Speaking of dreams...
Jan. 18th, 2006 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennyI had an incredibly pleasant, if totally formulaic, swords and sorcery dream this morning, in the snooze time after my alarm went off. I don't often remember my dreams these days, so I thought I'd note it down.
So I was me, fairly much, but in a fantasy universe. This was immediately apparent from the fact that I was living happily on my family's farm (my family weren't my actual family, they were a formulaic fantasy farmhouse-dwelling-hero-to-be family), with no Internet connection in sight.
I also, as it turns out, was a dab hand with a sword. Like, really good. I think I'd trained as some kind of Elite Swordsman Type Person™, but had decided to renounce blah blah live on farm blah. Not for any particularly moral reason, just I decided I'd rather be at home with my family I think. Which was handy, because the plot quite swiftly manifested in the form of a Ravening Army Of Darkness™ which wanted to kill my family and take over our farmland (no doubt just a pitstop on their path to the King's city, world domination, and The Death Of All That Is Good In The World™).
Fortunately the bulk of the army set up camp at the far end of the field, just close enough to show how Vast™ it was, with the campfires and generic clashing of metal noises, but far enough away that they weren't effective reinforcements for the party of half a dozen that were dispatched the next morning (because obviously Ravening Hordes Of Darkness™ don't attack when they turn up, they're going to wait until the morning) to kill the contents of the farmhouse, i.e. your beloved hero and his family.
Now, by this point we'd obviously noticed the arrival of the Horde™, and I'd gone and got my Trusted Sword™ out from under my bed, in preparation for defending my family. Here was the first off-note in my particular dream universe (and I think, the point at which I started to lucid dream, the oddness catching my attention sufficiently to hook my conscious mind in to the ongoing plot).
My Trusted Sword™ was rather distinctly bread-knife-ish.
Finely serrated edge, straight all the way up the front, the top curving off at the back, back edge blunt. Also, a thin and rather flexible blade. In some attempt to compensate for so blatantly being a bread-knife, the blade was black, but it was distinctly not magical. Quite a crap sword really. Definitely a four-foot long bread-knife, hoping for its big break in the movies as a hero's sword. I remember thinking 'this is a crap sword, why do I like this sword?' when I got it out from under the bed, but then remembering that I was a shit-hot super-swordsman and therefore everything was going to be fine.
So out I go to face the group of bad guys who've come up to the house and are helpfully standing outside it waiting for a hero to come out and challenge them or something.
As soon as I came out, they all drew swords, so we bypassed the "What do you want?" speeches and got straight into the cutty stabby fun bit. I slashed a few of them across the throat, which as far as I could figure out was my only fatal option with the weapon I was using, and ended up with the Biggest Ugliest Bad Guy™ at sword-point (such as the point is on a bread-knife, it was resting against his jugular), and the scrawniest next-ugliest one watching cautiously, the rest being dead on the floor around us.
The one at sword-point grinned and started leaning into the sword, which he quite clearly wasn't very scared of. Can't say that I blamed him, although he did get a nasty surprise when, after the blade had flexed a bit, the point suddenly managed to pop through his thick hide, and I followed it with the entire length of the blade, emerging from the back of his neck. He fell over when I took it out, and the other one scarpered.
(Yes, I know the bread-knife blade wouldn't actually have done that. I was quite happily and actively suspending disbelief at this point though, as the whole thing was so comfortably formulaic and I was obviously the good guy and going to get to have more sword fights soon.) :)
The scrawny guy must have run back to camp and told them there was a hero at the farm, because they didn't send any more scruffy oiks for me to fight with. Instead, they sent... another Elite Swordsman Type Person™. He was dead cute too. :-P
Interestingly, I didn't perceive him as a bad guy as such, just 'on the wrong side'. Also, rather amusingly (but helpfully), he had a bread-knife-y sword too :-D His was a bit more properly sword shaped, but it still had the serrated edge and the whippy thin (black, non-magical) blade. So, we duelled. Um, all day, as far as I can recall - not even a toilet break. Hard work, this heroing. We stopped and wandered off for dinner when it got dark, apparently with an unspoken agreement to continue the duel the next day at dawn. Gotta love fantasy universes.
