Grrl Power #751 – Dreamescape
I had intended to write this slightly more seriously, then I thought of this and it amused me. Hopefully no one is too upset this session is going in a Sydney-esque direction. Dr. Frost may be able wrangle her back on course on the next page.
Any number of things that Sydney was exposed to on the Alari homeworld could be pretty nightmare inducing. Being along, being lost, being surrounded by death, a planet of silence, fires burning on the horizon as far as you could see, not to mention the giant death machine gunning for you.
I used to have a recurring nightmare about… basically Godzilla, only Godzilla was like five miles tall, and you could see him coming from miles away through the billowing smoke and the burning horizon. It was sort of an impending and unavoidable doom sort of thing, plus there was a factor of being unable to properly register the scale and distance of something that large. There was a sort of Lovecraftian element of skewed perception to it.
Sometimes I think nightmares are scary just because your brain tells you they are, because some of the things I’ve had ‘nightmares’ about aren’t particularly scary, and some of the things I’ve dreamed about that sound scary weren’t remotely frightening in the dream. I had one where I was wandering around my high school, but instead of lockers, there were clear tubes, and all the students had been skinned and their bodies were floating in the tubes. Instead of being scared in the dream, I was walking around looking at all the tubes and thinking about how good the special effects were.
Fortunately I don’t dream much anymore, or if I do I only remember like 3 or 4 dreams a year.
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Now you have me imagining the aliens who survived Sydney having flashbacks to this humanoid that is akin to a mosquito to them absolutely slaughtering everyone they know.
My thought process after reading that:
“Small, buzzes around, stings…” Yeah that’s a mosquito. But we’re mosquitoes too so she isn’t annoying, she’s adorable.
I wonder if mosquitoes think that buzzing around people and stinging them is adorable.
Male mosquitoes suck flora blood, female mosquitoes suck fauna blood.
Maybe the bloodsucking obnoxious mosquitoes really are just being cutesy girls in their species’ eyes.
Compound eyes.
Mosquito-chan
I like that, for some reason. Gigantic, nightmare Aliens having nightmares of the Tiny Destroyer …..Sydney!
I had one ‘nightmare’ as a kid that was basically me going to Dagobah and finding that Yoda, Luke, Vader (and his decapitated head), and R2D2 had started up a swamp band together on the wings of the partially submerged X-wing. No idea what was supposed to be scary about it, but that’s what my brain was telling me, I was terrified.
They wanted you to be either the band manager, or band roadie, or the groupie (maybe even all three :P)
Did you, by an chance, watch Revenge of the Sith and then go to Showbiz/Chucky Cheese for pizza afterwards the evening before this nightmare? It sounds like a combo of that proto-Five-Nights-at-Freddie’s animatronic band from the pizza place and the characters from RotS.
I would watch that, sounds like a way better script that the prequals, new trilogy and every other spin off.
They should have stopped after making the second movie.
Technically, the second Star Wars movie was the Holiday Special…
The prequal trilogy would have been fine if Lucas had stuck to his guns on his original idea and had Jarjar be a villian only acting like a hapless sidekick in order to infiltrate.
But yea, this house-of-mouse fanfiction is a complete and utter fail. The original follow-up books are so much better, even with their occasional flaws. Jacen Solo & Jaina Solo & Anakin Solo forever > Kyl-emo Ren
Also, Palpatine clones and Yuuzong Vong are way better villians than who-the-frak-is-Snoke-sure-don’t-explain-or-whatever.
What ruins the prequels(In addition to a world filled with Jar Jar Binks…) is the effing Midichlorians!
It was a horrid attempt to answer a question that absolutely NO ONE had asked.
‘The force is stron in this one’ is great. ‘His Midichlorian count is higher than I have ever seen’ is something that belongs in Star Trek! (Nope, probably not a quote. I tend to fast forward past that stuff)
Midichlorians was already part of the lore before the prequal trilogy. Luke was specifically using that tech to help check for un-found force-sensitives in order to start building the new Jedi Order. (Back before the house of mouse fanfiction.) Not to mention that it’s a biological traits was mentioned in the original series. Don’t you remember the line, “The force is strong in my family.” That implies biological factors. The people who are annoyed by that are just those who forget that Star Wars is a Science Fiction, not Lord of the Rings.
In the books, which explain further, the Force isn’t truly a mystical force, but a technological one that that has become treated as a religion due to most of the original knowledge of it being lost, but it still remaining functional. The galaxy is basically in the middle of a dark age, having fallen from a Kardeshev type 4 civilization into being a Kardeshev type 2.5 civilization, and their understanding of the force is much like the dark age understanding of the sciences…. what little science knowledge exists is deemed as magic and occult. The Jedi were even purged just as the alchemists were. The days of “the old republic” are reflections of the Roman Republic before it fell. The whole of Star Wars (before house of mouse) was an allegory for the Fall of Rome era.
It even has a g******ed Senate being overtaken by an elected leader who declares himself Emperor who then renames the Republic to an Empire, and converts it into a military-expansion focused entity that although thriving in one regard, is quickly regressing in most others.
