strangetrip | A Lesson in Frustration (OTA)

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A Lesson in Frustration (OTA)

Liz was enjoying the various people offering her lessons. The Inn gave her a unique opportunity to be exposed to a variety of subjects she wouldn't normally take back home. Back home she had her eyes on a science degree in university. Here, she decided to ask Piotr to teach her some art. Liz was under no illusion that she would be good at it, but she thought it might be something nice to practice when Kitty was busy or she had read all that she could read.

For her first lesson, she was supposed to draw the hallway in perspective. When she had originally reached for a ruler to measure and be precise, he had said it wasn't allowed. So now, she was out in the hallway with a pad of paper and some pencils and an eraser. She sat on the end of the hallway with her back to the wall, trying to sketch what she saw down the hallway. There was a look of frustration and a lot of sighing and erasing.

(ooc: Find her in any hallway that's convenient for your pup if you like.)

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As he approached, she moved to stand up in order to both be polite and so he wouldn't have to look down as they talked. With the question, she paused and her blush spread across her cheeks more as she contemplated whether or not she wanted to embarrass herself that much.

"Um... Okay, Yeah. Sure. It's - I just started and Piotr said I wasn't allowed to use a ruler or anything so..." She awkwardly handed over the pad. There was a sketch of the hall in pencil that had a lot of faint erased lines. The hallways lines themselves were okay, though a little wobbly. Liz was having trouble figuring out how to make the doors look in perspective as well while all being appropriately proportionate.

Peter surveys the drawing, frowning. He's not frowning because it looks bad. He's frowning because he's thinking. That's always been a habit of his.

"Yeah," Peter agrees, still looking down at it. "It's tough. I like using a ruler or a compass for stuff like this just because I like it to be accurate."

Still holding the notebook, he looks over at Liz. "I know it might not help much, but I -- I could give you some feedback, if you think -- if you think it might help."

The frown worried Liz a bit. It was probably really bad compared to most others. There was a reason she didn't take visual arts in high school. Liz understood her academic strengths.

When he spoke, she was surprised it wasn't overly negative. "Oh, uh, yeah, sure. I mean. I already know not to quit my day job so..." She tried to joke awkwardly although a little part of her was worried he was going to say maybe she was better off sticking to science.

"No, no," Peter says shaking his head. He looks over at Liz with a look of concern, trying to gauge whether or not she's being genuine, or just humorously self-disparaging the way MJ was sometimes. "It's not really bad at all. I mean, I can't really do any of this stuff. That's why the only thing I really do is make videos on my phone."

It just always helped him when he was stuck on something to have someone else give him feedback. Sometimes they were able to see things he wasn't after hours or days of working on the same thing. And while he can't certain that Liz functions the wrong way, it's worth a shot.

Peter looks back down at the picture. "Okay," he says, tracing a finger down one of the lines of the hallway. "The tops of these doors should be coming down at the same angle as the floor below it. You almost got it on this side of the hallway, but they look a little less sure on this side." He runs a finger along the other side of the hallway. "My Aunt May always told me that if you want to draw a straight line, you need to just do it quickly. If you get slow about it, it's gonna be way less straight. I don't really know how that works out, but it does."

Aunt May was really into art.

"If you do it lightly, you can always erase it if it doesn't look right. And if you want, you can always do a couple of lines, one after the other to see which one you like best and erase all the others." It also helped to have a basis of comparison.

The suggestions that Peter started giving made a lot of sense as she followed his fingers at he talked. He said he wasn't good at art, but he had a lot of good advice. She took in all of his suggestions as he gave them, nodding and thinking about how to apply them right away. "Wow. That's - really helpful. I never thought to do lines quickly." Liz had always sort of associated speed with accuracy.

"Are you, Are you sure you haven't taken any art before? Because it sounds like you're, like you know a lot." And the fact he hadn't said anything judgmental made her feel more confident. Even Alex would have ribbed her a bit for this type of drawing.

"No, not really. The closest I come to doing actual art was photography and making movies on my phone. And what I do, that's not really real art. Just stuff I do for fun. But when I do the whole photography thing, I like to at least think about the way things look and how they're positioned."

He points down at the lines. "All that stuff about the lines -- I only really know that because I had to do a lot of physics grafting on the fly. I didn't always have a ruler or a compass on me when the answers suddenly hit."

