For Safety Reasons, Neither One Of Us Can Be Shot With This Gun.
Watching this Omori fan animation (NB: Omori route spoilers and Omori-typical unsettling imagery), set to a remix of 'Bad Apple!!' from the Touhou Project series, really leaves me in awe of the passion and creativity of fandom.
So many people worked on this! There must have been so much organisation and editing involved, on top of every individual animator putting in the work to animate their segment of the video. Not for any sort of material gain, but just because they all wanted to make and share a cool thing about something they loved. I just think that's neat!
The rest of this entry is going to be a collection of dreams I've had since April. As ever, there's absolutely no obligation to read these, and in fact I'd strongly advise against reading the one about Barret Wallace.
Dreamt I was Mark from Severance, and there was some sort of in-office... masquerade event? Still the same blank walls, still just office chairs for people to sit in, but we wore masks and the higher-ups called it a 'masquerade ball'. (This is exactly what a Lumon masquerade ball would be like.)
As Mark, I managed to upset Helly somehow; she ran out of the room. 'Helly,' Mark said quietly to himself, without my input, at which point I understood that Mark had not realised it was Helly until she'd left and was appalled to realise he had upset her. (Mark, how many people could it be? You know exactly two women, and the mask over Helly's eyes did not conceal her very distinctive hair.)
I-as-Mark ran out after her and hesitated for a moment before entering the ladies' loos, which she had gone into. I think we were able to make up.
Dreamt that Barret of Final Fantasy VII humped my foot? (I've already mentioned this dream; unfortunately you have to hear about it twice.) Possibly just a Barret cosplayer, in-character as Barret, with the same build. It was in front of other people? I think it was meant to be a sort of joke? I remember Barret looked at me beforehand (at this point he was standing and I was lying on the floor, both of us fully dressed), a little hesitant, and I gave him a small smile to indicate that I was okay with it (...because I thought it might be hot), and now I have to live with the knowledge that I consented to have my foot humped by Barret Wallace in my dream.
I also gave Squall Leonhart a cuddle. We were both standing, in that case, and there was no inappropriate foot conduct involved.
At the end of the dream, I remember I found myself stranded, facing a long and annoying journey home; it was going to involve a lot of walking just to get to a bus stop and then a lot of public transport, probably adding up to a couple of hours, and it was already night. I wanted to do this so little that I woke myself up so I wouldn't have to travel in my dream. To clarify, I actually did wake up! It was five thirty in the morning, and I was torn between mild annoyance at being awake and relief that I hadn't had to do that dream journey; I really hadn't been looking forward to it. (Waiting for or travelling by public transport has been a recurring theme in my dreams since I was a teenager.)
Dreamt I saw a huge and beautiful vulture perched in a tree by the side of the road and promptly lost my mind with excitement. Its head was a rich bluish grey; its wings were a gorgeous brown - actually the colour of one of my acrylic paints, Liquitex raw sienna - and so vast and layered that they almost spanned the road when they were spread. I'd been walking with Tem and Ginger (and enthusiastically pointed the vulture out to them; they were impressed, in a fond 'Riona's being weird about birds again' way), but I lingered behind as they walked on so I could keep looking at the vulture and point it out to passers-by. Then it retracted its wings, and it turned out it was in fact a ginger cat that could shapeshift. I was oddly disappointed to learn this.
Dreamt I was playing Final Fantasy XII so Tem could watch, and I noticed that, when you spoke to minor NPCs, their pronouns were displayed in brackets next to their name. One had a character model usually used for male NPCs, but the brackets just said '(Reticent)'. Their dialogue explained that they used to use he/him in some situations and 'everything else' in others, but something had changed about their approach, and I'll never know what, because I accidentally exited out of the dialogue box and the NPC refused to repeat it.
I suspect I dreamt about this because I've been playing In Stars and Time, which is a mediaeval fantasy RPG set in a land where it's usual for people to choose their own gender.
Dreamt I befriended Karla of Waterloo Road. But then I had to leave the school, and she explained, in her very straightforward and logical and toneless way, why she didn't want that to happen and it would make her sad. I felt bad!
Dreamt I was playing a Spider-Man: Miles Morales game that, to my delight, turned out to have character reactions programmed in for a lot of things the player could say aloud. I'd noticed voice recognition features in an earlier mission, so, during a conversation about the X-Men, I tested their extent by asking, 'Sex-Men?' as if I'd misheard. Peter Parker (who looked like the Tobey Maguire incarnation) looked over at 'me' (i.e. Miles) and shook his head, with a little smile. This was very exciting, but not absolute confirmation that the characters could hear and react to me, so I tried calling them the Sex-Men again. 'They're not called the Sex-Men!' Peter exclaimed.
Peter, I know for a fact you hugely enjoyed 'the Sex-Men' and you're just trying to act mature around Miles because he's younger than you.
I went on to take huge pleasure in saying things I thought responses might potentially have been programmed in for throughout the game, even things as basic as 'hey, how are you?' All I need in life is to be able to have a conversation with videogame characters.
Also, for some reason, Miles's girlfriend was a younger Chloe from Uncharted, and Nathan Drake turned up and tried to hit on her? I asked Nate if he'd met Elena yet; apparently he hadn't. 'Look forward to that,' I told him.
I'd be really interested to know what percentage of my dreams have me taking on the role of someone else, rather than being present as myself. I'm fairly sure I'm myself most of the time, but it's not unusual for me to dream that I'm someone else, usually a fictional character. I think I also occasionally have dreams where there's no 'me' present at all; I'm just experiencing a story I don't play any role in. It's impossible to get actual statistics on this, of course, as I don't remember most of my dreams!