What If modern religions are suffering the same fate? You have one individual like Leonardo da Vinci or Archimedes who were advanced in technological areas but instead this individual is advanced in social sciences and actually understood what he was saying. Then you have his followers who didn’t fully understand as much until you just have individuals who merely repeat the same words. Meaning is lost in the process of information being passed down over the generations (even with exacting teaching methods that are not used with most modern students), and, over thousands of years, the basics of charity and goodness are still known and taught, but WHY things are the way they are isn’t as known.
Yup, Lucas’ credibility went up in Snoke. His First Order of business should have been a coherent storyline, and once he got Holdo that then start adding interesting characters – instead he decided to Tico off as many minorities as possible, with 1 dimensional personalities, and backgrounds that boil down to “this person is moody and mysterious, honest”
I find your accusation quite Jarjarring. Most of the complaints go up in Vader when you realize you’re looking in Alderran places. It gives me new hope in Lucas to realize that most 1 dimensionality comes from a mouse who strikes back at the original storyline. The one exception binking a lone ‘comedy relief’ character who was ORIGINALLY supposed to a Phantom Menace infiltrating under the guise of a bumbling idiot to avoid suspicion. However, the original plan for the character was attacked by a clone idea… leave him as more background comedy relief. This was not due to original design, but because fan outcry about the character made Lucas back out. What IS the most one-dimensional character in Lucas’s work, was meant to be otherwise but changed due to fan outcry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/star-wars-the-darth-jar-jar-binks-theory-is-partially-true-says-actor-a6923351.html Except for that, deep dimensionally of characters is mostly… E…woking. I mean, I’m not saying to go completely gungan-ho for Jarjar, just realize complaining fans ruined a fairly immersive plotline, and he was -supposed- to become what Count Dooku replaced. But, as with all media, If you don’t like it, Dantooine to it.
+5
No Vader, but you’ve got Yoda, Luke and R2D2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30E
Except that DaveB describes them as death machines and Sydney describes the first one as this giant…like, Godzilla sized robot illithid looking thing so the people who thought they were constructs turn out to be right.
Squidward was really Mecha-Squidward as it turns out.
It isn’t all the running in my dreams that make them into nightmares. It’s that damned weather balloon that keeps chasing me down.
Yeah, gotta watch out for Rover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ffr1U7KMY
Be Seeing You!
Just don’t mind what rover looked like in episode one.
http://www.theunmutual.co.uk/roverone.htm
http://david-stimpson.blogspot.com/2011/12/therapy-zone.html
‘Weather Balloon’? Sure it wasn’t ‘swamp gas’? o_O
My dreams seem to be all pleasant. Only had one nightmare that I know of. It was my ex being nice to me.
You worry me.
No, that can be pretty terrifying. A few months after my ex had emptied my savings and divorced me, (Only a year after we’d married, our marriage was just her get out of debt scheme.) I was visiting her parents. (i was on good terms with them; They were embarrassed at what she’d done.)
She showed up, and HUGGED me! I stood there paralyzed between slugging her and running away screaming. I never dared visit her parents again. It was pretty nightmarish, alright.
I’m betting the therapist is writing something like “A river in Egypt is strong with this one.”
The notes they write are along the lines of “remember to ask more about X”, but in this case I’d think it’s more “she’s making fun of me so she can get out of running. Peggy said she hates running and is looking for a doctor’s note”.
+1
I think the doctor is right with this one, in that the human mind will go through all sorts of mental gymnastics when it comes to a developing phobia. For instance, a cop that finds a horribly mutiliated corpse in a trash bin may be traumatized enough that he develops Rupophobia. The horrific sight combined with the smell of rotting garbage may wind up making the cop afraid of getting dirty, so he copes by taking three showers per day.
Personally, I think a lot of people can empathize to some degree with Sydney. How many of you have gone through a full day of work at your job, but when it comes to quitting time the alarm clock wakes you up just in time to go to work?
ಠ_ಠ
It really sucks when your own brain trolls you worse than your most implacable enemies…
For about two years after I stopped working, I still woke up afraid that I had fallen asleep at work and my boss’s headlights had woken me up.
In my bedroom with blackout curtains and a blanket over my head.
Nearly 30 years later, still have dreams about delivering papers, not nightmares, just still delivering papers
If die and become a ghost, will become the Phantom Paper Runner (on an old Raleigh 20 bike) :P
In my experience, the worst nightmares are the ones in which YOU are the horrible monster.
I bet Maxima has those.
BTW, I really, REALLY like this webcomic. If I had spare money (medical issues, long story) I would throw some your way. The BEST webcomic I ever read is DIGGER, by Ursula Vernon. Grrlpower isn’t quite to that level, but it IS just a half-step down. It is certainly the most engaging supers story I’ve run into in a looooong time, and I’m a collector in remission, going back to the classic days of Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD. Kudos to you for an amazing work.
I’ve had those. Running nightmares are worse.
I wanted to make a comment last night, but my keyboard was unavailable. So naturally I turned on the on screen keyboard in Windows 10, so I could type it. Only to find the idiotic message displayed (from memory) saying ‘to display the on screen keyboard press Windows key plus (2 other keys)’. Oh yea, really useful tool for people who have no keyboard to use … just use your keyboard to activate this!! Dolts of programmers/corporate executives.
