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The dream I had last night was sufficiently bizarre that I want to write it down. Entertainingly I believe it was at least partially sourced from looking through my wedding photos...
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So, we were in the French countryside somewhere, and I was a young Brit assigned to be a lookout for a medium-term PoW camp (constructed while wrangling over somewhere safer to put them, no doubt). Right at that moment my job was keeping track of an escaped prisoner, who was apparently too valuable as a hostage to risk shooting in the head, or some such baloney. She looked like a cross between![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tienelle's sister Lucy and my primary school headteacher.
From my watchtower I regularly reported on her location in the forest by radio (typical LARP anachronism meant that female soldiers and PoWs were as common as male ones), but nobody seemed to be particularly interested or pay much attention, even when she crept back into the compound and opened the door of the high-security block (although they soon went in and put down the resulting uprising, they let her get away).
Eventually I handed over duty to another, and on my way back to barracks I had a rather strange conversation with a guy who looked rather like Tom de Rivaz, who appeared to be giving me ominous warnings and trying to recruit me to some kind of secret society. I blanked him, and headed onwards, ending up in a cluster of people around a noticeboard.
On the noticeboard was an advert for some kind of fluffy 'break free from the Nazi ideology' course, interesting to me because it was in roughly the format of all of the 'learn more about Jesus Christ' courses that you see offered but appeared to be entirely secular and indeed asked for a monetary contribution.
It was apparently being run by a lady who looked likebouteillebleu who bustled over and explained that the contribution was waived in the camp - she'd tried putting it down to a fiver but they really don't have any money, do they? - and was mostly for the printing of materials and the running of radio transmitters to deliver the course into enemy territory.
I was just starting to harangue people for not paying enough attention to the escaped prisoner when my mobile phone rang (apparently this was another deliberately incorporated anachronism). Answering it, I heard the escaped prisoner on the other end. In silky tones she informed me (while I was standing in a crowd of people looking expectantly at me) that if I valued my life I would return to (guy played by Tom de Rivaz) and reconsider my options.
I made frantic 'she's on the phone, go and trace it, radio genius people' gestures and whispers at the assembled crowd, but only one of them wandered off to do that, and with a last evil laugh the phone went dead before they could get anywhere anyway.
"It's the escaped prisoner," I said. "Watch your backs, she's recruiting."
At that moment Tom de Rivaz's character and one played byandroidkiller walked into sight and the former looked down at me knowingly and in a kind of displeased fashion, but before I could react to that, a lady who looked like a cross between my primary school headteacher and another of tienelle's relatives, Vivian (notably she has red hair), had tapped me on the shoulder and asked for a quiet word.
We headed into a hut which turned out to contain a modernish bathroom (a room with a bath, a toilet and a sink in it). She sat down on the closed toilet while I perched on the edge of the tub. Opening a notebook, she said something like, "Well, we'll have to recruit you for the (insert name of known Brit spy organisation here), won't we?"
I nodded my assent, as that sounded like a very good idea given that the other side's spy organisation apparently had me in their sights. The notebook page was covered with military-looking acronyms, some kind of unit designators. "So, let's test your knowledge of German militiary designations," she said.
I started to mentally flick through names of aircraft and divisions - I remember one was 'Panzerbjorne' - but at that point we were interrupted by the sound of gunfire from outside.
Two Nazis burst into the room before we could react. One of them, who looked liketheinquisitor, knocked the other lady out with the fire extinguisher he was carrying, whilst the other one (Tom de Rivas) leapt for me with a couple of throwing knives in hand that he'd obviously just dropped down from his sleeve, knocking us both back into the bath tub.
We grappled for a few moments, both trying to gain control of the knives, but thentheinquisitor's Nazi turned around and seeing that I might be able to get the upper hand, sprayed us both with the fire extinguisher. (The actual mechanism for this was that he opened his arms in a cone, waved them a bit and yelled "CARBON", which was some kind of 'spraying you with carbon dioxide fire extinguisher' call.)
