Disclaimer: While working out what to write this week, I remembered that I had multiple posts saved for future posting. I wrote them, saved them, and totally forgot about them. In one case, I actually just assumed I did post them and was genuinely shocked that I hadn’t. So, given that things are a little busy with editing and the holidays, I figured I’d post them now.
Welcome back to another round of diving into my weird dreams.
This one isn’t the most visually intriguing, but it’s still weird in a way that I felt warranted a post. Particularly because there’s an entire franchise in here somewhere.
I Was A Kid but Also the Leader of A Monster-Fighting Army Full of Kids?
In the moment, I remember thinking how stupid and throw-away the very first facet of the dream was, but in retrospect . . .
. . . seriously?
This was a Monster Squad / Stranger Things situation where I was a kid and so was everyone else in what was, at one point, just a neighborhood watch where we specifically kept lookout for monster-related occurances.
Until, very, very quickly, the dream jumped to the future where we were a bunch of kids armed to the teeth, splitting off into platoons to actively hunt werewolves.
The part of the dream that always sticks out to me: watching a bunch of “soldiers” either open or close a gate as they started leaving or returning to . . . barracks? I seriously can’t remember details other than 1) we were in suburbia, 2) the street was wet like it had just rained, and 3) they were pulling open the gate of what I think was a multi-story brick building (which, post-dream, I can’t help thinking of as both a firehouse and “the Ghostbusters building,” even though I remember something bigger and purely made of red brick, like a school).
Anyway, as I was standing there, a soldier ran up and told me that one platoon encountered a monster–and I really, really wish I could remember what monster it was, but I can’t. All I know is, shit was so dire that I didn’t even redirect all forces to that monster–I just rerouted a single group of soldiers to take care of it. Because, apparently, there was a full on war with the monsters in my hometown? I don’t know if all of the adults were dead, but there were none in that part of the dream. Extremely weird.
Unlike most of my multi-phase dreams though, this one continued with something like a loose story:
Years Later, at the Monster Lab
In the next phase of the dream, I was an adult, but I was also Barry Burton, from the Resident Evil games. This was super short–I was in a high tech science lab. White walls and ceilings with read-outs on panels of black glass. I wish I could say I was sneaking into some monster-creation lab or something (i.e. the end of many Resident Evil games), but no–I was in the control center, talking with the scientists who were trying to figure out how to stop the monsters. And, weirdly, that’s all I remember from that phase of the dream.
Retiring to an Extremely Weird House
The final phase was me, still as myself as Barry Burton, but also played by David Harbour. And I was retired from the war and looking at my new home. You can probably already tell that the connections to the original dream premise were thin, but they got thinner really fast; almost immediately, the dream just became a static tour of that home.
Which was admittedly very strange. First off, it was tiny–not just one-story, but one-room. I remember that it was at the center of a grass plot of land enclosed by a high, wooden fence. And, in the style of dreams, it was night, and although it wasn’t raining, I had a vague impression of rain regardless (like it was raining, but someone went into the graphical settings of my dream and just turned off the visual effects for rain).
Anyway, back to the house–its walls were all doors. Pretty, gothic front doors with large window panes. I remember that at some point, the realtor showed me how all the walls could open like it was a good thing, and I remember asking something like, “Why?” I don’t remember much after that; I just stood in the house, trying to get used to the idea that this would be my weird, new home, and then the dream ended.
I almost want to know what this one meant. The consistency with rain was really interesting in retrospect.
But more than anything, I . . . kind of want to see that grim future Stranger Things / Monster Squad story? Like, it would never fly now, but there’s an alternate reality where that movie came out in the 80’s. I am sure of it. And it’s probably great and terrible at the same time.
~~~
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. If this is your first time here, I post every Sunday / Monday about anything, from my quest to become a published novelist to the weird dreams I have. If you’d like to join me for what is clearly a weird, random journey, you can give me a Follow via the button on the left sidebar (on PC) or the top-right drop-down menu (on mobile). Likes are also always appreciated because, at my stage of z-tier popularity, they’re the only way I can tell what my audience likes.
At any rate, take care, stay safe, and, if you didn’t know, mudskippers are fucking hilarious. They are seriously everything I strive to make when I create an animal for one of my novels. Just knowing these gross mud fish exist brightens my day to no end, and I hope it does the same for you. See you next week!
But man this one did. But also didn’t? I don’t know–it was weird.
