Fanfiction: Pride and Prejudices
Title: Pride and Prejudices
Fandom: Hearthchained
Author: PinkPanda
Characters: Ethan, Travis, Liam, Olivia, Hazel, Tara, Sesili
Summary: Olivia tries to convince her friends to go to Pride.
Collection: Hearthchained Summer Drabblefest 2015
“YOU GUYS!” Olivia pranced into the study of Winfield House, all bubbles and bounce and bushy tail. She held up a colorful flyer, done up in all of the colors of the rainbow, and also, curiously, a lot of pink. “You guys we should go to the Pride Parade! :DDDDD”
Hazel, who had smiled reflexively as her girlfriend arrived, suddenly felt that cheery expression vanish into a doubtful look. “The Pride Parade, really, Liv?”
“Oh fantastic! A Pride Parade!” Liam stood up from his work with punch cards at the Alchemiter station, and put his hands on his hips. This dignified expression was somewhat marred by his having donned the result of his most recent alchemical experiment, which had turned out to be outlandishly large gloves apparently made of orange rock. “My mum always tried very hard to take us on the Oxford parade route whenever she had the time……. Besides the one time when she was the parade marshal, of course. That was a highlight.”
“parade marshal? okay that is p. cool liam,” said Tara, from her reclining repose on a couch reading a dog-eared copy of The Lonely Life of an Emperor, by M. Burdell.
Ethan, sitting on the couch beside Tara, did not look up from his copy of Thundercats. “your mom sounds so much cooler than my dad”
“I considered your dad’s It Gets Better video to be quite moving, frankly!”
“There is gonna be no more tlaking about your dad at all today Ethan,” called out Travis, who was himself perched in a loveseat a suitably non-awkward distance away from his friend, with an earbud in one ear.
Hazel sighed the sigh of the put-upon. “Seriously everyone, we are supposed to be alchemizing cool stuff and Liam is the only one besides me putting any work into it. How are we going to win this game if we don’t work harder at it? We only have eleven hours left!”
“But Hazel please we need to go because it will be so fun it’s in San Pandcisco on LoCaF!” pleaded Olivia. “With your space powers we can get there in a snap!!”
“i, what. san pandcisco, really?”
“yes san pandcisco it is right next to oakpand” Ethan did not evince any expression.
“omg. there is going to be no more punning around with my hometown and its suburban locales.”
“cmon tara arent you looking forward to seeing the gay bears marching in the san pandcisco pride parade”
Tara dropped her book in her lap and leaned her head back in exasperation. “how is there not a way for me to alchemize the word no with a gun so i can shoot you with it.”
“That is a terrific idea! Please hang on a moment.” Liam scrawled something unseen on a piece of paper with his comically gigantic gloves. The sounds of SPan alchemy momentarily filled the room. “Oh….. It just makes the script for Batman Begins. I should have expected that.”
“ANYWAY,” said Olivia, liltingly. “We all should go! Pandas make small cities so it’s only a ten-minute parade. And nearly everyone here is a queer, so we all have reason to go!!!”
“You got so many levels in pink, you probably have gay panda camo.” Travis pulled the earbud out of his ear, an expression on his face of equal parts frustration and perplexity. "I just wish I understood why all of my best friends are suddenly jsut SO GAY NOW!!" he said.
"I'm not gay, I'm bi :D" said Olivia.
"we know," Tara agreed. "and i’m not gay. i just, uh, kind of kissed a girl and liked it."
"girls tara" said Ethan, who was perpetually unable to allow any of his friends to be wrong. "i'm not gay either cause i only like boys when i'm a girl"
"I'm not gay and I can prove it. I have a crush on Future Tara!" said Liam brightly.
"She's just super cool and confident and really knows what she's doing..... You really should listen to her more Tara."
"I'm not gay either," declared Hazel.
Everyone looked at her with the raw, steely skepticism of those friends who have known that you are gay since literally forever.
