entrancelogs | [Action OTA]: アニメクラブに行こうよ！

Entry tags:

[Action OTA]: アニメクラブに行こうよ！

Who: Anyone who wants to attend!
Where: Second floor tearooms.
When: 5/ 18
Rating: E for Everyone, though individual discussions may go higher.
Summary: It's the inaugural meeting of Wonderland's anime club, and it's being kicked off with a movie marathon! Come watch, chat among friends, and eat up.
The Story:

Those who venture up to the second floor tearooms will see a variety of signs, hand-drawn in colored pencil and pen, directing them to the first room in the line, where a big poster is taped to the door. It reads:

Wonderland Anime Club!
Please come in quietly and find someplace to sit!
Remember to keep it quiet for other viewers.
Refreshments are in the back!

Inside, the tables have been pushed against the wall, and the chairs arranged around them, with some limited theater-style seating in the middle; the rest of the room is full of pillows, blankets, and cushions, making a soft place to lie around and relax with a view. The middle of the room contains a projector set up on the table, projecting onto the far wall, and the lights are dimmed. All the films are subtitled, and the speakers on the side let the audio flow throughout the room. A refreshment table is in the back, filled with Japanese convenience store snacks, including various flavors of ramune, pocky, chocolate candies, and potato chips. There is also, helpfully, a list at the refreshment table of all the films being screened that day, and the times they're playing at, so people can properly identify them.

The list reads:
サマーウォーズ / Summer Wars: 12-2 PM
となりのトトロ / My Neighbor Totoro: 2-3:30 PM
猫の恩返し / The Cat Returns: 3:30-5 PM
魔女の宅急便 / Kiki's Delivery Service: 5-6:45 PM
ハウルの動く城 / Howl's Moving Castle: 6:45-8:45 PM
千と千尋の神隠し / Spirited Away: 8:45-10:45 PM

There's also a 'mailing list' left next to that where people can leave their names if they're interested in coming to weekly meetings, to watch new shows and discuss their favorites, among other things. Everything is also decorated with stickers of cats, dogs, and rabbits, along with a surprising amount of glitter for pizzazz.

Come, stay as long as you like, and enjoy the show!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, Chara wasn't turned away at the door, somehow. Despite everyone involved's better judgment. They've played nice, too; they spent the entirety of Howl's Moving Castle at the back of the room, haunting the snack table like the ghost they are. Not even eating, mind you. Just lurking in a vaguely malevolent manner.

For the first bit of Spirited Away, they continue to lurk. As the movie goes on, though, that starts to change. It catches their interest, and they maybe let themselves scoot a little closer.

By the time Chihiro signs the contract and loses her true name, they throw pretense to the wind. They drop themselves down at Frisk's side (the skeleton-free side) and maybe sort of... shove them a bit? Nudge them? Lean against their side? Truly, the gesture is up to literary interpretation.

"Scoot over."

There's no way Alphys could've known the acute significance of true names and losing them, but Frisk is fascinated regardless. They can sympathize, perhaps to a gratuitous extent, and what's more is the world Chihiro ends up in...it's not so different from being in the Underground, is it?

"Enjoying the movie?" Frisk doesn't expect Chara to actually admit to getting invested, but they scoot regardless and pat the pillowed ground beside them with a huge grin.

They settle in next to Frisk, and choose, generously, to ignore that big happy grin Frisk is sporting. Chara's not one for touch, Chara generally prefers to keep a large bubble of personal space, but... they let themselves sit against Frisk's side. They reason that it doesn't count, since Frisk's body was technically also their body at one point.

"I don't enjoy anything," they remind Frisk, even if they're positive Frisk has long since ceased buying that. A shake of their sleeve, and a collection of little biscuits tumble out into their open palm. Lifted from the snack table when nobody was looking. Hello Panda, the box said, and it promised each little cookie had a chocolate filling, so... well, Chara doesn't like to be predictable, but it doesn't count as predictable if nobody sees it, right?

"I think Alphys picked this on purpose," they remark, offering their handful of sleeve-snacks to Frisk.

Wow, woah, gee, Chara! Not obvious at all. Allegedly they pilfered those from the snack table, which is, as Frisk cunningly discovered, actually open for anyone to take from at their leisure. The exchange is practically rote at this point, but Chara knows that Frisk knows that it is, so it works.

They accept a small handful of the biscuits courteously, but they can't fight the smile twitching the corners of their lips.

"I think so too." They crunch one of the snacks between their teeth and, yep, there's that chocolate-y taste they know Chara likes. "You know you don't need to hide these, right? The snack table's open to anyone."

They start to refute, but then... sort of stop. They... don't. They don't actually know why they felt a need to be so secretive. To steal, to hide, to hoard. They know the snacks are for everyone, right?