This was another multi-phaser, but the other parts of it were extremely boring and mundane:
First, I was in a hospital visiting my old landlord’s husband for some reason? Particularly weird because he didn’t even have a life-threatening injury, but I went and sat with him anyway like we were family, even though I he was not and I would never do that.
Second, I had a car and lived in a small town in what I can only imagine was California? That part isn’t clear, but it was definitely a small, desert town where I lived with new roommates in an extremely large room? Again, weird, but mundane.
The only part that really matters was when . . .
An Old Friend Published Book Prime
Okay. This is weird to explain but during the dream, the “old friend” was just that–a static entity that I only knew as “an old friend.” I don’t know how often this happens to other people, but she was only an idea until I woke up and realized that the vague shape I saw in my dream-peripheral might have looked like an ex-coworker.
Whatever. That doesn’t matter.
What matters is, at some point, I drove my car through that desert town, got out, and went into a brick building (just imagine the most boring, two-story building made out of large bricks and concrete that you could possibly imagine in an a small, industrial town in an American desert and you’ve got it). And inside . . .
. . . an old friend was signing her newly published novel.
Somehow, this was a surprise. Like I was going to that building for something else.
I remember walking up and talking to her while she was signing for a line of fans. To be clear, there was no stage or signage; it was just her, sitting at one table that was weirdly placed next to machinery and piping.
Regardless, yes, I was being a weird, rude asshole in this dream–because who just walks up to an author while they’re signing and starts talking to them? Actually, on that thread, I remember her being visibly annoyed that I was doing it, but she was also amazingly patient about it (probably because it was my dream). She just gestured for me to check out a copy of her novel–one of the many on her table.
And . . . my God.
Okay, first, I remember seeing it while walking up and thinking, “Is she signing dictionaries?” because it was that thick.
Which is why, when I picked it up and saw that it was not a dictionary but a Fantasy novel, I remember saying, “Holy shit.” Part of that awe came from the dream-knowledge that this was her first novel, it was that long, and it got published, which immediately translated to, “It must be really fucking good.” On top of that, dream-me remembered talking with her about it when it was in the planning stages and now I was floored that it was here, I was holding it, and it weighed ten pounds.
But the real mind fuck was that the cover was gilded. Seriously, every copy was bound in actual leather with 14 karat gold accents. I opened it and not only were the edges of each page gold-leaf, but they were . . . wavy? Not in a water damage way–the edges of every page were intentionally cut so they swelled and dipped in a subtle, waving pattern. And that pattern shifted every twenty pages or so, so the edges of the text block looked like golden coins.
It blew my mind.
And, wildest of all, I opened up her novel . . . and discovered it was a graphic novel? Well, no–hold on. Not accurate. It was not a graphic novel in the way that term suggests.
It was a novel . . . that was fully illustrated. In color.
I don’t know how, but it was somehow both–full narration and panels at the same time.
I kid you not, even my dream brain was like, “No. This would never happen,” so the art in those panels was clearly not great.
But even with that, I just woke up. I didn’t jump awake like this was a nightmare–I just opened my eyes, blinked, and chuckled as I said, “Seriously?” to myself.
Because it was the kind of beautiful tome you’d see in the Cloisters or some other museum, published here in America, in bulk. There were so many copies on her table–of this book covered with actual gold.
It was cartoon-levels of ridiculous; seriously, I just started rewatching The Simpsons and I feel like it’s Homer-daydream levels of silly.
The moment I woke up, I was immediately disconnected from the jealousy in that dream, because I would never want one of my books published like that. The gold cover, the wavy text block, and then the horrible art inside is the exact opposite of what I’d want. I will admit that the idea of a bunch of high quality illustrations conveying all of the narration for an entire novel sounds amazing even though I don’t understand how that would work (wouldn’t it need to be, like, 14,000 pages?). But if there was any part of that dream that I’d actually want, it’s the signing–although not in a maintenance hangar in a desert town.
I dunno. This one was just all-the-way weird and I had to share it. If for no other reason than to just give everyone a peek into a weird, dream reality where publishers apparently don’t give a single fuck about publishing costs.
Seriously, in that world, every copy of Memory is a 13×11 tome with art by Yoshitaka Amano on every single page. And the cover has a silver mask that you can pull off and wear. Because why not?
