in, and how far they won't go.

She exhales a smoke ring. "I doubt there will be much of a funeral, at any rate."

[risewrong]

Libby's eyebrows rise a little higher, and her mouth dimples at the edges, somewhere between concern and jaded sarcasm. "Not a very friendly person before they were a corpse, I'm gonna guess."

She shifts to rest her cheek on her hand, scrunching up her face. "But yeah, something like that. You're -" she points her finger sloppily at Hasi, and smiles - "a very pretty person, though." The finger drops to her side, flopping against her leg before coming to rest against the chair. The smile upshifts to a very cheeky grin. "You shouldn't have to hang around people you don't like."

[oleanderknife]

"Ohh, I imagine it depended on the day." Her phrasing may be diplomatic, but she is way down into the jaded side of things, this one; it's amiable enough, but some days she is a lot older than twenty-four. She smiles right back at Libby, though, recognizing her from Stigmata that evening Hasi came in with Hyde (and she wonders how that read to other people, but he was at least somewhat busy and didn't cause any major mayhem while present - might have laid groundwork, though).

"Well, thank you! Sad to say I don't think a single soul escapes it, though, or so the college roommate experience made clear to me."

[text]

[fireburned]

you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. you don't know who's listening.

Nobody thinks you're funny, Harvestman.

[text]

[oleanderknife]

I think in some cases that would be incentive.

[text]

[fireburned]

i'd say it depends on where. at their funeral ain't the best place. probably not at the wake neither.

in a bar and on your fifth beer, hell yeah.

[text]

[oleanderknife]

I don't know if they'll even have those, in this case. But I'm not hugely inclined to say much, regardless.

[campjesus]

"I wouldn't badmouth them in front of their family or nothing." Brody hauls himself up on a nearby bar after fixing himself a glass of juice (!), looking distinctly less goth than usual. No makeup, his hair is flat and limp, and he's wearing track pants and a high-necked shirt. And he looks like shit. Bad night. "I guess it depends on what they did, like, if they murdered babies and people are tryna be all 'oh he wasn't such a bad guy', or I guess if they did something specifically bad to you, then definitely speak up, but if they were just kinda a jerk to people now and then..." Shrugs.

"That whole thing about not speaking ill of the dead, that's more for the living, anyway. Like funerals, and flowers on graves."

[oleanderknife]

She surveys Brody's appearance, but doesn't comment; he told her a little about the shoot, and if he wants to say more, he will. She gestures at him approvingly with her cigarette, though, smile skewing a touch wry. She processes the advice, though, and it seems to be about as good as she'll get with this sort of question, reaffirming her gut instinct.

"I always skipped funerals." There's a pause; she is aware of how that sounds, but doesn't sound very broken up about it, either, just- it's not how she grieves. Not that there will be a great deal of grief in this case, anyway. "Weddings, too, though."

[campjesus]

"I hate weddings." He wrinkles his nose. "And I don't think I've ever been to a real funeral. Which is funny, 'cause most of the people I know have died." No, actually, that's the opposite of funny, it's kind of really sad. "I like the ceremony, and what it represents, but I think--like weddings--some people get more caught up in the tradition than what it's supposed to be for."

[oleanderknife]

Hasibe pulls a face, sympathetic - to which part of that is a mystery, dead friends or the endless melodrama of weddings. "I'm at the age where a lot of my friends from college are getting married, and I...only go to the receptions if I go at all. Which is probably sort of rude, too, but really, I'd rather start my own marriage off with a party than a two-hour ceremony."

[text]

[one_drafted_man]

What kind of "don't really like" are we talking about, here? Like, you didn't get along with them personally, but they were otherwise fairly decent, or like they were really pretty much an evil dirtbag? ...I think that pretty much outlines my breakdown of whether or not I'd bother to play nice at all with my opinion of them.

As for fixing a bad day... Shit, I don't know. I'm still getting used to the concept of having good days.

[text]

[oleanderknife]

Like 'I wasn't hugely stunned to find out they'd died violently.' Bit of a gray area between those two.

Well, what's a good day, then?

[text]

[one_drafted_man]

Ah, that tricky gray area. I'd probably try to opt for being noncommittal, unless I knew it was about something where the person was actually not a dick. I wouldn't lie, in any case.

Any day where I'm not part of a bullshit bogus civil war automatically gets 5645645 bonus points. Aside from that, any day where I can focus on living the life I've been able to make for myself, instead of the realization that I'm half a galaxy and 800 years from the last place I let myself call "home."

[text]

[oleanderknife]

So vague, but not deceptive. Thin line to walk.

Those are some interesting (if certainly circumstantially justifiable) standards.

[polyseme]

"I would try and avoid any situation where I would be expected to reminisce fondly about the not so dearly departed." He knows it's not the best answer, but it's worked well for him in the past.

[oleanderknife]

"That shouldn't be too hard to manage." As long as she avoids certain colleagues of his, who in all likelihood will be missing the not so dearly departed primarily for his business skills, anyway. "If it keeps coming up I plan to bite my tongue, anyway, but the impulse to remind everyone of what the truth actually is remains...tempting, I suppose."