33 Apocalypse Ave, Saturday Evening

[hotceltogoth]

So it wouldn't be a movie night without snacks. Which was why Ronan was coming into the living room with a giant bowl of popcorn (tossed in butter with just the right amount of sea salt and a little cayenne pepper and cumin) in one hand, a couple of bottles of Guinness Foreign Extra in the other or enough for Jack and/or Emma if they are joining in

Comments

[bitten_notshy]

Normally, Jack would have let Ronan and Kaidan have the living room to themselves, but sometimes something on the TV attracted even him.

Such as what looked to him like an enormous squid holding guns.

"... what in blazes is this?" he asked, and snatched a handful of popcorn before anyone could stop him.

[not_a_whiner]

"'Blasto: the Jellyfish Stings'," Kaidan said. Yeah, he made it sound as ridiculous as it was. "Just another piece of fine entertainment from my galaxy."

Shepard probably would've said that more earnestly.

[bitten_notshy]

"So I'm to take it action movies are universal," Jack said, with the sigh of one who was still Victorian enough to prefer a nice night of vaudeville.

He gestured to the squid-thing. "That's the jellyfish?"

[not_a_whiner]

"A hanar," Kaidan corrected idly. "I think 'jellyfish' is technically a speciesist slur..."

[bitten_notshy]

"So why did they name the movie that?" Jack asked idly. "I hadn't realized it was real."

[not_a_whiner]

"Because it's a hanarsploitation movie and they were trying to stir up some controversy, most likely," Kaidan replied. "And no-- well, there's special effects in the action scenes, of course, but they're all real actors."

[bitten_notshy]

"Huh," Jack said, and settled in. "Are there hanars behind the camera too, or do they just act?"

Because everything was political.

[not_a_whiner]

"I... have no idea if there were any hanar involved in the production," Kaidan admitted. "Didn't really pay attention."

Didn't really particularly enjoy these movies, but wound up watching them somehow anyway.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack shrugged. "It's okay," he said. "I'm just always curious who's doing the exploiting. Apparently even when I'm talking about a different galaxy."

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan gave it a shrug. "I don't know," he said. "Not a lot of hanar leave their home planet, you know?"

[bitten_notshy]

"They don't exactly look designed for travel," Jack granted.

[not_a_whiner]

"They have to be outfitted with special mass effect generators just to stay upright in regular gravity," Kaidan said. He took a sip of his beer. "Not that this movie pays a lot of tribute to physics..."

[bitten_notshy]

"Total rejection is a kind of tribute," Jack mock-protested, and then leaned back into the couch. "Honestly, I don't watch a lot of movies. Most of them seem a bit like this to me. Loud and illogical. Not made for time travelers, you know?"

He liked supernatural horror for mocking purposes, and he'd sit through filmed versions of classic plays. The rest of the time, he'd rather read.

[not_a_whiner]

"No, I get it," Kaidan said. He put his bottle back on the table. "There's a kind of... theory that went around for a while-- scientists determined that if anyone from a pre-1900s time period came into our time, they'd probably go crazy over all the background noise alone."

He eyed the television. "Sound, image... we've grown to deal with it as a species, but it took time. And even now our brains aren't quite wired that way yet."

If they were, he might not have his migraines.

[bitten_notshy]

"Maybe that's what happened to me," Jack guessed, amused."I went mad as soon as I got to the airport in this time, and the last three years have been one long hallucination. Though how I'm hallucinating things we hadn't imagined yet, I don't know."

He reached for a bottle of his own. "Actually the noise didn't bother me much, but I'd just spent a week on an airship. It wasn't quiet. And I'm not from much before 1900, anyhow."

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan chuckled for a moment. "Well, it's what the scientists are saying," he said. "I don't think they've ever had a test case like you."