Dream Theory - Commentary - Ch. 7-8 (Patreon)

Surprise!  We are going to get Blake’s point of view in this story!  Isn’t that great?  Isn’t that wonderful?  Weren’t you expecting it??  You probably were, because you thought “oh no what’s going to happen to Yang I really need to know so I probably won’t know next week.”  

That’s exactly what you thought, right?  You’re a psychic, because I thought the same thing!

We’ll get back to Yang eventually, but first we get a little piece of Blake’s mind.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m trying to figure out which other stories I’ve done a non one-to-one point-of-view switch.  I think RCR started out without any particular methodology for switching POVs, although I’m trying to switch back and forth each chapter now.  The Fire Within?  I can’t remember that story very well, but I think that was also an irregular one in terms of POV switching. 

I prefer to stick to one-to-one or just a solo POV for a story because anything else feels very...chaotic.  To me, at least.  When I’m outlining a story, knowing that I’m switching back and forth or just sticking to one keeps my mind on track.  Without that formula, the drafting process becomes very much like:  “But I can make anyone’s chapter next.”

Also, I like to keep things fair in terms of POVs (if I’m going to switch at all).  Using one character’s POV for only a couple of chapters lets us peek into their mind but not get to know them very well, and what’s the point of that?  (This should tell you to expect about an equal number of Blake’s to Yang’s chapters…)

For Dream Theory, I considered using only Yang’s POV, then realized that Blake’s perspective could be really illuminating.  Not just on the mysteries surrounding her disappearance, but also on her way of thinking and how she uses the Dreamscape.

Oh, by the way, I don’t think I mentioned it yet, but the title of this story was originally going to be “Dreamscape.”  Then I was going to use “Daydreamer.”  Ultimately, I ended up with Dream Theory because that’s what ties everything together.  Dreamscape and Daydreamer are the systems that Blake uses her expert Dream Theory skills to school the heck out of.

And, from what we see in Chapter 7, she’s very, very good.  Especially compared to Yang.  (Poor Yang...) But, as has been alluded to since the beginning of the story, Blake isn’t ‘good’ in a ‘she’d done this a lot’ type of way.  She’s good as in ‘a natural and one of the best in the world’ type of good.  So when we see what she’s capable of doing in a dream, and how easily she does it, try to keep that in mind.  There aren’t millions of people running around who can do what she does.  There’s more like a handful.

You probably noticed, but I snuck a little callback to canon into this chapter as Blake describes the emotions Yang displays with her eyes.  We also see it again in Chapter 8 when Yang actually gets angry (more on that chapter later.)

From bright, cheery violet to a stormy, grey-tinged lilac, Yang’s eyes were windows into her thoughts and emotions.  Those who knew her well could pick up the changes, with one of Ruby’s favorite lines being ‘stop being so raspberry’ - a reference to the reddish-tinge that appeared when Yang was angry or especially annoyed. 

Just like canon, Yang’s got red eyes!  Only during dreams though, as her emotions slip through.

One of the most important reasons why I wanted to show Blake’s POV was to hear her inner dialogue on why she made the decision to stay away.  Yang is obviously struggling to understand why anyone would ever do that, but Blake gives us a clearer understanding on how she feels.  

This is my way of convincing readers that she didn’t just make a rash, stupid decision.  And this is a bit of a delicate process sometimes, because you need the character to make a complicated and, in some cases, ‘dumb’ decision to create a compelling story.  At least, that’s how the decision appears on the surface.  But it can’t look dumb all the way through (unless you’re writing a purposefully dumb character...).

Fortunately for me, Blake happens to have a canon MO for running away and thinking that her absence will keep others safe.  And, as we see in Chapter 7, she wants to go home.  She wants to be with Yang, but she’s also scared.  And fear can be a powerful emotion.

Something else she hints at but doesn’t explain is that she feels guilty.  She feels responsible, like she’s done something wrong.  This brings me back to What Defines Us, where Weiss was so hard on herself because of how guilty she felt.  While similar, it’s also very different, as Blake still thinks Yang is safe (well, for the moment anyway), and she’s trying to fix her mistake.  Whatever that mistake is.  (We’ll find out later.)

Weiss tried to atone for her mistake by punishing herself, where Blake is trying to fix her mistake before anyone figures it out (secrets secrets are no fun...).  She also makes a couple of comments - one in Chapter 7 and one in Chapter 8 - that imply she’s scared of Yang finding out what she did.  In Chapter 7:

She wanted to explain everything and beg for Yang’s forgiveness.  But she was too far into this now, so far that her only choice was to continue her research and hope she found a breakthrough like Yang had.

