Taking it slow, but it's not typical

[callbacks]

Who: Dave Strider callbacks and all y'all's lovely faces!
Where: Goldenrod City
When: Throughout the month of March
Summary: Come bug Dave at his part-time gig at the nice combination café/bookstore. OR, if we have plans (or you'd like to make plans; hit me up at asherdashery, it's public) I can write up a starter just for you!
Rating: Probably nothing over PG-13.
Log:

[Food service is...well, it's everything movies told him it would be. But as far as workplaces go, the café isn't half-bad. The bookshelves make everything seem quiet even during busy hours, and the comforting scent of paper and coffee fills the space. Dave actually kind of looks forward to his shifts there.

The best part, though, is making the latte art. It took him a while to get the hang of it, because it's got to do with as much science and math as it does art, but Dave is nothing if not a master of timing. Most customers will get a heart, leaf, or tulip, but at slower times of day, he might experiment with drawing a little more.

(He has, of course, also figured out how to draw a dick in your latte. But that's neither here nor there.)

He's a quiet, friendly server, and as long as it's not caffeine crunch time, feel free to request your favorite Pokémon. Or if you're the only one there on a slow day, just wait--he might surprise you.]

((OOC: So! Since this log is open all month, please give me the date you want our thread to go down. I'll also be updating a thread tracker of sorts below so it'll be easier for all of us to find the right thread. Threads do not have to take place in the café! I just provided that as a starter for people who just want to chill with Dave. I'm gonna be throwing a bunch of non-coffee-related starters in here, too.))

NAVIGATION
March 4 - Carolina and Karkat, lunch
March 7 - Kaneki, café | March 8 - Maka, café; Chihiro, café | March 9 - Naoya, Honeyed Souls | March 11 - Jimmy Two-Shoes, text-->action
March 13 Banjou, café | March 14 - Karkat, pale confession

Comments

[crouching_sin]

I prefer testing new recipes. I... probably should be a little bit more aware of how much of these things I eat, but...

[He has a sweet tooth. It's not like it's the worst thing in the world.]

[callbacks]

[Dave grins a little.]

Well, I mean, if you're worried about maintaining your wispy anime figure, I bet you know a couple people who could help with your quality testing. Just saying. Tall, young American teenagers, probably got a lot of room for recipes, won't hardly need to be paid much.

[crouching_sin]

Probably. I'll have to send more along.

[He chuckles a little bit, glancing at the Swablu again.]

How are you and your group settling in? You've got a large group, haven't you?

[How many people? Four? More than that? Traveling with just Atsuro was enough for him, with all of the Pokemon between them.]

[callbacks]

[Breeze is fine. He's narrowed his choices down to some particularly tasty-looking Poképuffs and now appears to be deliberating about which color looks most delicious, head bobbing this way and that.]

Yeah, there's like...eight of us? Dipper comes and goes, kid likes to travel. But we're doing pretty good, I think. Most of us got jobs, and the ones who train are really getting pretty high-level by now.

[crouching_sin]

... That's... well. As long as you're doing fine.

[He's not buying you eight coats though, damn.]

If you need advice on things to do in the city, just let me know. I've been here for... mm. Over a year now, actually. The city still feels a bit too small, but I guess I'm used to Tokyo.

[callbacks]

Yeah, I think this is probably about on par with Houston. Smells nicer, though.

[Houston smells like someone took a dump on a butt, honestly.]

I'm not sure how long we'll be staying, since I know the girls want to win badges and junk. But it's cool to be where most the people I talk to are based. I dunno, what do you like doing here? Besides counting candy money.

[crouching_sin]

I train my Pokemon a lot. I do a lot of exploring restaurants, as well. I read a lot, too. Mostly nonfiction, because there's only so many Pokemon-based puns that one man can take. 'The Old Man and the Seadra'. Please.

[The book's bad enough, you don't need to make it punny, too.]

[callbacks]

[Snicker.]

Believe me, dude, I know. You know that combo café-bookstore? That's where I work. The fuckin' titles alone, man. And don't even get me started on movies I've found since I got here.