That happened a lot when he was developing the webslingers, and tried to figure out the whole physics of swinging without crashing head-first into a building. That didn't really happen anymore. As much, anyway.

"Do you, um. Do you still take videos here? Do you have any on your phone?" Liz paused, then blushed. "Not to sound... really lame, or whatever, but, um. My phone is. It's not like yours since your, from the future."

Meekly she pulled out from her back pocket a flip phone with very basic texting ability and nothing else, not even the web.

"Y-yeah, I do. Sometimes. I haven't really done much with it lately. I used to carry my phone around all the time when I was back in my own world." But without text and call-making capability, he left the phone back in his room more often than not.

"Oh wow, I don't think I've ever seen one of those things in-person." Sure, in old movies, but that was totally different. The only time you actually saw anyone use it was when they held it up to their ear like a normal phone.

"Can I see it?"

"Oh. Uh-yeah, sure." She held it out to him. She knew that in the future cellphones would be a lot better, but she had no idea. The idea that it would have a video seemed amazing and she was very interested in seeing what that looked like too.

"It's, um. It's not an expensive one. My parents are, well they're practical. But... I'd like to, I mean if you're okay with it, uh, see one of your videos sometime."

"Y-yeah. I mean, if you really want to." Peter's not sure how terribly impressed she'll be with any of his movies, but he already has the one he wants to show her in mind. The German movie, where he's Spider-Man.

Peter flips it open, examining it. Then suddenly, his head swings to face Liz. "Did you -- Did you seriously have to press 7 times to get a single S?"

Liz blushed. "Just.. 4 times. It's - you get used to it." The truth was the Inn wasn't so far off from her reality so she didn't feel weird about it at all. "Is it... different now? The ones you can buy in the future?"

Peter taps the screen experimentally, but when it doesn't respond, Peter has his answer.

"Yeah, I mean... well, there's a little keyboard that appears on a screen and you just type directly there. You can even toggle between different keyboards, so there's a separate keyboard for just special characters."

He snaps the phone shut and passes it over to Liz. "I still think it's interesting," he says. "It's weird seeing how much we progressed in phone technology in fifteen years. In 1900, there was like... half a million people using old-school landline phones. Now, everyone's wandering around with little portal versions of them in their pocket."

She watched him tap the screen with a bit of confusion before he explained that his cellphone had things that happened on it. "Yeah, I, um. I know what you mean. Well, okay, so I can't really like, picture it but my friend Alex, back home. He's always been into technology. He hacked an FBI laptop once, which was really cool. I'm... not as good. But I heard someone say that the computers here are, well they're slow to connect to the internet?" She found the dial-up pretty normal.

"I get the feeling if I was suddenly in the future I'd, um, suck at everything." Liz laughed softly. "I must sound totally lame. Like how my mom is when I talk to her about stuff she doesn't understand."

"Yeah, that sort-of sounds like Ned," Peter says. "He's way better at computers than I am." Peter was competent, but there was a reason why Ned was the guy in the chair.

"I actually haven't really tried using the computers," Peter admits. "I mean -- it's not like I don't like computers, just... most of what I'd use it for, like talking to people just -- it's just not a thing here." It was a lot like his phone in that regard.

But before Liz can get too self-depreciating, Peter cuts in. "N-no, not at all. Just because you don't know the tech doesn't mean you won't know how to use it once you're actually in the future. I mean, everything takes practice for you to get used to it."

Peter gestures down at the drawing. "This, too. I mean, you might not have it down now, but you are gonna have it down eventually."

She was reminded, again, that her future would hold all these cool things and she'd be... kind of old compared to him. She felt awkward for another moment before she pushed it aside and nodded, looking down at the drawing again.

"Hopefully at least good enough to make Piotr proud. He's... a really nice guy. I'd like to at least make his effort worth while, you know?"

"Yeah," Peter says in agreement. "He's really cool. I wouldn't want to be on the other end of a fight against him, though."

Not that he could ever imagine being on the polar opposite end of a fight with a guy that nice, though. Though to be fair, he'd assumed the same about Captain America, who was also of similar built, and from Peter's limited personal contact with him and far extensive understanding of him from various media, including interviews, video recordings, and biographies, probably of similar disposition.