"Just because I only want to kiss girls doesn't mean that I care about any of this 'gay culture' stuff," said Hazel defensively, waggling two raised fingers on each hand to indicate air quotes, "and neither should any of you."
“i dont care about gay people and even i think that is dumb hazel” said Ethan.
“We are gods, we don’t have to worry about that stuff!” She struck a heroic pose. There are limits, unfortunately, to how heroic a pose one can strike while wearing pajamas, even if those pajamas are pretty cool-looking because one happens to be the Witch of Space. “Our romances are the stuff of legends,” Hazel announced with aplomb.
There was the shlumpfffs of displaced air that so commonly marked the arrival of a time-traveling Tara. This one had arrived in the middle of the room, and looked momentarily disoriented, but got her bearings quickly enough. “you’re totally bi, tara.”
Olivia tromped over to Tara and clasped her hands in her own, forcibly. “I always knew you were in the family Tara!”
“okay did you really have to just come in here and announce it to everyone?” said Tara, turning her head to face her future self, a hurt look on her face. “why are you being such a jerk about this?”
“firstly: yes,” snapped Future!Tara. “second: because you have stuff you don’t want to say, so you need me to come back in time and say it, so you don’t have any responsibility because you doomed yourself into having to do the same thing. except you are responsible because this --” she made a strange, expanding gesture with her hands “-- is all a big conspiracy by you and me so you can externalize your anxieties and shit.” She k-k-k-kk-k’d her fingers across her Scroll Top time machine, before bidding it to vanish, and stepped back a full pace.
“See Tara? She knows what she’s talking about!” said Liam. “So much cooler than our normal Tara.”
“i agree with liam for once”
“Shut up future Tara!” said Travis, dead-set on defending his friend. “You are WASTING SO MCUH TIME ON STUPID SHIT!! GO PUNCH YOUR OWN FUTURE SELF FOR ONCE!!!!”
“rrrrrrgh,” said Tara, pulling her hands away from Olivia. She stood up abruptly, stepped into the middle of the room, and summoned her Scroll Top. “it’s fine travis, i know when i’m not wanted.” A click-clack, and a sfffpmulhs, and she vanished.
“okay well,” said the remaining Tara, who flopped back onto the couch. “that was a weird minute and a half.”
Travis opened his mouth, not sure what to say, and closed it again.
The usual medley of DINGs and buzzes that marked an incoming group message from a troll was also accompanied by the usual simultaneous checking of Internet-connected devices.
Sesili: I’ve never understood this strange sense of pride you humans have about the configuration of your shame globes and seed flaps.
Sesili: Where I come from, we have a sweeply event known as Hemopride, which makes profoundly more sense than your primitive display.
Sesili: During this event, the highbloods go on parade with their wealth and power on display, to reinforce to the lower castes how much they should be respected.
Sesili: They usually wave a three-striped flag with the three highest colors of our nobility. It’s quite handsome.
Sesili: <hemoprideflag.jpg>
Olivia looked up, as if to address Sesili directly. “o_o You guys know that this is just the bisexual flag right? This is for realsies just the bisexual flag.”
“whoa that is just the bisexual flag, you’re right.”
“Oh you trolls. I love all of you so much,” said Liam.
“Was that serious or sarcastic?” asked Hazel.
Olivia interrupted Hazel’s retort with a long, slow kiss by the standards of romantic time dilation for thirteen-year-olds, which meant that it lasted about three seconds in total. "<3<3<3"
“Ooooooooooh!” Liam broke in. He glanced around, a bit disappointed that nobody else was as excited about this as him.
“I mean it’s just that like,” began Olivia. “This might be the last thing we get to do together before we all risk our lives and stuff. And Pride is about celebrating who we truly are without lying to ourselves or anypony else and I just want for ten minutes to all be friends together. -_-”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Tara smirked. “you said anypony.”
The parade was ten minutes.
But they made the best of it anyway.
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