Plus, what would Yang think if she discovered the truth?  What would she think if she figured out Blake’s role in this?  What would she say when she realized the situation Blake put them in - not just the two of them, but everyone?  

And in Chapter 8: 

Yang couldn’t know, could she?  Had she found out, somehow?  Had she investigated Dreamscape further?  Had she somehow stumbled across Blake’s secret?

“Won’t you let me explain?” she asked as desperation clawed within her.  “I can explain.”

We’ll learn more about that later, as Blake’s secret is a big part of what drives her right now.  Her secret, but also her fear of what Yang will think if she finds out, are driving her decisions.

One of my favorite parts about writing this story was using a setting that’s who knows how many years in the future.  (I actually don’t know how many because I never decided on a timeframe.)  Multiple times throughout the story, I’d write something completely blaise only to stop myself and think  ‘Wait a second...this is the future.  Why are they still using legal pads??’  I’d then change it or, in this case, make an argument for why Blake uses pen and paper to keep notes.  But she mentions how archaic the practice is, for good measure.

This happened again in Chapter 8 during the library scene.  Originally, I’d planned to describe a big, beautiful library filled with books.  Then I realized...are there really going to be that many books around?  So many people use e-readers these days, it didn’t seem very probable.  That changed the scene from a library filled with books to a library with an exhibition of books.  Libraries then become, in a sense, more of a meeting/reading/collaborative workspace for people to use.  

I think libraries are kind of moving that direction anyway, so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for books to eventually become something of a novelty.

Back to Chapter 7 and our greater mystery, where we learn that Blake did know Greyson, the poor intern whose name I can never spell correctly.  Which is dumb, because I picked his name.  Maybe I should’ve gone with something easier, like Paul or John or something...

But I picked it, so that’s what it is!  And we find out that Blake knew him, which would lead us to assume she worked with him while he was interning at Dreamscape Industries.  Her assessment of him seems to point even more towards that fact:

Ambition was his undoing - a weakness that made him susceptible to forces he wasn’t prepared or warned to fight against.

And then we have her guilt over his passing, along with everyone else at the train station, which she feels responsible for.  So what did she do?  And what’s going on?  As you’ve probably already guessed, she gives us a hint that Daydreamer’s release is important.  But even she doesn’t know what will happen once the new system hits the shelves, so she’s missing important pieces of information in this puzzle. 

Which she’s trying to get by going a little Inception-esque on some poor dude from the marketing department.  But he sounds a little sleazy, so I think he kind of deserved it.

This is a moment I chose to show what she’s trying to do, but also how good she is at it.  She’s learning everything she can about someone’s life, which is probably available online, then using that knowledge to pass herself off as a figment of imagination.  She basically stole his wife’s dream-identity.

She also gives us some good explanation on how she uses the Dreamscape, and what separates her from other dream theorists.  She mentions the dangers, especially of forcing oneself into a dream, which implies that while the Dreamscapes are awesome, they are still reserved mostly for times of sleep.  And then she mentions how there’s another realm that dreamers can enter if they fully let go of themselves.  I can’t even imagine what that would feel like...to let go of yourself...but it must be pretty weird.

It’s also somewhat of a contradiction, as she points out.  Dream theorists are trained to hold onto their identity to make sure they don’t lose themselves to a dream.  To enter this other realm though, the darkzone, they have to let go of that identity yet still be able to recollect it at will.  The more I think about it, the scarier it sounds.  (And the harder it sounds…)

I liked Blake’s description of what it meant to intrude into a stranger’s dream here - akin to walking into someone’s house uninvited.  I feel like most people would immediately get scared and aggressive.  Some might be cautious, depending on what type of person walked in and how they presented themselves.  Very few would be openly accepting, I think.

But what if that person believed you were someone they knew?  That totally flips the script, doesn’t it?  You would let your guard down, which is exactly what Blake counts on Martin doing.  She basically waltzes into his dream masquerading as his guilty conscious, which I think is great.  Not so much for Martin, but again...he’s kind of a sleazeball.

I enjoyed the sequence in his house so much, as Blake basically does anything she wants, yet in a subtle, non threatening way.  She creates a noise upstairs to give herself reason to investigate.  She moves the step under Martin’s foot so he misses her arm when he tries to touch her (remember, he could touch her if she was his subconscious, but not if she’s another dreamer).  And the poor guy’s like...what the heck is happening?

Blake’s thoughts during this dream sequence give us a couple more reasons to be wary of this new technology.  The first: 

Everyone seemed to have one these days, not realizing or caring that the process of creating a prefab surrendered vital details about their livelihoods for storage at Dreamscape’s main headquarters.

