ten_fwd | Youth Style

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Youth Style

Eleanor has never really cared about fashion. Her mother's utilitarian philosophies leave little room for vanity; and anyway, ten years into the fall of her city, all their clothes are looted from the apartments of the dead. Nightgowns aren't as fitted, so they don't get outgrown as quickly, and they weren't as valuable a target for looters in years past, so they're the entirety of her wardrobe at home.

But the ship is cooler and less humid than the Persephone Correctional Facility, and she'd wanted to blend in better, not walk around barefoot in a nightgown all the time; so she'd asked the replicator to give her something that young people here would wear.

Big mistake.

What it vomited forth is so bad, it has actually made her have an opinion on fashion. The trousers are unremarkable, but the sweater looks like--well, like sheep had become too expensive, too demanding of resources, that scientists had started engineering clothing out of fungus, grown to order. If she hadn't gotten it from a replicator, she'd be sure that was the case, but surely wool fibers aren't more demanding to replicate than fungus.

Is this how they make their young people enlist, by offering them the choice between uniforms or this? Were the designers aiming for a strange organic beauty? Because splicer tumors have a strange organic beauty. This is just ugly. It's warm, which is why she's still wearing it, but it's so, so ugly.

And to make it even worse, three different people in the hallways mistook her for some boy she's never met. Either that or Wesley is just the local word for terrible dresser.

One moody teenager, slouched at a table in Ten Forward with a glass of cola and half a grilled peanut butter and apple sandwich she's not eating.

[picture bubble wrap rendered in brownish yarn. Ugly, ugly sweater. Feel free to laugh.]

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There's a cough as Noriko's eyeing of the room at large turns to eyeing of the girl in a truly awful sweater. "Wow."

"Did you ask for the ugliest shirt those machines could produce?" she asks, eyebrw raising.

"We used to have a cat named Schrödinger," Eleanor says. "Well, he might still be alive--I don't know. One time after one of my mother's gallery parties, he got into the leftover rum balls and canapés and was sick all over the flowerbeds. This looks just like that."

Oh, she thinks it's awful. She'd just been hoping that it was only her taste, and maybe people from other times and places actually like it.

Nope.

"Yeah, I'd...believe that."

Nori is still trying to figure out what the sweater is made of, before she ventures past Eleanor to get her a new one. (Jerk as she can sometimes be, she's not a complete ass.)

"Nice name for a cat, though."

Eleanor's pretty sure it's not wool; it doesn't taste like it, or have that sheep scent. Beyond that, she has no idea--it could be some advanced synthetic they don't have where she's from, or it could very well be fungus.

One hundred percent hideous, though.

"He was a good cat. We couldn't keep him at home; Mother didn't like disorder, and you can't control everything with pets around. But he had the run of the park, and I'd play with him there."

"Yeah, I had a goldfish as a kid, that doesn't mean I want something that looks like it vomited as a sweater," she chuckles, rising and shaking her head as she goes to the replicator and asks for a sweater, describing a brand and particular name like one she has at home.

It comes out black and big, weave loose enough to see through, but warm.

"Here, you want to try this instead?"

"That looks much better," she says. "I thought... I thought I'd try to blend in better, dress like how people here dress. Our clothes at home are perfectly normal, so I wasn't expecting anything like this."

It's awkward, being a teenager. Especially from such a sheltered background.

"Yeah, no. I am not wandering around wearing a jumpsuit unless I'm working on a car, and there don't seem to be many here," she says. "Pants are a wonderful invention."

She holds out the sweater; she herself is wearing fairly normal clothes for the twenty-first century, though she also tends toward the wilder side personally.

"I don't have trousers at home," she says. "The other girls get to wear them--they have whole suits--but I just have nightgowns. I never minded them at home, never really gave much thought to them; they did their job as far as clothing goes. But it's not as warm here, and everyone else wears much more."

She's self-conscious enough about her gawky, freakish body. It's that much worse having so much of it on display.

She takes the sweater and pulls it on over her existing one, then with a bit of squirming extracts the ugly sweater through the neck-hole of the new one.

"You should get some here, then," Noriko offers with a shrug. "They work a whole lot better than nightgowns for decreasing the coming-off-like-a-lunatic factor."

Though, as she watches the girl manipulate herself out of the first sweater, Nori thinks that may not be her primary problem. "You are wearing a shirt under that, right?"

"I have some," she says gesturing down at her legs. "They feel strange, but at least not as drafty. We have women back home who wear trousers, but they're much... much wider. Like women in the movies wear."

Despite it being 1968 where she's from, she doesn't mean bell-bottoms, but rather Katharine Hepburn-style wide-leg trousers. Nothing fitted.

"...I'm not, no. Should I be?"

