Freaky dreams
Feb. 19th, 2010 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI woke up somewhere in the dark hours having dreamed a zombie apocalypse. We were travelling through an abandoned urban... well it's not exactly a wasteland when the lights are still on and we stop off in shiny pretty hotel type places... We were gathering up any survivors and trying to avoid people eating zombies. And the moral of the whole thing was that, alone, we would not survive. People without friends were zombie food.
... I doesn't want to be zombie food. Yet all my friends are in this little internety box and possibly no help in a zombie uprising.
My contribution was to find a charismatic leader, get them to listen to me, and then keep them alive. Because I know I can't get most people to listen to me, yet I have pretty good plans for many different things. The 'keep them alive' part was tricky because they got to be leader by demonstrating they care ie wandering off to find people that have strayed, putting themselves in danger for the common good, all of that. Bit of a difficult balance there. Especially for someone as physically inept as me. Wasn't like I could go be their bodyguard.
Also, unfortunately, it wasn't magic zombies, which I'd have some chance against. It was the more recent bio zombies, plague zombies, infectious and gruesome.
Zombies rather bother me. I mean, a lot of monsters bother me, because they start with the idea that people can start out in category 'people' and then be disquailfied. That's a no good very bad terrible idea that has in the past led to godawful things. There's often a way to read it though where it's their own actions that make them cross the line - vampires aren't evil because they've got deviant biology but because they eat people. But zombies don't choose to be zombies, so it's like these killing people lines can get crossed on accident. But then I think, well, yeah - especially with your classic zombies that have someone to raise them, but also with the general metaphor. Unthinking zombie hordes just sort of lumbering along while terrible things happen? Crossing the lines on accident because of not looking where they were going. Bad choice of politics, not-my-problem thinking, or the effects of mass production in action where people are pretty much treated as things in the pursuit of capitalism. Plenty good metaphor meat in there. But... expressed as 'these people look funny and act brain injured! kill them a lot!' And, well, no. Bad. Old school zombies, they needed freeing, it was a slavery thing, you got them free or you got the slave master. Plague zombies? No such chances. Which is weird, because we can cure more stuff than ever before. But zombies are apparently the slow inevitability of death now, and fast zombies are the unexpected nature of death, and basically we cannot as yet beat death. So there we are.
After Buffy finished I wanted to write more stories with Giles, but without Slayers. I like Faith plenty much, but the trouble with a Slayer in a story is you thin end up pointing them at things to Slay. You fix your problems by killing them, probably with a pointy stick. It's of the bad. I mean, it's always tempting, embody problems in a metaphor monster and *splat* it, very satisfying... but not readily applicable to real life, and based on the kind of inclinations that lead humans to crunch each other. Boo. Death is the problem, not the solution. So I didn't want zombies, or vampires.
I wanted to write about ghosts. They're already dead, and that's their big problem. Killing people, even the people what murdered them, isn't going to be helpful, because logically you'd then end up with two pissed off ghosts. Ghosts are a hydra problem, you can't cut them down, but unlike the hydra 'smarter violence' isn't the answer either. Exorcism is a stupid cheat. Exorcism is taking the ignored and trying to kick it further out. Sod that. You've got to negotiate with them, figure out their unfinished business, solve their problems - live with them, and treat them as part of a society that is in general ignoring them. It's the only way left. And it's the right way anyway.
Throwing a Slayer at that didn't seem like so much the great idea. What use would they be? Only now that's why I want to include them - because having someone around who thinks with their muscles and can't is a pretty good way to demonstrate. But ghosts are mostly the way the past might be dead but it's never gone, so I want characters with plenty of past. Giles and Ethan, obviously, and Andrew (probably without Jonathan... mostly...), and Faith. A shiny new Slayer wouldn't be half as useful. Unless you gave her a history too. So then we're looking at a sort of ex evil club, and also a set of people you wouldn't necessarily think of as empathic and understanding. They're not the Ghost Whisperer, basically. But they'd need to do the job.
I know the comics did something with Giles and Faith, but I stopped following the comics. I keep meaning to order the collections.
