i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I dreamed last night about a magic school lesson on teleportation, except a demon transported into the middle of one of the students. (Not a "100% evil" demon, more an extraplanar entity?) The professor calmly said "don't worry, I've got this handled" but when she (magically) disentangled them, the girl had the demon's creepy mouth with pointy teeth and he had her mouth. That got fixed but it turned out some of his demonic powers had stuck to her also and couldn't be removed as easily, so she had to get lessons from him on How To Suddenly Be Part Demon.

It's the sort of dream that I'd want to turn into a story, only any sort of "magic school" will look like a rip off of Harry Potter. (Yes I know the trope existed before HP, but still.)

Last night was weird, partly because I got really sleepy fairly early and tried to go to sleep around 10 ... but then didn't get to actual sleep until about 3

but partly because of the dream I did have when I eventually got there

where I went to a horror movie that ended up involving audience participation... in the middle of a scene it went black, and when people started looking towards the projection booth in back, the guy had just been shot by two men who then came in to terrorize the audience

except instead of being at all afraid, I was having epic amounts of fun, because I immediately grokked that this was part of the movie experience and therefore completely staged, and so I was certain there was zero danger

(except maybe my mom -- I'd come with my parents but sat in different places in the theater-- saying something to indicate we were related, because I was pretty sure she thought it was real and going "no don't hurt my daughter" would give them ammunition to make her even more freaked out)

so I was sassing the hell out of them, utterly delighted, while in my head composing a livejournal post about how this particular movie had IRL aspects.

...just. What? lol.

Feeling vaguely human again. Still testing positive for covid (and, apparently, flu B) but symptomatically better... well ok I'm sleeping a lot (12h, up from last week's 14h; at least that's my "lying in the dark with eyes closed" time, not necessarily literally asleep because brains are silly) and still feel constantly tired, but I have a voice again.

Wrist is improving but I'm taking things easy there; crossword is on computer (slower and awkwarder), Duolingo halfheartedly done on computer, other games mostly stopped.

Funny, I'd been thinking I should reduce gaming time anyway 🙃 since it's mostly idle gaming where you check it and upgrade things and do busywork quests to unlock cute things but if you sit down and think you're not really *doing* anything. Guess going from ~9h sleep to ~14h is a very effective strategy at going cold turkey with stuff, especially stuff that would have happened during the 5 hours now spent not awake.

Dreams have been their usual. Several involving creepy crawlies ( deets ) A couple dreams where my eyes keep closing, and in the attempt to fight that (because of course I'm fighting a shapeshifting shark taking the current form of a cat eel hybrid thing) I force my irl eyes open, waking me up. A bunch of dreams about choir rehearsals. One where I was waiting for my dad to pick me up and some guy put his hand on the back of my neck so I yelled that I was being abducted.

(This is of course sleep dreams, not "what I am doing with my life" dreams.)

This week I got myself a clock that a) has a nice big display, b) the option of colorshifting the display (currently a slow roygbiv fade rotation), and c) ability to project onto the ceiling (that sadly doesn't color-change, oh well). It means that when I wake up in the middle of the night I can tell what time it is without having to move. Yesterday I had a multi hour stretch of waking up every half hour...boo. Brains are silly. But the clock makes me ridiculously happy.

Yuletide story is creeping slowly along. I dithered sending it back for a different pinch hitter, given sick + carpal tunnel + haven't written anything in *mumble* years, but I still have time... that and a half-fleshed-out story. Whatever happens it'll technically be the best thing I wrote all year ... looool. (Haven't posted prompts on the "ph prompts here", won't until I definitely have a fill.)

I (dreamed I) was playing a game, a combo of real life and computer game, where you're hunting t-rexes ... well first you has to equip the "Beast Armor", which of course was skimpy studded-leather straps. I was rolling my eyes at that even in the dream.

To fight, you climb up its tail onto its back, keeping your balance while it thunders about, and then once you've near its shoulders there are specific glowing squares where the t-rex is vulnerable. Each hit makes it thrash around harder. Falling off ... is not recommended /deadpan

When I was telling this to one of my aides I realized it sounds a lot like Shadow of the Colossus. Which i haven't played in years omg.

(I also dreamed about watching an episode of Buffy where Giles slowly loses his ability to talk coherently because of some magical effect leeching his words away. He's trying to tell the Scoobies what to do but getting more and more garbled (and frustrated-- he can tell it's happening). Only in the dream, the people I was watching with suddenly took the watch party into a different room, one I couldn't get into, so I never saw the end...)

Brain has been utterly obsessed with Tangled -- earworms and also just poking at plot holes (where does the tower come from? Gothel wasn't intending to babynap. Also what tf does Rapunzel do with the satchel and crown between Gothel giving them to her by the campfire and the boat?) and general questions.