Anyway, that night after dinner, family still sat around the dinner table, I had a vision. In the vision, the enemy swordsman was accepting a Big Evil Magical Sword™ that was being presented to him by his Evil Dark Overlord™ type blokes. He'd obviously decided that this was the only way he would be able to beat me, us being far too evenly matched, as the day's duelling had proved. So uh, he turned to the dark side. Red glow around the sword and everything, I might have mixed up my universes a bit there. *cough*
As the vision faded, I walked to the window and I could see the Evil Red Magical Glow™ amongst the enemy campfires, and I knew my vision was true. I turned to my family, and told them what I had seen, both vision and through the window. My mother rose from the table and went upstairs without a word, and we all know what she had gone for. She came back downstairs with my grandfather's sword. Which, reassuringly, was a real sword. I was quite pleased about that. It was still a rapier sort of thing, as opposed to the gigantic broadsword that the other guy had just taken custody of, but that just made my strategy for the morning all the clearer - wait for Newly Evil Bad Guy™ to raise Huge Evil Magic Sword™, weave around his lumbering defense, and run him through with the Righteous Sword Of Goodness™.
Having realised that the plot was this hugely transparent by now, I then woke up - but rather than feeling cheated of the end-game, I felt like I'd dreamed it through to the end and won the final fight. Which, being entirely lucid by that point, would seem a likely outcome.
So that was fun. I actually woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off again, feeling all heroic and full of goodness, which is amusing considering my usual attitude in the morning. I even got to work twenty minutes early, although I have just spent about half an hour typing this up in-between other tasks :)
In other news, I went to the gym for the second time last night. Everything went fairly well, I even did a few more repetitions than required on the machines that seemed easiest, and I don't ache this morning. I must however admit to kicking the bicep curl machine before I started using it :-P
So I was me, fairly much, but in a fantasy universe. This was immediately apparent from the fact that I was living happily on my family's farm (my family weren't my actual family, they were a formulaic fantasy farmhouse-dwelling-hero-to-be family), with no Internet connection in sight.
I also, as it turns out, was a dab hand with a sword. Like, really good. I think I'd trained as some kind of Elite Swordsman Type Person™, but had decided to renounce blah blah live on farm blah. Not for any particularly moral reason, just I decided I'd rather be at home with my family I think. Which was handy, because the plot quite swiftly manifested in the form of a Ravening Army Of Darkness™ which wanted to kill my family and take over our farmland (no doubt just a pitstop on their path to the King's city, world domination, and The Death Of All That Is Good In The World™).
Fortunately the bulk of the army set up camp at the far end of the field, just close enough to show how Vast™ it was, with the campfires and generic clashing of metal noises, but far enough away that they weren't effective reinforcements for the party of half a dozen that were dispatched the next morning (because obviously Ravening Hordes Of Darkness™ don't attack when they turn up, they're going to wait until the morning) to kill the contents of the farmhouse, i.e. your beloved hero and his family.
Now, by this point we'd obviously noticed the arrival of the Horde™, and I'd gone and got my Trusted Sword™ out from under my bed, in preparation for defending my family. Here was the first off-note in my particular dream universe (and I think, the point at which I started to lucid dream, the oddness catching my attention sufficiently to hook my conscious mind in to the ongoing plot).
My Trusted Sword™ was rather distinctly bread-knife-ish.
Finely serrated edge, straight all the way up the front, the top curving off at the back, back edge blunt. Also, a thin and rather flexible blade. In some attempt to compensate for so blatantly being a bread-knife, the blade was black, but it was distinctly not magical. Quite a crap sword really. Definitely a four-foot long bread-knife, hoping for its big break in the movies as a hero's sword. I remember thinking 'this is a crap sword, why do I like this sword?' when I got it out from under the bed, but then remembering that I was a shit-hot super-swordsman and therefore everything was going to be fine.
So out I go to face the group of bad guys who've come up to the house and are helpfully standing outside it waiting for a hero to come out and challenge them or something.
