interstellar5555 | ☆TRACK IIX: BETTER TO PRETEND PT. 1

Who: Famous musicians, hopeful auditioners, and random onlookers.
What: Hit gameshow series “Fairy Trial” is celebrating one of its anniversaries, and it’s invited you onboard. For more deets, check out the OOC post!
When: March 11th.
Where: Sevetop Entertainment’s studio.
Warnings: Mingle log mystery bag.

“It's so much better to pretend
There's something waiting for you here.
Every letter that you wrote
Has found its way to me, my dear.”

☆BETTER TO PRETEND

For musicians in either Pride or Virgo, the job offer is delivered by their managers- a suggestion to accept an invitation from Sevetop to participate in a successful gameshow. (A message that is delivered perhaps a bit more pressingly to some, with the unsaid words of “This is a chance to make it up to us”.) For others, strangers just trying to make a living and wait for their chance to save their loved ones, the message is delivered over their communicators by Gold, with promises that infiltrating this event will aid you in liberating the captives from their label's control. Either way, all roads lead to Sevetop Entertainment.

Sevetop might not have the weight that musical giants Pride Labels and Virgo Entertainment do, but that’s because it’s not into the musical industry. Sevetop is all about television and the big screen. For these purposes, it has its own little area of the city, a bustling kind of Hollywood filled with the more office-like buildings, auditoriums for additions, and even various sets. Whether you’re driven in style via limo, or brought to a regular line of buses, this is where you end up at.

Musicians, of course, end up at the more posh meeting room. A spread of delicate little lunch sandwiches, veggie platters, cupcakes, and assorted beverages are on a table for anyone to snatch up, and regularly refilled. Every celebrity is handed a small folder with papers inside going over both the boring legal things and explaining the purpose of the show. “Royals” are the ones to be “saved”, but they don’t have to make the journey easier on their “Heroes” and are given tools at their disposal to help or hinder. Heroes have one goal to accomplish, ‘rescuing’ their Royal, but it changes depending on the challenge.

Much to your surprise, some of those aspiring Heroes might just look familiar. Don't tell!

☆THE HEROES

In another building, next door, various people picked off the street (some coincidentally, others not so much, thanks to Gold's glamour witchcraft) are being given very much the same kind of presentation… In a room much more cramped, with not nearly enough chairs, on a slideshow. The only refreshments available are small bags of chips (try not to take more than one) and coolers full of bottled water.

After the separate presentations are done with, everyone is allowed to check out the sets for past seasons, which includes what look like giant mushroom tops that are made of very bouncy rubber, climbing walls made of fake vines, pumpkin shaped carriages (horses not included), and other such things.

Of course, it’s not all play. While you’re messing about, you’ve all been given numbers. Once you’ve been called, you’re to stand in front of Fairy Trial’s hosts and commentators: siblings Bella and Maurice Hooks. Both of them are equally friendly, although her more outgoing to his easygoing, but they have plenty of questions for this little audition. Tell them about yourself: hobbies, job, your favorite fairy tale, what you think your best skill is - and then, the most important, you get to display a choice "talent" in front of the audience. It can be whatever you like, as long as it's crowd appropriate.

Be careful, though, because the rock stars you're hoping to work with are watching, too. At the very least, don't make an ass out of yourself. Gold's enchantments are good, but there are some things that even magic can't charm its way through.

After all this, you’ll get a chance to just rest and mingle while your rides come back to take you back to the mall or HQ you were picked up at. Obviously for certain famous names, they’ll probably be the first ones out, but who knows… Maybe there was a traffic delay, and now you have some time to spare waiting around here as well. Just take note that you’re not allowed to wander too far from the Fairy Trial sets. Security is keeping an eye on folks to make sure they don’t steal or wreck anything.

And don’t worry, you’ll be told about the results within a week! They promise.

“You can make believe that what you say
Is what I want to hear.
I'll keep dancing through this
Beautiful delusional career.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He spots her standing there. He should probably wait for the car but he plans to walk. It's a nice night. He recognizes her from Junkyard Carnival. Well how could he not? But they haven't really interacted much at all. Since they're under the same label and he's kind of bored so... might as well shoot the breeze.

"So what do you think of all this farce? Fun or just a pain in the ass?"

Oh look. It's Mr. Punk is Dead. Ha.

"Oh gosh, I just can't wait to get shoved into something with bows all over it, preferably in some shade of purple and brown, and wait for an inept bruv to come get his every unrealistic fantasy made into reality." She takes a long drag on her cigarette and arches her eyebrow. "Should be a laugh."

He only thinks it's dead because it is. But he won't hold it against you.

