Imagine if you will that your created world is real and that your characters are real and they see you as just another person. Kind of like the movie Delirious.

But at the same time you are the guardian of your creation, protecting it from the world and characters of other creators. But what if you had come up with some innovation that another creator wanted to take for his world?

And your two worlds were about to collide? You had agreed to a crossover but you discover a plan for his characters to remove you from the picture using your innovation against you. Because the greatest innovations in these world's of imagination and creation are of course weapons…

And you have to rally your characters to fight his without them realizing what kind of world they live in and at the same time figure out who you can and can't trust. Sometimes the lines between characters and worlds can blur…

I had a dream like that. I was going to do crossover comics with someone else only to have one of my characters tell me this other author was plotting my destruction and the theft of the Robofemoids. But not just for a story. Because after all these worlds were real as much as they were our creations.

That's complex!

If I had that dream I know it'd turn out all right and I'd win.
-not because I'm conceited, that's just because that's the pattern all my dreams have if they're causing me worry, anxiety, or even terror. I just have an “auto-win” function, no mater what.
It's not even lucid dreaming, I just magically find an RPG-7 behind my couch, or put my hand in my pocket and pull out a 1911 automatic, or find a katana at my side…
If it's a bigger threat the world just changes to make it something I can more easily deal with.

A REAL bad dream for me is when I get things that I want! The “good” dreams with the sexy women, expensive cars, fame, fortune, acclaim, even good times with great friends or dead relatives- dreams where things go RIGHT 100% are the ones that leave me feeling like utter crap when I wake up because none of it was true. :(

Dreams that put you in an emotional state are hard to categorise- Usually it just involves dialogue, like an argument for example. Having a realistic argument in a dream can make me wake up feeling EXACTLY as angry as I was, and leave with that “on edge” bad mood feeling all day, as if I have to respond to some non-existent attack… It's annoying.

All too often the dream spends a lot of time setting up the problem. This one ended just as I and Belinda Brandon recognized what was going on and the conundrum we faced. And my inner voice telling me that I couldn't divulge to her that she was not a real person. Though my wife was…

Odd. This reminds me of the Joker. People say he's insane. However, I think he's not. Rather, he's very aware of what he and his world really are. He's one of the few characters I know of who breaks the fourth wall a LOT in all media he's presentv in. It also explains his behavior. He will kill anyone because of what they are… creations of some writer or artist put there to entertain their audience. And I guess in my own mind the Joker antagonizes the Batman in a misguided effort to make him realize this as well. That's my take on it.

Lonnehart wrote:
Odd. This reminds me of the Joker. People say he's insane. However, I think he's not. Rather, he's very aware of what he and his world really are. He's one of the few characters I know of who breaks the fourth wall a LOT in all media he's presentv in. It also explains his behavior. He will kill anyone because of what they are… creations of some writer or artist put there to entertain their audience. And I guess in my own mind the Joker antagonizes the Batman in a misguided effort to make him realize this as well. That's my take on it.

That is a form of schizophrenia. Even Shakespeare knew it as a form of madness, hence the play within a play in Hamlet and the rarely performed prologue to Taming of the Shrew.

In my dream last night, I was a caveman type person. From a time long ago, living in a tree… I lived with two women on my tree platform, we all had dirty blonde/reddish hair and very light brown skin.

Three people in an adjacent tree dominated us, owning us like their slaves or something. One man and two women. They were bald and had bone white skin.

There was an ebony tree that we made bows and arrows from for hunting, but the wood was bone white like those people instead of black, and the wood was too hard for bows- they'd often break after the second shot.

Something happened and I rebelled against the white skinned people. I waited till the man emerged from his tree and then I shot him in the face. The arrow didn't kill him though, it just lodged in his sinus bones. He pulled it out and threw it away. I had to run because my bow had broken.

I took the women and we escaped into the jungle. I knew the man would die eventually from infection, but that could take weeks. Meanwhile I had to make another weapon…
The dream faded away before I could get one.

ozoneocean wrote:
In my dream last night, I was a caveman type person. From a time long ago, living in a tree… I lived with two women on my tree platform, we all had dirty blonde/reddish hair and very light brown skin.

Three people in an adjacent tree dominated us, owning us like their slaves or something. One man and two women. They were bald and had bone white skin.