~~~
That’s it for me. If you’re new here, I’m an aspiring Fantasy writer who posts here every Sunday / Monday. I tend to write about whatever I want, so posts range from talk about my writing progress to talk about the weird fucking dreams I have sometimes. If you’d like to join me on this journey, you can give me a Follow via the button on the left-side bar (on PC) or the top-right drop-down menu (on mobile). Likes are also always appreciated because they help me gauge what content people like on here.
No matter what you do though, thank you for reading. Take care, stay safe, and enjoy this last Halloween before literally everyone is Robert Pattinson Batman. Bye!
There is a bizarre disconnect that happens when you (apparently) remember every single dream you had over the course of one night.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if that’s actually what happened to me Tuesday evening–I don’t know how dreams work.
But by the second time I woke up exhausted and confused by the batch of dreams I’d just had and remembered, I remember thinking, Okay. That’s it. There can’t possibly be more of them.
And then I went back to sleep, and had, I swear, more.
I don’t know why I had double-digits dreams on Tuesday night, but I do know there are a few factors that might have contributed to it:
I finally got my sleeping schedule in order that night. Went to sleep around 12am and woke up at 10am.
I ate right before bed. I know–terrible. But I was that level of hungry where I just wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep if I didn’t have something.
A-a-a-a-and melatonin. As a man who doesn’t even drink anymore, melatonin hits me in genuinely bizarre ways, I guess.
Somehow, all of that led to a crazy marathon that I’m going to describe . . . part of. Because, A) the idea of describing absolutely everything is really daunting, B) I did eventually forget most of it, and C) not all of what I remember was interesting. What I will say here is, combined with things I’d forgotten, I think I hit all genres–horror, comedy, mystery. It was ridiculous.
Okay. That said, let’s jump in–in the order I remember these:
The Girder Sword
I was walking into a forge in the woods, carrying half of a girder that I know I’d cut (length-wise) myself, in a previous dream that I can’t remember.
The forge was lit yellow, like a movie set–designed to convey a different tone from the sun-backed green waving through the loose slat walls.
There was an old master smith in that forge, and although I don’t remember anything about him, I know he said I could make the half-girder into a sword, and I proceeded to do so. A super difficult feat to achieve in real life, but I montaged straight through it in 10 dream-seconds.
In the end, the sword I made was a two-handed, curved blade. Oddly flat and unrealistically thin, I remember it having a strange pattern on it. Not damascus; this was more like brushed steel, crossing the blade in weird directions–like its entire profile was haphazardly ground into the edge using a power tool.
Which meant it looked really cheap and unfinished. As if my brain was like, “You better take some more melatonin and keep on dreaming you think you can make a giant sword from a girder in 10 seconds. The fuck outta here.”
Still, I was super proud, and totally ready to take it outside (I don’t know why–sharpness test on fruit?), but the old smith said I should wait. He didn’t specify why–didn’t suggest sharpening it, working on the handle, heat-treating, or anything else that might actually be good reasons to wait. He just said I should give it a day, and I was like, “. . . Okay!”
So I just walked out of the forge, gleeful and proud until I discovered there were fucking
Monsters in the Forest
I think that even in the dream, I was like, “Fuck . . . This is why I wanted to bring the sword with me!”
I don’t remember exactly how I encountered the monsters–I just knew they were there, and then, at some point, one of them slashed me, full on, in the back.
Which should’ve just killed me, because they were video game-style armored monster dudes with swords. In fact, if you’re familiar, I’m sure they were Abyss Watchers from Dark Souls III:
Dark Souls 3 concept art of the Abyss Watchers.
I didn’t get a good look because I just started running, which must’ve come directly from my experience in the gas station last week. However, I don’t want to send the wrong message that I’m still massively hung up about that, so I will say that, somehow, this was not a nightmare.
Maybe because the monsters were video game enemies, this entire part of the dream just felt like a video game; the fear maxed out at the tension of having 1 HP and trying to run past enemies to get to a checkpoint. Only a little less tense because, even in the dream, I thought, “I’ve fought the Abyss Watchers so many times. I got this.”
So this part of the dream was me running, turning around, dodging an attack at the last second, and then turning, running again. I was trying to stick to a thin, dirt path that snaked through the forest, but it was dotted with other monsters, so I kept veering off into the brush, ducking, listening for footsteps, dodging again, running. At some point, I knew the Abyss Watcher chasing me would see another monster on the road and attack them instead.