Imagining scanning everything in your house and sending those images to one of the biggest companies in the world.  Think of the privacy concerns.  Think of the type of information they could have access to from who knows what kinds of people.  All in the name of creating a fancier dream.

And then there’s the concept of losing track of your reality: 

“Honey, I can explain,” he said instead, falling into the trap every dreamer fell into when pressed too far.  He knew it was a dream, but it was too lifelike to fight against.  Instead of taking control of the situation, he played into it, feeling like he could explain it all away.

It was a dangerous situation - one in which he could easily lose his grip on what was real and what wasn’t.  The longer this went on, the harder it would be for him to accept his ‘real’ reality.

And then she drops this snippet with little explanation:

Even though very few dreamers had the skill necessary to harm her, it was an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. 

‘The skill necessary to harm her.’

Just pointing that out...in case you missed it...

On to Blake’s current living situation, which is, as she describes it: a relatively-rundown apartment building on the far side of the globe.  She also makes a small comment:

From a respected dream theorist to a suspected spy hiding in one of the places society forgot...it was quite the fall.

I think it’s important to keep in mind what a blow to the ego and psyche she’s taken.  Not only did she lose the love of her life and her freedom, but she also lost her job - and she was great at her job.

A small note on Blake’s noisy neighbors, I initially intended for them to be a bigger part of the story, in which case I would’ve used Sun and Neptune as the party boys across the hall.  I even considered that Blake was friends with Sun, enough of a friend that she would ask him to wake her up from her midday dreaming sessions.  And then I could add the whole ‘Sun likes her but obviously she can’t like him back’ angle.

But that just seemed like a lot.  It’s a lot of plot and development to put into additional characters, and it detracts from the central story (in my head, at least).  Especially when Blake’s focus is Yang and ‘fixing her mistakes’ (as it should be).  And, most importantly, Blake’s on the run - why would she ever get close to the random boy across the hall when she won’t even tell Yang where she is?  Talk about the ultimate betrayal...

At the end of Chapter 7, Blake revisits the day that changed her life, in which she narrowly dodged death.  While she doesn’t go into many specifics, she basically got a feeling.  You know that feeling - the one in the pit of your stomach, or when you just feel like something isn’t quite right.  She listened to it and got the heck out of there.

It’s really sad to think about Blake rushing out of the terminal, phone in hand to call Yang, ready to ask Yang to come get her, only for that not to happen.  Only for her to realize that she was in more danger than she knew.  And then, like I mentioned before, Blake let Yang believe she died.  She didn’t reach out for a long period of time because she thought someone would watch Yang.  She needed the grief to be real.  And she needed Yang to survive the grief too.

I suddenly feel very guilty for what I put them through...I should write some RCR as penance.  (See, this is how I make up for giving them such hardships - by giving them easy lives somewhere else!  It evens out in the end.  I think...)

Before leaving Chapter 7 behind, I want to point out this thought:

She needed to get to Taven, somehow.  But without the right information, he’d notice her immediately.  

Taven being Taven Bishop, the man in charge of Dreamscape Industries.  Keep that in mind!

Now to Chapter 8, which is basically all about Yang.  Initially, this chapter started right when Blake found Yang in the library.  Well, that resulted in a very brief chapter.  In the interest of lengthening this out, I added the section at the beginning which is basically Blake forming one of her memories for us to see.

It ended up working pretty well, I think, and let’s us see how Blake and Yang met (which was adorable, in my opinion).  It also introduces an interesting concept from the man who approached Blake right after her lecture ended:  dreams-as-life - the idea of foregoing real life to live in a dream.

I’ve seen versions of this idea pop up recently - I think a Black Mirror episode covered it, and the video game Observer used it, as well.  With such an immersive technology, of course people would want to use it to create a better life for themselves - the life they want versus the life they have.

As we can tell from Blake’s responses, the idea makes her a little testy: 

“The Dreamscape isn’t built to simulate an entire life, so the dreamer would have to take the reigns themselves.  Obviously, that type of control requires an above-average dreamer, if anyone even wanted to put that much pressure on themselves.”

“Theoretically though, Dreamscape Industries could program a sequence of dreams to simulate any life the dreamer wanted.”

Understanding that the man - who must be a member of one of those ‘forever dreamer’ groups - wasn’t giving up anytime soon, Blake shook her head.

“We aren’t working on that at the moment,” she told him flatly.  “The science could be there, but first we need to solidify a co-dreamer’s form, don’t you think?” 