(Why did Gothel tell R about birthdays? What does G do all day, besides foraging? How does R wash her hair? How does R wash anything, for that matter? Is there indoor plumbing? How does the bathroom work? Why doesn't Gothel tell the king etc that they don't need to destroy the flower, just sing? Why doesn't R ask questions about the Lost Princess?who, if anyone, commissioned the crown theft, and if no one, why those three and why now? Why doesn't Flynn say why he's going to the shore? How does Maximus communicate to the Ruffians And Thugs that Flynn needs rescuing? ...etc)

I could handwave away some of my questions if Gothel had magic; after all, the original Rapunzel story involves a witch (I did have to look it up to make sure I wasn't just remembering Into The Woods, lol), and that could explain how no soldier finds the tower (it's magicked so that no one looking for Gothel or R or the tower can find it; Flynn gets through because he's only trying to hide from Max; alternatively it's a special "only findable if you need a place to hide" place) and how water works (woo plumbing) ... but there's no evidence she has anything other than knowing the flower song.

Also I keep getting plot bunnies. "R and Flynn have sex in the boat and she gets pregnant and the babies look like the mural of the Lost Princess" (if I can figure out a way for them to have sex without Flynn turning into a dick-led jerk) ... "something something fix the ending to give R her autonomy back" (I could see her maybe cutting her hair as a drastic way to keep Gothel from using it, before Flynn gets stabbed anyway, but I haven't found anything that feels right) ... Gothel, faced with Unexpected Baby, going to a, like, underground organization for helping women escape violence, first punching herself in the face a few times and using berries (or magic) to dye Baby R's hair darker, and then pretending to be a victim (which fits in with the tower being a sanctuary)...

*gnaws on things*

* * *

Unrelated: had a dream last night about a spider. Cut for arachnophobes... ( Read more... )

Also dreamed that I was given a coloring page (a chicken, with stars around the edges of the page) and a yellow crayon. I started coloring the stars yellow, only one of the stars turned out black. Sadly I woke up (to Phoebe licking my face) before I found out if other colors could come out of the single yellow crayon...

one of my dreams last night had this elaborate SF story (wormholes, and robots, and mysterious older spaceships on supposedly-new-to-us planets, and conspiracies, and material-specific telekinesis (like Magneto but with fabric), and gay romance) published in a magazine, that had me in the dream a) asking my mom if this was a dream because if it was I wanted to memorize the story to write down later, but if not that would be plagiarism; and b) remembering a Farscape episode where Crichton, in only a space suit, was falling towards a planet, playing a guitar and singing about how he was going to burn up in the atmosphere; there was a rocket behind him, that generated a bunch of cloudy turbulence when it entered the atmosphere, and then exploded; but it turned out this was all for the benefit of some enemy that wanted Crichton dead, and he'd used the turbulence to engage jet boosters and zoom off unnoticed, to be picked up by Moya afterwards

...I'm pretty sure this moment doesn't actually exist, and it bugs me to no end that I can remember so much detail about that and not the first SF story...

Also had a dream where my dad and I were off at a house near the ocean -- on a cliff, not beach level -- and there was a beautiful gigantic wave that just kept growing bigger and bigger, jewel tones of blue and green backlit by the sun except for a few dark shadows of fish, until it was towering over the house, so we ran uphill up the road and watched it crash down. Nothing broke, even windows, so everything inside the house was okay.

Last couple nights were kinda wild, dreamwise:

1. Banquet dinner at the White House, where everyone was at a long thin table. Multi course meal. One course was something or other "flambé" which meant a pile of sliced meats with a lit stuck in like a birthday candle. One course was the microwaveable Kraft mac-and-cheese bowls.

2. Episode of Star Trek something -- the opening theme was Voyager mushed with Orville, but characters were DS9 -- where Bashir and Jadzia, in their pre-Starfleet lives but yet on DS9, were doing some sort of heist job, and Bashir had an invisibility suit. He bought a signed baseball that was on display in a shop before going invisible for the heist.

3. I was in college and therefore sharing a room, only the person I was sharing with wasn't around much when she was awake. My aide was stripping me down ("I guess I'm taking a shower" thought dream me) when suddenly someone knocked at the door asking for my roommate. I opened the door a crack to talk and she forced her way inside claiming she was the roommate's fiancée from an arranged marriage; she had all these questions about the roommate, and I realized that the reason my roommate wasn't around much was because this girl was basically stalking her

4. I had written a novel out longhand and had to type it up, only the room I was in had the desk facing the wall, and there was a piece of furniture -- tall, wooden, with several drawers in the bottom half and then side-hinged doors on the upper section that opened out to a small shirt closet on the right side and several open shelves for jewelry on the left -- that for inexplicable reasons I did NOT want to have my back to. The desk wall had a large mirror above the desk but that wasn't good enough, so I got help moving the desk around so I could keep the Scary Thing in sight. I told myself it was an ordinary whatever and that nothing was going to happen ... except then the right side of the doors on the upper half started slowly opening and closing by itself, just a few inches back and forth. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open (in the dream) but was also getting scared. Then suddenly both of the upper doors slammed shut, then opened to reveal a *totally different* interior that included some kind of machinery that started telescoping out into the room. I didn't know if it was a weapon or what, but I was pretty terrified by that point, and tried shouting for help but my voice wasn't carrying at all--

-- at which point I woke up with my heart absolutely pounding. My brain was still in "don't close your eyes!!!11" mode even though I immediately realized that the Scary Cabinet Thing had been a dream, and it took like twenty minutes to relax and at least thirty more to get back to sleep.