Having fortunately let Tom De Rivas' Nazi take most of the blast, I held my breath and vaulted out of the tub pasttheinquisitor who had his hands full of fire extinguisher, getting out into the open air as fast as possible. Within a few steps I had an awful lot of guns pointed at me, but then there was a cry, "Don't shoot! She's one of mine."
I looked up and sawedith_the_hutt beckoning me over. This was the point where I got around to mentally reviewing the fight and realising that I had broken ribs, so I stumbled across in a rather pained fashion, exchanging a rueful grin with another girl I recognised as another Brit (she looked quite a lot like Gracewing but with blonde hair).
"Were you on Team Beta as well?" she asked. I nodded ruefully, not trusting myself to speak, and she seemed satisfied.
We went to sit on some steps while the Nazis finished securing the camp, andedith_the_hutt explained that he'd saved me because he was quite fond of me, but I had better be on my best behaviour from now on, and not cause his trust to have been misplaced.
(Then it wasn't very restful snoozing with occasional dream-moments of having broken ribs, and nothing appeared to be happening much that I could interact with without moving, so I got up.)
-----
A brief digression, probably more interesting than the dream writeup: I noticed while writing up this dream that I don't remember proper nouns from dreams at all. Names of people and organisations in dreams come up in my memory as 'signifier: (properties of organisation or person)' rather than an actual word with a spelling and how to say it (sometimes they come with the ghost of one, e.g. the spy organisation mentioned is tagged 'begins with G, something like Grenadiers but not').
I think this might explain slightly more what I mean when I say 'signifier' (it's like a pointer in my brain which often is labelled to look like a word but doesn't have to be). When I complain about having primary key collisions with names, that's because the words are linked to signifiers (and any mention of the signifier's label fires off the signifier, making me very confused when people share the names I've labelled people-signifiers with).
This is probably still just uninformed and not quite correct babbling though :).
Oh, and the wedding photo link? There's a picture of Inq looking _really_ sarcastic, plenty of pictures of Edith looking avuncular, and relevant pictures of the featured relatives oftienelle, which I think I got the faces for those characters from...
---
So, we were in the French countryside somewhere, and I was a young Brit assigned to be a lookout for a medium-term PoW camp (constructed while wrangling over somewhere safer to put them, no doubt). Right at that moment my job was keeping track of an escaped prisoner, who was apparently too valuable as a hostage to risk shooting in the head, or some such baloney. She looked like a cross between
tienelle's sister Lucy and my primary school headteacher.From my watchtower I regularly reported on her location in the forest by radio (typical LARP anachronism meant that female soldiers and PoWs were as common as male ones), but nobody seemed to be particularly interested or pay much attention, even when she crept back into the compound and opened the door of the high-security block (although they soon went in and put down the resulting uprising, they let her get away).
Eventually I handed over duty to another, and on my way back to barracks I had a rather strange conversation with a guy who looked rather like Tom de Rivaz, who appeared to be giving me ominous warnings and trying to recruit me to some kind of secret society. I blanked him, and headed onwards, ending up in a cluster of people around a noticeboard.
On the noticeboard was an advert for some kind of fluffy 'break free from the Nazi ideology' course, interesting to me because it was in roughly the format of all of the 'learn more about Jesus Christ' courses that you see offered but appeared to be entirely secular and indeed asked for a monetary contribution.
It was apparently being run by a lady who looked like
bouteillebleu who bustled over and explained that the contribution was waived in the camp - she'd tried putting it down to a fiver but they really don't have any money, do they? - and was mostly for the printing of materials and the running of radio transmitters to deliver the course into enemy territory.I was just starting to harangue people for not paying enough attention to the escaped prisoner when my mobile phone rang (apparently this was another deliberately incorporated anachronism). Answering it, I heard the escaped prisoner on the other end. In silky tones she informed me (while I was standing in a crowd of people looking expectantly at me) that if I valued my life I would return to (guy played by Tom de Rivaz) and reconsider my options.
