entrancelogs | [CLOSED] The Dating Game

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[CLOSED] The Dating Game

Who: Donna Noble (

supertemp), Amy Pond (

oncefairytale), Ushiromiya Ange (

regretel) and Philip (

radiopalkiller), the eligible bachelor
Where: Filmed in front of a live studio audience!
When: 07/01, third day of the event
Rating: probably in the PG-13 area
Summary: It's another fun episode of The Dating Game!
The Story:Lights! Camera! Action! Cue studio littered with blinking neon hearts, which leave very little of the residents' current predicament to the imagination! And here she is, our charming hostess, Miss Whatsherface!

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's edition of The Dating Game!"

The audience cheers wildly. The three women seated in a row on chairs to the right side of an obnoxiously rose-coloured partition perhaps less so. And yet the wide and toothy grin of the approaching hostess seems to promise them nothing less than the chance at becoming the luckiest woman in the whole world, after a few simple questions and one brief commercial break.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you know- you know what they say about love, don't you? They say that love is when you can't fall asleep--" She pauses and smiles into the camera knowingly. "When you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

Another round of applause. The camera zooms in on the contestants.

"And maybe one of these three ladies will finally meet the man of her dreams today, so let's say hello! Bachelorette number one, what's your name?"

Her grin perks up. She smiles at the first chair expectantly, much like a well-meaning shark.

[[ OOC: I'd say tagging order is Donna, Amy, Ange & Philip. First the show will demand ~~obnoxiously perky~~ introductions, then Philip gets to ask "funny" questions and then he'll pick his bachelorette. Everybody can play host, audience and any other NPCs as needed! ]]

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Donna gives the hostess a blank look. All of this dating nonsense is starting to get a little ridiculous. "Donna," she says, unable to keep from sounding a bit sulky about it all. "Donna Noble. From Chiswick."

There's a round of applause from the studio audience, and it's almost enough to make Donna wish she had the bloody laugh track back.

"We're glad to have you here today, Donna! Tell me, what are you looking for in a man?" She leans in, eager to hear Donna's answer.

A bloke who won't try to feed me to giant spiders, Donna thinks, but she manages to keep from saying it. "Well, uh, I reckon I want someone who...sees how special I am?" she finishes lamely. That's a good answer, right?

Apparently it's acceptable, because the audience coos in creepy unison. "I'm sure you'll find Mr Right someday!" the hostess chirps before moving on to the next ~~victim~~ bachelorette.

Amy groans when she finds herself seated on that other side partition sitting on a stool. She's familiar with these lights by now and knows nothing good can come of it. And when the announcer starts on about sappy romances she rolls her eyes.

"What's it to you?" she crosses her arms, not sure she wants to play this game. Not after the last few days she'd been having. Sure nothing too terrible had happened but it's starting to wear on her.

"Looks like someone's been scorned before." She waits and the crowd all say "Aww," at once. "Maybe you'll have better luck tonight! We do have one very eligible bachelor after all!" The hostess grins a 'well-isn't-she-adorable' smile and moves on to the final contestant.

Growing up, Ange lived a somewhat abnormal life compared to most. TV was not really a part of it, so while she recognizes shes on some kind of set, she doesn't really get what's happening, so it's lucky, on some level, that if she has to be here at all, she's going last.

When approached, she looks at the mic shoved into her face for a moment, then at the two who went before her.

"...I'm Ange. I'm not looking for a man."

The hostess titters. "Oh, Sweetie! We're all looking for a man."

With everyone introduced, she turns away to get started with the main event.

"And luckily we've got that man right here! Let's have a round of applause for Philip LaFresque!"

On cue a sliding door opens on the other side of the partition, revealing a face so dour, it makes up for the show's forced bubbliness twice and then some. Sure, the event may have been able to force him into something slightly nicer than his usual cave exploration clothes, but there's no forcing him into a better mood anytime soon.

