(no subject)

[femme_a_soldat]

Madame Thénardier had been casually wiping tables with a rag occasionally dipped in a small bucket of indeterminate liquid that might or might not contain panther's urine.

But now, she's put down the bucket and is leaning on the bar, gazing up with admiration at the television, on which Indian women with colourful saris are dancing, or arguing with great passion, or hugging their children, or crying. It seems that Bollywood movies are just the thing for her sense of exoticism and drama.



[[

• OOC1: She has no idea it's the anniversary of the day on which two of her children will be going to have died in 1832 -- but I still had to put in my one Les Mis charrie for Barricade Day!
• OOC2: We are still looking for a new mun for Monsieur Thénardier (le_sergent ), but in the meanwhile, I don't want to completely not play Madame.
• OOC3: 'Panther's piss' was the notional substance with which the cleaning staff at my first proper job after uni wiped all the computer screens, at least according to my very snarky colleague, so it's become a term for 'unspecified cleaning substance that might not actually be helpful' around here.

]]

Comments

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

She's not the only Parisian to have recently discovered the television. Bossuet noticed it the other day and he's just as entranced. He wanders in and leans on the bar as well.

Look at the people! The people from...from Somewhere Foreign With Dancing. "Do you know what it's all about?"

((*waves a tiny flag of Not Dead Yet (Just Very Busy)*))

[femme_a_soldat]

"I think she's thinking that he's with another woman, and the other daughter's in love with an unsuitable man," Madame Thénardier says, eyes riveted to the all-singing, all-dancing exotic extravaganza on the TV screen. "Or maybe the other way around."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Ahhh." He nods sensibly. "...How can you tell? Oh! Oh, is other woman that one in purple? She has the look of Another Woman."

[femme_a_soldat]

"No, I think that's the son's wife," Madame Thénardier says. "There's a lot of people involved in this. An epic tale from far-away lands!"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Indeed."

There's a bowl of some sort of nuts and crackers near his elbow; he takes a handful absently. They're very salty. "What's the son's wife upset about? Is he with another woman too?"

[femme_a_soldat]

"I haven't the foggiest," she says. "The story had already started when it caught my eye."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Wonderful." It really is. Now a crowd of young men has taken over the scene; apparently two of them are supposed to fight. "It's better than an opera. --Well. I suppose it is an opera."

((Sorry, Grantaire. Bossuet is in ur b4r, stealin ur l1nes.))

[femme_a_soldat]

"Of sorts," Madame says. "Isn't it marvellous?"

The girls are dancing commentary to the fight of the young men, and the music is getting fast and frantic.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He munches some more pretzel bits. "Yesterday I was watching this thing and it was all about sharks. Put me off seafood entirely."

[femme_a_soldat]

"Mostly, it's people screaming at each other," Madame Thénardier says. "Or squid."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Squid? Were the people screaming at one another fishwives? --I don't mind a nice dish of calimari but there's only so much I want to know about the things before they reach my plate."

[femme_a_soldat]

"No, it was squid on that thing," Madame Thénardier says. "Waving their tentacles and changing colour."


[[OOC: By old, cracky Milliways tradition, one of the things the Milliways TV gets is a soap opera from not precisely specified squid world, with the lovely title 'Tentacles Of Our Waves', so that is something one will always see when zapping.-]]

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"They change color?" Bossuet shakes his head disapprovingly. "Untrustworthy creatures. --Is that the Other Woman?" On the screen, people are looking daggers at one another in a moment that would be extremely tense if he knew what was going on.

((I love it!))

[femme_a_soldat]

"Yes, that is her!" Madame says, getting excited. "She looks as if she would lay claim to him."

The figure in question is in fact sashaying towards the male lead, who has stopped fighting and looks at her in complete amazement.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"The shameless hussy," he agrees, mock-serious. "And now the other fellow's going to hit him while his back is turned--there you go. I suppose he'll end up with the Other Woman and they'll be miserable together?"

[femme_a_soldat]

"But they have such lovely clothes to wear while being miserable!" Madame exclaims, as the dancers move in again, swaying around the fighting parties.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Ye-es.... I'd prefer good company and bad clothes instead, myself." He looks over at her thoughtfully. "But not everyone has a choice, I suppose."

[femme_a_soldat]

"There is still being miserable in rags, which is the most common lot," Madame says, with a dramatic sigh, peering down at her own attire, which is both functional and revealing, but nothing near the saris on the TV screen.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It's hard to take the dramatic sigh seriously, but-- "You make a good point." Lesgle looks ruefully at the television screen, rubbing the back of his neck. (His own clothes are shabby, but they have a way to go before they could be called rags.) "--What if our villains here end up happy together, and well-dressed?"

[femme_a_soldat]

"Than the world is as unfair as I have always come to expect it!" Madame Thénardier says. "Honest people work hard and come to nothing, and villains live happily ever after."

She is still completely convinced that she and her husband are hard-working honest people

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet bites down on a smile. Oh, drama! "You are a philosopher, Madame."

[femme_a_soldat]

"Oh no, that is my husband, not me," she says. "He's a philosopher, especially in he company of a bottle."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Ah, man's best friend! So many new ideas have been poured out into a glass and shared around a table. --Probably the writers of this, this opera, were so inspired." He nods at the screen.

[femme_a_soldat]

"It would explain why they do that thing with their veils now," she says, staring at the dancers.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"It really would."

That's fascinating. Bossuet could watch this all day. He probably will.

((Shoot, I'll probably be mostly offline all weekend, so maybe that should be a wrap for now? I'm trying to get better about not just vanishing mid-thread...))

