Lab Journal Entry #3

[matril]

Yeah, I'm pretty much going to post an entry every day. Why not? It's already all written, rough draft though it may be. (45 episodes, intended to be aired once a week with a few exceptions.)


"Eli"

Int., Tori’s lab, the camera held slightly shakily in someone’s hands. TORI is leaning toward it, looking exasperated but amused in spite of herself.

TORI
Put it down. You’re going to break it. Wait, did you start recording?

ELI
(VO, behind camera) Guess.

TORI
(Rolling eyes) Eli, turn it off! (Lunges forward)

ELI
(Yanking camera out of reach, moving to other side of table) Nope. It’s time to spice up your videos.

TORI
Lab journals.

ELI
(Plays with camera shots, dizzyingly so) Yeah, that name has to change.

TORI
The name is accurate. Why would I give them a misleading name? That’s just click-bait. Those who are genuinely interested in my research will watch my lab journals for their own sake. I respect my viewers too much to pander to them.

ELI
Okay, but I never said you had to be misleading. You can be truthful without being boring.

TORI
(Raises eyebrows) You think I’m boring?

ELI
(Laughs) Never. But your potential viewers don’t know you like I do. I’m trying to help, milady. Can’t you take a little creative input?

TORI
If I say yes, will you give me back my camera?

ELI
Eventually.

TORI
(Folds arms in defiance, but she’s fighting a smile) Fine. What do you think I should do?

ELI
Well, to start with – when I said be more personal, I didn’t mean about your degrees. I meant you – your background, your family, that sort of thing.

TORI
Is that relevant?

ELI
Sure. If you want people to listen to you, you have to give some idea where you’re coming from.

TORI
But I already told them about my fields of research.

ELI
(Exaggerated, long-suffering sigh) Yes. And yet you still haven’t even told them your name.

A beat

TORI
I haven’t? Oh. Okay. (Looks directly at camera for first time this video) My name is Tori – Victoria, in full. Uh – for reasons of confidentiality, I prefer not to disclose my last name.

ELI
(Pretends camera is slipping) You’re losing them, Tori.

TORI
Fine. What else?

ELI
Family? Childhood memories?

TORI
I have a family, yes. And many childhood memories. (Can’t keep straight-faced. Now she’s messing with him.) All right, all right. Well, I have two younger brothers, Eric and William. They’re generally obnoxious, just like little brothers are supposed to be, but I love them anyway. Eric is in high school and William just turned ten. I’m thirty, by the way. Is that relevant?

ELI
(Makes “I don’t know” grunt)

TORI
Thanks for the input. Now it’s your turn.

ELI
What do you mean?

TORI
Give them a look at the cameraman. I think they’re entitled to it.

ELI
(Turning camera around to reveal his face, sticking his tongue out) How’s that?

TORI
Great. Everyone, this is Eli, the goofball I’m planning on marrying. Quite a catch, isn’t he?

ELI
Stop! You’re making me blush.

Comments

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

There are certainly good things to getting an instalment every day, even if that means I have to try and keep up my own tempo of responding to them. I have to admit it took until the end of the piece for me to connect "Eli" to the original novel, although it also took me a while with the first one to see just how "Tori" fit in as well. It also caught my attention that Tori's siblings haven't also been "gender-swapped"... although a few moments' thought reminded me there might be reasons for that later on. Tori's preferring not to give her last name did have me wondering about the whole "an updated version of a classic story means that story never existed in the new story world... except when it does" matter, but maybe that's overthinking things.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd have to say that the novel Frankenstein doesn't exist in this world, just to simplify matters. Her user name on the videos would have been Tori F, leaving the viewer to figure out the rest. At least, that's what I was leaning toward. Maybe I would have decided to have her give her full name after all. It's just such a long, cumbersome name, and of course one with so much cultural baggage that's only tangentially related to the original novel.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Hello Mr. Lavenza! (Unless it's something else). You might want to consider backing away a little while it's still early on :)

I just assumed Tori didn't want her full name getting splashed all over the internet. P&P didn't exist in the Lizzie Bennet diaries, did it? S&S did, though. So maybe she could refer to one of Mary Shelley's other novels, though heaven knows most people probably couldn't name one. I certainly couldn't -- though I do know she wrote Rambles In Germany and Italy because Robert Browning makes fun of it in one of his letters to Elizabeth Barrett.

[matril.livejournal.com]

I've never read another of Mary Shelley's works myself, I admit. I kind of suspect it's more the intriguing concept of the novel rather than its execution that established it as a classic. But I could be underestimating her writing abilities. She was terribly young when she wrote it, after all. Nothing that I wrote as a teenager is fit for mass consumption. ;)