I made frantic 'she's on the phone, go and trace it, radio genius people' gestures and whispers at the assembled crowd, but only one of them wandered off to do that, and with a last evil laugh the phone went dead before they could get anywhere anyway.
"It's the escaped prisoner," I said. "Watch your backs, she's recruiting."
At that moment Tom de Rivaz's character and one played by
androidkiller walked into sight and the former looked down at me knowingly and in a kind of displeased fashion, but before I could react to that, a lady who looked like a cross between my primary school headteacher and another of tienelle's relatives, Vivian (notably she has red hair), had tapped me on the shoulder and asked for a quiet word.We headed into a hut which turned out to contain a modernish bathroom (a room with a bath, a toilet and a sink in it). She sat down on the closed toilet while I perched on the edge of the tub. Opening a notebook, she said something like, "Well, we'll have to recruit you for the (insert name of known Brit spy organisation here), won't we?"
I nodded my assent, as that sounded like a very good idea given that the other side's spy organisation apparently had me in their sights. The notebook page was covered with military-looking acronyms, some kind of unit designators. "So, let's test your knowledge of German militiary designations," she said.
I started to mentally flick through names of aircraft and divisions - I remember one was 'Panzerbjorne' - but at that point we were interrupted by the sound of gunfire from outside.
Two Nazis burst into the room before we could react. One of them, who looked like
theinquisitor, knocked the other lady out with the fire extinguisher he was carrying, whilst the other one (Tom de Rivas) leapt for me with a couple of throwing knives in hand that he'd obviously just dropped down from his sleeve, knocking us both back into the bath tub. We grappled for a few moments, both trying to gain control of the knives, but then
theinquisitor's Nazi turned around and seeing that I might be able to get the upper hand, sprayed us both with the fire extinguisher. (The actual mechanism for this was that he opened his arms in a cone, waved them a bit and yelled "CARBON", which was some kind of 'spraying you with carbon dioxide fire extinguisher' call.)Having fortunately let Tom De Rivas' Nazi take most of the blast, I held my breath and vaulted out of the tub past
theinquisitor who had his hands full of fire extinguisher, getting out into the open air as fast as possible. Within a few steps I had an awful lot of guns pointed at me, but then there was a cry, "Don't shoot! She's one of mine."I looked up and saw
edith_the_hutt beckoning me over. This was the point where I got around to mentally reviewing the fight and realising that I had broken ribs, so I stumbled across in a rather pained fashion, exchanging a rueful grin with another girl I recognised as another Brit (she looked quite a lot like Gracewing but with blonde hair)."Were you on Team Beta as well?" she asked. I nodded ruefully, not trusting myself to speak, and she seemed satisfied.
We went to sit on some steps while the Nazis finished securing the camp, and
edith_the_hutt explained that he'd saved me because he was quite fond of me, but I had better be on my best behaviour from now on, and not cause his trust to have been misplaced.(Then it wasn't very restful snoozing with occasional dream-moments of having broken ribs, and nothing appeared to be happening much that I could interact with without moving, so I got up.)
-----
A brief digression, probably more interesting than the dream writeup: I noticed while writing up this dream that I don't remember proper nouns from dreams at all. Names of people and organisations in dreams come up in my memory as 'signifier: (properties of organisation or person)' rather than an actual word with a spelling and how to say it (sometimes they come with the ghost of one, e.g. the spy organisation mentioned is tagged 'begins with G, something like Grenadiers but not').
I think this might explain slightly more what I mean when I say 'signifier' (it's like a pointer in my brain which often is labelled to look like a word but doesn't have to be). When I complain about having primary key collisions with names, that's because the words are linked to signifiers (and any mention of the signifier's label fires off the signifier, making me very confused when people share the names I've labelled people-signifiers with).
This is probably still just uninformed and not quite correct babbling though :).
Oh, and the wedding photo link? There's a picture of Inq looking _really_ sarcastic, plenty of pictures of Edith looking avuncular, and relevant pictures of the featured relatives of
tienelle, which I think I got the faces for those characters from...