Now I know what it feels like to live in a Steven King book? 😂 Or maybe an episode of Dr Who. Not sure. But if the Doctor arrived it was after I woke up.

all from last night:

1. a West Wing episode where the wife of a Republican candidate announced she was creating a Republican Women group; their first event, highly publicized and televised, was skeet shooting, only she accidentally shot a bald eagle. The episode showed a badly-done cgi eagle landing almost on top of the wife, and then the eagle's face changed into the face of a Native American, following be the camera panning over to show two lines of Native American ghosts in stereotypical outfits. Episode ended with a press conference of the candidate announcing his divorce ("when I woke up this morning, I was lying next to my wife. Now, she no longer has a husband, I no longer have a wife, and she's packing up to move out") and withdrawal of his candidacy.

2. An X-Files episode where a government dude agreed to transfer a file of budget info to someone online, only when he initiated the transfer it allowed the other end access to everything including confidential stuff -- basically copying *.* in a way that government doofus couldn't interrupt. I, watching the ep, wanted to yell at him to pull the cord (either power or internet or both) but I was watching in a movie theater so couldn't. Rest of episode either didn't happen or I just don't remember.

3. Teen me (possibly only tween?) was going with my family to some sort of competitive test, possibly like a spelling bee. We had to pick a spot for me on the front bench; each spot had a reward of some sort. Some rewards were shoes, either dress shoes way too big for me or sandals that I couldn't really wear. The rest were fancy dress hats, mostly ... *stares at wikipedia page on hat styles* I guess picture hat and fascinator are the closest. I found one that looked like a tiny pink hat, meant to be worn perched on the side of the head, rather like this, and I put it on and felt like a queen. Rest of contest either didn't happen or I just don't remember.

4. Some guy reading from scripture that had been suppressed for centuries but recently re-found, detailing Jesus and his disciples ... basically having a giant orgy? It was written as being this ~mystic experience~ that ~transcended the limits of flesh~ but it boiled down to Jesus discarding his robe and joining them on the bed, so uhhhhhh yeah

5. The library here advertised showings of ... er, it was called "Cabaret", but not a musical and with a different plot, about trans people in Nazi Germany; the main character is this girl disguised as a boy who stays at a cheap boarding house that turns out to be all LGBT people, including a gay couple and a nun who turns out to be a trans woman; the main character falls in love with a trans woman and for a while is trying to figure out if she herself is trans or gay but eventually decides it doesn't matter because it doesn't change who she loves. I enjoy the movie but then my mom mentions wanting to see it (preferably with me) and that's a huge yikes because I'd have soooo much explaining to do, for her not to be confused.

(Also I woke up with "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" going through my head, which is definitely not Cavaret. Probably my brain snagged it via Moulin Rouge rather than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? idk)

6. ( transphobia )

Content -- bugs and sudden death (but not death by bugs)

( Read more... )

CW snakes, text only

Dream last night: I was committing to another year of grad school, even though that was also committing me to take and pass several classes -- calculus, biology, chemistry, I don't remember if there was anything else -- that I had, in the dream, previously failed at. (For whatever reason this is a repeating motif in my dreams. Incomplete grad school makes sense because, well, I never finished. Chemistry makes sense because ochem killed me in undergrad. Math makes *no* sense; I was always good at that. Having general ed requirements for grad school makes no sense. It varies whether the in-dream previous problems were "didn't attend classes and therefore failed" or "attended, thought I did ok, flunked test".)

As I was in the linguistics lab doing a practice run of something for the next day, I came across a ball python in one of the cabinets. Not small for a ball python (but not like anaconda-sized). Cold enough that it had patches of light frost. I picked it up to warm it with body heat, and gradually it got more alert and more active as it warmed.

(I miss being able to hold snakes IRL. Sigh.)

"Oh yeah," said one of the other students. "That's Ozymandias. We stole him from the emergency department."

...stole?

"Yeah haha they even have a thing in the newspaper asking for help finding their lost snake." Silly people, his voice said. All that fuss over a *snake*

I decided to bring him back "home". (His home, not mine.) It was a 20-minute walk across campus, which was tricky because it took both hands to hold him, and I still had to use one hand to drive the chair, which turned into a flying mount a la World of Warcraft and I almost crashed into the ocean, but eventually I got there.

The intake person was delighted to see him. "Hermes! You're back!" And the snake seemed to get even more animated and wriggly on seeing/smelling her, and immediately slithered over to greet her and also crawl all over the desk and keyboard and stuff.

At some point, also, my mom was fearmongering about how she heard about someone who had been handling a ball python and got bitten on the cheek, so she was worried that I'd get bitten too. Sometimes my dreams are random but sometimes they are very very true to life...

Anyway. Happy ending for the snake! Except for, y know, it was a dream so everything stopped existing when I woke up...