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Curator and Mariella quietly sat side by side on the museum floor. They had already finished all the maintenance it needed and ran out of things to do during the last reset. They had nothing better to do but just sit there and space out while staring at the wall art. Finally, Mariella broke the silence.
“If we were fictional characters, do you think we would pass the Bechdel test?”
“I hope so.. Do we meet all the requirements?”
“Well.. we’re both women and we’re talking to each other. But I think we both have to have names in order for it to count.”
Curator quietly sighed. “Fine. I have a name I used to use as a kid.. It was Charlotte. I don’t use that name anymore though..”
“Charlotte’s a pretty name! Anyways, that solves that part but what about the not talking about men part? Does talking about the Bechdel test count as talking about men?”
“Well if we get technical, talking about the absence of men still counts as talking about men. We’re still talking about men because we’re still acknowledging them through their absence..”
“Oh shit you're right.. We need to change the topic to pass the test.” Mariella paused as she tried to think of ways to change the topic. Then it hit her. “Who’s your favorite woman musician?”
Curator sparked up at the question. “Oh I’ve been listening to Mitski recently!”
“Nice! Mitski makes really good music! Oh right; I started relistening to a few of Lady Gaga’s albums.”
“Lady Gaga is nice. I don’t listen to much of her music but she seems very talented.”
The conversation started to die down again. Once more, they were left with the silence of the museum. Some minutes passed as they both thought about their own miscellaneous things. The conversations eventually picked up again after a while.
“Why are you so insistent about passing the Bechdel test anyways? It’s not like we’re in a fiction piece of media.”
Mariella shot out of her daydreams. “Hm? Oh I don’t know. I was just wondering if we would pass the test. Speaking of media; if we were fictional characters, what form of media would we be in? Like would we be book characters or something?”
“I mean.. To recreate the complexity of the parable as a whole in a single book would be unlikely. I think if we were characters, we would be in a TV show. Or maybe a movie?”
“Hmm.. I mean the parable is never ending and TV shows do eventually end so maybe not. I think we would be in a video game! It’s easier to recreate the infinity of the parable in a game!”
“A video game? Are you joking? Who would want to play a video game that never ends! You wouldn’t ever get the satisfaction of completion. You would just be wasting your money!”
“Well.. Maybe the game is free because it would be impossible to find a target audience who likes those sorts of things, who knows!” She sighed before continuing. “But going back to the book idea from earlier, if we were book characters, what part of the book would this conversation be in?” Mariella grinned smugly at the other.
Curator playfully rolled her eyes. “Well, decent writers wouldn’t write in a completely useless conversation if its only purpose was to pass stupid test. But if it were, this would probably just be a filler scene in the middle of the book. Only there to meet a word count..”
“I guess you're right about the decent writer part.. But what if ‘the person writing this conversation’ wasn’t a decent writer? What if the writer was just some bored teenager with crappy writing, making fanfiction?” She chuckled as she watched Curator facepalm.
“That’s ridiculous! Why would a teenager of all people write about this conversation? And why fanfiction? Who would willingly want to read about this conversation just because their favorite characters are in it? Your logic is confusing.”
“Yeah well, that’s the fun of ‘what if’ questions. None of it could be true! But it’s fun to think about it. I mean can you imagine it? Fanfiction about us? You were right, who would want to read about us?! Good thing we aren’t fiction characters!”
The two laughed together. The “what if” questions were nice to joke together about. Even if they were “real people”, it was still fun to imagine what it was like to be a fictional character.