As soon as I came out, they all drew swords, so we bypassed the "What do you want?" speeches and got straight into the cutty stabby fun bit. I slashed a few of them across the throat, which as far as I could figure out was my only fatal option with the weapon I was using, and ended up with the Biggest Ugliest Bad Guy™ at sword-point (such as the point is on a bread-knife, it was resting against his jugular), and the scrawniest next-ugliest one watching cautiously, the rest being dead on the floor around us.
The one at sword-point grinned and started leaning into the sword, which he quite clearly wasn't very scared of. Can't say that I blamed him, although he did get a nasty surprise when, after the blade had flexed a bit, the point suddenly managed to pop through his thick hide, and I followed it with the entire length of the blade, emerging from the back of his neck. He fell over when I took it out, and the other one scarpered.
(Yes, I know the bread-knife blade wouldn't actually have done that. I was quite happily and actively suspending disbelief at this point though, as the whole thing was so comfortably formulaic and I was obviously the good guy and going to get to have more sword fights soon.) :)
The scrawny guy must have run back to camp and told them there was a hero at the farm, because they didn't send any more scruffy oiks for me to fight with. Instead, they sent... another Elite Swordsman Type Person™. He was dead cute too. :-P
Interestingly, I didn't perceive him as a bad guy as such, just 'on the wrong side'. Also, rather amusingly (but helpfully), he had a bread-knife-y sword too :-D His was a bit more properly sword shaped, but it still had the serrated edge and the whippy thin (black, non-magical) blade. So, we duelled. Um, all day, as far as I can recall - not even a toilet break. Hard work, this heroing. We stopped and wandered off for dinner when it got dark, apparently with an unspoken agreement to continue the duel the next day at dawn. Gotta love fantasy universes.
Anyway, that night after dinner, family still sat around the dinner table, I had a vision. In the vision, the enemy swordsman was accepting a Big Evil Magical Sword™ that was being presented to him by his Evil Dark Overlord™ type blokes. He'd obviously decided that this was the only way he would be able to beat me, us being far too evenly matched, as the day's duelling had proved. So uh, he turned to the dark side. Red glow around the sword and everything, I might have mixed up my universes a bit there. *cough*
As the vision faded, I walked to the window and I could see the Evil Red Magical Glow™ amongst the enemy campfires, and I knew my vision was true. I turned to my family, and told them what I had seen, both vision and through the window. My mother rose from the table and went upstairs without a word, and we all know what she had gone for. She came back downstairs with my grandfather's sword. Which, reassuringly, was a real sword. I was quite pleased about that. It was still a rapier sort of thing, as opposed to the gigantic broadsword that the other guy had just taken custody of, but that just made my strategy for the morning all the clearer - wait for Newly Evil Bad Guy™ to raise Huge Evil Magic Sword™, weave around his lumbering defense, and run him through with the Righteous Sword Of Goodness™.
Having realised that the plot was this hugely transparent by now, I then woke up - but rather than feeling cheated of the end-game, I felt like I'd dreamed it through to the end and won the final fight. Which, being entirely lucid by that point, would seem a likely outcome.
So that was fun. I actually woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off again, feeling all heroic and full of goodness, which is amusing considering my usual attitude in the morning. I even got to work twenty minutes early, although I have just spent about half an hour typing this up in-between other tasks :)
In other news, I went to the gym for the second time last night. Everything went fairly well, I even did a few more repetitions than required on the machines that seemed easiest, and I don't ache this morning. I must however admit to kicking the bicep curl machine before I started using it :-P
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 02:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 02:13 pm (UTC)[13:54:50] <denny> hopefully that will amuse everyone
[13:55:02] <denny> Formulaic Fantasy Adventure #4
[13:55:13] <denny> (with bread-knives)
[13:56:24] <denny> I'm just waiting for the jokes about my inadequate weapon to start :-D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 02:27 pm (UTC)I could probably do it with proper psychoanalytic jargon if you want though.
I just read the entry that sparked your small world moment this morning. Unimpressed by response. Must remember not to read things ever again.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 06:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-18 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-19 10:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-20 03:26 am (UTC)Go on. Look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-20 09:52 am (UTC)