…

That's similar to the story in one of those caveman movies of the 1960s. Was it bad over exposed Koda color too? If it had been my dream there would have been three wisecracking silhouettes at the bottom of the frame. I have had dreams like that where I reduced the tension by turning into a MST3K scenario.

Ha! I think the similarity in stories is due to the absolute simplicity of the set-up. It's a very basic scenario. I'm sure in a movie version there'd be sex and hijinks as well :)
Unfortunately not in this case :( The women and I only shared captivity.

———-

A funny thing happened today that got me thinking:
I was listening to a sitcom on BBC radio 4 (over the TuneIn radio app on my phone). The BBC messed up the playback though, it was getting slightly slower and slower, just a teeny little bit at a time. I only noticed it because characters were sounding “fatter”, chubbier…
As it slowed down more they started to sound obese!

I know that if you breathe in sulfur hexafluoride you get a deep voice because sound travels slower through it. So could it be that fat people (not in all cases) have slower vibrating vocal chords for some reason? Or that the sound resonates more and takes a little longer to get out because of the increased mass it travels through?

Actually some very obese people can have high pitched voices because excess weight can lengthen the vocal cords.

And then there was the study that found that mezzo sopranos weighed less that alto sopranos…

Opera singers are pretty exceptional though, definitely NOT the norm.
Shorter chords usually make for higher voices in most cases- the vast majority: hence why children and proportional dwarves (not Achondroplasiac dwarves), and just shorter people like jockeys, have higher voices.

Other factors are loose or damaged vocal chords, bone density, and things going on with the tongue, teeth, and nose…

Speaking of voices, haha, check out Alanna Ubach in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4zoubokk0

OH MY GOD what a voice! LOVE it! I would love to see her as a kick arse hero in an action movie with that voice. It's amazing!

I think it's more of a perception that fat people have deeper voices - as their voices deepened your mental picture of them expanded to compensate.
Most people I can think of who might be described as overweight have less resonant voices, often pitched higher, with a few notable exceptions like an enormous opera singer.

Guys like Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker were pretty slim on the other hand and their voices were so resonant, they sounded like they were singing an octave lower than they actually were. I do think height plays a part over all, but some short people have exceptionally long, thick cords.

Those are long chords LOL!
Nah, height plays THE most major role. Shorties with deep voices are the exception. It happens but it's exceptional.

With the BBC radioplay though, as the voices slowed, they sounded like they came from larger people. You could “hear” the padding of cheeks and the fleshiness of chin and face, the movement of jowls…

Let's say that rather than just being “fatter” voices, they were “fatter and older” voices. Like an older woman with big lips and heavy jowls.
Do you know what I mean? Slow and careful.

Or say if you're talking while your face is recovering from a numbing injection at the dentist… Along those lines maybe.

You know that can all be achieved through voice training and proper breathing? Amazing what choir practice or singing lessons can do for a voice.

And tobacco use helps considerably to get a richer deeper voices. Look at Winston Churchill. He first entered Parliament with a squeaky voice and a decade of cigars and brandy later he was the deep rich vocal tones we all love from those WWII speeches. ;-D

But no amount of cigars could help George Patton.

Ohhh, cigarettes can do strange things to voices. Ever hear Hyena Hell?

She's a short, shapely, beautiful woman, with a voice that would make Patton run for a bunker and hide. XD

Extended yelling and/or being surrounded by loud noise does funny things to your voice too. I think Oz is the only one who has heard me speak, ( unless you listen to 5+ year-old quackcasts.) but I have a pretty normal mid-range tenor most of the time.

Except for after a week of field ops or working in a loud shop. The more I yell and deafer I go, the more I start to sound like the barking hounds of hell baying after some lost soul. My voice drops almost an octave and starts getting a grainy snarling tone, and I'm not the only one. My ex used to sound like she had just gargled a boiling vat of lead and spent a few hours smoking entire cartons of cigarettes after a week of her out running training with the Army.

As NCO's we had a marching command exercise where we had to march a section from the other side of a drill field. Not only did we have to pay attention to step and command but our voice had to carry.

Breathe from the diaphragm. In the Army a southern drawl inflection also tends to creep in. It is one way to get a sort of sing song to calling cadence.

