The second important moment came when we were fed that night. Our captors all came to throw scraps down to where we were chained, making evil remarks and trying to frighten us by telling us what they planned to do to us tomorrow. I paid attention, and threw some of the rotten food back at one of them. The other two laughed at him as he swore at me and dumped the rest of the food over my head. I threw more of it, at the same man. One of them had to restrain him from killing me immediately.
It wasn't a victory like before, but the important thing was that I had changed the tone of the story further. In lots of horror stories, the villain/s are uniformly evil. They might have a few quirks or personality traits that make them more interesting, but on the whole they're implacable fonts of misery and suffering for the main characters. By getting them to argue amongst themselves, however briefly, I'd divided them into individuals and diverted the flow of evil for a moment. They were no longer undefeatable abstract incarnations of evil.
The next interesting thing came when my phone rang, waking me up. Blearily, I took a message before flopping back into bed. Still half-asleep, I could feel the dreamworld hovering at the edge of my senses. I knew I could get up now or allow myself to drift back into the pseudo-horror story. I didn't feel any temptation to return, but I also realized that I hadn't saved Raven-hair yet. The torture house closed in around me again.
I found the last focal point of the horror story at the end. The three made it known that they were going to kill us tonight. There would be an epilogue, I realized. The police would arrive early in the morning, too late to save anyone and too late to arrest our killers. Tragically, they would miss us by only a few hours. Events had already been set in motion independently of our story thread, and they were already on the killers' trail. I had to either delay the captors or get the police to come sooner. The solution came in the form of an old cigarette lighter. I set fire to the peeling wall paper and burned the house down.
On the surface it wasn't the smartest plan, considering that Raven-hair and I were still chained to the floor. But the important thing was that the fire both distracted the killers and drew the attention of the police early. It was the final lynch-pin that collapsed the horror theme. The killers wouldn't escape. Evil wouldn't triumph, or even disappear ominously, only to inevitably return later. And if Evil couldn't win, then the main characters couldn't die. We were pulled from the burning wreckage by the police, scorched and coughing, but still alive. Blankets and coffee were provided as we somberly watched our tormentors handcuffed and led away.
I did say it was a strange dream. Still, very interesting to someone like me who's obsessed with dreams.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Dream survival
I had an interesting dream. Not last night, but the night before. Last night I didn't sleep, which accounts in part for my rambling narrative.
It's all become a vague haze of thoughts and impressions now, but I remember the important parts. I found myself in a world with a psychological horror/thriller theme. A woman and myself were being held captive in a strange old house by three psychotic people. There was all kinds of various psychological torture going on as they toyed with us. We came damn close to escaping more than once, only to find it was all just a set-up by our captors so they could cruelly crush our hopes repeatedly.
I never learned the woman's name; all I really remember is that she had very black hair. There came a point when she finally just gave up on escaping entirely. It was then that I started worrying. I'm not the biggest expert on horror movies, but I've seen enough to know that giving up all hope is a good way to mark yourself as the next one to be picked off.
This was the first point where the dream started getting interesting. You see, I've had those moments before in dreams where my subconscious mind puts two and two together and realizes what's going on. Zombies? Quick, what characters are left at the end of zombie movies? Vampires? What kind? Various movies and books spring to mind, and how the main character managed to survive (if they did). It's just how my subconscious works, all full of plots and stories.
I immediately realized that even if I did find a way to live through the story, raven-hair girl wasn't going to make it. That was a result that was unacceptable to me, so I did something I haven't tried before in a dream: I tried to change the story. Instead of taking the situation as it came and trying to make the most of it, I started trying to change the rules.
Even after that revolutionary decision, I still somehow understood that this was a story, and I had to keep in mind how stories worked. It wouldn't be possible to escape or fight our captors directly, we'd already been trying and failing at that for a while. In horror stories, no matter how completely the main character seems to escape or win, it inevitably turns out to be pointless. What I had to look for were the focal points of the plot that defined it as a horror story. In order for both of us to survive, I had to disrupt those moments so that the theme shifted to a theme where more than one person barely escapes with his life.Most of this wasn't a conscious thought process. These are conclusions that I came to after thinking back on the dream.
The first crucial moment came in the form of one of their psychological torture games. Raven-hair and I were chained to the floor, each on one side of a room. They made sure the chains were just long enough that we could almost touch fingers across the room if we stretched. I was wearing a shirt with long sleeves, and even though I cried and cursed at them that I couldn't reach Raven-hair, I didn't stretch as far as I could have. My arms were still slightly bent inside my sleeves. As soon as they left, I was able to reach several inches further than they had intended. We were able to touch and even hold hands in spite of the chains.
However we were supposed to have been tortured, it failed. In most horror stories escape is the only real victory that counts, which only makes it that much crueler when it's snatched away. By achieving this small victory against our captors, we'd already shifted the tone of our story a step away from the horror genre.
To be continued
It's all become a vague haze of thoughts and impressions now, but I remember the important parts. I found myself in a world with a psychological horror/thriller theme. A woman and myself were being held captive in a strange old house by three psychotic people. There was all kinds of various psychological torture going on as they toyed with us. We came damn close to escaping more than once, only to find it was all just a set-up by our captors so they could cruelly crush our hopes repeatedly.