And, after I jumped into a bush and started sneaking (while muttering, “Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me”), the Abyss Watcher finally did just that and ran off to wail on some other monster.
The River Ruin Museum
I know for a fact that there were a bunch of dreams in between this and the forest of monsters, but all I remember is winding up in a museum.
Just a totally normal museum . . . until the side of one hallway opened up to an outdoor river, a ruin on its other side.
The ruin itself was vague dream-construction–old stone in slanted, long strips at different elevations, leading nowhere. Some of that stone was on the museum side of the river, sloping down into the green water, but most of it was on the other bank, flanking a giant goddess statue, cross-legged, arms out, hair big.
I’m pretty sure this was just the part of my brain that misses being outside going nuts, because it was totally acceptable to just jump into the river, swim around, check out the ruin, and then return to the museum.
I don’t remember ever going back to the museum though. I just stood out there, laid back on an empty slope on the museum-side of the river, looking around at the sandstone hills rolling up and away from the goddess.
The Sea Creature Crafts Show with a Former Supervisor of Mine
This is the last dream I remember well enough to talk about.
In a dream that happened after the River Ruin Museum and this one . . . I got a job at the River Ruin Museum.
That meant (I guess) that I would be working in the section devoted to aquatic life, which totally makes sense–I love sea creatures despite having Thalassophobia.
What made less sense is that I had to make a quilt of aquatic wildlife for a contest . . . with my coworkers . . . and all of it was being judged by one of my least favorite supervisors from my last job IRL?
And I somehow used a net . . . to make a quilt that was made out of water?
I mean . . . That just feels a little unfair to everyone else, really. Fucking water magic in a work talent show? Come on.
In typical dream speed, the preparations and the contest were all set to take place in the same location: the Aquatic Life Hall of the museum.
And, because I remember it so well, I’ll describe that Hall. All old, polished wood. Just, head-to-toe; every surface that could be rich, dark wood was. It had the kind of fittings and moldings you’d expect from the walls of an old building, only with an extra bit of weird embellishment–molds sanded into rounded waves, rolling up walls that were three stories high for reasons I don’t understand. At ground level, there were display cases with real sea creatures in them, but there were also mountings of creatures that ran up the walls, higher up than anyone could be expected to examine them (with no stairs or ladders to reach them).
And as I stood in that hall with my net, an old supervisor of mine walked in and said something that I must not have listened to because I don’t remember it at all (which is the most accurate-to-life moment in any of my dreams ever).
Without instruction, I proceeded to toss out the net, which hovered in the air (because, of course), did whatever the fuck I did to fill it with water (I think I just said, “And now . . . water!” and it was there), and then proceeded to put replicas of animals into the water.
And if you’re asking, “Wait. Why replicas? It’s real water,” well, fuck, I don’t know. I vaguely remember that, even in the dream, my supervisor came back and asked why they couldn’t be real animals, and I was like, “They need to be replicas or it won’t work.”
But then, the replica animals did start moving, but only because they were in the water. And my old supervisor was like, “Whoa! Dude, they’re alive!?” and I was like, “omfg you’re so annoying.“
I grudgingly explained that they weren’t, but, “Ha ha. Shucks–yeah, they sure do look real though, boss. Ho ho,” and then continued putting more of them into the quilt, one-by-one.
And, because my dreams are just like this, that was the end of the dream. The contest never happened, although, again, fucking water magic–I won.
In Conclusion
After, between, and around all of those dreams, I had a bunch more that I remembered while waking up but lost minutes after. There was definitely a horror one that had something to do with a YouTuber. And another one where I had a task I needed to complete but just could not remember it. There was even a weird recurring one that acted like . . . a dream meta-game? Like, I kept coming back to a resting state where, having completed another dream, I got a point to put towards leveling up a dream skill tree? And I remember going all-fucking-in on one stat . . . which I think was Inventory Size?
Whatever. It was fucking bizarre.
And I’ve been trying to do it again every night since with no success.
I’m probably going to look up info on having vivid dreams after this.
Not only because I think I’ll find crazy story ideas in those dreams . . .
. . . but also because I just kind of love it?
I definitely wouldn’t want to do it every single night, but one night a week of vivid dreams sounds pretty cool.
And I’m sure it’ll continue being pretty cool until I have a night of horrific nightmares! : D
~~~
Thanks for joining me on this weird dream-venture.