Voices can be affected by age if you don't treat them right… (well, shouting and smoking etc as you guys say- all fits into “age” though).

Hands too! I worry about damaging mine and ruining my drawing ability, ever since my thumb was paralysed (TWICE)

Skin as well. I make sure I use my sunscreen well. The sun can really mess it up!

You get lulled into a false sense of security because you heal fast all the way into your 20s, but after that you lose your “autosave” feature, the training wheels are off and you're playing with the bigboys! Having an adult body means that “easy mode” is turned off.

Ironscarf wrote:
I think it's more of a perception that fat people have deeper voices-

Made me think of this

Being on the optimistic side of middle age, I have a lot of thoughts about aging. I like Oz's example that older age means you're no longer playing in easy mode. Still, following the well researched advice about eating quality nutrients, staying hydrated, getting adequate body and mind rest (and, yes, Sunscreen!) can take you a long way. Until I was 40 I looked young for my age. That is no longer true and I totally credit emotional stress.

As far as voice, I smoked for over 30 years. And there was about 5? 8? years that I buddied up with way too many wine bottles a week. But for the past 10 years or so, no one can differentiate my “Hello” from my daughter's when we pick up the phone.

In our case, we can be loud, even flamboyant, when we want to be, but our fallback position is to quietly observe, she probably more so than I, and our voices reflect that.

As Indy said, “It ain't the years, it's the mileage. ”

A few years ago I saw a 1975 Plymouth Valiant with under 35,000 original miles. Beautiful, you could almost smell the new car smell after nearly 30 years. In 1982 I owned a 1975 Duster with a 110,000 miles on it and it was falling apart. Same color scheme, same chassis and drive train but all the difference was the mileage.

What is he thing with the “new car smell”?
That stink makes me want to vomit my entire stomach out through my nose. :(
It's made up of hazardous fumes apparently so that seems the right response.

Maybe it's just because I'm more sensitive to chemical smells than the average joe? -Or rather I become sensitised to them. Like when I used to oil paint I liked the smells but gradually sensitised to it so much I found it sickening and couldn't be in the same room for long with it.

Perfumes, fuels, aftershaves… toxic crap in the shed. All get to me BAAAAD. But not just ANY smell, only certain “chemical” ones.
It's probably one thing that has subtle changes like Formaldehyde: CH2O.

I know that causes a bad reaction on its own.
I used to have to wear an expensive double filter respirator mask and goggles when working with MDF because the smoke from it when I drilled or cut it would screw my head (sinus on fire, leading to headaches and sickness). The dust was just as bad.

You don't drive, nor do you own a car. So you would not understand. It's not what you're thinking at all. It's a smell of freshness, that you're the first guy to open the door. The first one to open the shrink wrap on some magical box.

It sometimes smells like pine, or fabric softener. But not like mold release or stale lubricant, bright white grease fresh and pure as snow. But not like chemical preservatives. Nothing bitter or stinky. Pure and new and ready to go.

Like that brand new, reconditioned M2 fifty caliber machine gun I unpacked, the brand new Kevlar helmets stinking of pine. Like that. Not the reek of my solvents and paint. I have worked with them for 40 plus years. Formaldehyde is nothing compared to lacquer thinners and methyl ethyl ketone.

To be honest dude, I think most other people are just de-sensitized to it. I know I start hocking up a lung whenever I spend to long doing stuff in a dark room. All the iodine in the chemical cleaners and whatnot gets to me, but melting PVC or curing acrylic? Nothin'.

Though all the smells are toxic, different irritants will evoke stronger responses in different people. But MEK remains EVIL. Pour some into a box of Styrofoam and the fumes could wipe out a small town. Acrylic is nothing compared to melting styrene. Polystyrene is very nasty, I can practically drink liquid Acrylic but dissolve styrene in MEK and you're ready to wipe out a few villages in India.

Ah… the smell of new things… I guess I like the smell of brand new computer components when I unpack them (like when I bought my current CPU, the FX 8350 4GHZ Black Edition). Of course, there was one smell that brings back memories for me. Mostly because at the time with my sister being a first time mother I got saddled with taking care of my eldest niece who is now almost like a daughter to me (and probably the closest I'll ever get to having one).

oh… video link.

Sci Show: Why Do Babies Smell So Good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQulV8cjAq8

Babies smell gross.