He approaches the hostess with a frown and ignores her expectant smile, even after the applause has died down for juuuust long enough to make the moment awkward.

"Philip!", the hostess finally chimes. "Why don't you tell us a little about yourself?"

There's more of her smile, and more of his frown.

"Erm... no."

The slightest whisper stirs in the audience, but the Mrs. Hostess quickly cuts it off with a laugh and a nudge (a sharp one, mind) to Philip's side.

"We've got a shy one here, huh? Let me help you out a little then! Born in Canterbury, now long-time London resident and professor of physics at the world-renowned [ INSERT NAME TOO REMARKABLE TO EVER BE WRITTEN DOWN IN PRINT ] university, Philip is twenty-nine years old, cinema enthusiast and looking for the right woman for his happy ending!"

Whatever Philip mutters in response is lost under the audience's roaring applause of excitement. The hostess tucks her cards between two fingers and adds a few claps of her own.

"Philip, why come to us now?"

Ignoring the arm the hostess puts on his shoulder Philip crosses his arms and looks away, eyes only glancing towards anything that might look like a viable emergency exit. Shit out of luck on that one, he can just guess.

"The event made me. I tried to run, but one of those bloody hearts fell off the wall and almost killed me."

He shoots the woman next to him a challenging glare, but her smile remains uninterrupted.

"Isn't that just adorable, ladies and gentlemen, he says he just can't live without love!"

"No, that's not anywhere near what I--"

"Such a romantic at heart! Bachelorette number one, why don't you say hello to Philip and tell him why you're the right one for him?"

While Donna fully admits that Philip doesn't look half-bad cleaned up and in decent clothes, she's still just as annoyed as everybody else is at ending up in some ridiculous seventies throwback dating game show. It's probably not as bad as the shadows from the last event (Donna's sounded an awful lot like her mother at times), but it's definitely close.

"I'm probably not," she tells the hostess frankly. "I mean, he's a bleeding physicist, and I'm hardly the intellectual sort, for starters."

Awwww, the audience coos in unison, and the hostess gives Donna a sympathetic look as she places a hand on Donna's arm. "Don't you worry, every shy intellectual just needs someone more outgoing to pry him out of his shell! I'm sure you'll be a perfect match."

Amy's noticed him around once or twice but never really had any fascination with him. The dour look on his face was usually enough to steer her the other way. But throughout his introduction, she definitely feels for him. She has a feeling this host is going to make their lives very interesting.

The effervescent hosts walks over to her. "Now, Amy, what would you say to win over our charming bachelor?"

Amy thinks on that for a moment. She knows that whatever she says will probably be manipulated into something ridiculously cheesy. The only option she can see is to play along until the mansion got bored of this. So she pastes on a charming smile. "Well, for starters, I'd go with how experienced I am in the kissing department. My job's given me a...unique...background in that." She covers her mouth with both hands, aghast that those words slipped out. She'd been willing to play along but...where had that even come from?

The host smiles a knowing look at Amy. "It's hard to find the right man, isn't it? A good one only comes along so often. It's lucky for you that he might just be sitting over there if you play your cards right."

"Now, now, now!" the hostess suddenly chides, before the applause has even settled. "Where do you think you are going?"

She turns sharply to bachelorette number three, whose clever introduction stands apart from the rest insofar as that Ange is literally standing, away from the rest, having stopped on her way to the stage exit.

"I'm not looking for a man," she repeats and keeps walking.

The audiences awwws with disappointment, and the hostess only shakes her head, tutting.

"Well," she begins crisply. "Well, it looks like she wasn't the one for our Philip after all. Let's say, ladies and gentlemen, let's... give Ange one last round of applause and say goodbye!"

The audience follows the cue and claps wildly, but Ange only shakes her head, not looking back. Not looking down either, otherwise she might have seen the trapdoor on time, before it opened underneath her feet, the studio floor swallowing bachelorette number three whole.