So many people worked on this! There must have been so much organisation and editing involved, on top of every individual animator putting in the work to animate their segment of the video. Not for any sort of material gain, but just because they all wanted to make and share a cool thing about something they loved. I just think that's neat!
The rest of this entry is going to be a collection of dreams I've had since April. As ever, there's absolutely no obligation to read these, and in fact I'd strongly advise against reading the one about Barret Wallace.
Dreamt I was Mark from Severance, and there was some sort of in-office... masquerade event? Still the same blank walls, still just office chairs for people to sit in, but we wore masks and the higher-ups called it a 'masquerade ball'. (This is exactly what a Lumon masquerade ball would be like.)
As Mark, I managed to upset Helly somehow; she ran out of the room. 'Helly,' Mark said quietly to himself, without my input, at which point I understood that Mark had not realised it was Helly until she'd left and was appalled to realise he had upset her. (Mark, how many people could it be? You know exactly two women, and the mask over Helly's eyes did not conceal her very distinctive hair.)
I-as-Mark ran out after her and hesitated for a moment before entering the ladies' loos, which she had gone into. I think we were able to make up.
Dreamt that Barret of Final Fantasy VII humped my foot? (I've already mentioned this dream; unfortunately you have to hear about it twice.) Possibly just a Barret cosplayer, in-character as Barret, with the same build. It was in front of other people? I think it was meant to be a sort of joke? I remember Barret looked at me beforehand (at this point he was standing and I was lying on the floor, both of us fully dressed), a little hesitant, and I gave him a small smile to indicate that I was okay with it (...because I thought it might be hot), and now I have to live with the knowledge that I consented to have my foot humped by Barret Wallace in my dream.
I also gave Squall Leonhart a cuddle. We were both standing, in that case, and there was no inappropriate foot conduct involved.
At the end of the dream, I remember I found myself stranded, facing a long and annoying journey home; it was going to involve a lot of walking just to get to a bus stop and then a lot of public transport, probably adding up to a couple of hours, and it was already night. I wanted to do this so little that I woke myself up so I wouldn't have to travel in my dream. To clarify, I actually did wake up! It was five thirty in the morning, and I was torn between mild annoyance at being awake and relief that I hadn't had to do that dream journey; I really hadn't been looking forward to it. (Waiting for or travelling by public transport has been a recurring theme in my dreams since I was a teenager.)
Dreamt I saw a huge and beautiful vulture perched in a tree by the side of the road and promptly lost my mind with excitement. Its head was a rich bluish grey; its wings were a gorgeous brown - actually the colour of one of my acrylic paints, Liquitex raw sienna - and so vast and layered that they almost spanned the road when they were spread. I'd been walking with Tem and Ginger (and enthusiastically pointed the vulture out to them; they were impressed, in a fond 'Riona's being weird about birds again' way), but I lingered behind as they walked on so I could keep looking at the vulture and point it out to passers-by. Then it retracted its wings, and it turned out it was in fact a ginger cat that could shapeshift. I was oddly disappointed to learn this.
Dreamt I was playing Final Fantasy XII so Tem could watch, and I noticed that, when you spoke to minor NPCs, their pronouns were displayed in brackets next to their name. One had a character model usually used for male NPCs, but the brackets just said '(Reticent)'. Their dialogue explained that they used to use he/him in some situations and 'everything else' in others, but something had changed about their approach, and I'll never know what, because I accidentally exited out of the dialogue box and the NPC refused to repeat it.
I suspect I dreamt about this because I've been playing In Stars and Time, which is a mediaeval fantasy RPG set in a land where it's usual for people to choose their own gender.
Dreamt I befriended Karla of Waterloo Road. But then I had to leave the school, and she explained, in her very straightforward and logical and toneless way, why she didn't want that to happen and it would make her sad. I felt bad!
Dreamt I was playing a Spider-Man: Miles Morales game that, to my delight, turned out to have character reactions programmed in for a lot of things the player could say aloud. I'd noticed voice recognition features in an earlier mission, so, during a conversation about the X-Men, I tested their extent by asking, 'Sex-Men?' as if I'd misheard. Peter Parker (who looked like the Tobey Maguire incarnation) looked over at 'me' (i.e. Miles) and shook his head, with a little smile. This was very exciting, but not absolute confirmation that the characters could hear and react to me, so I tried calling them the Sex-Men again. 'They're not called the Sex-Men!' Peter exclaimed.
Peter, I know for a fact you hugely enjoyed 'the Sex-Men' and you're just trying to act mature around Miles because he's younger than you.
I went on to take huge pleasure in saying things I thought responses might potentially have been programmed in for throughout the game, even things as basic as 'hey, how are you?' All I need in life is to be able to have a conversation with videogame characters.
Also, for some reason, Miles's girlfriend was a younger Chloe from Uncharted, and Nathan Drake turned up and tried to hit on her? I asked Nate if he'd met Elena yet; apparently he hadn't. 'Look forward to that,' I told him.
I'd be really interested to know what percentage of my dreams have me taking on the role of someone else, rather than being present as myself. I'm fairly sure I'm myself most of the time, but it's not unusual for me to dream that I'm someone else, usually a fictional character. I think I also occasionally have dreams where there's no 'me' present at all; I'm just experiencing a story I don't play any role in. It's impossible to get actual statistics on this, of course, as I don't remember most of my dreams!