"So I should take this opportunity to introduce you to the concept of my-size barbie, okay," Noriko says. "Come on, come with me. At the very least you need a tank top under that thing unless you want everyone to see your bra."

Noriko is just going on the assumption she's wearing that, at least. Hopefully.

Not at all.

Well, she may be almost six feet tall, but she's undeveloped in some other ways, thanks to her slug's effect on her hormones. Not to mention, elastic doesn't last forever, so even if she did have anything to support, she probably couldn't find anything at home to do the job.

"Whatever you think is appropriate," she says. "I've never been clothes shopping. I just wear what I'm given."

Noriko, on the other hand, is fairly short--thank her genes for that. She tops out at five foot five inches when she's standing upright, but she's a bit more developed than Eleanor around the ribcage area.

"At least a tank top. You might not need anything else to feel comfortable, but we'll see what the machine gives you."

"I can get used to anything, as long as it's fairly comfortable," she says. "I can get used to the uncomfortable also, but if I'm going to be working, I'd rather avoid distractions like that."

Not that she's been doing much here. Just reading... alone.

"Nah, you don't have to worry about being uncomfortable by necessity, these things give you some choices," Nori answers, asking it for a tank top in a size that she thinks will fit Eleanor.

"You're pretty lanky, though, so you might have to adjust the sizing some, but here," she says, handing the shirt over. "It might be a little short, but I didn't want it horribly baggy."

She's pretty good at putting things on without getting indecent. It takes a bit of squirming, but the tank top is soon in place under the sweater.

"I don't like really baggy clothes," she says. "I don't like very tight clothes either, but when I was younger they gave me loose clothing so I'd have room to grow. I'd like to feel that I'm done growing."

The other girls her age are a foot taller still than she is. Six feet is more than enough for her.

"Well, the, how does that fit? Loose, too tight? Anything else you think you'd like?"

"I think it's comfortable. And warm."

And doesn't look like any sort of animal was sick.

Whether it's stylish or flattering or helps her blend in here or not, she doesn't know, but she does know that it doesn't make her feel eye-catchingly hideous.

And that's a step in the right direction.

"Well, that's a good step," she says. "You have a favorite color or anything?"

"Not really," she says. "I used to have a red jumper when I was younger, I remember that, but it's been all white since then. It makes the laundry easier."

And gives that nice sacrificial-Lamb look. The people's messiah.

"Unless you're Jesus reborn, or an emperor, you need color," Noriko says with a quirked eyebrow. "How about blue?" she asks.

"I have no objections to blue," she says. "It's everywhere, at home. I almost miss it, with all the tans and browns here--no blue. Even when you look out the windows, it's closer to black than blue."

Depending on the time of day and the weather, the blue outside the windows at home has varying amounts of green in it. It changes. Things don't seem to, here.

Maybe it's different when they're moving.

"Blue like this?" Noriko asks, holding a lock of her hair out from her head. "Because blue like that can happen. I'll see about getting you one of my favorite tee shirts in that color."

"We don't have colors like that, where I'm from," she says. "Not for clothing, and certainly not for hair--we did have older people dyeing their hair to try to look younger again, and then having surgery to look younger and getting tonics. But just natural hair colors. Blonde, red, black."

"I have got to introduce you to something called Manic Panic, then," Noriko says with a grin. "Some of it washes out, or is just colored gel. Since your hair is dark, it might not take some of the dark shades easy, but there are ways to deal with that."

Oh, man. Don't get her started on hair color and style choices, Eleanor, or you won't hear the end of it for a long time. "You could have hair any color in nature. And some that aren't, even."

She could do with purple. The teleportation plasmid gives a flash of light when it's used--red for most people, but hers is purple.

Not that she's about to volunteer that information.

"I can't do anything permanent," she says. "In case I get returned. I don't want my mother to know."

"They make clips of extensions for that very reason," says Noriko. "What color you want? Or should I get all of them, and let you be a rainbow?"

"I don't really fuss much over my appearance," she says. "I've seen how elaborately people prepare themselves for a night out--Aunt Grace was a singer in a nightclub, and she used to make herself beautiful every night, but that's not how I am. I don't know what I want."

"Well, you can always experiment a bit, see what strikes your fancy. It took me a bit to find what I liked too."

"How do you know where to start?" she asks. "Do they have shops here? Maybe looking at things in person and trying them on is the way to do it. Not ordering one thing and being stuck with it."

She wants variety. She wants to try new things. It's just overwhelming, when you have no experience at all.

"You know, I...don't actually know," Noriko says. "I mean, we can ask, but I don't get the impression there's a mall or anything. They'd have said, wouldn't they? Rather than cramming us all in here."

"Maybe they don't think about it," she says. "Maybe they know what they want, so they just get everything from the replicators. Maybe they only try things on when they go to visit planets--maybe that's what I need to do. Find a primitive planet with shops."

