don't stop believing

[stagemanagers]

[Streetlights, reveals] | [Vision Statements] | [Mass Resolution: CONNECT] | [A little touch of the sun (Revival)] | [They do this bullshit like 8 times a week (Rescue)]


[It's a pleasant afternoon in the garden. Maybe not emotionally, but physically - isn't it nice when you get to have class outside?

As your voices rise, singing defiance in unison out for the Wizard, there's no immediate response; at least, nothing that clearly is a response. But there's something. Amidst the sound of your song, it may be hard to hear at first; Janis will likely be the first to notice, but eventually everyone is able to hear. It sounds as though other voices are rising along with yours.

There's something on the air - no music, or at least no instrumentals, just a disembodied sort of lyrical chant. You don't recognize any of the voices. They aren't singing the same song as you all are. Maybe they can't; they sound long long ago, and far far away now. Still - despite everything - the trees around you move lightly in a sudden soft breeze. It feels as though you have invoked something, old and entirely beyond your knowledge.

But first. Haven't you forgotten something?

It's Wednesday.

Welcome to this week's school club!]

Comments

[fourbutts]

[ Janis sort of. Staggers back. ]

He's not wrong. That the- that the multiverse is being fucked up, anyway.

[ She shakes her head. ]

But if you reset it... if you reset everything, everyone... you're just buying time. Until the next time someone wants to have a story out of their own universe. You're just... addressing a symptom.

[comeandfindme]

[ She looks over to Janis, concerned. ]

You- you saw something?

[fourbutts]

Yeah, it's... it's not good.

[ she shakes her head. ]

If we don't do something, we actually are all fucked.

[musacal]

It's really not good.

[ Nana chiming in to give the confirmation that it's not just Janis seeing it right now. ]

But there might... there might be other ways to fix it! Now that we've seen how big it really is--!

[comeandfindme]

[ She sucks in a breath. ]

Then... Then we do something about it. We find another way. Between the lot of us— We know a lot of narrators, right? There's- there's you, there's Bal, LP. Hell, maybe there's Brett—

[ She remembers something, right then. Actually starts to let go of Farrah to dig through her backpack. ]

[brokeforgood]

[That's cool, she's yeeting back to her strawberita.]

[comeandfindme]

[ FARRAH NO—

She's not gone for long. Just long enough to pull out a signal flare. ]

...He's looking for me. I wonder...

[brokeforgood]

[It's fine, she's back with her drink]

Even if he's not, I wanna see that thing go off.

[comeandfindme]

[ we're gonna get you sober one day kid ]

It's only got one flare. The important part of being prepared is...knowing when to use your resources. [ aka she's holding it for a little bit ]

[tailor_made]

...he's also a symptom. None of this would have happened without the initial games setting it off. [Hester never saw the other office but she was paying attention at the trial. She knows about the journals and the tally marks, all those centuries-

She knew he'd suffered through something terrible, that the multiverse was falling apart at the seams and this was the only way they knew to fix it but she had no idea the actual extent of it.] Like a domino effect.

[fourbutts]

Right, but... how long before another Leading Player shows up? Or, hell, just Leading Player? Someone running one of these?

[ she frowns, thinking. ]

There's got to be some way to... I don't know, reinforce the multiverse instead of just doing the same thing over again! Otherwise you might just have us all stuck in a fucking loop, William, and I don't even want that for you!

In everything you've done, in all that you've tried, can you prove we haven't done this before?

[stopbelieving]

You haven't.

You're right, though. Things can't be reset entirely. Someone has to stay and monitor it. And -

[If you tried it once,
you can try again.
DON'T GIVE IN TO SORROW THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW -

Will closes his eyes, takes a breath, and shakes his head.]

- I can - I can do that.

[Although it sounds like a long and lonely way to live.]

[barberic]

To let you just repeat this whole thing anytime you feel like it? Like hell. This ends with you stripped of whatever powers you had and dead, so that you can never hurt another person again.

cw: suicidal ideation

[stopbelieving]

Why would I want to do this again? I'd love to end this dead, but if I do that, it will just loop. The Leading Player will start her games all over again, and the same thing's gonna happen.

[barberic]

You're a bloody madman, that's why. You've done it twice now, by your own admission.

If we were foolish enough to believe you and go along with your plan, leaving you sole arbiter of the way things "should be," there would be no one to stop you from doing this over and over again every time there was a deviation from your divine plan.

[stopbelieving]

I don't have any plans. It's Sondheim, for you.

[fourbutts]

... I can't believe I'm saying this to you, but nobody deserves that.

[ No one deserves to be forgotten. ]

I can't agree with your plan. Not until we try at least... I don't know, Avengers-ing up some narrators or trying to summon Sondheim or making some kind of effort to actually fix this.

It sucks that it's breaking the multiverse, but all of us are better off for having met each other. That's... just the kind of story this is, I think. If you leave a story alone, if you leave everyone in their little boxes, after a certain point it all kind of stagnates. We're all part of each other's stories now, and... I think that's good, so long as we can get the multiverse to, you know. Agree.

[stopbelieving]

...but it doesn't agree. [...] You know Sondheim is a real person, right? You want to summon the real Stephen Sondheim?

[fourbutts]

Why not? If anyone can fix the fucking musical multiverse it would be him, right? That's the thing about writing a story! You get to do whatever the fuck you want! It's technically Tina Fey's fault Regina got hit by that bus!

[tailor_made]

Janis, please don't summon actual 91-year-old American composer Stephen Sondheim or actress and comedian Tina Fey. I think that may actually break things for good.

[tailor_made]

No. [Hester stares at Will in the middle of the pond, crammed between her new girlfriend and Farrah. He's done so much wrong, even before he brought her in but-] Janis is right, Will, no one deserves that kind of life.

[stopbelieving]

It's necessary.

[comeandfindme]

[ ... ]

What happens to Hester if you do this?

[tailor_made]

I don't care if it's necessary! [She throws up her hands, gesturing angrily in a way that speaks to a certain R2 participant who technically lives rent-free in her head.] Sentencing yourself to even more isolation isn't the answer!

[musacal]

[ Hey speaking of R2 participants - ]

She's right! How does that really make anything better?!

[ Says the girl who willingly timelooped for several decades but hey. Growth. ]

You've already been through so much, isolating yourself more because you think it'll protect everything is horrible!

[ GROWTH. ]