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[video] the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner
[It's video, so it's clear that Dorian looks the same. Still the bright roses of youth on his cheek, still the crisp dark curls on his head. The candour of youth in his face, and 'youth's passionate purity' in his smile. To look at him, you'd think he had kept himself unspotted from the world—even if all that the blue smoke around him is from one of Lord Henry's opium-tainted cigarettes.
But that is the visual half of things. As for the audio half?]
1986. The summer. [For audio, there is something torn in that low and musical voice, something of electrohouse's wretched distortion ripping the guts out of the base and leaving the jagged beat in its wake.
Dorian laughs.] It was 1986, it was the summer, and Highlander came out for UK audiences. Crooned over scenes of loss, Freddie Mercury asks a question he'll never need to answer: "Who wants to live forever?" [The cigarette held away, conductor holding the note to let the question hang.]
[And callously, we're back.] Contemporary efforts in medicine might suggest 'just about everyone,' but in stories about immortals, the weariness is always more loss of people than loss of time. It's more that you're watching your granddaughter's funeral than it is that the shop beside the graveyard is a chain electronics place instead of the private member's club where you met her grandmother decades ago.
[Another drag of the cigarette. He is still smiling a pleasant, youthful smile.] But it occurred to me, speaking with Rebecca, that that sense of loss, of friendships brief as mayfly lives, is one we all get to share here. It's not a curse of immortality, something known only in a long term. It's frequent, repetitive, and to all intents and purposes, mundane. We foreigners just lose people, over and over and over and over, and there is never any resolution to any of it. Like the workroom of a perfectionist, it's a slaughterhouse of unfinished stories, and the corpses just keep piling up. Only corpses would give more closure than disappearances, and we aren't likely to be here ourselves by the time we can hold a funeral.
So we get used to it. We cope and we carry on. [Cigarette between his fingers, he gives a salute that somehow doesn't come across as sarcastic.] Congratulations on all the recent efforts, and good luck to everyone still with us in the future.
[Dorian holds up a mobile phone (circa 2007) with all lightness of touch and tone.] Does anyone have anything to for a mobile's battery? I left the charger in the 21st century, and I'd like to get my music off of this, but it gave out.
But that is the visual half of things. As for the audio half?]
1986. The summer. [For audio, there is something torn in that low and musical voice, something of electrohouse's wretched distortion ripping the guts out of the base and leaving the jagged beat in its wake.
Dorian laughs.] It was 1986, it was the summer, and Highlander came out for UK audiences. Crooned over scenes of loss, Freddie Mercury asks a question he'll never need to answer: "Who wants to live forever?" [The cigarette held away, conductor holding the note to let the question hang.]
[And callously, we're back.] Contemporary efforts in medicine might suggest 'just about everyone,' but in stories about immortals, the weariness is always more loss of people than loss of time. It's more that you're watching your granddaughter's funeral than it is that the shop beside the graveyard is a chain electronics place instead of the private member's club where you met her grandmother decades ago.
[Another drag of the cigarette. He is still smiling a pleasant, youthful smile.] But it occurred to me, speaking with Rebecca, that that sense of loss, of friendships brief as mayfly lives, is one we all get to share here. It's not a curse of immortality, something known only in a long term. It's frequent, repetitive, and to all intents and purposes, mundane. We foreigners just lose people, over and over and over and over, and there is never any resolution to any of it. Like the workroom of a perfectionist, it's a slaughterhouse of unfinished stories, and the corpses just keep piling up. Only corpses would give more closure than disappearances, and we aren't likely to be here ourselves by the time we can hold a funeral.
So we get used to it. We cope and we carry on. [Cigarette between his fingers, he gives a salute that somehow doesn't come across as sarcastic.] Congratulations on all the recent efforts, and good luck to everyone still with us in the future.
[Dorian holds up a mobile phone (circa 2007) with all lightness of touch and tone.] Does anyone have anything to for a mobile's battery? I left the charger in the 21st century, and I'd like to get my music off of this, but it gave out.
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Anyway. That's not why he's here.]
I managed to find a charger for myself a while back [Or rather, the Doctor made him one. It doesn't look fantastic, but it works, so...] I can lend it to you for a bit - I don't use my own phone much anyway.
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iIt was broodingly antihero which usually masquerades as deepDorian smiles gratefully.] I would be infinitely thankful. I've managed to make mine last months, but it's my only source for music or pictures, so the battery still drains.video;
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I--um. The Earth Sector.
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[On a flying carpet]
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Uh, sure. That works.
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[But Dorian will show up shortly.
On a flying carpet.]
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That's... different.]
Um. [Holds up the charger.] Here?
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No problem. [Awkward smile.] I know it looks kind of weird, but my, um, friend, made it for me. I think it should work for almost any Earth-based phone, but tell me if you have problems. I'll ask my friend about it.
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...that's kind of. Nice, actually. Kind of.]
Did it come here with you or something?
[Here as in this world in general, not... flying him here, because that much was obvious.]
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[A beat]
I say that but he found me, really, and followed me home. Like that magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin, did you see that?
[And so Dorian's hedonist cool kid reputation is ruined by a Disney movie.]
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especially when he's a Disney movie personified.]Er--yeah, I think I remember it. [Kind of.]
...that's pretty cool though. [Admittedly.]
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sob he really is][Dorian laughs.] Be careful; it will go to his head. [And yes, the carpet seems to be sort of, well, bobbing its—head? nearest tassels?—cheerfully.]
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actual Disney prince Rory Willams][Makes a small, vaguely awkward smile.]
Well, you're around. I'm sure you know where to draw the line with it--him.