Peter hands the drawing pad back to Liz. "I'm sure he'll be proud. I mean, if I were your teacher--" He presses his lips together. "--I'd be proud, too."

Immediately after the words leave his mouth, Peter wishes he could dissolve into a puddle of goo and slip through the cracks in the floorboards. Why did he just say that? Why did he have to be so bad at this?

Liz had not been prepared for such a comment and it pulled red onto her cheeks. She smiled sheepishly, looking down at the drawing pad for a minute to help her get a sense of things before she looked up again. The blush was still there and so was the smile, but the initial surprise has subsided. "Thank you. That's, um, that's actually a really nice compliment so. Thank you." Her smile widened just a little as if to help reassure.

"Oh! I still haven't forgotten about your promise to show me that substance you made so, you know, at some point maybe you -can- teach me a few things."

Peter can feel his cheeks warming. Liz is so cute when she smiles like that. Really, who is he kidding? Liz is so cute all of the time.

"Yeah," Peter nods, agreeing. "And maybe while we're here you can help me figure out some way to improve it. I mean, the fluid works as-is just fine, but there's always room for improvement." He swallows. "And, well, sometimes there's just stuff you miss or don't think of that a second set of eyes can put together almost immediately."

"Oh, well, I can try my best." Liz felt like maybe she would be useless considering the technological differences, but she also liked the challenge. It wasn't every day tyou could say you got to play with science from the future.

"Makes me kind of wish I had something to solve from back home so I could get help" Her smile widened a little as she made the little joke. It was true, though, and there had been several times her problems could have been solved by new eyes.

"Yeah, we still have our own problems here," he says. "Like getting back home. It seems like everyone's resigned to just stay here."

Peter isn't resigned, exactly, but it's not like he has something that he can definitively point to as The Act That Needs to Be Completed to Solve Said Problem, either.

However, that does bring something else to mind.

"Next time the portal opens, you want to go together?" Peter asks, only realizing afterwards how his invitation might be construed. It's not like he would mind if Liz considered it a date because they didn't really have any date-like place to go to at the Inn, except maybe the restaurant, which didn't feel really date-like since they all ate there already. Instead, he quickly scrambles for cover: "I mean, it'd be good life-drawing practice for you to be able to see other things in other places and - well. And, well, draw them."

There was a brief look of surprise, but then it was replaced by a look of excitement. She nodded. "I'd, I'd really like that, actually." She had been thinking about those places since they were brought up to her the other day. "I used to always say I wanted to go traveling and see new places, so if another world shows up, that would definitely be like traveling. And... Well, I'd, um. I'd feel better if I was with someone I trusted." The last part admitted somewhat quietly.

Trusted. Peter has to try really, really hard not to smile at that, but like most things about Peter that he tries to hide, he can't quite manage it. The smile is definitely there.

"Yeah," he says, a little quieter now. "Me too."

A momentary silence falls between them after that, and Peter for once, doesn't feel the urgent need to fill it all with something. When he finally speaks again, it's to ask Liz a question.

"When's the assignment due?" he asks. "I'd like to see it when it's done, if you don't mind showing it to me."

"Piotr said whenever I feel satisfied with it." Liz paused, then laughed a little. "So maybe never? No, um. I'm just kidding. But, I will, definitely show you before I hand it in. You can be like my proofreader, but for art, if there is such a thing."

She didn't think there was, really, but it would definitely feel reassuring if he said there was improvement before she showed it to Piotr. She wanted to impress the man. He was so nice and all.

Peter smiles at Liz's explanation. He really wishes she had a little more confidence. It was clear after his first glance at her that she was really pretty. And it was five minutes into their first conversation that she was really smart. And it took even less time in this conversation for him to realize she multi-talented.

"But... do you feel any more satisfied than you did a few minutes ago?"

She hadn't thought of that and she paused to consider. Liz glanced down at the pad, already thinking about how she was going to take Peter's suggestions and use them. Somehow looking at the lines on the page, she wasn't as frustrated at them anymore.

"Actually... yeah. I guess I kind of am." She looked up with an expression that seemed a little more relaxed about the whole thing. "Thank you, Peter. You're -- Well, I'm, really glad you're here." Since meeting him the Inn seemed a lot less daunting and maybe just a tiny bit normal, if that were possible.

A Lesson in Frustration (OTA)

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