Well. They've got plenty of excuses on hand, so it's probably one of those. "Maybe they're open to you, but I'm not exactly the guest of honor. You should have seen the look on Undyne's face when I stepped in here." They laugh, carefully pick a single one of their conquest cookies, crunch it down. ...Good. These are really good. Kind of cute, too, as far as food goes.

"Neither Alphys nor Undyne is exactly subtle. That's why it's so obvious the good doctor picked this movie for you. We've barely even started and it's already wildly transparent. The main character's even wearing stripes!"

"It's so we know she's a kid, right?" Well, it works. And besides, as long as Chara isn't raising any ruckuses, Alphys did say this sort of thing was open to everyone. Undyne and Chara aren't about to be the best of all bestest buddies, but maybe they can coexist a little better than they have. That is, with a real minimum of killing and death.

"Long as you're not doing anything to interrupt, it wouldn't matter." But if it makes them feel better to slink about, well...what can Frisk do to stop them? There wouldn't be much point in it, anyway. So instead they grin at the scene unfolding on the screen. "A kid in a striped shirt falls into a world of monsters and spirits. I guess it does sound vaguely familiar."

"I think she's trying to make you feel better," Chara announces, picking another single little biscuit, even if they're pretty sure they could wolf these things down like popcorn.

"It's gonna have a happy ending, and the moral will be something tiring and sentimental like 'love conquers all' or 'friendship is magic' or whatever, and you'll probably cry at the end."

"I bet you'll cry too." Unlikely, but the teasing back-and-forth has fallen into a comfortable rhythm, and Frisk isn't about to disrupt it. "Chihiro even had the same color shirt as you! Yellow-and-green striped!"

Honestly, they can't see this movie having anything but a happy ending, particularly given the fare that preceded it. But it doesn't make the tension any less enjoyable, as Chihiro braves the dangers and challenges of working at the spirit bathhouse.

A brown-haired, rosy-cheeked child in a green-and-yellow striped shirt who has a strange but somehow deeply important boy coming to their aid? Golly, who would ever relate to that? Probably someone stupid.

So Chara bumps up against Frisk's side, in another maybe-shove-maybe-nudge-maybe-lean. "Not likely! I was only born with, like, three tears within me. They're gone. Spent. No more left to shed."

"Hmm." Frisk manages to tear their eyes from the screen long enough to scrutinize Chara matter-of-factly.

Then they lift a hand, wiggle their fingers, and grin.

"Two tickles says you're wrong."

You think Frisk was just gonna let a weakness like being ticklish lie there and not do anything with it?

"You wouldn't dare!" Chara hisses, and it's enough to pry their attention away from the screen, too. There are few threats on this green earth more serious and game-changing than tickles. The horror.

"I don't want your gross grubby fingers touching me. They're probably rife with cooties and potato chip dust."

"Whereas yours are coated with that oh-so-sanitary chocolate goodness?"

But Frisk lets their hands drop, even crosses them across their chest. See, it's all good. All safe. No tickles today. For now.

"I'm just saying, I've got hard evidence."

A wise choice, Frisk. Chara would probably throw the "be quiet and don't disturb other anime-viewers" rule directly out the window if that particular threat were acted on.

Not that it takes much to get Chara to stop being quiet, really.

They look back over to the movie. Sort of shrug a bit. "Tears don't count if they're tickling tears. That's like cutting-onions-tears. Your evidence is nothing before the crushing might of proven science facts."

Honestly, they could choose to make things Serious, but where'd the fun in that be? This has been a pretty relaxed evening so far, and they've been enjoying the movie. No need to make things needlessly intense.

"We'll have to see. This movie's ending might be utterly devastating. You don't know."

"Yeah, right. This movie's for babies, and my heart is cold and black and shrivelled," Chara declares. "Now shut up, I think that guy in the white outfit's gonna show up again."

Except, no, not even close. Haku's nowhere in sight. It's just some weird gross pile of sentient mud or something. They're just. Kind of low-key hoping for Haku, okay.

Frisk watches the screen for a long moment, but he doesn't show up again. Not just yet, anyway.

"You like Haku?"

They wouldn't have pegged that one, but on second thought, that makes a lot of sense. The way he helped Chihiro without a second thought, guiding her through the world like a benevolent spirit - maybe that was a little lighter compared to how it was back home, but Frisk smiles at the unintentional parallels.

"...I like him too."

They curl up. Knees to chest, arms folded, face half-hidden, because... they're smiling, they guess, but they don't know why. Who cares about Frisk's dumb opinion about a character who isn't even real?

"I bet he dies," they blurt. They don't know why they say that, either.

"I bet he ends up fine." Though, actually, Frisk isn't sure. Chihiro's parents got turned into pigs, and they haven't seen them since. Privately, they're of the mind that Chihiro's parents deserved that, a little bit, but there's no reason they have to stay like that forever. Or get eaten. That's pretty ghastly.

