Glieuaeiel's DJ

Cross-Dressing

A guest on a talk show demonstrates his attempt to dress like a woman. Then there's a video clip showing him in the outfit that the show's hosts create in order to teach him how to do it better. The outfit is red and black with bows in various places. I'm impressed. It makes a distinct statement while also seeming to suit the man quite well.

Group Project

We're working on our project (which is due soon) when suddenly we get assigned a new group member. That's really unfair. We have to add a new section on "Charm" (as in charisma) in order for there to be enough substance in the presentation to accommodate a new member. The rest of the group votes that I should work on this section, and it's clear that they mean this to be derogatory (by implying that my personality needs a lot of work). We sit in hostile silence for a few minutes. I decide to give them the silent treatment and work on my own for the rest of the project.

Saruman

I'm working with some friends on a level in a game. In a room near my character, a wizard starts leading a ritual which we cannot allow to be completed. We try to run amid the gathered orcs and kill things, but there are just so many of them! I score a lot of hits, but I can't see the health bars, so I don't know how much more work will be required. And I'm not focusing on just one target at a time, either: I'm just running in circles and loops, slashing at everything that I pass. I pass the wizard and take a swipe at him, but then I get a better look at his face. It's Saruman. I feel scared, now--I'm not prepared to face him.

Slightly Daring

I'm sitting in someone's lap. Feeling a bit daring, I squirm around a bit, ostensibly in order to get more comfortable.

Climbing

It's the beginning of the last level of a game. I have to climb up a rocky slope on a mountainside.

Mom's Army

My mom is an evil wizard. We would be able to deal with that, but apparently she is somehow using her powers to give similar powers to other people as well. I discover this when I overhear some men talking about how they're on their way to a ceremony gain those powers and join her army. They say that she's planning to convert one percent of the world's population, then stop, allowing them to rule over the rest of humanity. This is bad news for me and the rest of my family.

Cruelty to Animals

A woman from the housing system has taken my family's dog for a walk while we're on a camping trip. While most everyone else is distracted, I see the woman use the shock collar to zap the dog for absolutely no reason. This makes me very angry, and I immediately report the event to my dad.

Frags:

• bugs being scary
• "fly -- over [illegible] northern realms"
• orchestra audition

Salsa Skills

One of my salsa teachers (a girl) comes up to me at a dance. She says she's been really impressed by how much I've learned, and she wants to dance with me.

[Sadly, no such thing happened at the IRL dance the previous night. :'( ]

Pirate Crew

I've joined the crew of an infamous bearded pirate. There's a gigantic swimming pool inside the ship around which everyone sleeps at night. Once, I accidentally set of a musical alarm of some kind that woke up the captain. In response, he declared that there would be no music of that genre played on his ship any more. In fact, no one can even get that kind of music stuck in zir head, because there's a mind-reading device aboard that will instantly know. [The dream goes on to illustrate what the punishment would be, but I can't remember it any more.]

Out of the Frying Pan . . .

I'm near the docks of a city. There are a number of ships made of fog moored in the water. Later, a person meddles in some kind of voodoo magic that results in zir writhing on the ground, apparently feeling as though ze's being boiled alive. In order to avoid death, ze is forced to use a counterspell. But then another person standing nearby tells zir that as a side effect of the counterspell, ze is now possessed by about twenty different malignant spirits. Suddenly, the person seems very confused and dizzy.

Secret Santa (5:37)

My RH calls me into her office to receive my assignment for our house's secret santa this year. I also overhear the person before me getting her assignment, which has something to do with a basketball team. Apparently she really hates this team, because she almost starts shouting at the RH in her annoyance at this assignment.

I go back outside, where there's a party going on. My secret santa assignment walks past with a group of her friends, and they drag me over to where people are dancing. I'm still no good at "party dancing," though, so I'm not sure what to do with myself. I just stand there awkwardly amid all the flailing arms. Then I notice some volunteers trying to get through the dance floor carrying trays of drinks. I try to move out of the way for them, but I know that very few other people will.

I notice that I'm not wearing any pants, just briefs and an extra-long T-shirt. Well, if no one's bothered by it, then I guess I won't bother to change. It's kind of fun going around like this.

Someone hands me a cup, telling me there's a really delicious new drink in it. I try it, and it's pretty good. Looking over at the bar, I see the bottle that it came out of. It's marked "5% alc/vol." Now I think back on it, the drink did taste like there was alcohol in it.

