lanselos_du_lac

Shen Yuan nods. "Sets," he explains. "Fabricated locations, usually a painted backdrop of some kind and then partial buildings, or the insides of rooms." It occurs to him that there's a certain irony in Lancelot asking him about theatre when they both live in a house with two people from one of the most famous plays of all time. Which—how does that work, exactly? Their world was all stage directions! The ways their Denmark looked changed every time a production was put on! Not to mention Claudius and Laertes themselves—do they look like specific actors who have played them? An amalgam of every actor who's played them? No, if that was the case they'd look way crazier, probably, and less handsome. If an Ophelia showed up, would Laertes even recognize her? What if she was from a different production than them?

Maybe every world had a System, actually, filling in from the author's brain all the details that they never actually wrote down, like it did in PIDW. Maybe it's just that no one else knows their world had a System, because to them it was just, like, the world.

He realizes he's totally gotten lost in thought in the middle of a conversation, and blinks back to himself. "Costumes," he says hurriedly. "They wear costumes. The actors. And the things they hold are called props."