They need a good
kick up the arsetelling off.Too tired to recall what I wanted to say then. Watch this space, in a day or two’s time.
Kicking will only loose you a shoe, the sock and maybe the foot as well.
Yea.
Thinking about it the best cure would be to do a little light hunting each evening before bed. Wormhole off to spaceship the size of a mountain territory, and hunt down a few Godzilla sized robot Illithid things, before returning by a roundabout route. No running just therapeutic blasting.
Meanwhile all the toddler Godzilla sized robot Illithid things, at the robot factory nursery, will be told to ‘behave or ‘the Halo will hunt you down before bed’!
Hopefully Sydney won’t lash out at her teammates…! Imagine Varia said something and Sydney would say in the moment…
Sydney:Go polish your low rider!
Varia:I AM AZTEC,NOT CHICANA!
Sydney:Sorry about that!
Later Varia and Sydney do their impression of Cheech and Chong(can you picture that???)
Sydney (long puff) (Hey, they’re legal now) What’s in this?
Varia: Mostly Maui Wowie…but it’s got some Labrador in it.
Sydney: Labrador? What’s Labrador?
(Most of us know what comes next)
Eh…Gotta be honest, this is kind of a big disappointment. I get that this is mostly a comedic series, and it’s your characters and all, but this was a chance to give Sydney some much-needed depth. Kind of disappointing to see her just default back to a scatterbrain instead of actually, y’know, having a character arc that changes her.
Nice Obduction bubbles for Sydney’s dream sequence.
The term you are looking for is “Kirby Krackle.”
See my comment above.
That sort of thing amounts to “if patient does not respond as I expect, patient is in denial.”
That was supposed to be a response to yet another person saying “Sydney must be in denial”.
Which amounts to a shrink having preconceived notions about what the patient is suffering from
Sydney isn’t in denial, she is straight out saying she is having nightmares about running, which she has already established to hating
I think she’s writing down “Maxima, you need to debrief this one thoroughly. Make note of the ass-kicking she did and her descriptions of exactly whose asses she kuck. You may have been underestimating the scope of her energy attack.”
And then turning the page –
“Possible unreliable witness overstating the scale of defeated foes. Boasting indicating insecurity?”
“Probable denial of suffering from PTSD, Likely indicates refusal to face perceived personal weakness.”
“Note: Investigate interaction of her ADHD medication with anything I really have to prescribe.”
“Also – hates running.”
I also expect she’ll have dreams where she’s walking around without the orbs in everyday life and everyone around her is babbling in alien and all the signs look like backward upside-down mirror and no one understands her while she’s starving or bleeding out.
(I know you cant read anything in dreams, anything with print is blank unless it’s something the mind sees as an artistic image, not something drawn from the logical side of the brain)
That… is not true, you are able to read in dreams, personally read books all the time and the pages aren’t ‘blank’ nor ‘artistic images’
It’s the same bullshit along with ‘only blind people dream in colour’
Agreed. Sometimes detailed stuff I read swims and morphs, but normal stuff (signs etc) stay put without any trouble.
That’s interesting. I usually just get something indistinct and, if the dream decides that it needs to be read, I know what it says instataneously.
Dr. Frost is sitting there scribbling, “I recommend 3 gal. of Ritalin.”
She later gets a phonecall, “Did you mean 3 gm?”
“I know what I wrote.”
Looking at all this dream talk, I feel like I’ve experienced something that the rest of you might not have done: An indeterminate dream.
The setting was vague – Like suburban reality without the details – and so too was the bringer of my demise. A void in human shape that would kill me on contact. I knew that I was dreaming and I knew that it was coming for me, in particular. I could see the dream and think from an external perspective, yet also from inside my dream-self, over whom I had absolutely no control.
His death was inevitable and thus meaningless. It was a happy dream. Yet it had the potential not to be.
Somehow I knew, if dream-me died, external-me would retroactively cease to exist within the dream, taking away the foreknowledge of the outcome and turning it into a horrible nightmare. Fortunately, I regained full knowledge of the experience hours later but the fact that the ENTIRE experience, from start to finish, depended on whether or not I awoke before the end, was pretty crazy.
Heh, saw a funny post on Imgur: https://i.imgur.com/zWvQ7Cu.png NOT SAYING THIS IS OUR AUTHOR so please don’t send death threats, just found it funny and thought I’d share.
If I didn’t think she was serious, I’d seriously think that Sydney was setting the stage for a medical running dispensation. I mean, really, just look at what she is saying without knowing what she has gone through. It’s classic goldbricking behavior!
“Well, sometimes I get the menstrual cramps real bad.”
It’s a year ago in the future, from when this was uploaded, I just want ted to say, I love the doctors necklace. I wonder, if it has some esoteric meaning!
Rereading this and I just wanted to comment on the freaky ass nightmare I had. First, the Nightmare taunted me about not being able to wake up. Then it transitioned to pretending I had woken up, with my fiance there and everything, but she was acting weird and trying to convince me I was awake. My Nightmare tried to trick me!
Doc, you’re going to need another pen and a bigger notebook.