Rising Shards

It was clear the movie was a bust for Alix, I thought she'd be more into fucked up weird indie movies, but her reaction said otherwise. It was a bit disappointing, but nobody's taste was the same, and I couldn't expect someone I met so recently to just perfectly align with my tastes. I felt bad that Alix was rattled enough by the movie that she got quiet during the ride to my place. I didn't think the movie was that messed up, or that mentally draining, but I was a regular at the indie theater and the indie scene in general in town (which really was a scene that spilled over from the big city of Litus Empirica to the suburbs around it) so I had a bit more experience with the more...unique kinds of movies like Seventeen Bottles.

Alix perked up when we arrived at my place. Her immediate reaction seeing it was nice, with her exclaiming, "Oh wow, it's so cute!" Stella's gut instinct was proved right almost immediately, as somehow within a minute of arriving she tripped right into the shelf where I usually keep my little elephant statues. I had put them up earlier, but if Stella hadn't warned me they would've been toast. I spread most of my little knickknacks to higher shelves like I was baby proofing a house. Fail woman proofing a house is almost more difficult than baby proofing, as Alix proved to be a lot more unpredictable.

"Phew, glad my hand reflexes are still good," Alix said as she got up. "I used to tank trips like that all with the ol' noggin." She knocked on her head playfully. "But that...was a recipe for a concussion."

"We don't want you having any more of those," I said.

"It's OK! For the only major one I had, the doctor said my thick skull saved the day," Alix chuckled.

Still, I didn't want this night to be something Alix looked back on and thought about seeing a movie she hated and almost knocking herself afterward, so we needed to do something she wanted like I promised. We curled up on my couch in front of my TV, and I put one of my knitted blankets around us.

"So what do you want to watch? I'll put anything on," I said.

"Um, I really like Workplace Pals," Alix said.

"Pfft," I said. "Really? I mean, it's a...classic, of sorts, but a lot of it hasn't aged well."

Alix blushed. "I mean...I know it's got some jokes that...yeah..."

"We can put it on!" I said. "Just...don't put any on if there are fat jokes, Kanibari jokes, Exa Cani jokes, Cani jokes in general really, or the homophobic ones, the racist ones, the transphobia, acephobia, the weird disdain for deaf people..."

"Uh...so the first like twenty seasons are out then," Alix said. "But, um! I don't like any of those seasons, and I don't like the cruel jokes, if that needs to be said. I just like the slapstick stuff. Really, only the later twenty seasons are any good."

Alix blushed harder, it was cute but it would be a deal breaker if she was all in on the infamous first half of Workplace Pals. The show had a major creative turn over halfway through and was somewhat rebooted into a more cozy office comedy, causing a major uproar in the horrible side of its fandom. It was potentially a red flag that Alix even liked the show at all, but her knowing which half was the decent half was a better sign than if she was a huge fan of the whole thing. Making matters kind of cuter, she asked to put on her favorite joke and gag compilation, and it was clear by the way she recited the lines that the main way she watched the show was via compilations, and the ones she showed me weren't the bad bad stuff, at least. So my gut told me a red flag was averted.

After the third funny moments video, Alix sounded like a scared puppy all of a sudden.

"Um...am I ruining this date?" Alix asked.

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