"No one says you have to make it easy for them." He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "Why not modify the costume? Give it your own personality? Who wouldn't want a punk princess?"

And it took a lot of mental willpower not to put mental air quotes around that statement.

"Listen, nineteen seventy-eight," Luci says, immediately rounding on him at the word 'princess'. It's like he grabbed the cat's tail and now it's exponentially more pissed off than a little grab should result in. "Our bands have a good thing going, but you call me a princess one more time, I'll put this cigarette out right on that hipster jacket of yours and get Yuffie to spam your followers with boring porn. You get me?"

He holds up his hands. Obviously he hit a sour note. Perhaps he should have used the title queen instead, with drama in front of it. Also nineteen seventy-eight? He doesn't get the reference though he wonders perhaps if he should.

"Sorry, no offense. I was just going with the theme. All I'm saying is if you've got to be pushed around why not see how far you can push back."

Also his jacket is not hipster. He is not hipster. They are pretentious shits. He is not. But he doesn't expect her to understand the difference.

"Yeah? Well I'm wearing a fucking suit, answer the clue phone. G-O-D you're even more annoying in person." Even if her opinion is that Xanxus thrashed this idiot in their duel, she still feels personally affronted by him. Not that he said her genre was dead, that he had the gall to say it without knowing just who he was insulting and from what side of the field. That kind of blind ignorance is past annoying and well into The Emperor of Stupid.

...Emperor of Stupid.... Familiar but not quite.

She takes a very long, very pointed drag on her cigarette before barking a laugh and letting the smoke out in a huff. "Yeah that's a plan. Make the fans wonder why I'm not into it. That's a great image to broadcast. If I didn't think they'd enjoy this shit, I'd be out of here so fast."

Only she wouldn't, because Lesedi had her on a very tight leash. Sometimes literally.

He shrugs. As far as he's concerned people put too much emphasis on fans. But then that was what most of the industry was like. In his, admittedly limited experience, they either loved or hated you regardless of what you did or didn't do. He waves away the smoke though, stepping back from her a bit because that's a bit obnoxious and decides not to mention it will kill her voice.

"Lucky fans you've got there." Do not add princess, he tells himself. Even though the temptation is looming. "In that case I hope you can give them a good show."

To Luci, her fans are everything. Interacting with them, talking to the crowd between numbers, making them scream and shout with the smallest of motions... it gives her life, it makes all the shit Pride puts her through worth it.

But apparently Sabo doesn't care for her smoke. Usually she'd stamp it out for the sake of the other musician but, eh, she doesn't feel like it in this particular instance with this particular person.

"They sure are. Every time they see me, they walk away happy. Can't hope for more than that."

She reminds him a lot of Xanxus, but he supposes that's to be expected. Still in as much as he doesn't really think much of what she calls punk, he can still respect her as a true musician. Especially since this isn't even her style to begin with. Maybe this really was what it was all about. Naybe it was what everything in the end was all about.

"I don't even know who mine are." Or if he had any. He wasn't going to suppose he did, or if he did, they were likely a masochistic bunch. "But I guess that's what separates the top tier from the rest of us."

Though he mostly means him. Mostly though he's curious about what she'll say or do as he tries to get a bead on more of her personality. Though he's well aware he's likely only getting one side of it.

Luci arches an eyebrow at Sabo like he's just admitted to wearing three pairs of underwear every day. He doesn't know who his fans are? Holy crap, this guy needed serious help if he wasn't going to torpedo Cosmic Indulgence's fan-friendly reputation.

"What are you even talking about?" Luci frowns, tapping the ash off her cigarette. "Yeah, our shows pull a lot of audience and I'm performing at least twice a week somewhere, but you want 'top tier', talk to Predator."

And get his face bitten off by the psychopaths as a result. That's an exaggeration, they probably would just snub him and ignore whatever attempt he made, but Luci isn't above a little bit of hazing.

So much for the compliment. It's an interesting way to take it. She's different from her bandmate and not someone easily lead. Or at least so it seems.

"Yeah I might check him out." Or he might not. Top tier, bottom tier, it was all the same to him in the end. The only thing that counted was-- was what? He wasn't sure but he knew he'd know it if he found it.

"Anyway..." he rocks back on his heels a bit. "Break a leg, I guess."

"Yeah, you too," Luci puffs out some more smoke. "For your band's sake, don't be boring. Nariko pulled a lot of fans, you guys have to make up for losing her."

And with Terry in the shape he's in, she imagines that's going to be an uphill fight.

☆TRACK IIX: BETTER TO PRETEND PT. 1

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