simplestgift | Three Bells: [WRITTEN] - New Horizons in Lit Appreciation

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Current Location: The Library, or Cloud 9

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Three Bells: [WRITTEN] - New Horizons in Lit Appreciation

They have everything Shakespeare ever wrote in the library. Everything! It's a fountain of gold. I could spend days here. I'd sleep here if they'd let me. I don't think I've ever been happier. And there's no theatre group here? None? Do people here not realize what they have? What kind of a world is this?

In case anyone asks, I'll be in the library for the rest of my life.

[Or really just the rest of the day. At some point he'll have to come up for air and grab something to eat at the 7th Heaven, where he'll be buried in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It'll be dark before he goes home, carrying only a single book.]

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Will do.

So. Found any new and interesting bits of your future/my past yet?

Apparently it's easier to topple a mad king than a mad captain. I'm not finding that terribly funny.

You could try the nineteen eighties? Specifically, pants from the nineteen eighties. They're a guaranteed cheerer-upper.

[It takes a minute.]

What the HELL are they wearing? I thought MY hat made me look crosseyed!

Judging on the reaction, I think they're probably Hammers pants. Welcome to the modern era, Archie!

I'll have to show you the sorts of fashions they had when I was a boy. Women looked like bells. If you hung them up by their fingertips, everyone would think it was time for church.

Those dresses always look so pretty in movies, but I can't help thinking about corsets and being REALLY glad for jeans.

[ says the girl with the skyscraper heel fixation. ]

I can't speak as to the corsets, but maybe the movies don't quite convey the sheer absurdity of some of these gowns. Some of the older women still wear them, and cages and padding to go under them so it's all the right shape. I liked womens' fashions a bit more towards the turn of the century. It was all a bit more...well, natural, I suppose.

[No, he doesn't know what movies are, but he'll pretend.]

That's... much less romantic than the usual image. Cages? That's really not something I hear and feel like wearing.

[ dawn is working on the reference gap. she will get there! someday. ]

Well, the body doesn't naturally follow this sort of silhouette. At least, no body I've ever seen.

[What follows is a rough sketch of the outline of a dress like this.]

That's actually scary. I am officially scared of clothes right now.

Serves you right for introducing me to the nineteen eighties.

Just wait. At some point, I'll find a way to get a TV and copies of Project Runway episodes, and you can be really terrified.

Why? Do they wake up with mice nesting in their hair?

Nope! But they DO make clothes out of stuff like... pipe cleaners and coffee filters sometimes.

You've captured my interest. From what I've gleaned about pipe cleaners in the last minute or so from an encyclopedia, I can only determine the clothes must look like this.

[Undefined scribble.]

How it covers anyone is beyond my powers of imagining.

They're actually more like this:

[ dawn, seriously that looks like an elephant or perhaps a very lopsided chair. honey, an artist you are not. ]

...Covering people isn't exactly clothes priority number one by 2005.

I can't decide if I'm horrified or delighted by that. All right, you win. Your era has the worst clothes! Proud?

I might be doing a dance. A Dance Of Pride.

I'm also trying to decide if it's mean or awesome to tell you to look up bikinis.

[A few minutes later.]

Yes, well, now I'm also trying to decide that. No mystery, eh?

Not a whole lot, no. We have fridges but also, way less clothes.

At the risk of sounding rude or backwards, I think I prefer a woman with self-respect. They actually let themselves have pictures taken like this? Do they know what goes on in a man's head?

[Yes, there's a double-meaning there, and he's aware of it. Someone has also clearly explained photography to him. That, or he spent way too much time in the encyclopedia after "pipe cleaners."]

Sometimes, that's kind of the purpose? [ but oh GOD she is not explaining porn to archie, not even a little. ] Most of us just wear them to the beach, not for magazines.

[Oh, there was lots of porn in his time. It just wasn't photographic, and it was a heckuva lot more sexist than it is today, which he's partly reacting to. See, if these pictures are pornographic, it's pretty softcore, even to him. If they're not, then are women of Dawn's day simply walking visual prostitutes? Buffy's not. Buffy is decidedly self-assured. And covered.]

I suppose I'm still trying to work out the differences between your time and mine.

[ dawn is a child of the internet age, rule thirty four and all. and considering historical porn is not actually something she's done much of, admittedly. ]

It's an adjustment. Which means an adjustment period. You're not freaking, so that's step on [ dawn stops writing mid-word with a slight scribble, then jots hastily ] One sec, hang on.

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