Worlds with magic in are much easier for the trips over her own feet person to navigate. Clearly I am optimised for magery. High Int and low everything else. Er, specialised Int. Narrow focussed obsessions work for magery though.
Last night (er, the night before the one with the zombies) I had a much better dream where I was with a team in Paris trying to investigate an imminent bit of magical terrorism, but then the whole world changed around us - someone had either dumped us in an alternate universe or tampered with time far enough back that our hotel had never been a hotel, which left us lost and without our equipment. And then the Eiffel Tower started to glow bright red-yellow-white and melt. It was kind of awesome. We headed towards it but got intercepted by an opposing team. With guns. I threw myself back out the way, casting as I fell, and time slowed right down, and so did the bullets, until they were hanging in the air, surrounded by little crystalline ice rims. I'd made a shield of radically slowed down air and used it to deflect the bullets I couldn't stop. And, also, kind of froze my hands, but apparently that happened sometimes and I wasn't really worried. The rest of my team could get on with subduing the other guys now the bullets weren't a problem. We totally kicked arse.
In dreams with magic, that's the kind of stuff I can do. Lightning spells, fireballs, and now cold, with flight or speed and decent shields. In dreams without magic? I'm toast.
So I decided after the zombie dream I didn't really fancy carrying that into the day (hah! like that worked so well...) so I went back to sleep. And then I dreamed a *nuclear* apocalypse, where I'd been preparing for years and woke up knowing today was the day and couldn't get anyone to listen to me, and I'd had a bunker built and maintained, but come the day I discovered all the maintenance routines that should have been a trivial amount of effort per day had been combined into a six monthly epic slog, and what do you know, it was maintenance day and everything was out for repairs. And then just as the bunker doors were closing I saw teenagers standing outside and chatting to their friends, and I dashed out to try and get them under cover. They should have been in the bunker but it was the old problem where nobody believes the fire alarm. So we headed for the alternate cover, the underground rail station we were right next to, trying to get to the deep tunnels fast. But on the way down we discovered the route had been made much longer to try and make it accessible, and the work wasn't finished yet. Also, after we'd gone down-down-down as far as we could get, I found a light well. I ran again, but the bomb was about to hit, and the very last thing I saw was the whole world going white.
I hear other people have, like, rest when they sleep.
Concept.
... I doesn't want to be zombie food. Yet all my friends are in this little internety box and possibly no help in a zombie uprising.
My contribution was to find a charismatic leader, get them to listen to me, and then keep them alive. Because I know I can't get most people to listen to me, yet I have pretty good plans for many different things. The 'keep them alive' part was tricky because they got to be leader by demonstrating they care ie wandering off to find people that have strayed, putting themselves in danger for the common good, all of that. Bit of a difficult balance there. Especially for someone as physically inept as me. Wasn't like I could go be their bodyguard.
Also, unfortunately, it wasn't magic zombies, which I'd have some chance against. It was the more recent bio zombies, plague zombies, infectious and gruesome.
Zombies rather bother me. I mean, a lot of monsters bother me, because they start with the idea that people can start out in category 'people' and then be disquailfied. That's a no good very bad terrible idea that has in the past led to godawful things. There's often a way to read it though where it's their own actions that make them cross the line - vampires aren't evil because they've got deviant biology but because they eat people. But zombies don't choose to be zombies, so it's like these killing people lines can get crossed on accident. But then I think, well, yeah - especially with your classic zombies that have someone to raise them, but also with the general metaphor. Unthinking zombie hordes just sort of lumbering along while terrible things happen? Crossing the lines on accident because of not looking where they were going. Bad choice of politics, not-my-problem thinking, or the effects of mass production in action where people are pretty much treated as things in the pursuit of capitalism. Plenty good metaphor meat in there. But... expressed as 'these people look funny and act brain injured! kill them a lot!' And, well, no. Bad. Old school zombies, they needed freeing, it was a slavery thing, you got them free or you got the slave master. Plague zombies? No such chances. Which is weird, because we can cure more stuff than ever before. But zombies are apparently the slow inevitability of death now, and fast zombies are the unexpected nature of death, and basically we cannot as yet beat death. So there we are.