I never learned the woman's name; all I really remember is that she had very black hair. There came a point when she finally just gave up on escaping entirely. It was then that I started worrying. I'm not the biggest expert on horror movies, but I've seen enough to know that giving up all hope is a good way to mark yourself as the next one to be picked off.
This was the first point where the dream started getting interesting. You see, I've had those moments before in dreams where my subconscious mind puts two and two together and realizes what's going on. Zombies? Quick, what characters are left at the end of zombie movies? Vampires? What kind? Various movies and books spring to mind, and how the main character managed to survive (if they did). It's just how my subconscious works, all full of plots and stories.
I immediately realized that even if I did find a way to live through the story, raven-hair girl wasn't going to make it. That was a result that was unacceptable to me, so I did something I haven't tried before in a dream: I tried to change the story. Instead of taking the situation as it came and trying to make the most of it, I started trying to change the rules.
Even after that revolutionary decision, I still somehow understood that this was a story, and I had to keep in mind how stories worked. It wouldn't be possible to escape or fight our captors directly, we'd already been trying and failing at that for a while. In horror stories, no matter how completely the main character seems to escape or win, it inevitably turns out to be pointless. What I had to look for were the focal points of the plot that defined it as a horror story. In order for both of us to survive, I had to disrupt those moments so that the theme shifted to a theme where more than one person barely escapes with his life.Most of this wasn't a conscious thought process. These are conclusions that I came to after thinking back on the dream.
The first crucial moment came in the form of one of their psychological torture games. Raven-hair and I were chained to the floor, each on one side of a room. They made sure the chains were just long enough that we could almost touch fingers across the room if we stretched. I was wearing a shirt with long sleeves, and even though I cried and cursed at them that I couldn't reach Raven-hair, I didn't stretch as far as I could have. My arms were still slightly bent inside my sleeves. As soon as they left, I was able to reach several inches further than they had intended. We were able to touch and even hold hands in spite of the chains.
However we were supposed to have been tortured, it failed. In most horror stories escape is the only real victory that counts, which only makes it that much crueler when it's snatched away. By achieving this small victory against our captors, we'd already shifted the tone of our story a step away from the horror genre.
To be continued
Creativity is running low... and that's how I like it.
Been very busy lately, and not just at work.
Don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm trying to craft another steampunk-style story right after the last one. Normally that's not how I write, but everyone seemed to like the first one so much and were so encouraging. I thought, 'Sure, what the Hell.' It's been much slower going than the Underground Lecturehall, primarily because I'm not exploring some shiny new idea. Slowly but surely it's coming along though.
Now, add to that my half-conceived, half-finished, half-assed attempt at a webcomic. Still mostly working on getting the characters to look the same from panel to panel.
And finally, Max and the guys have decided to try to tap our collective creative energies and make a cartoon out of it. An actual 11-22 minute animated cartoon. We've been meeting weekly and throwing ideas at each other and the project has gotten progressively more complicated at each meeting. Last week Mike sat down and argued with everyone for almost an hour trying to develop some kind of a business plan. We all mostly stared in frustrated bewilderment. Dude, we're doing this because it sounds like fun and if we're really lucky it might actually be good and make some money. It stopped sounding fun the instant you asked if we were each willing to put in $20 then and there to buy some registered animation software. We still haven't settled on how many main characters there are going to be, for crying out loud! I left that night frustrated and feeling utterly tapped. It was very difficult to revitalize my brain enough to come up with eight hours of entertaining gaming the next night.
Also, it's been super-busy at the theater.
Am I complaining? Not really. It's been years since I put creative energy into so many varied formats all at once. More often than not, there are a few things going on that I can switch focus between, but not simultaneously. It's a good stretch I think. Exercise for the brain.
Don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm trying to craft another steampunk-style story right after the last one. Normally that's not how I write, but everyone seemed to like the first one so much and were so encouraging. I thought, 'Sure, what the Hell.' It's been much slower going than the Underground Lecturehall, primarily because I'm not exploring some shiny new idea. Slowly but surely it's coming along though.
Now, add to that my half-conceived, half-finished, half-assed attempt at a webcomic. Still mostly working on getting the characters to look the same from panel to panel.
And finally, Max and the guys have decided to try to tap our collective creative energies and make a cartoon out of it. An actual 11-22 minute animated cartoon. We've been meeting weekly and throwing ideas at each other and the project has gotten progressively more complicated at each meeting. Last week Mike sat down and argued with everyone for almost an hour trying to develop some kind of a business plan. We all mostly stared in frustrated bewilderment. Dude, we're doing this because it sounds like fun and if we're really lucky it might actually be good and make some money. It stopped sounding fun the instant you asked if we were each willing to put in $20 then and there to buy some registered animation software. We still haven't settled on how many main characters there are going to be, for crying out loud! I left that night frustrated and feeling utterly tapped. It was very difficult to revitalize my brain enough to come up with eight hours of entertaining gaming the next night.
Also, it's been super-busy at the theater.
Am I complaining? Not really. It's been years since I put creative energy into so many varied formats all at once. More often than not, there are a few things going on that I can switch focus between, but not simultaneously. It's a good stretch I think. Exercise for the brain.
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