At least, being from 1968, it wouldn't be so strange for her to end up looking like a space hippie. Not that the style would suit her, or that she'd know what a hippie is to begin with.

"Your guess is as good as mine, man," she says, shrugging. "It's weird enough here that I don't even know."

John's not laughing at you, El.

Except for the part where he's totally laughing at you, El.

"Dayum," he chuckles, hiding behind his beer. "You join Starfleet when I wasn't looking? Or did the nice doctor adopt you?"

It's the worst, isn't it? The absolute worst.

And it only makes it that much worse that other people think it's terrible too.

"I asked the replicator for what young people here wear," she says, sulking. "I didn't know they were programmed for schadenfreude."

Okay, that's too much. His giggling intensifies into an outright guffaw. He rubs his face with one hand, setting his glass down on her table.

"Lordy, lordy, lawdy," he says, straddling the seat opposite her. Riker-style. When in Rome, and all that jazz. "Well, I think you were successful. But if you were trying to blend in, I hate to say it, but you look like moss on a horny toad's ass."

God, it's even funnier in person. The rainbow sweater was bad enough on his old TV back in the Florida suburbs. They didn't get the best reception, so they needed rabbit ears to pick up Star Trek, and the resulting image was often wavy. Even that looked cooler than this.

"That would make it better," she says. "The only way I'd want to wear this would be if it literally made me blend in--if it turned me invisible. You'd think with all the neutral colors here, I could find some brownish wall to stand next to and disappear. But none of the walls are fuzzy enough. Do you think they've got mold anywhere? Some sentient wall-fungus that wants to be one with my sweater, so it'll devour it and I can be free?"

Or she could take it off, go to a replicator and order some better clothes. She's just not sure what.

"Uh, probably not," he chuckles. "But I like your imagination. What's the matter, kid? How come you want to hide that cute kid under all that... that?"

He'd figure what with no longer being under her mom's thumb, maybe she'd like to get out and meet some new people. Stretch her wings, not turn herself into wallpaper.

"I don't know much about fashion," she says. "I never had to choose my own clothing before--I just wore what I was given. The styles were all very different from what people wear here, and I knew I'd probably stand out in that, and why not try something new while I can? But what it gave me was so different from what I'm used to, and I thought maybe it was just my personal taste. I don't like the way the ship looks either; it's too plain, compared to my city. Maybe it was just my taste. But I don't think it is."

Uh-huh, okay, John understands. This probably falls under the realm of 'girl talk', which isn't exactly his strong suit for all the obvious reasons and more. Fashion for John is a t-shirt and a nice pair of pants, but durable pants, not skinny jeans or whatever kids are wearing these days. Man's pants. Something with an unnecessary loop of fabric for carrying around a hammer.

"All right," he says, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the table. "So you just need to find your sweet spot. Something new, but not too new, right? So what are you used to wearing back home? Favorite colors? Warm, cool?"

He can do this. Girl talk should be a piece of cake, right?

"At home, I basically wear a nightgown," she says. "You've seen it, I'm sure. There's a bit of a shortage of intact clothing, not that there was ever much for girls my height, and Mother doesn't want me to wear things that look patched, so nightgowns it is. Always plain white."

She has a few. Same style, same bit of lace and ribbon, same color.

"I wanted something different. This is certainly that."

"Uh, yeah," he confirms. "Not that I was looking."

He still wants to make sure they're clear on that. He can be the friendly older brother type, but not the creepy old guy type, or the clingy daddy type. He doesn't really notice much, but it's been a while since he last saw a girl wear a nightgown. It left an impression.

"Well, you definitely can't go walking around in a nightgown unless you want people to start calling you Ebenezer," he says. Actually, it might be an improvement from "Wesley," but still. "So if there wasn't a shortage back home, what would you wear? Not here; don't worry about here. Just tell me the first thing that pops into your head that you like."

In fairness, it's an old-fashioned nightgown that could probably pass for a strange sundress... but people aren't wearing sundresses here either. It's not warm enough to need it.

"I like the suits the older girls at home wear," she says. "Not with all the reinforcements and armor--I won't be going out underwater, here. But under all that, they wear... they're like boilersuits, I suppose. Better for climbing around in, and better for doing science in. But..."

She shakes her head. "They'd probably make me look taller and thinner, and I don't need that. I don't need people concerned about what I eat."

She is a weird kid. John cocks a smile at her. He likes weird kids, but come on, give him something to work with!

"Okay," he says, leaning back. He looks thoughtful for a minute. "Naw, that works. Yeah, I think we can work with that. So a boilersuit, nothing too tight, no heels, I'm thinking in... blue. It'll match your eyes."

See? He can totally do this girl talk thing. Wouldn't his sister be proud?

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