Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 4: Showtime!]
04-06-2010, 12:34 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.
When it comes to interior decoration, the backstages of major theatres have never won any awards. Why should they? All the glamour and the pizzazz happens up front, on the stage itself - that's what gets covered in the most luxurious furnishings and elaborate ersatz doodads money can buy, coated in whatever shade, strength or shape of light you can think of (and probably a couple you wouldn't want to think of - very few plays really need fluorescent strobe spotlights, but hey; they look snazzy, alright?) - all this under the pretence of making things look more real. Hmph.
No, for reality, try this - desolate, deteriorated corridors with floorboards that probably haven't actually seen better days, illuminated (if you can call it that) by the odd bulb hanging onto its wire for dear life, swaying and swinging without there even being a breeze to have set it off. Piles of boxes, presumedly holding unnecessary props that the director will never know if he'll quite need again, towering from floor to ceiling and beyond; where age had born holes in the upper echelons, whole towers had been carefully moved under them so that the most could be made of this newly-conquered space. If that was the logic behind it. Maxwell hadn't quite figured out why such a silly thing should occur, but he bet it had something to do with scene.
This was a play, was it not? OK, so the connotation was foolishly obvious, verging on the worryingly dull, but there was possible irony in the fact that the round was staged in a theatre, where they would continue their performance for the enjoyment of the Observer. Of course, why choose a plain old boring theatre that you could pluck out of any town in the multiverse when you could "make" one that had a sinister element to it; that had corridors that provided the perfect backdrop for battle sequences; that had curious quirks to give it the character to go against the chaos? The warrens of tunnels made backstage a proper stage in its own right.
It also made it a hell to navigate to anyone with legs.
Maxwell was starting to become quite envious of Vyrm'n's ability to just screw gravity and flow through whatever mediums happened to be in the way between Point A and Point B. Still, there were advantages to being human... probably.
And then, somehow, he reached his destination. But here there was a scattering of brazen detritus that hinted at him being too late - scraps of costumes, the rubble and remains of cardboard architecture, the component parts of many a prop...
...it was quiet though. He hadn't expected that. It would be helpful, though. It was getting rather tiresome, but he was going to have to have a good think about all this.
At the point where the light that escaped from under the closet door no longer reached out, Maxwell sat down. If he couldn't muster up the courage here, well...
No, for reality, try this - desolate, deteriorated corridors with floorboards that probably haven't actually seen better days, illuminated (if you can call it that) by the odd bulb hanging onto its wire for dear life, swaying and swinging without there even being a breeze to have set it off. Piles of boxes, presumedly holding unnecessary props that the director will never know if he'll quite need again, towering from floor to ceiling and beyond; where age had born holes in the upper echelons, whole towers had been carefully moved under them so that the most could be made of this newly-conquered space. If that was the logic behind it. Maxwell hadn't quite figured out why such a silly thing should occur, but he bet it had something to do with scene.
This was a play, was it not? OK, so the connotation was foolishly obvious, verging on the worryingly dull, but there was possible irony in the fact that the round was staged in a theatre, where they would continue their performance for the enjoyment of the Observer. Of course, why choose a plain old boring theatre that you could pluck out of any town in the multiverse when you could "make" one that had a sinister element to it; that had corridors that provided the perfect backdrop for battle sequences; that had curious quirks to give it the character to go against the chaos? The warrens of tunnels made backstage a proper stage in its own right.
It also made it a hell to navigate to anyone with legs.
Maxwell was starting to become quite envious of Vyrm'n's ability to just screw gravity and flow through whatever mediums happened to be in the way between Point A and Point B. Still, there were advantages to being human... probably.
And then, somehow, he reached his destination. But here there was a scattering of brazen detritus that hinted at him being too late - scraps of costumes, the rubble and remains of cardboard architecture, the component parts of many a prop...
...it was quiet though. He hadn't expected that. It would be helpful, though. It was getting rather tiresome, but he was going to have to have a good think about all this.
At the point where the light that escaped from under the closet door no longer reached out, Maxwell sat down. If he couldn't muster up the courage here, well...