Usually though, I’m talking about writing, my life, or I’m issuing brutal takedowns of multi-million dollar budget Hollywood films that are horribly written. Feel free to pass by next week, where I think I’m finally going to muse on how story tropes manifest in different generations.
Until then, take care, stay safe, and, ya know what? It’s time. If you have the choice today . . . maybe actually pick oatmeal raisin. I know! I know! It was terrible last time, but we’re older now and, who knows? Maybe oatmeal raisin is amazing now. Some people reading this already love it. We’ll never know unless we try it.
And if you do try it, hit me up after with #oatmealraisinstillsucks.
I had a lot of things I could’ve written about today.
But I had a dream where I was Willy Wonka embroiled in a Game of Thrones-esque plot to take the Chocolate Factory away from me, and I just had to share that.
I don’t remember everything that happened in the dream, but I do know a few things:
I was Gene Wilder Wonka, not Depp Wonka.
The plot to take over the factory was coming from inside House Wonka. I wish I could tell you who it was, but I only have the vague vibe that it was Willy Wonka’s brother. So . . . Walter Wonka?
There were other Houses involved, but no matter how hard I tried to remember what those Houses were, I lost them. I want to believe it was like, “House Keebler” or something, but, in typical “What the fuck?” dream fashion, I think the other major House involved was House Mormont. Like, just inexplicably, a mile down the road from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, there’s House Mormont, as grim and dirty as it was on the show.
I kept giving arch-as-fuck monologues, Cersei-style, while eating Gobstoppers. This is 100% real; it happened three times over the course of the dream, and every time, I stopped near the end of the monologue to spit out the Gobstopper like, “Why do I keep doing this?”
I pushed someone out of a window. Episode 1 Jaime defenestration. It was the very end of the dream, and although I do not remember what they looked like, I know it was the person trying to steal the factory–so Walter, I guess. I know for a fact that after I pushed them out of the window, I said, “Well . . . That was easier than I thought it’d be,” but I immediately choose to retcon it so I instead shouted, “You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!” out the window. Not just because of course, but because if I ever need to push someone out of a window in real life, I’d want to shout that after them.
Now, you might be asking yourself, “Louis, did you want to share some kind of affirming realization that hit you during this dream? Maybe a thought on how fun it can be to mash up different IP’s?”
No. I just needed to share that dream, because I woke up from it like, “Wait–what? Really!?” Hands down the best, weirdest dream I’ve had in years.
What I will say, in conclusion: I am not the man to write it . . . but if anyone else out there decides to write a high intrigue, political drama set in Willy Wonka’s goddamn Chocolate Factory, I’m here for it.
~~~
I would like to thank my roommate for sending her kids to the grandparent’s for three straight days. You alone made it possible for me to actually sleep and have this insane dream.
That said, I’m gonna hit post on this one and wind down (today was one of those 95% pratfall days where things just keep going wrong and I’m over it). If you enjoyed, you can always give me a follow.
Regardless, take care and get more sleep if you can. Weird dreams are the goddamn best.
In the lore of the dream, I’d been a member of the Rebellion.
Or, really, whatever faction stood in the Rebellion’s place; my dream took place far in the future of the Star Wars universe, and, although technology doesn’t seem to advance in a galaxy far, far away, there were drastic differences in tech in my future. Machines were more organic, which was strange, parts of them made of muscle, other parts — terminals for example — mapped to bioform towers that expanded and contracted as needed.
The Force, as we’ve seen it, also wasn’t a thing anymore. No one talked about Jedi or Sith. There were just . . . normal people and Force-users, everywhere, a distinction that was strangely lacking in gravity. I was a Force-user, for example, but no one cared, because it wasn’t super unique. I hadn’t been trained on a distant planet and didn’t wear fancy robes. I was just a guy who could mind-trick people into not seeing him — into looking past him or not noticing he was there, even when they looked right at him.
In that future universe, I was a former Rebel gone rogue–a strange way to think of it, but accurate. Because the Republic had maintained its victory at Endor for thousands of years, and now the “Empire” were the ones with old, broken down technology, trying to bring down the established government.
It was never specified in my dream, but I think I was part of a Republic infiltration group meant to stop an Imperial plot to capture a planet with a new weapon. However, at some point during that operation, I was left for dead, which fueled my hatred for my old friends.