[crouching_sin]

Yeah. I don't go to the movies here anymore unless they seem to be originals and not blatant parodies. If Disney could see these things it would have a fit.

[Though the idea of interdimensional copyright lawyers is both horrifying and hilarious.]

[callbacks]

Well, it's not so bad with the Disney shit. I mean, at least they're already all cartoon animals. And sometimes the Pokéupdates are fucking incredible.

[He has never laughed so hard as when he watched Sharpedonado, Naoya.]

But like, Omastarsky and Hawluch? So not necessary.

[crouching_sin]

[He stares for a moment. That... is not a reference he knows.]

Ripping off a movie you liked from your world, then?

[callbacks]

Aw, you don't know Starsky and Hutch? I guess that makes sense, it probably didn't make it over to Japan. Buddy cop movie, it's got Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in it.

[crouching_sin]

The first name is vaguely familiar, the other one not so much. If it did make it to Japan, I guess I didn't watch it. I'm not a fan of cop movies, anyway. I prefer watching for special effects.

[callbacks]

So Lucas and del Toro more your style?

[crouching_sin]

Yes. Not Michael Bay - explosions are fine, making half the movie into explosions is not. Especially when the robots are barely in the movie.

[He may have wasted too much time picking apart Transformers shut up.]

But Lucas makes it work, and del Toro is... well, his stuff is fascinating, even if there's some obvious Catholic influence. I'm willing to ignore it for the sheer brilliance of his movies, though.

... And there's Kubrick's special effects as well, but that pretty much goes without saying.

[callbacks]

Right, of course. Little before my time, but yeah. A Clockwork Orange was...

[Dave trails off for a moment, then looks aside. Holy shit, when did he watch that movie? Before he was thirteen? Christ. Jesus, that's fucked up.

After a moment, he shakes himself and clears his throat.]

It was something. And 2001, obviously, that's a classic.

[crouching_sin]

... It was something, yes.

[He'd appreciated it, but he wouldn't have shown it to someone Dave's age. Maybe after the meteors, not before.]

Obviously. I did appreciate the philosophy references in it. That was interesting to see.

[callbacks]

I liked the part where the main doctor dude had my name.

[crouching_sin]

Heh. I'm sure you did. Naoya's not a super uncommon name, but it's not the most popular.

[He can't look at any characters named 'Cain'. They're almost always bad guys.]

[callbacks]

David is, like, ubiquitous. Not that my name is David, it's just Dave. But still. All over the place. I'm kind of surprised I haven't run into any other Dave-types, since there's so many people here.

[crouching_sin]

It depends where all of them are from. There's a lot of people with Japanese names here, whether they're from Japan or not. But Japanese can also have a lot of ways of writing the same name with different characters, so even if they did have the same name it might not be written the same way.

[callbacks]

Oh, right. Because of the kanji, right? ...How do you write yours?

[crouching_sin]

Right.

[He grabs the order pad and a pen, taking a moment to write out '直哉'.]

This first one... it means roughly honesty, frankness, or repair. The second one is...

[He huffs in amusement for a moment.]

It means 'how' or 'what'... basically, it's the equivalent of a question mark. My parents didn't know anything about me when they gave me the name, of course.

[It's still kind of funny, though.]

[callbacks]

Huh. 'How to repair...'

[He muses on that for a moment. He kind of likes it, even if it's kind of ironic for literal actual Bible Cain.]

What does my name mean? If it means anything, I guess. We don't do the kanji thing so maybe it doesn't.

[crouching_sin]

Dave? Well, technically that's the short form of David, which when written in the original Hebrew looks like this.

[He jots down 'דוד'.]

That's without the vowels, and don't ask me to explain Hebrew vowels because you probably don't want to know. Anyway, with the way root words in Hebrew work, it's the same root as 'beloved'. David was the second king of Israel in about... the tenth century BCE. Supposedly, Jesus was descended from him.

[It's not like he ever asked the guy.]