Just because they ended up liking the world they fell into doesn't mean everyone would, after all.

"So he's your favorite, then?"

"I guess...? His motives are hard to figure out. That makes him a bit more interesting than most of the cast."

Though maybe they're talking too soon. It'll probably all be obvious by the end, right? Stupid kiddy movies aren't known for their subtlety or ambiguity, surely. "He's totally gonna die, though. Or, like... get hit by a truck trying to save Chihiro-" Sen? Name the fallen human, right? "-or fall off a cliff or get mauled by spirit bears or something. Can't really have a compelling story unless there's bloodshed, right?"

"Or maybe he'll keep helping her and they can both escape by the end!"

Frisk, ever the optimist. To be fair, they haven't consumed a great deal of media, with the exception of what little they could glean on the TV or picked up from library books. But the movies so far have had such wonderful endings, and they honestly find themselves hoping Haku makes it out all right. They're also one hundred percent certain they'll be crying by the end. Asriel isn't the only crybaby, after all.

Chara rolls their eyes. "As if. I bet the twist is that he's the villain all along, and he was just tricking Chihiro into trusting him so he can eat her parents." There's a bright, sharp look to their eyes as they curl in a little more, trying to dream up more endings that are far more realistic (read: unhappy) than Frisk's guesses.

They don't come up with any more, though, before the screen snaps up their attention. A streak of white shoots by. Haku, pursued and attacked by a swarm of... paper? It's not a truck or a spirit bear, but whatever! Chara uncoils like their beloved switchblade popping free, all at once sitting up and leaning in alertly, digging a sharp elbow against Frisk.

"See? See? What did I tell you?"

"We don't know he's bad!" Frisk squeaks as they sit bolt upright and try to swat away the searching elbow simultaneously, which is an effort that doesn't particularly go well for them and sends their remaining biscuits scattering onto the floor. They get ignored in favor of the action on the screen as Frisk watches with bated breath.

"He's a dragon! He still might be good!" Wouldn't they both know, better than anyone, that monsters are seldom truly monstrous?

"Frisk, you're gonna get us in trouble!" Chara hisses, dropping down to pick the fallen snacks up. Don't make a mess, don't waste food. Don't be an ungrateful brat!

...They look up again a half-second later, though, because finally, some action, and they're sort of kind of really invested in Haku already, and...

"He's either evil or he's dying. It's gotta be one or the other. He's gotta be in the story either to suffer or stab us in the back. There's no point in a character who's only just... nice and okay and fine!"

Says Chara, as if they haven't gotten Frisk in trouble before. Fortunately, Frisk is too riveted by the action on the screen to care very much.

"But he's not okay and fine!" He's still in service to Yubaba, and dying to boot. Frisk is finding themselves to be...worryingly invested in his eventual fate, gripping the edges of their blanket rather tightly. "Sen's gonna save him, right?"

"Nah. She's gonna point and laugh while he bleeds out all over the floor." Chara says, lightly and breezily, like they aren't involved or interested in anything at all here. Except maybe for a raging internal debate on if it's gross to eat the floor cookies, or if the five-second-rule is something a mature and also intimidating individual can get away with.

"What do you think, Frisk. This is a stupid sappy movie for babies." Of course he's gonna be okay. Frisk is totally gonna end up going on and on about how okay he's gonna be, probably, and then he will be okay, not that it's any business of Chara's or anything.

SPIRITED AWAY (slams fists on table)

U CAN SPIRIT ME AWAY ANYTIME

ARE YOU TRYING TO *FLIRT

SPAMS FLIRT OPTION

BUT CAN YOU MAKE SPAGHETTI THO

U KNOW IT

yeah well my standards are casserole-based so TOUGH LUCK

BUT WHAT IF I MEET THOSE STANDARDS WHAT THEN

THEN YOU'D BE A REAL CASSEROLEVA. cassanova. uh. it sounds funnier in my head

BETTER WRITE A CASANOVELLA

I THINK YOU NEED TO SLOW YOUR CASSEROLL

BUT THEN YOU WOULDN'T HEAR ME CASSEROAR

I'D RATHER PASSEROLE ON THAT

SIT YOUR ASSEROLE DOWN

I'M TIRED OF YOUR SASSEROLE

I'D RATHER EAT GRASSEROLE

WE'RE GOING TO CHURCH IT'S TIME FOR MASSEROLE

BETTER GET THERE FASTEROLE

WE DON'T WANT TO SHOW UP LASTEROLE

WON'T THAT BE FANTASTEROLE

IT WOULDNT SHOW A LOT OF CLASSEROLE

BUT I BET IT'D BE BADASSEROLE

HONESTLY I'D CALL IT CRASSEROLE

BACK IN A FLASHEROLE

im kinda tired i think im gonna go crasherole