I wanted to write this yesterday, mostly because yesterday morning I was in that state and observed something I'd not previously observed. I thought about it long enough that I left a post-it for myself reading "Stage Tutu Torial", but then I forgot to look at the note.
"Stage Two" is to my mind the most interesting of the "stages" through which a verser passes as he acclimates to the versing process. "Stage one" has the verser fully asleep and awakening; "stage three" has him fully awake but limp with his eyes closed. "Stage six" has him not merely awake and aware, but aware of his surrounds before they have become his surrounds sufficiently as to enable him to make decisions about his position and readiness before being fully material. But "stage two" is the interesting one, the one in which the character is neither fully asleep nor fully awake, in which bits of dreams and reality mingle.
It is also significant that Harry expressed concern over running a stage two entrance last week, and Scott commended him in a self-disparaging fashion that said that he found stage two entrances daunting. I find them much easier to run live, when I can interact with the player, take what he says he is doing and incorporate it into the fantasy in odd ways, and stretch it out for a couple minutes before having everything coalesce into consciousness and reality. I find it challenging to do anything remotely adequate in that regard via forum posts, because the interaction lacks the necessary immediacy. But this thread is an effort to arm referees with tools to help with stage two entrances.
I am reminded of a comedian who talked about having one of those dreams where you are awake and getting dressed for work when you are actually still asleep. The whale waiting in the living room is not at all unusual, he says; he just stopped by to give you a lift to work.
Yesterday morning I heard some kind of metallic hammering, followed by the scraping of machine parts in a repeated sequence. The one was followed by the other several times in succession, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang; squeak! squeak! squeak! squeak! bang, bang, bang, bang; squeak! squeak! squeak! squeak! As I shifted toward consciousness, the banging lost its impact and the squeaking became less harsh, and I realized I was listening to a bird. Yet I could see how were I moving from a highly industrial world to an open rural or forested one, my brain would interpret the two-part bird call as machine noises, and my mind would fill in images that fit the machine.
Although it is less useful, I was also in a recent conversation about dreams in which you have to go to the bathroom. In my experience, what happens to me is that I find a place to go and I go, and then I start wondering why I still have to go and awaken to find that I am in bed and need to go to the bathroom. Others, however, complained that it has happened to them that having not gotten relief from going in their dreams, they try harder, and, let's say, regret the outcome.
I figure this is a good start. I might think of more fragments, but I'm inviting others to contribute to ways in which images and sounds and smells and tactile sensations can be warped in that semi-conscious state into something different from what they are. I have examples in some of the novels, and one in the rules of course, and they've been done on game threads here and in live play, but let's pool ideas and resources on this: how do you do an effective stage two entrance?
--M. J. Young