Adolescent, by Jane St Clair, for the Skirt Challenge
Adolescent
by Jane St Clair
31 July 2005
No spoilers.
Short and silly.
For the Skirt Challenge.
*
There are things they'll never be able to express to Teyla. She's a nice lady, but she grew up in a weird, techno hunter-gatherer culture. She's never even watched TV, and all the DVDs they show her aren't going to change that. They're way too late for her formative years.
She doesn't have a single yearbook photo in which she's sporting a featured bangs and/or a mullet. She's never wasted a single afternoon of her life eating cheese doodles and watching MTV.
Nostalgia doesn't mesh with her view of the universe. Cheesy 80s-retro nostalgia nights just make her go to bed early.
It's too bad. She could learn a lot, about the Atlantis expedition team, if not actually about Earth-American culture. Dr Soraschuk from Cultural Anthropology keeps bouncing and shrieking about spontaneous regenerations of postmodernism in the absence of commercially-produced media. (But that's not really accurate. They packed a fairly serious number of iPods when they came, and none of this would have happened if not for the playlists that were in rotation the day they discovered the city's glorious sound system.
(The mess hall has better bass than most pimped-out cars.
(Pause to explain the concept of pimped out to visiting Athosians.)
The sound systems at high school dances were never this good, but the decorated mess does a decent impression of a gym on dance-night. And just like in high school, they're a population of dateless wonders.
There's a 4:1 ratio of men to women on Atlantis. And the resident females would rather game in a corner with the rest of the geeks than dance with the marines who look like boys who used to pick on them.
The gamers are probably having the most fun anyway. Perfectly reproduced 80s-era Dungeons and Dragons. Not a collectible card game in sight: there was a debate over that, and an online vote, and the final decision was that collectible card games were an anachronism, and also most people had left their best decks at home.
Little multi-sided dice flying.
The marines drink punch and lurk at the dance floor's edges. Dr Weir slides around like an over-cheerful committee member, asking random startled boys to dance.
All evidence to the effect that most sane people choose not to relive their adolescences.
Except.
They'll argue later that the kilt is completely inappropriate to the music, that if you're going to come dressed as Axel Rose, you have no business singing Journey. But none of them are going to forget Major Sheppard, in a kilt and combat boots, doing a raw-voiced karaoke version of "Don't Stop Believing".
Dr McKay has pictures, in case it slips their minds.
by Jane St Clair
31 July 2005
No spoilers.
Short and silly.
For the Skirt Challenge.
*
There are things they'll never be able to express to Teyla. She's a nice lady, but she grew up in a weird, techno hunter-gatherer culture. She's never even watched TV, and all the DVDs they show her aren't going to change that. They're way too late for her formative years.
She doesn't have a single yearbook photo in which she's sporting a featured bangs and/or a mullet. She's never wasted a single afternoon of her life eating cheese doodles and watching MTV.
Nostalgia doesn't mesh with her view of the universe. Cheesy 80s-retro nostalgia nights just make her go to bed early.
It's too bad. She could learn a lot, about the Atlantis expedition team, if not actually about Earth-American culture. Dr Soraschuk from Cultural Anthropology keeps bouncing and shrieking about spontaneous regenerations of postmodernism in the absence of commercially-produced media. (But that's not really accurate. They packed a fairly serious number of iPods when they came, and none of this would have happened if not for the playlists that were in rotation the day they discovered the city's glorious sound system.
(The mess hall has better bass than most pimped-out cars.
(Pause to explain the concept of pimped out to visiting Athosians.)
The sound systems at high school dances were never this good, but the decorated mess does a decent impression of a gym on dance-night. And just like in high school, they're a population of dateless wonders.
There's a 4:1 ratio of men to women on Atlantis. And the resident females would rather game in a corner with the rest of the geeks than dance with the marines who look like boys who used to pick on them.
The gamers are probably having the most fun anyway. Perfectly reproduced 80s-era Dungeons and Dragons. Not a collectible card game in sight: there was a debate over that, and an online vote, and the final decision was that collectible card games were an anachronism, and also most people had left their best decks at home.
Little multi-sided dice flying.
The marines drink punch and lurk at the dance floor's edges. Dr Weir slides around like an over-cheerful committee member, asking random startled boys to dance.
All evidence to the effect that most sane people choose not to relive their adolescences.
Except.
They'll argue later that the kilt is completely inappropriate to the music, that if you're going to come dressed as Axel Rose, you have no business singing Journey. But none of them are going to forget Major Sheppard, in a kilt and combat boots, doing a raw-voiced karaoke version of "Don't Stop Believing".
Dr McKay has pictures, in case it slips their minds.