Green Soccer Ball

I'm walking along a hallway with a group of people, languidly dribbling a luminescent green soccer ball. The narration tells me that it is a ball of Nutella, and it belongs to one of the guys walking nearby, the leader of the group. We go into a big room with rows of shelves, and the rest of the group starts passing the ball among themselves, trying to keep the ball's owner from getting it back. But this isn't just friendly teasing, it's malicious. Round about this time, I know I'm dreaming, but I try just to focus on what's going on around me, so that I don't leave the dream. Once, the ball rolls up to a shelf near the ball's owner, but he's standing on the other side of the shelf. Using magic powers, he zaps the ball with a bolt of lightning, and it disappears and reappears next to him. Three people start running towards him to get the ball back, but he zaps them all simultaneously, and they fly backwards to the end of the room.

Then he turns to me. To him, I know, I'm with the other people. But somehow he's willing to give me more of a chance, maybe because I respect him. (By the way, I'm a girl right now.) He warns me that he's about to zap me. Then he shoots the bolt of lightning, and I conjure a shield in front of me, in the form of a fuzzy ball of white light. The shield absorbs the lightning. He tries again, and I block it again. I guess he's impressed, and we start a conversation. But the other guys in the room are all watching us. Suddenly grinning, the guy walks up to me and takes both of my hands in his, one in each. I'm confused until I realize that he means to teleport us somewhere more private. The destination is a camp of soldiers on the eastern edge of Skyrim.

Hank Dreams (9:11)

I'm in a museum, learning about Hank Green's approach to lucid dreaming. There are several different tiers to it, and Hank warns people against trying the most vivid version without lots of practice. Personally, I think he's just being jealous about his ability to do that version, but whatever. The tour group enters a small movie theater, where we'll watch a video that has something to do with the dangerous effects of the most vivid version, which Hank calls a "Hank Dream." The video starts with Hank lying in a bed, sleep-talking to Marilyn Monroe. Some of his friends are standing around the bed, of course, including the one videotaping the whole thing. It's all in black and white. After a minute, Hank says, "Marilyn, stop. Stop! I'm already married," and everyone in the movie theater laughs. Then Hank starts sleepwalking as though blind, groping around the room, trying to find someone. The people around the bed back up, and suddenly I realize what is about to happen. "Oh, fuck," I say, jumping out of my seat and trying to get away from the movie screen. Hank stumbles after me, presumably intending to do to me whatever he had been about to do to "Marilyn." Drawing on my tae kwon do, I assume a back stance with my hands in double shooto position, preparing to fend him off. John Green laughs and explains the rest of the story: "Eventually she [Hank] gets so mad that she poops at you and storms off, and you LOSE. Except you hit her enough that after a moment she goes like this:" From a kneeling position, he slowly widens his eyes and straightens his back in an expression of surprise, then falls over backwards, apparently unconscious. It's all very comedic.

Frags:

• '"who are you?" violin player' (7:05)

Desert Sands

I'm traveling through the desert in a game, trying to get somewhere. It's interesting, because the style of the graphics changes depending on the game location. I enter a city that has a resident wizard who's been putting up some defenses. With the help of some allies, I climb a rocky cliff to where he's shooting spells at us, and one of my allies stabs him, despite the warning of a citizen that he should not. Then the citizen explains that killing the wizard won't remove the defenses, because he's cheated death using a strange temple. The temple has something to do with a green emerald, which is linked to an earlier part of the story: one of the main characters accidentally dropped something here that made it a focus point for magical energy.

Bed Space

I've been sharing a king-sized bed with two girls I know. Usually I sleep on one side or the other, but tonight, even though I get there last, I insist on sleeping in the middle.

La Madrugada

My family's woken up at the crack of dawn to go on a trip. It's dark and cold in the house, and no one seems to want to make much noise. I look over the bag of food we've packed. There are some M&Ms.

Nudism

I'm watching a video made by my aunt and her daughters. It's a sort of coming out video, where they explain about their family's nudist beliefs and then take off all of their clothes.

Acting Club

I'm standing by a car parked on the side of the road at night. The captain of the acting club is there with me, trying to figure out where the heck is everyone. We just got a whole stack of new scripts, and we need to start working on them right away if we're going to be prepared for the performance. The captain is about to give up and start recruiting new members from scratch, but another club member convinces her to wait long enough for someone to run inside the school to round people up. The person takes a while to return, and we're about to lose hope, but then we see a group of people coming around the corner far away. One person, three, four . . . ten! And more are still coming! She must have known exactly where to look for the other members. I suppose that makes sense: attendance has been pretty poor lately, but it's just because everyone's stressed about schoolwork.