It’s the emotion that centered the dream for me — the element that made it relatable (and writable) for me. I’ve felt something similar in my waking life — in varying degrees, of course. I don’t always hate the friends I lose contact with, but with some of them, my anger is unrepentant. In my dream, it still burned hot enough that I understood why I switched sides, even though the Empire was evil. I genuinely hated my former friends, although it was tinged with a Star Wars-appropriate amount of doubt, tempered with real-life reflection.
Anyway, I don’t know what the Empire’s new weapon was — what it looked like and what it did were totally glossed over. I knew it was a space craft (because doomsday weapons always are in the Star Wars universe), but that was all I knew about it.
Which, of course, means that this dream was terrible fanfiction because I wasn’t a Marty Sue; I wasn’t an important character in the space opera I was living — had no part in making, defending, or wielding that weapon.
Really, all I did for the majority of the dream was sneak around the weird, tech-flesh bases of the Republic, hacking terminals, avoiding patrols. There was one point when I let the mind-trick stealth powers fly and just walked through a Republic base, in full Imperial gear. Of course, it’s me though, so a character with power can never have absolute power, even in my dreams; guards with the express intent of spotting intruders could see me regardless, so the moment I got back outside, into a cavern full of Republic Stormtroopers, I was back to running between shadows.
At some point, I ran into another Force-wielding Imperial operative on the same mission, which triggered a remnant of Sith hatred. As if there could be only one apprentice, I made a spiteful competition out of getting to a key terminal first. I beat the other operative, but this weird moment added to what I learned from the dream, which I’ll get to in a second.
Let me just say that, at some point, I did get to stand inside of the Empire’s new weapon — on the bridge, with other Imperial agents. We’d captured an official of the Republic who didn’t know what the weapon was supposed to do, and I got to watch him go from rebellious to terrified as he had the base’s capabilities laid out for him.
“Wait . . . You’re not saying this weapon can,” swallow, “do this right now?”
No one answered him, and one of his worried, frantic glances fell on me. I held it and smiled at him. “Yes. It can . . . This planet is now under Imperial control.”
Dreams aren’t always in first person for me, but that moment was. And man was delivering that line awesome.
~~~
Now, I’m a writer who loves legacy stories. The idea of a universe advancing in time and changing significantly is really interesting to me. Because, no matter what a legacy story is trying to achieve, it will fail if it’s too different . . . but it’ll be boring if it’s not different enough.
Batman: Beyond is an example of a legacy story that’s different, but not different enough. I’d put it somewhere on the low end of the Legacy Spectrum of Success because, while good, it’s very reluctant to abandon Bruce Wayne. And, as I see it, the golden question for any legacy story will always be “What do we do with the old cast?”
The Alloy of Law is a better example, because it leaves behind the Mistborn trilogy’s cast, making them a rare, sometimes vague, often playful reference in that world’s history. However, the world is a little too different for me — because it goes in hard with a Wild West aesthetic . . . which feels different in a bad way. The original trilogy’s setting was hyper-unique, with a world covered in black ash, and terrifying Inquisitors, giant metal spikes in place of their eyes. I still absolutely love Brandon Sanderson, but I never thought cowboys would be the future of the Mistborn world, and that change still feels strange to me.
The Legend of Korra is a much better example of a successful legacy story because it shovels almost everything out the window . . . while still feeling the same. The protagonists are all different, the world has changed a bunch, even the tone is more mature. Some members of the original cast make appearances, but most of them have passed, off camera, which is only natural. Even so, the fine details are still the same; people still Bend the elements, and the world outside of the new, advanced Republic City is still very much as it was.
Those examples have always made me wonder how far a legacy story can be pushed before it stops being a legacy story. Prometheus is a kind of legacy-prequel that tests those waters by having almost no bearing on the Alien series.
With this dream, I think I tested those same waters, even though I didn’t realize it.
The used future feel of Star Wars is still there, only now its the classically clean and sterile Imperial ships that are old and dirty.
The sense of rebellion is still there, only now strangely backwards, with the evil Empire struggling to gain ground that the Republic only barely notices is there.
Force-users are still around, but they’re less remarkable, which balances somewhere between Darth Vader being real . . . and Darth Vader being looked down on as a practitioner of bullshit space magic by the one Imperial officer in A New Hope.
