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ph_logs2025-03-29 08:17 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-03-29 08:17 pm
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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow
SYMPHONY OF SORROW
If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats
You find yourself at the theatre.
You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.
There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.
A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.
You deserve this.
You deserve this.
You deserve this.
You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.
There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.
A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.
You deserve this.
You deserve this.
You deserve this.
Observer’s Overture
First Movement in E Minor
adagio, con dolorePP
Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.
Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.
vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P
The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.
Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.
Opera Infernale
Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)
chorale concerto a tutti, con affettoF
Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.
segue
Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.
segue
On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.
CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor
There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him. Ensemble's Lament
Third Movement in G Minor
bocca chiusaPPP
There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.
pesante
Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.
declamando, letando
There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.
The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…
freddo, pietoso
Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.
Reprise - Observer’s Overture
Fourth Movement in E Major
impetuosoFF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.
presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.
Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.
Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.
The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.
Homeward Aria
Fifth and Final Movement in C Major
tiempo di fanfara, vittoriosoF
When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.
It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.
enfatico, mancando poco a poco
| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |
Take Your Face [for Neil]
feat. CONSTANCE DIAZ & NEIL WEST
as
Connie & "NEEDLES"
It is no more pleasant to stand in the green room a second time than it was the first, to be pulled and pushed and manipulated into another costume far more decadent than the last. A gown of brown and fawn, with delicate detailing and layers of fabric that hang both light and heavy around her legs. An intricate Venetian mask affixed to her face, covering half of her skull entirely whilst letting her hair fall in twisting waves toward her shoulder and dark eyes peer past gold outlines.
Muzzled, but not blinded. She can say nothing to the ally being re-dressed into a dress-up doll interpretation of another, grey and blacks and reds and a mask of his own, but she can watch.
The stage is dark. Illusory stars hover as pinpricks of white in the black, but they do not illuminate the space around them. One moment stood in the inky emptiness, the next flashbanged as a spotlight singles CT out like the sights of a rifle and she is all, at once, alone. A single point of light in empty space, isolated and at rest. Silence and stillness, stretching on.
Until in twisting, fluid motion she is swirling across the stage in a cyclone of skirts, graceful arms and elegant footwork to the sound of the orchestra swelling up from the pit below. Towards— what? No one watching knows, not yet.
But she does. She knows.
She is seeking him.
no subject
The motion culminates as CT travels across the stage and finds herself in the arms of her dance partner. A mask of thin filigree creates a strange optical illusion. She can see that it is Neil, if she looks closely, but if her eyes unfocus for a moment, the outline of his face disappears into the curling metal, gunmetal grey with a red stripe down the center. Brown eyes stare impassively from the eye openings as he pulls her into a waltz.
There is something joyful about it at first. Triumphant, free. But as the music they dance to continues, the broad motions become tighter. And with it, the stage. Props of space debris begin to crowd their space, and the two of them must take sharper turns to accommodate.
no subject
Sharp turns and weaving motion, footwork forced to tighten up and move faster between the mimicries of old junk, of the resting place of not just many ships but of the version of her life she'd tried so hard to cling to that she left claw marks in it.
Her eyes won't focus in more than short bursts, snapshots of the familiar face lost so quickly to an intricate tangle of metal and memory. Imagined pressure bears down from impassionate eyes and though she is still muzzled, even her singing voice locked behind the mouth of her mask, she remembers her own pleading well:
I can't leave. Not yet.
A flash of technicolour, at the edge of the stage—there one second and gone the next. CT's head snaps toward it so hard her hair whips and her neck aches, and she pulls at the hold, body refusing to follow the next turn as a hand reaches out futilely into the darkness a hair's breadth from colliding with sharp debris.
no subject
The loop grows tighter. Whatever she is trying to reach, she won't get there. His grip is surprisingly tight. Smaller and smaller. Their space on the stage narrows. So does the spotlight, until they are just spinning in place. Faster, faster.
no subject
Dizzying turns and speed, skirts twisting around her legs like a whirlpool sucking her down, trapping her in its ever-narrowing maw. Again and again she tries to free herself from the pull, to break free of the overbearing hold that keeps her in place—but it never works, never helps.