At the centre of the stage her chair descends as well, if at a considerably slower pace, and re-emerges moments later, a big and red heart of plush with a frowny face sitting where Ange's place used to be.

Philip jumps up from his chair.

"Did you just--"

A sharp pat on his back interrupts him, and the hostess presses herself against his side with a near unnaturally wide smile.

"I know you must be disappointed, but quality over quantity, Philip, hmmmm? Isn't that right, dear audience?"

The cheers and shouts of encouraging agreement nearly force Philip back into his seat, and there is a disconcerting twinkle in the eyes of that hostess which, quite frankly, does the rest. Whatever the young woman's fate was, Philip can't say that he's especially eager to discover, let alone repeat it.

He drags his hand across his face and, in a voice that sounds suspiciously like somebody sitting in a rusty bathtub filled with exotic fire ants, slowly starts reading from the question cards in his hands:

"I have always had a passion for the cinema, and I hope that our love can be just like it is in the movies. If I picked you, bachelorette number one, what movie would our life together look like?"

Donna watches everything unfold with a horrified look on her face; while she'd been thinking about making her own escape, it's clear that it's no longer an option, and it's best to just slog through this whole bloody miserable affair. She doesn't even know the girl - Ange, was it? - but she's certain that she didn't deserve to be dropped down a trapdoor to something that's probably even more horrible than being stuck in a seventies dating show.

(Maybe she's in the Big Brother house now. While ultimately a worse fate, she'd at least be safe then.)

It takes Donna a moment to realise that Philip's speaking - and, more, that the question's directed to her - and she blinks stupidly, both at the camera and at the microphone the hostess is shoving in her face. "What?" She shakes her head to clear it, trying to remember what he'd said.

Love just like the movies? Who comes up with this crap, honestly? "Titanic," she mutters under her breath, thankfully not quite loudly enough for the microphone to pick up. It's an accurate depiction of her love life, but probably not what they're looking for.

"Pride and Prejudice," she says finally, her voice flat, "a classic love story that's been adapted to film countless times. I've always felt like Elizabeth Bennet, and I think that you would be my Mr Darcy. Though Mr Darcy might seem aloof and cold at first, he ultimately reveals the heart of gold that lies underneath, and he and Lizzy fall in love and lead an idyllic life together."

Amy is also staring in horror at Ange's disappearance. She had entertained thoughts of just walking away but she'd experienced enough of whatever this was to know that it couldn't end well. Her proof is now sitting beside her. Amy scoots as far away from it as she can, which isn't much given the uncomfortably hard little stool she has been given.

While the microphone might not have picked up on Donna's answer, Amy does. She laughs a little at it but tries to school her face into a neutral expression so she doesn't face the same fate as Ange.

"And, don't you worry about missing out on this Bachelorette number two. Given his love of movies, now if your chance to impress him with what you have to offer," the overly energetic host proclaims.

Amy frowns at this woman and wonders where her endless reserves of chipperness come from. "I know it's hard to beat that wonderfully romantic answer, but you've got to have something up your sleeve, don't you?" the host goads.

While she may not want to actually win a date with him, she's seen what happens if she doesn't at least give this insane show something to work with. With a deep sigh, she finds her answer. "What's that really romantic one that everyone loves? Um...The Notebook, right? About those two kids that fall in love and even after everything they find a way to be together, yeah?"

The host gives a cheesy smile to the audience and they all coo in delight. It's all Amy can do to keep from gagging at her reply. If she didn't know any better, some of this feels rather scripted. She could hardly believe the drivel she's spouting.

"Put your hands together for our Bachelorettes, everyone. Aren't they doing fabulously? I'm sure one of them is sure to win over our charming bachelor. They really do have a chance at finding true love, don't they?"

There's a genre that's escaped his cinematic enthusiasm for the most part, and Philip really can't say that he's sorry. Titanic would've put it a lot better, he thinks grimly and restrains his features into an expression that, while nowhere near cheerful, is at least closer to neutral than it is to a grimace someone would pull if, say, they were about to be thrown into a pit of venomous snakes.

