milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"You have GOT to be kidding me."

Standing in the open doorway, Cisco stares at the bar shaking his head.

With a sigh he tosses his toolbelt onto a bench beside the doorway and steps through into Milliways, letting the door close behind him.

His annoyance at what he had to go through to get here evaporates quickly, and when he takes a seat at the counter he’s all smiles.

"Hi, Bar. Remember me?"

That is absolutely not a squeal of delight when Bar produces a napkin with a cheerful greeting and a mug of Butterbeer to go along with it, anyone who hears one is clearly just imagining things.

Taking a drink, he turns on his stool to observe the bar at large, wondering just what exactly he can get into this time.

[ooc: link leads to a short oom.]

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"Oh, I know Wall-E!" Baze says, grinning around his straw.

"The first half of that movie was great, but the second half suffered from pacing issues and a convoluted plot shoved into the latter part of the film."

Baze Malbus, film critic.

Cisco beams when Baze says he knows Wall-E, it's always a great thing when people get Cisco's pop culture references.

The smile falters, though, on Baze's assessment of the movie.

"Bro, what are you even talking about?! Okay, granted, they got a little cutesy with the message, but the ending of that movie was beautiful. Two artificial beings finding love as humanity rediscovers its own connection with each other and the world they left behind? It's beyond poetic."

Hello, Baze Malbus, film critic, meet Cisco Ramon, film buff and romantic.

Oh, no, a romantic? Baze has no idea how to deal with one of those.

"The film had several messages, and with the exception of 'don't trash your only home,' they were all clumsily delivered. They spent a heck of a lot of time establishing that the planet was destroyed, and not very much explaining how the humans would resettle a barren wasteland. I mean, I'm sure they were able to, but I bet a lot of them died off in the first year, which doesn't fit the tone of the movie as a whole."

"They had a gigantic spaceship that sustained them for literally centuries" Cisco counters, waving an arm as if the ship was behind him. "They could very easily have lived there while cultivating the earth around them before eventually branching out."

Slurping his slush in preparation to fight Baze on this, Cisco continues. "Besides that, they had all the robots to help with, and with the co-pilot out of the picture they could unseal all those hidden records and find the information they would need to learn how to adapt and survive. The plants in the ending shot showed the earth was already primed for regrowth, the people and robots would just need to help it along."

"But why did the film need the copilot going chaotic evil in the first place? The focus shifted between droid vs. nature and loneliness to man vs. computer, and eventually man vs. nature," Baze says, drinking a bit of the butterbeer.

"Wall-E wasn't invested in the copilot conflict, that was all the pilot's doing. In the first half of the film, Wall-E was the clear protagonist. In the second, he was a catalyst, sure, but he lacked agency and focus."

Cisco runs his hands through his hair, not quite believing what he's hearing.

"No, he is absolutely still the protagonist in the end! He totally completes the Campbell's hero arc through the second and third acts."

Hunching up on his stool so that his feet rest on a higher rung, Cisco counts off on his fingers.

"He went through the tests, allies and enemies when he freed the other robots and took on the security drones, the trash compactor scene was him approaching the innermost cave, he 'died', sacrificing himself to save the plant was his moment of choice and crisis, he went back to Earth, was reborn, and in the end 'returned with the elixir' by bringing the people back to Earth so that they could recolonize based on the knowledge that he helped them to gain. Boom, full hero arc. And that's a mic drop."

The declaration is made by the miming action of said mic dropping.

Baze has never heard of Campbell's hero's arc, but clearly Cisco knows what he's talking about. The Guardian laughs, picking up his butterbeer for another drink.

"All right, all right. Clearly I need to watch this movie again, and pay closer attention. I concede the point."

"Hey, I know what I'm about," he assures Baze, taking a drink from his own butterbeer. "Before Barry came along and Caitlin came out of her shell again all I'd do is watch movies and game."

"Oh, yeah? What games?" Baze says, moving on to the cream slush.

"I should teach you Sabaac."

"Video games, both retro and new school. Lots of fantasy free-roaming games, but also the occasional first person shooter," he replies then asks, "What's Sabaac?"

Baze has only tangentially heard of video games, so Cisco might as well be speaking a different language. "Shooter" makes sense to Baze, but why would someone want to virtually shoot someone else, when guns are so plentiful? Maybe shooting people in real life is frowned upon. Weird.

"Sabaac is a card game with a special table with a suspension field. There are face cards--including the Idiot, the Queen, the Evil One, and the Star--and four suits of fifteen pip cards: Flasks, Sabers, Staves, and Coins."

Baze wouldn't be the first one to think Cisco is speaking another language, so it's okay if he does.

"Huh. Sounds kind of like poker. Minus the suspension field."

"Well, would you like to play a game? I can teach you Sabaac, and you can teach me this poker," Baze says, gulping down more Suicide slush.

"Sure!" he replies, grinning at the idea of learning a game from another universe.

"Full-disclosure, though, I'm terrible at poker. I can totally teach you the rules and how it's played, just don't think my technique is going to win you any hold-em tournaments."

It's the poker face, he doesn't have one, but he is going to start humming the song after ordering another slush for himself in preparation to play.

Baze orders a deck of Sabaac cards and a table with a suspension field. He takes a gulp of his cream slush, and deals out the cards, gleefully explaining the rules. He's always looking for another Sabaac player.

(OOC: Annnd because I don't know the rules of Sabaac, we can handwave that Baze taught Cisco and fade there? Thanks so much for the thread!)

[ooc: That totally works for me! Thank you for the thread! <3]

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