I remember once I smelled a terrible, choking stink while riding on a train. It got worse and worse. It smelled like burning plastic and oil. No one else seemed to be able to smell it or at least they didn't mind it enough to really react.
I had to change to the next carriage, till the smell got too strong there, then got off the train to wait for the next one.
The other passengers just didn't seem to mind.

ozoneocean wrote:

I remember once I smelled a terrible, choking stink while riding on a train. It got worse and worse. It smelled like burning plastic and oil. No one else seemed to be able to smell it or at least they didn't mind it enough to really react.
I had to change to the next carriage, till the smell got too strong there, then got off the train to wait for the next one.
The other passengers just didn't seem to mind.

That is when you speak to the conductor or other train crewman because it could be the brakes draining away or the hydraulics in the door burning out. When you are on a vehicle every day (train, bus, truck) and there is a sudden strong smell you don't recognize… let someone know.

Point is “don't recognize” If you know it's vomit, someone puked on the train.

On the platform you're going to smell diesel exhaust and hydraulic fluid. But if you're in the car and there's a sudden sweet smell burning the back of your throat?

Hey, conductor isn't that the brake linings?
Nah, the engine is just burning oil.
Burns oil like that it'll seize up. And the exhaust supposed to be black and sooty like that? Isn't this the 21st Century?

There're are no conductors, just the occasional pair of guards, which are only on some trains. I think I filed off a feedback note through the website on my phone. In the 21st century that's the only way to get in contact with these idiots -_-

I have fond memories from train travel back in the late 1980s-
Back then they were retooling to introduce a band new fleet of electric trains, but during the transition they got rid of ALL the old diesel trains, all they had were historical wooden carriages from the the early 20'th century… maybe the ‘20s or older. Towed by old diesel freight engines.

The lights were never on unless it was night. There was no air conditioning or electric doors or anything. They were dark inside and HOT as HELL in the summer. But you could open the doors yourself and try and get a cooling breeze that way. They even had the old conductors back then with their little ticket printing machines.
Back then the station infrastructure was also pretty old. It was really charming (old stations, old bridge walkways, old signal boxes etc)

But they eventually wiped all that interesting stuff off of the map and blanded it all up with shitty modern crap.
OK, older stuff costs a lot more to maintain, but the charm it lends and the tourism value of that sort of stuff is incalculable! When it doubt, always try and keep older stuff like that. It’s what makes or breaks a lot of places as destinations around the world.

Getting into nostalgia mode looking up the old computers from the last century. Hard to believe they were cheap back in the day. Then again I'm thinking in todays money as I'm pretty sure back then a hundred pounds (the British currency, not the American weight measurement) was quite a bit of money back then for a ZX Spectrum. Still, it was cheaper than the C64 which came in at over three times that amount.

The programmers for the old Spectrum were geniuses I think, working within the limits of the ZX Spectrum. Despite the games on the machine reminding me of the old Apple II computer games the stuff on the ZX Spectrum looks pretty interesting. Too bad if you want music in your game though… you need the ZX Spectrum 128 for that. And a TV (the machines didn't require its own dedicated monitor as it used RF out to connect to any analog TV).

Still trying to wrap my head around the QAOP control setup (I'm so VERY used to WASD)…

So my cataract surgery has been scheduled for the right eye. And tonight my left eye started to get flashes. I had a detached retina 15 years ago and I was warned to be wary of any flashes because it could mean the retina has torn again.

I called the doctor so we'll see but flashes in the periphery of one eye while the other is all cloudy can be very distracting. And if I go blind none of you will ever have to put up with me again. :-D

bravo1102 wrote:
So my cataract surgery has been scheduled for the right eye. And tonight my left eye started to get flashes. I had a detached retina 15 years ago and I was warned to be wary of any flashes because it could mean the retina has torn again.

I called the doctor so we'll see but flashes in the periphery of one eye while the other is all cloudy can be very distracting. And if I go blind none of you will ever have to put up with me again. :-D

Yikes! We'd rather put up with you than have you go blind! I hope you get those taken care of soon! :(

And just letting anyone know who's interested in making games that Humble Bundle has a Clickteam Fusion bundle. Here's the link. :)

https://www.humblebundle.com/clickteam-fusion-bundle