[femme_a_soldat]

And so will Madame, quite cheerfully.-

[[OOC: Good fade point -- and thanks for the thread!]]

[lt_blade]

Sonya doesn't allow herself to watch television on base: for one, fighting over channels with the guys wasn't worth it, and two: on the base it was a waste of time.

She's looking through some papers when the program catches her attention. Hindi wasn't one of the languages she spoke, but given the gestures and expressions of the characters, it's more or less easy for her to guess what's going on. It's also not a surprise to see Madame invested in it.

"You're able to follow along with this?" She had only a vague idea, her attention more on paperwork: compartmentalization was a well used skill for her.

[femme_a_soldat]

"They're all in love with the wrong people, but maybe it's a misunderstanding," Madame says, not taking her eyes off the screen. "And that's everybody's mother!"

will be away all day

[lt_blade]

"Could be, or maybe some of those people are stringing them along." She could recall the occasional soap opera with her mother and some of her friends. Once and awhile she tried to follow along, just to see what the fuss was about, but they were all the same to her.

"The dancing is silly, more interesting than American soaps from the looks of it."

[femme_a_soldat]

"Soap?" Madame says. "They haven't mentioned soap yet, only candy, and tea."

[lt_blade]

"Think it's because the very first ones were sponsered by soap companies, least that's what mom told me when I asked her. They're usually played in the mornings when most wives are doing the cleaning." So maybe that made sense. "Lot of going on about who's cheating with who, someone's a gold digger, and if there's rumor of a 'long lost twin', that really got them talking."

Her mom watched a lot of them.

[femme_a_soldat]

"Dramatic turns of events, and high tempers?" Madame Thénardier says. "Yes, they have them, too."

[lt_blade]

"Very dramatic, least if you'd watch the characters. When I was little, mom and her friends would always talk or watch them together if they had the free time." Which, raising two children more or less on her own, wasn't that often. "No songs or dances of course, that's usually for musicals, not soap operas."

Pity really, watching it on the tv, Sonya felt they would've added something more interesting than what happened on American Soaps.

[femme_a_soldat]

"But you cannot have an opera without music!" Madame protests.

[lt_blade]

"I think they're just referred to as operas because the stories are dramatic and full of twists-or so that's the claim anyway. I've tried watching a few while recovering, honestly after awhile they all tend to blur." Seen one, seem them all if she were honest.

Another look at the television and her own childhood had her remembering something else. "Actually, there was one I still enjoy. It was called Dark Shadows, and it was interesting because it was the only Soap Opera where there were actual supernatural elements too it-one of the main characters was a vampire trying to come to terms with what he's become."

That she could remember all of his from decades ago only proved it.

[femme_a_soldat]

"A vampire!" Madame says. "That is really exotic. There has been quite the craze after Polidori's novel a few years ago. So they're still popular in your time?"

[lt_blade]

Sonya wasn't sure about exotic, but it was definitely unusual for a soap opera. At the very least, she'd yet to hear of any others with such characters.

"No clue who Polidori is, but yes, in a way they're still popular. Mostly around Halloween, it's common enough for kids and adults to dress up as vampires. There are also the novels 'Dracula' and 'Interview with the Vampire', that are well known."

She'd read the first and wouldn't admit to anyone that she's read the latter.

[femme_a_soldat]

"I've never heard about the latter -- are they any good?" Madame Thénardier asks.

[lt_blade]

"Dracula's interesting, given how it's written." She couldn't say she cared for the main 'hero' of the story though-all the signs infront of him and he kept shoving his head into the sand. "Interview with a vampire..I may've skimmed over it when I was a teenager. It was alright, the basis itself is interesting-this journalist getting to interview an actual vampire, but really it's a matter of interest."

She had no idea what sort of books Madame read in the first place, but for herself-mopey vampires weren't one of them.

[femme_a_soldat]

"The latter does sound amusing!" Madame Thénardier says.

She likes things lurid and sensational.

[lt_blade]

"Bar has an impressive library just over there." She motioned her head over towards the door to the library. "Pretty sure you could find a copy of both if you have their spare time."

Which she wasn't sure of. For all her character, Madame didn't look like she had much time for reading, but then Milliways had plenty of it to spare.

The paperwork still needed to be sorted, but at the moment SOnya's finding it more dry that she's willing to put up with, but if she goes to her office then she'll have a subordinate at her door any moment-and those she couldn't ignore.

[femme_a_soldat]

"I would love that!" Madame says. "I love a good, ripping read!"

[lt_blade]

In the back of her mind, Sonya knew what Madame and her husband were capable of-what they'd already done. She'd worked with plenty of crooked people in the past with a certain amount of disconnection.

So long as the Thénardiers didn't try anything, she could remain civil-if only for Milliways's sake.

Yet even she had to admit that the woman's enthusiasm was contagious enough for her to feel the same. "Dracula's pretty good. It's been around for 90 or so years from my time, though most are more familiar with the movie version than the book-and there are a number of movie versions inspired from it."

For all her mentioning of the Anne Rice novel, Sonya wasn't too proud to admit that Christopher Lee as Dracula was pretty enjoyable.

[femme_a_soldat]

"A movie is something like this opera?" Madame asks, pointing at the screen.

[lt_blade]

Sonya nodded. "They're usually longer though, and ideally they'd have a more coherent storyline." Usually. "Also not all have singing in them, background music mostly, but it's just to enhance the mood of the story."

Then there were those cheesy fantasy movies that left more questions than answers of what the director was trying to say.

[femme_a_soldat]

"That is a lovely way to pass the time!" Madame says. "Where do I get them?"