(no subject)

[camwyn]

Apparently I tried to dream the setting of a YA dystopian novel or movie of some kind last night; the ones for adults don't usually feature arbitrary sorting, except maybe for Demolition Man and its "let's reprogram you with skills you have an unusual aptitude for" schtick. I was brought to a building for some form of what I thought was going to be incarceration. The computer at the door, or possibly an unseen human woman who just sounded like the computer, informed me that they had decided I was going to be given the identity of a World War II Korean general, so I'd have to pick a name; I remember flailing because I thought I was going to be dropped into a cryo tube and have this identity sleep programmed into me or something, but no. After being pushed into the building and a lot of weird stuff with flashing lights I found myself in a room full of people of various ages and races (myself included; in this dream I was actually a tall Chinese-American man with a small goatee and messy hair, and saw nothing unusual about this) and was handed a light gun and told to go get my initial assessment in virtual paintball. We were being held so that entertainment of some kind could be recorded and broadcast, and the identity thing was to make us more interesting to the viewers, but I couldn't be allowed to actually be recorded until I lived up to the shooting and surviving abilities expected of a general...

Most of the rest of the dream involved either practicing with the light gun or assessing the building for possible escape points with the help of some of the other people incarcerated there. I remember one of them was a Korean-American woman who was mildly disappointed that I wasn't actually Korean. I also remember finding an area where we probably could have escaped if we kicked out a window hard enough, but the area below the window was under renovation and nobody could tell whether we'd land on solid ground or in water deeper than our heads or on metal completely covered in tetanus-inducing edges.

I woke up before we could decide whether or not it was worth it to kick out the window. This is what my subconscious does when I'm feeling unwell enough to stay home from work, I guess; it decides I'm a Chinese guy.

Comments

[derien]

This sounds like an awesome beginning to a book! :) (I used to wonder if it meant anything that I sometimes dreamed I was someone else entirely, sometimes a man, and then decided it probably means I can really get involved in characters I'm reading about.)

[camwyn]

I've had one or two other dreams where I was a guy before. Thing is, when it happens I'm a specific guy. I don't dream that I'm me but with external dongles; I'm Jerry Burek, developmental biology post-doc who accidentally created a rat capable of vomiting through prenatal chemical testing, or I'm the Chinese-American guy from this particular dream who's not entirely sure what he did to merit being thrown into the house of shooting things, or whatever.

Then again, I can count the number of dreams I've had where my actual gender registered in my thoughts for any reason whatsoever on both hands and one foot. Most of the time being female, either socially or anatomically, just isn't important enough to register in my sleeping brain.

[derien]

I take it that Jerry Burek is specifically a dream created character? Because I had to google the name, curious why I hadn't heard anything about a rat that could vomit. I would have thought that would be big news. :)

Most of the time being female, either socially or anatomically, just isn't important enough to register in my sleeping brain.

I suppose that's what it is to me, too. :)

[camwyn]

Yeah, that's the name and the character background that came out of the dream. The cause involved testing a food additive for teratogenic/mutagenic potential as part of FDA approval. Just my brain, nobody else's.

[derien]

That's really awesome. :)

[ymfaery]

..do you get the sense in the dream your hair is usually messy, or is it normally styled in some way? ;)

[camwyn]

This was chunks-of-standing-up messy, the kind of thing that looks like it was designed for either anime or a video game character, to make it easier to pick them out visually. Normally I don't really notice.