...And for a second he almost forces his face to light up, because guilt is a fantastic motivator, and because Philip can't help but feel that there should be room to express that his horror and repulsion are situational, not personal, but then again--

"That's the last question, right? It's just two?"

Then again, the faster they're out of here the faster he can apologise, take to his heels, and never ever speak of any of this to anybody again.

"My, my, my!" the hostess laughs. "Someone really can't wait to say goodbye to single life, huh? Don't worry, Philip, we think two keys are enough to unlock anyone's heart, but choose carefully~!"

The audience chuckles happily, and Philip slowly closes his mouth when he realises that he doesn't even know where to begin objecting to that. Instead he tries his best to ignore the hostess's ready-for-TV toothpaste smile, and starts reading from the next card.

"My last girlfr-- really?"

He stares dumbfounded at his card, just to make sure that he's really reading a bad pun about Evie's passion for Ancient Egypt and their relationship "being history". The rest of the question he won't even look at, but the hostess is treated to a glare all the same.

"More keys on the keychain, Philip!" she only laughs in return and plucks the card from his hands.

Fantastic, apparently he gets to choose his nightmare. He looks at the next card warily.

"My favourite thing about redheads is th-- what is wrong with you?!"

This time the question is enough to get him to his feet, but instead of retreating from his accusatory stare the hostess only wraps one arm around Philip and pats his back, before squeezing him tightly.

(He was wrong, it's not venomous snakes. It's constrictors.)

"Such a tough choice, huh? Why don't you let fate decide, and have Lady Luck lead you to your lady?"

Philip almost doesn't notice the applause on cue anymore, not when his attention is on the hostess and her dainty fingers, which pluck a card from the stack in his hands and offer it to him with a sweet smile, while pressing down on his shoulders and encouraging him to sit back down.

( And did he just feel the floor shaking a little? )

Taking the card Philip grudgingly complies, this time reading the question in silence before opening his mouth, which has twisted back into the grimace he'd nearly hidden earlier.

"Bachelorette number one," he begins with strained reluctance. "I think that life never stops asking us questions, and none of us have all the answers. I have taught physics for several years, but what is something you could teach me in return?"

He lowers the card and frowns, as if still waiting for a worse catch. Then he sighs and offers Donna an apologetic shrug.

Of course they aren't done yet; Donna doesn't expect to be half so lucky as to escape after just two questions. She wonders what's going to happen to the unlucky loser - is one of them, perhaps, destined to join Ange in a possibly bottomless pit somewhere under the mansion? She'd been hoping that Amy would win - it's nothing personal towards Philip, he's certainly good-looking enough when he's cleaned up, but it would quite possibly be the most awkward date of her entire life, and that includes the time her mum more or less forced her to go out with her mate Joanne's orthodontist son who kept talking about teeth the whole night - but now she's not sure whether she'd prefer the date or the bottomless pit.

(She's pretty sure that Philip, if left to his own devices, wouldn't insist on a date, but there's absolutely no way of telling what'll happen after everything's said and done; for all she knows, the date itself will be another nightmarish reality show.)

Teaching? She furrows her brow, giving Philip a blank stare. If there's one thing she knows even less about than films, it's teaching, especially when it comes to bloody life lessons. Luckily, that same instinct kicks in again, and she finds herself parroting words that would never leave her mouth ordinarily. "I've been travelling through time and space, and I've learnt to find wonder and magic in the most unlikely of places, from my back garden in Chiswick to the Ood Sphere. If you choose me, I'd love to share my unique view of the universe with you." She finishes with a sigh, rolling her eyes at Philip.

[Handwaves ftw! Gonna say Amy will produce another generic answer and then we can have the show fade to black before the good bit of who won. And then Amy will have a running joke with Donna that Donna deserves Philip.]

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[CLOSED] The Dating Game

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