Flute Solo

As a favor, I've asked a teacher to come play a piece of classical music for me. Now, another teacher and I watch as she performs an arrangement of it for solo flute. I had been worried she would refuse, so I'm glad she's doing this. She's quite good. In fact--is she somehow playing two lines of music at once? I listen closely but am unable to decide. Perhaps she's just switching between the two lines of music depending on which one has the moving notes. She reaches a climax in the music with lots of fast, leaping intervals. During the slower section after that, she interrupts the music to say to me, "Have fun practicing that." (An ensemble in which I play will be learning the same piece, soon.) A phrase later, she stops playing again to say something else, and eventually she stops playing the piece altogether, once it's clear that there are just a few slow chords remaining. The other teacher, who has been holding up a triangle in preparation to play it with the last chord, mimes teetering on the brink of playing then falling over from the waist. She's obviously saying she's disappointed that the flautist didn't properly finish the piece. After this, I think there's one more piece for us to go over.

Standing Room Only

People standing in the back are having a hard time seeing the presenter, so they keep shifting around in a counter-clockwise direction. Even though I'm back there with them, I think the constant shifting is more annoying than not being able to see. Cynthia, standing next to me, agrees. (Cynthia's a college housemate of mine, a year older than me.) Suddenly, the whole audience starts moving. Apparently the presenter noticed all the milling around in the back and decided to try to fix things himself. So now those people have made him interrupt his presentation. I hope they're happy.

As we're moving around, I stretch my arms over my head. Realizing that my left arm is behind Cynthia's head, I decide I might as well put my arm around her shoulders. It's a bit of a cliche, but I need all the help I can get. At first, Cynthia doesn't react. Then she moves my hand from above her shoulder to under her armpit, and says, in a surprised voice, "Glieuaeiel, you've put your arm around me." Like she's known all along that we're interested in each other, and the only slight surprise is that I would choose now to make a move. Then she calls me a first-year, which is an unfair dig at the fact that I'm younger than her (since in fact I'm a third-year). She's always been one to worry about not acting her age, though, so maybe it really does bother her. Anyway, it's actually a bit uncomfortable walking around in this position. [I guess the arm-around-the-shoulder thing is best used when nobody's moving.]

The presenter is saying something about wizards and what effect the concept of wizards had on our childhoods. Shortly, everyone starts moving around again, and I get separated from Cynthia. I wonder if I should try to find her again, but I decide she'll be fine on her own. I try to help out by moving some music stands, but then I realize that I'm not sure where they should go. Still holding the stands, I find a seat near the front of house left, then set the stands in front of me. Someone reaches past me to grab one of them, and I realize that the stands were supposed to be distributed so that everybody gets one. I keep one stand for myself and hand the last one to another person sitting near me.

Frags:

• A survey about preferences in fiction genres uses the word "tranny" to mean "the protagonist of a science fiction novel." It must have been written by someone old, who didn't realize that nowadays the word is an offensive term for something entirely different.

Victory

In our last confrontation with this portly, evil wizard, we left him for dead. But something feels unfinished to me, and I decide to go back into his old home to see what really happened. Inside, I see a few grotesque, mummified corpses--remnants of our last encounter. Nothing seems alive. I guess it really is over. But then I watch in shock as one of the "corpses" starts standing up. It's the wizard!

Before long, the mummy effect wears off, and he's back to his usual corpulent self. He explains that he was just playing dead, waiting for me to return so that he could get his revenge. We begin to battle. Somehow I force him to start balancing heavy objects in the air. I keep increasing the weight, until finally after I add a piano, his wizardly powers can't take the strain and he collapses, his powers spent. He's still dangerous, though, and I need to break his focus somehow if I want to have a chance to defeat him. I remember that he keeps a pot of explosive powder on the coffee table--perfect. I knock it to the ground, and the resulting "bang" and flash of sparks give me the opening I need.

Shower Regulations

Spoiler for Shower Regulations:

At this camp, nudity is required at all times in the locker rooms, although there's still strict segregation between the sexes. It's early morning now, and I'm still a bit groggy. I need to go to the bathroom, but my unfamiliarity with social nudity has given me a slight erection, which would make that difficult. I decide to take a shower instead. I consider going back into the main room, but there might be girls in there that would see me naked.

Prank War

A group of younger kids is having a prank war with a group of slightly older kids. Somehow this involves an underground train, and a room behind the tracks from which you can't escape if there's currently a train passing by. In the most recent prank, the younger kids dared the older ones to steal from the adults the supplies needed to make a special kind of warm alcoholic drink. This includes hot coals and ethanol, basically. So the bigger kids sneak into the outer room. They can't see any hot coals, and the adults might turn around at any moment, so they frantically grab a dark rock and some hot ashes, hoping that when they heat the rock with the ashes, it will be as good as a coal. What they don't know is that the little kids were plotting to get them caught.

Frags:

• At some point the words "lucid dreaming" came up, but I don't remember the context and apparently it didn't make me lucid.