Fifth Floor Common Room; Sunday Evening [ 03/18 ].

[shestheworst]

Britta was not on the roof. It was a shocker, to be sure, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was broke and totally out of both cigarettes and pot. She supposed she could go up and wait for someone and bum a smoke from them, but that seemed just pathetic

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[wasthecuteone]

"Hey, um, whoever you are," Petra said to Britta when she popped into the common room. After watching a few channels flip past on the TV, she offered, "I think Bridal Death Match is on. Or at least a rerun."

[shestheworst]

"Hey...whoever you are," Britta offered back with uncertainty, because was that how you responded to that? It sounded good enough. "And what horrible, stereotypical-gender-role-reinforcement-sounding hell is Bridal Death Match?"

[wasthecuteone]

Petra paused halfway to the cabinets to check for snacks, so she could backtrack across the common room and actually look at Britta. "You're not Adina," she said, sounding disappointed, and perhaps a tinge accusatory. "You sound like Adina." How dare you not be Adina, Britta?

"Bridal Death Match is the popular CorporationTM TV show about brides who cage fight each other in order to win the wedding of their dreams." Sometimes Petra talked a little like a promotional TV spot. It was a thing in her universe, and she usually didn't realize she was doing it. She didn't realize when she pronounced the TM, either.

[shestheworst]

"Who's Adina?" Britta asked, her uncertainty growing as she eyed the other girl speculatively. "And you're right, I'm not her. And that show sounds terrible. Cage fight each other for a wedding? If you're going to get out there and beat the snot out of some other girl, at least do it for something worth while and not something that only propagates the fact that you're a piece of property to be exchanged away in a show of patriarchal ownership of anything female, just so we can continue the farce that is matrimony and pop about even more children to contribute to the overgrown population that we're already fighting to sustain."

[wasthecuteone]

"Miss New Hampshire," Petra told her, like that was at all helpful. "And oh my God, you really do sound like her, that's so cute! I'm Petra West," she said. "I live down in 511?"

[shestheworst]

"Cute?" asked Britta, gawking at this Petra West for a moment. "There's nothing cute about centuries of subjecting women to objectification, submission, and basically imprisonment under the guise of religious, romantic, and societal ceremony."

She took a deep breath, to seethe a little, to ignore her St. Patrick's Day hangover headache, and to pout a bit, too.

"Britta Perry," she offered. "512."

[wasthecuteone]

"Oh my God, I have got to hook you two up--well, actually, no, the echo chamber would be kind of frightening," Petra said. "But come on, weddings are fun. There's cake. And the cage matches are great, because you have to be a badass to get all these ultrafeminine trappings. It's subversive."

[shestheworst]

"Subversive...or just a big trick?" Britta challenged. "I mean, sure, you have to kick ass to get all these ultrafeminine trappings, but the point is, you're still fighting your own kind for this ultrafeminine ideal mostly propegated by the men in charge? I say, you make a Bridal Cage Match where the women band up together and stand for the fact that they don't need a man in their life or the ultrafeminine trappings that symbolize what we're all supposedly striving for. Listen, I come from a long line of wives and mothers, and I plan to avoid that my whole life. I even refused to write a letter to Santa, because I don't want to have to depend on a man for anything. There's no way you'll ever catch me trying to be all...Betty Crocker. Or a Steppenwolf wife."

[wasthecuteone]

"But what if you fall in love with some guy and want to make it official?" Petra asked. "There are tax benefits to marriage. Or you get sick and you need the health insurance?" Not that her dad's health insurance was actually any good anyway, but it was better than her mom would have had if they hadn't been married. "Don't just write it off out of hand because you don't like some of the history. Plus, like I said, weddings are fun!"

[shestheworst]

"Ew," said Britta, a succinct opinion of her thoughts on love right there. "And tax benefits and health insurance, huh, so now the government and Big Brother are involved, too. If I get sick and it's nothing I can't fight off myself, then I deserve to die. I mean, I guess it's cool if other people want to do it, but you're not catching me within a twenty miles of a wedding if I can help it."

"Ooh," she added after a slight pause, "unless it's protesting something. Or gay marriage. I would support that, too, because, I mean, everyone should have the opportunity to be miserable."

[wasthecuteone]

"So like you wouldn't even get married for love but you'd get married to another girl just because?" Petra just had to check that she'd heard that right.

[shestheworst]

"No, I wouldn't marry anyone," Britta clarified, "but I would support a girl if she wanted to marry another girl. Or a guy and a guy. Or a guy and a girl. It doesn't matter who, it's all just some ridiculous outdated ritual. If I love someone, why do I need some big old ceremonial and a certificate from the government to prove it? Not to mention how many people die mining diamonds..."

[wasthecuteone]

"Nobody said anything about diamonds being necessary," Petra pointed out. "Or the certificate from the government, even though you don't get most of the legal benefits without that thing, which is, you know, why gay marriage is such a big deal to get acknowledged in the first place. But, you know, I think it's just nice, to say, this is the person I'm going to stay with for the rest of my life. I mean, with divorce rates what they are I think there's something really brave in taking that stand, even if it does crash down on you later or whatever."

[shestheworst]

"Yeah, but with divorce rates what they are," Britta reasoned, "does it really mean that much when anyone says that anymore? Sure, I'm going to say that I'll be with that person for the rest of my life now, but that's no guarantee you'll actually stick with it. You might, but you might not, and then there's this whole stigma attached to it just because it's only natural that you might not want to wake up to the same face every morning."

[wasthecuteone]

"But you're saying you intend to," Petra pointed out. "So that's pretty neat."

[shestheworst]

"Yeah, but you don't have to get married to say something like that." Britta shrugged. "I think it'd be pretty neat if you said something like that, didn't get married, and still stuck to it. Now that's impressive. No legal, moral, or societal obligation to do it, but you're still all, 'you know what? I could totally go have sex with someone else right now, but I don't really want to.'"