One thing I do try to do, as often as possible, with this blog is document my weird dreams and I've had a couple this week which would be outright disturbing on their own. Together, there's a sense of escalation, despite the fact that the first cast me as the 'victim', while I was the 'villain' in the second.
Since I've left it a few days before getting round to writing about the first, I don't remember much beyond the impression the dream left with me. Essentially, it boiled down to being kidnapped by a trio of eastern Europeans in a what seemed to be a small car. I was with a former colleague - someone I intensely disliked, so I've no idea why they'd have kidnapped the both of us - and, at one point, we seemed to come to a silent agreement to attempt an escape. The driver - someone else I believe I recognised, but don't remember who it was - turned round long enough to impress upon us what a painful mistake it would be as the two sitting in the back of the car with us (may have been a taxi... or some kind of many-seater people mover that simply felt claustrophobic under the circumstances) were rather more alert and dangerous than they might have appeared... and that they would reach their guns before we did.
We resigned ourselves to whatever fate awaited us, and I started thinking that there was lots of stuff in my cellphone that would be of great use to anyone attempting identity theft, and wondered if I'd be able to get it out of my pocket to delete the offending notes before they noticed. It did dimly occur to me that, if I could do that, I might be able to phone or text for help... but I woke up around that point.
Thursday night's dream is somewhat fresher in my memory, though the details are no less confused, to be honest. It seemed to begin with me playing a first-person shooter game, looking about the same quality as GoldenEye on the N64 (which is to say, a bit rubbish by today's standards) and spending quite some time laughing at the game's expense. At some point, though, this low-res, low-poly game blended into reality... or I stopped playing and moved elsewhere in the building I was in - the problem was I couldn't really be sure in the dream, partly because of the extreme nature of what I did next...
...For some reason, my girlfriend's family (including the dog, but it wasn't their actual dog as far as I can remember) had gathered together in a large-ish, glassed-off area in one room. It looked almost like a large shower cabinet as the glass didn't reach the floor or ceiling, so perhaps they were just checking out various parts of a large hotel apartment, and decided to see if they could all fit into the shower..? On a whim, I decided to chuck a grenade in with them.
I have no idea where the grenade game from, other than the game...
The next bit I remember was walking down a road heading back towards the scene of the crime, imagining what state the police and forensics teams would have found the room in - glass and human giblets littering the floor, part of a wall blown out, people in clean suits milling around taking samples of DNA, that kind of thing. I distinctly remember thinking I could get away unpunished... and that either my girlfriend wouldn't mind that I'd killed her family (and dog), or that I could at least get her to keep quiet about it. Weirdly, that's when reality started to trickle into the dream, and I realised there was no way I'd ever get away with it, one way or another, and that my girlfriend would never approve... So I decided to turn myself in to the police just before I woke up.
I wonder if that last part was a reaction to my utter disdain for that plot device most frequently used it detective TV shows, where the killer says "I had no choice but to kill that person" (sometimes almost being presented as a sympathetic character, for example, killing someone to protect a friend/lover)... Because, let's face it, whatever the situation, ending someone's life - whether one's own or someone else's - is not the only choice. Perhaps it's the intention to portray all killers as so divorced from reality that they can't see an alternative but, far too often, these characters are portrayed as everyday people up until they're revealed as the killer.
But what's worse than that, in those same TV shows where the killer committed murder (occasionally several) to 'protect' another person they supposedly care about, that person invariable shows disgust - as opposed to dismay - that this person they've supposedly known for ages would behave that way... and I don't believe for a moment that such a dramatic act could be utterly unprecedented.
Now I'm on this televisual digression, I'll mention that I've just started watching Mr. Robot... and have been very impressed so far, both with the story (even if it is a little derivative) and its presentation. The odd camera angles, the use of focus to represent the main character's state of mind and attention make it very interesting to watch without even paying attention to the story. The protagonist's warped morality and the internal dialogue - directed, amusingly, at an imaginary person who is the viewer - are compelling. I like the way his best friend and his shrink can both tell when his attention has drifted (presented briefly as a flashback or a more honest version of the conversation he's having) and snap him back to reality. The best friend also impressed me by striving to avoid being a damsel in distress, insisting that the protagonist let her succeed or fail on her own abilities, rather than step in to support her in the workplace.
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