She is caught in his orbit and there will be no escaping it, now. Tighter and tighter, faster and faster, the spotlight's shade begins to shift and she wants to open her mouth to plead but she can't.
Violins thrum in the pit. Orchestral voices sing. CT's chest swells with every ounce of fear and uncertainty she remembers so well.
no subject
The curtain plummets to the floor before the audience can see CT's true face.
Then, from between the red velvet, Neil emerges bare-faced, with CT's brown and gold mask in hand. He places it on his own face, and with a snap of his fingers, the red and black color drains from his suit, replaced by shades of brown.
He bows stiffly, and exits stage right, leaving only his own mask abandoned forlornly on the center of the stage. The spotlight tightens on it before fading to black.
no subject
Around and around, stumbling and shaky, she falls to the floor as the curtain waterfalls heavy against the ground, consumed by the darkness it leaves behind and the thrum of panic still clutching at her chest.
Even through the fabric, a part of her instinctually knows what's happening on the other side. A hand climbs to her face, then clenches and falls.
And then it's... over. The thinnest stream of red light that crept between the curtains disappears and the weight holding her there lifts, lets her scramble up to her feet and gather the extravagant skirts in shaking hands. Up, go, off the stage, off stage-right until the bustle of the other unwilling performers in the green room is upon them once again.
"N— Neil?"
no subject
no subject
"No, they— I just collapsed. I think." Her second performance of the night, the odd disorientation of coming out of the act is familiar but no more pleasant. She shakes her head to shake it off and one of her arms bends at the elbow so she can pat the hand on the matching shoulder. Grounds herself. "That was... a very metaphorical representation of— of someone I knew. Uh."
She looks around, nods her head toward a quieter corner of the ever moving room. Even after the stage, perhaps especially after the stage, she'll take what limited privacy she can get.
no subject
no subject
"He— was supposed to be an ally, of mine. Working against my old program, like I did, I needed... contacts on the outside, you know? People to help. Needles— Santos—" she shakes her head, not really sure what to call him—she knew him as Needles longest, but Rat used his name toward the end and she remembers it vaguely from her childhood, "he was one of them. An old friend of my brother's, apparently. It made him... overprotective. He was always pushing me to leave, even when things were stable."
no subject
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"In a way," she echoes, picking at the scar across her palm the way she so often does. "Eventually he made me leave. I-It might've been the right call, things were getting... dangerous, but I didn't want to, and... anyway, we were on the run for a while. But my old team caught up with us and that— idiot—"
She clenches her fist, which stops her picking but makes the knuckles pale.
"He wouldn't leave. He took me down to this bunker, this— dead end except for a single escape pod only he had the code for and he wouldn't. Leave. The others were all dead but he— if he'd just listened to me, we could've escaped before—"
Her hand flies subconsciously to the scar that stretches up her chest.
no subject
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She nods in stuttering confirmation of his assumption, fingers curling against the scar before she forces her hand away again. "No, no you're— you're not the same as he was. He— he didn't listen, he never listened. Sometimes it was like he thought I was still just a kid who didn't know better, that's what I get for being his crush's younger sibling, apparently! He— you— ugh."
She drags a hand down her face. Goddammit, Santos.
"...you listen when I have something to offer. You're— fine."
no subject
Then, his hands leave her, arms spreading in an offered hug.
no subject
She breathes. In, out. In, out. Until she doesn't feel quite so light-headed or like she's going to start hyperventilating for no good reason. Just breathe. They're... fine. They're fine. It's over. This is all just unpleasant memories drawn back to the surface.
A moment's hesitation, then she steps in and accepts the hug.