Blake obviously feels there are much more pressing issues to figure out before testing those limits of dreaming, but you have to imagine that these ‘forever dreamer’ groups are constantly calling for more research into using dreams as an alternative to life.  What a concept.

A much more relevant concept in this chapter, however, is what Blake shows us when Yang shows up in the dream.  She can interact with Yang.  Not the real version of Yang, but a dream-created version of Yang that Blake controls.  Because she can recreate people so easily, she can make herself a figment of Yang and interact with that figment in a dream.

As we also see, she refuses to do that.  She thinks it’s unfair, so refuses to take comfort in it (another version of punishment, you could say).

In a somewhat-amusing callback to canon, Blake explains that she could create a clone of herself in a dream, and Yang could interact with that clone.  She doesn’t particularly want to do that because it makes her jealous, but she’s considering it as an option since Yang seems to be getting more restless.  

But:

She didn’t even know if Yang would consider that an acceptable solution…

From Yang’s chapters, we know how Yang would feel about that suggestion - which is that she would have no idea how to feel about it.  In Chapter 4, she had the following conflicting thoughts:

How different would their separation feel if they could hug every night?  What if they could kiss and hold hands, like they once had?  Would that make this any better, or just that much worse?  It still wouldn’t be real; it still wouldn’t be Blake.

And:

At this point, Yang would accept just about anything - any form of contact would be reassurance that what they had was still there, buried somewhere.

She wants the reassurance, just like Blake does, but she knows that the Dreamscape isn’t real.  And what she really wants is real reassurance.  Blake, meanwhile, refuses to let a clone of herself have any bit of Yang that she can’t.

This gets into an interesting bit of background for Blake, as she discusses whether dreams would ever be an acceptable alternative to real life.  She admits that she used to think so - which puts her a little closer to those ‘forever dreamers’ than she’d expect (although she probably didn’t go so far as thinking they should never wake up).  Now, however, she realizes the importance of being together in person. 

Nothing could replace the reassurance and comfort of being held by the person she loved.  No matter how far technology advanced, no matter how ‘real’ dreams looked or felt, it would never be real.  If she’d never fallen in love, she probably wouldn’t know the difference.

I think it’s really sweet how much Yang changed Blake’s perspective on the world and on dreaming.  She took someone who loved to dream and made them love to live instead.

Maybe Yang made Blake love to live a little too much though, because now she spends her time pining over being back together again.

Ok, that sounded horrible, but you know what I mean!

We also see that Blake is a little bit...jealous, one could say.  Especially when Yang’s late and Blake doesn’t know where she is or who she’s spending time with.  I think this reaction is probably natural, especially with how long they’ve been apart and the secrets Blake keeps.  They’re a little less trusting of each other than they used to be, so Blake’s thoughts quickly turn to jealousy when Yang shows up late.  She also basically tells us that she’s aware that Casey likes Yang with this little snippet:

But Blake knew that certain members of the department were interested in Yang as more than friends.

Casey, dude, you were too obvious.  That, or Blake’s very observant.  (Considering she can recreate the smallest of details using only her mind, I’m going with the second one.)

This brings us to the last part of the chapter, where we get all of the ‘oh no’ moments.  

The first ‘oh no’ moment is that Yang’s using a prefab, which we know - and Blake knows - Yang never does.  I think it’s so fascinating how all I had to do was describe Yang flailing through the beginnings of dreams a couple of times, and now everyone knows that she wouldn’t do this.  (I think she also made a couple comments about how she doesn’t like to use prefabs, which also helped).

We know what happened to Yang, so we’re just waiting for Blake to figure it out.  On her side, however, the situation is very very...confusing.

My two favorite parts of this sequence (‘favorite’ I use gently here…) are when Yang tells Blake not to touch her.  Which, as we’ve seen so far, Blake can’t touch Yang because they’re both dreamers.  So why would Yang tell Blake not to touch her?  Because dream versions of Blake had been used against her.

And then, what I thought was the most alarming and confusing part:

Did you let someone else in?” she asked right before the presence lashed out at her. 

Blake already explained what it’s like to break into someone else’s dream - that’s what she did in the previous chapter.  So for her to feel someone breaking into her and Yang’s dream...we now know something bad is up.  As if we didn’t already know that from Yang’s reaction to Blake...

Which sets us off on the next part of the story, with Blake rushing back to Vale in an attempt to save Yang, even though she has no idea what she needs to save Yang from.  But that’s all we know for now, so that’s as much as I can tell you.

There’s much more to come, which hopefully you enjoy, especially as the mystery starts to unravel.  And, as always, thank you for the support!

Until next time,

Miko