After Buffy finished I wanted to write more stories with Giles, but without Slayers. I like Faith plenty much, but the trouble with a Slayer in a story is you thin end up pointing them at things to Slay. You fix your problems by killing them, probably with a pointy stick. It's of the bad. I mean, it's always tempting, embody problems in a metaphor monster and *splat* it, very satisfying... but not readily applicable to real life, and based on the kind of inclinations that lead humans to crunch each other. Boo. Death is the problem, not the solution. So I didn't want zombies, or vampires.
I wanted to write about ghosts. They're already dead, and that's their big problem. Killing people, even the people what murdered them, isn't going to be helpful, because logically you'd then end up with two pissed off ghosts. Ghosts are a hydra problem, you can't cut them down, but unlike the hydra 'smarter violence' isn't the answer either. Exorcism is a stupid cheat. Exorcism is taking the ignored and trying to kick it further out. Sod that. You've got to negotiate with them, figure out their unfinished business, solve their problems - live with them, and treat them as part of a society that is in general ignoring them. It's the only way left. And it's the right way anyway.
Throwing a Slayer at that didn't seem like so much the great idea. What use would they be? Only now that's why I want to include them - because having someone around who thinks with their muscles and can't is a pretty good way to demonstrate. But ghosts are mostly the way the past might be dead but it's never gone, so I want characters with plenty of past. Giles and Ethan, obviously, and Andrew (probably without Jonathan... mostly...), and Faith. A shiny new Slayer wouldn't be half as useful. Unless you gave her a history too. So then we're looking at a sort of ex evil club, and also a set of people you wouldn't necessarily think of as empathic and understanding. They're not the Ghost Whisperer, basically. But they'd need to do the job.
I know the comics did something with Giles and Faith, but I stopped following the comics. I keep meaning to order the collections.
Worlds with magic in are much easier for the trips over her own feet person to navigate. Clearly I am optimised for magery. High Int and low everything else. Er, specialised Int. Narrow focussed obsessions work for magery though.
Last night (er, the night before the one with the zombies) I had a much better dream where I was with a team in Paris trying to investigate an imminent bit of magical terrorism, but then the whole world changed around us - someone had either dumped us in an alternate universe or tampered with time far enough back that our hotel had never been a hotel, which left us lost and without our equipment. And then the Eiffel Tower started to glow bright red-yellow-white and melt. It was kind of awesome. We headed towards it but got intercepted by an opposing team. With guns. I threw myself back out the way, casting as I fell, and time slowed right down, and so did the bullets, until they were hanging in the air, surrounded by little crystalline ice rims. I'd made a shield of radically slowed down air and used it to deflect the bullets I couldn't stop. And, also, kind of froze my hands, but apparently that happened sometimes and I wasn't really worried. The rest of my team could get on with subduing the other guys now the bullets weren't a problem. We totally kicked arse.
In dreams with magic, that's the kind of stuff I can do. Lightning spells, fireballs, and now cold, with flight or speed and decent shields. In dreams without magic? I'm toast.
So I decided after the zombie dream I didn't really fancy carrying that into the day (hah! like that worked so well...) so I went back to sleep. And then I dreamed a *nuclear* apocalypse, where I'd been preparing for years and woke up knowing today was the day and couldn't get anyone to listen to me, and I'd had a bunker built and maintained, but come the day I discovered all the maintenance routines that should have been a trivial amount of effort per day had been combined into a six monthly epic slog, and what do you know, it was maintenance day and everything was out for repairs. And then just as the bunker doors were closing I saw teenagers standing outside and chatting to their friends, and I dashed out to try and get them under cover. They should have been in the bunker but it was the old problem where nobody believes the fire alarm. So we headed for the alternate cover, the underground rail station we were right next to, trying to get to the deep tunnels fast. But on the way down we discovered the route had been made much longer to try and make it accessible, and the work wasn't finished yet. Also, after we'd gone down-down-down as far as we could get, I found a light well. I ran again, but the bomb was about to hit, and the very last thing I saw was the whole world going white.
I hear other people have, like, rest when they sleep.
Concept.