Particularly interesting to me, the old Sith ways are still there — but only because of perspective. The fact that my protagonist hated other Force-users who worked with the Empire was possibly only relevant to my character; the other operatives might be buddies, for all I know. But I hated them regardless, and the audience was locked onto that perspective, which made that hate an oddly effective throwback for the Sith, even though I wasn’t Sith — I was just a Force-user on the Empire’s side. It felt like a great way to hearken to a bit of series lore without actually using it.
Overall though, the question is . . . do I think this dream would make a good Star Wars legacy story?
The answer: Oh God, no. Are you kidding? Look, I enjoyed this dream, but it’s way, way too different. And weird. Freaking flesh-tech? Are you kidding me? That would never work in the Star Wars universe. That idea alone took the dream into Bad Legacy Story Town. Star Wars is all about fun (at least, at the moment, it’s still mostly about enjoying yourself [man did I hate Rogue One, btw]), not about hating everyone. And definitely not about following the story of a man fully invested in helping take down a peaceful galactic government. I mean, to a degree, it’s off-putting for me that I even had that dream.
But still, it taught me something about writing.
And delivering that “Imperial control” line was pretty sweet.
~~~
Thanks for reading, guys. It feels like I haven’t written in ages. I have been able to sleep on a normal schedule again though, so I can’t really complain. I hope everyone’s April has been going well though — that the words have come easily.
For anyone new to the site, my name is Louis Santiago, and I’m a fantasy writer based in the Bronx. My short story, “Aixa the Hexcaster,” was published last year in Mirror Dance Fantasy. However, I’m still very much learning about the writing process–still trying to figure it out, which means posting here every week, even though I make absolutely no money from it. So, if you like what you read here and feel up to getting updates by email – a new post from me delivered right to your inbox – then please hit the Follow button at the bottom of this page. Because, even though all I get from this site is emotional support, that support means the world to me.
Regardless though, thank you just for dropping by. And, as always, write well.
Ending the week with a weird one here. A kind of spiritual successor to my dream diary tweets from ages ago.
Again, as it happens pretty often on this blog, writing about this just feels right.
And, although I’m not sure why, I’m going all “right” on this one; I’m doing it up. I am alone, on my computer, in a completely dark room.
It’s time to get meta. To get weird and cerebral. And a bit spooky.
Let’s step back into the weird dream I had last night, made as clear as I could possibly render it.
~~~
I can’t claim to remember all of my dream from last night, but I know that it centered around a building I was exploring. A ruin, for sure, set in stark grays and reds.
Because, although I didn’t jump awake or experience anything that truly terrified me, this was definitely a nightmare.
I was looking for something. I’m not sure what, but it was living–some kind of creature that was hiding in an old . . . I don’t know what it was. A multi-leveled structure with strange plazas and surreal pathways of pitted concrete.
Sometimes, I found myself stepping into enclosed courtyards and finding walls and upper landings made out of thin sticks of red wood.
Other times, I’d walk down a hall and come out in places that didn’t make sense. The one I remember best was a perfectly rectangular hallway that ended with nothing–an opening with no door. The hallway’s walls, floor, and roof made a perfect cylinder of concrete that was cleanly cut, its other half gone with whatever structure it was attached to. As if to suit that metaphor, the doorway was leaning down–into a slate river, perfectly clean, oddly dry. I remember dropping down into that river, looking around at a world made white by a glaring sun.
And then I was back inside, looking for the creature again.
At certain points, I heard it, and despite trying to seek it out, I ran or hid. In the moments between, there were actual zombies to fight, although I was strangely unmoved by them, as if I was playing a video game. I’d already dealt with zombies countless times.
In the end, I never confronted the creature that I was looking for.
But I did find it, on the other side of a red rust door, moving around. Not stomping or growling. Just settling and resettling itself. Perhaps never aware of me. Possibly not even waiting as I stood on the other side of its door, doing nothing until I woke up.
~~~
Apologies if you don’t like reading weird stuff. I was going to try and figure out a meaning as a second part of this post.
But I . . . kind of like leaving this dream as just a weird dream. And, besides, all meanings I could think of surrounded the likelihood that I’m feeling a little stressed–that a big challenge is coming up in my life and I have to face it.
But eh. We can talk about that on Monday.
For now, it’s the weekend; let’s just party.
Thank you for stopping by; I don’t think I say it enough, but I appreciate everyone’s support. If you’d like, you can find me on Twitter @LSantiagoAuthor.
But, in the mean time, thanks just for passing by, and I hope your weekend’s awesome.
House of Error 