"Hey,can I see that script?",Jim said."I get the locker right next to the printer and I don't recall seeing it come out..."
The script girl looked,and found that besides the casting call spec the papers in her hands were blank."Uh...the thread hasn't been written yet",she said."Optioned three years ago,but nobody's actually come through with episodes."
"Well,shouldn't get people's hopes up",Jim said."I'm sure the stage director won't mind if you take five and come back when someone writes Episode 297065." The script girl nodded and left.
"Oh,frack",Isydoria said,kicking the wall in frustration."I haven't had an episode gig since 298517,that's three years too..." her eyes misted over.She looked at Jim...he didn't seem overly interested in her despite her extravagantly-defined beauty and attire,but she realized he was the leading man of the entire Addventure and she was still just a bit-player.He had his pick of girls like her,onstage or off...and just now his two main leading ladies,Sharon and Robin, were coming up on either side of him.
"Someone's writing us right now",Jim said encouragingly."So what's your main background in the story?I haven't worked with you before unless you count that unrelated description just now."
"I've hardly got a backstory yet",Isydoria said softly."About the only attribute I've got besides my looks is that I've got a fixation on seducing Dabbler."
"Dabbler?",Robin exclaimed sympathetically."Oh,honestly,Isydoria,Dabbler?The guy is such a perv..."
"I can't help it...I'm kind of...a Dabbler groupie.He seems nice enough!"
"Yeah,right,in his episodes about himself!The guy had his evil alter ego get me pregnant...with a crazy imp...and specified that this sterilized me...hasn't affected my fertility in other threads thank goodness.Then he gendermorphed us both so that I could get him pregnant..."
"Yeah,that's about when I last saw him...a side thread where L.E. un-gendermorphed him.But he ignored me.""Lucky you",Robin said firmly.
"L.E. is one of the few writers with the decency to extend abortion rights to feminized men",Jim said."I've got enough entanglements without becoming a mother!"
Isydoria looked back and forth between Jim and Robin and Sharon.She saw no trace of jealousy or possessiveness among them,and Sharon laughed."Come on,we wouldn't be working here for so long if we took our scripted feelings seriously or had a real fixation on monogamy",she said."Sure,Robin does her unattainable-bitch-goddess thing until Jim seduces or does horrible things to her,and I get my outraged reactions when he does his bumbling horny boyfriend routine,but offscreen we're all friends.When we're not working or being intimate with other friends the three of us usually sleep in the same bed."
"I have to tell you a lot of us aren't really the way we act onscreen",Jim said."Take Julie 6,the redheaded dominatrix at the company that sold slave gruel.She and I were working with a full-scale author war,where Elroy and Leviathan and Jezebel had her enslaving me,and L.E. and Pamela B-B-B-B Forbes and Zon18 (not to mention a couple of Greek gods) had me getting the upper hand again.Well,offscreen that woman is pathologically submissive,I sprain my wrist trying to spank her as hard as she wants,I usually have to turn her over to Billy Young...man can that kid wield a bullwhip!"
"Billy has...family issues",Sharon said."And the Mediators haven't been active lately."
"So what's through that door anyway?",Isydoria asked.
Jim smiled."From the point of view of the Original Backstage,the Backstage Ring surrounds domed soundstages where the Addventure episodes take place..."
"But over at Joes they were telling me--" she motioned at Muscatel and Bourbon,"that the Addventure takes place outside the Ring."
"That's the craziness of Authors for you.Relative to here,it's the outside world,and the worlds they kidnap other characters from,that are outside the circle."
"That Deja Voodoo decided the Imp I mothered for Dabbler was a barrister,who introduced himself as a solicitor here,from the Lord Peter Wimsey series",Robin pointed out.
"So...you generally don't have children in any of your threads..."
"Yeah,despite all the sex and almost no mention of contraception",Jim said."Except with the Uncle Sid threads where DV used it as an explanation for all my variant relatives being real."
"Think about it,Isydoria",Sharon said."Would you want your offspring to grow up as Addventure characters?...at the mercy of all those guys",she motioned toward the reader's monitor screen with her head,"out there?"
"I can see your point",Isydoria said."But still...poor Dabbler stuck with a computer gussied up as a brassy,long-in-the-tooth country singer and a genderbent ex-Avatar...I think the love of a good Character could reform him and we could have a secure family..."
"Oh,give it up!",Robin groused."You realize that he even went and declared that Avatars AREN'T true expressions of Authors writing themselves into stories,after years of Authors assuming that in good faith?That he went and decided they were really taken-over characters from a past of the Addventure that didn't really exist,even when Authors would never have done that?"
"You're not being hard on him?"
"Well,I'll work for him if he scripts me...but it's very hard to have a Character-Author relationship based on mutual respect here.Trust me."
"So what am I going to do?"
"Well,you know the Addventure is going to be eight years old on the 20th?",Jim asked."Biggest,longest-running Addventure in the history of the program,which if you look at Addventure.com dates back to around '94.I think we should have a celebration,and since you aren't doing anything else,maybe you could plan the party."
"I bet Joe would give me the day off",Muscatel said,grabbing a speaking part in the episode before anyone could stop her.
"Have to think where to hold it",Isydoria said."Do we want to invite Authors?"
Sun Jun 11 13:59:13 2006