Dream Theory - Commentary - Ch. 19-20 (Patreon)

And the countdown begins!  In two weeks, we’ll be saying goodbye to Dream Theory and moving on to something new!  I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of ready.  Considering I finished this story at the beginning of the year (was it in March, maybe?), it’s already half a year in the rearview mirror.  So, while I’ll miss the story and these versions of the characters, I’m ready to show you what else I’ve been working on too.

I think this might be the first time this has happened in a commentary...but we actually have one chapter in Blake’s POV and one in Yang’s!  

Actually, just kidding.  The same thing literally just happened the last commentary but I didn’t notice it.  Whoops.  Well - there were only two instances of this happening in the story, and at least I caught one of them.

But these two chapters, like the last two, were packed with action, information, and - in Chapter 20’s case - some resolution.  

First, be honest - did you think that Chapter 19 was real when you started reading it?  I mean, obviously it was real because those were real words, but did you think that it was real in the story?  If you fell for it, I’m happy because that’s what I wanted to happen!  A little writing trickery is fun sometimes, right?  Well, for me it is, at least.  XD

I did leave a tiny hint that something was up though, although I wouldn’t be surprised if no one noticed it or gave it a second thought (did you not notice that tiny, super obscure heads up I left you??):

She couldn’t tell if it was nerves, anxiety, or pent-up stress leaving her system, but small shudders passed through her every few minutes.  

It doesn’t call too much attention to Blake feeling off, but this is her feeling off about something or because of something.  My thought was that her mind is resisting Lyla’s attempt to force this new reality on her, but she’s so unaware of it that she easily writes it off as decompressing from what happened in the prior dreams.

Again, Lyla is able to recreate the police station so perfectly because she was just there bringing the box of Blake’s belongings to Yang.  Can you imagine being able to recreate everywhere you’ve ever been, even if you were only there for a few minutes?  I probably couldn’t even recreate my office perfectly and I spend eight hours a day there!

So what was Lyla’s purpose in putting Blake in this dream?  Did you put that together as you read through it?  I’ll give you a reminder!  It has to do with this interaction:

“What about the Daydreamers?”  When Blake stilled at the term, Yang carried on.  “They won’t work, right?  You broke them so they won’t work?”

For a second, Blake considered glossing over the answer.  But when she and Yang were already on thin ice in the ‘withholding information’ department, it didn’t feel right to keep even more knowledge from her.

“I developed a section of the network link without anyone’s help…” she explained while slightly fidgeting in her chair.  “That’s what I removed.  Without it, Daydreamer can’t connect the way they want, and it should take a while before anyone can recreate it without my help.”

“You mean ‘remove’ like you deleted it?  It’s gone for good?”

“I deleted it,” she replied.  When Yang raised her brow, Blake nodded in confirmation.  “It’s gone, completely.  I’m the only one who should remember it.”

Remember that Blake essentially broke the Daydreamers, and Lyla needs to figure out how so that they can fix it and carry forward with their devious plans.  When she realizes that her attempts to force the explanation from Blake aren’t working, she changes tactics.  By using Yang, all she has to do is...ask...and Blake answers.

The answer probably isn’t what she wants to hear, but it’s an answer that she didn’t have before.  Now she knows that she has to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, and decides to break Blake’s heart before she goes.

At least, that’s what she tries to do, isn’t it?

But how would she know that Casey liked Yang?  Well, that answer is...he’s just that obvious.  When Lyla visited the police station, she saw this:

He must have felt the observation because he looked their way and, as soon as he met Yang’s gaze, smiled and waved.  Yang waved back before turning towards Lyla, who smiled at the interaction.

Casey, dude, your smile gives you away.  

To be fair, at that point in time Blake had been ‘dead’ for a long time so it might make sense that he’s making his feelings a little more widely known.  But he was also pretty obvious from the beginning, if we take Blake at her word:

She knew his intentions the first time they met.  She saw the way he looked at Yang - the way he gravitated towards her and did anything to make her smile.  

Of course, Blake would probably be the first person to notice someone who’s interested in her girlfriend.  Also, Blake would be the first to notice most things because her entire role in this story is as one of the most observant people in the world.  If she can notice such small details that she can pretend to be someone’s wife, I’m pretty sure she will notice when someone is subtly interested in her girlfriend.

I thought it was fitting to give Blake a little bit of her own medicine in this chapter.  While Blake was away, Yang was the one dealing with jealousy because she didn’t know what Blake might be up to.  But now, Blake’s the one living her worst nightmare with Casey appearing to be the cause.

In the first iteration of this chapter, Yang was going to be much more forward about breaking up with Blake for Casey.  As in, she kind of implied that the two of them were already together or would get together immediately after the breakup.  

Ultimately, I didn’t think Blake would believe it.  Most importantly, I didn’t think you would believe it.  From what we’ve seen and heard from Yang, we know that she’s questioning how much she can trust Blake.  But she never gave any indication that meant she wanted to be with Casey instead.  Therefore, I thought it would be somewhat plausible for her to request a break - at least some time apart for them to figure out what they both want - but unreasonable for her to suddenly jump into another relationship.

Fortunately for Blake, there are intimate details about Yang that Lyla couldn’t learn with their limited interactions together.  Most importantly, Lyla hasn’t yet figured out that Yang’s eyes subtly change color with her emotions.  This is something that Blake mentioned back in Chapter 7: 

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.

But Blake almost fell for it.  She almost didn’t notice (because what fun is it if she notices everything right away?).  

I’m going to admit that it was kind of a guilty pleasure to have Blake essentially fighting with Yang for a little bit there.  It was something I really wanted to put in, because how often do we get to see Yang going after Blake like that?  Or, more specifically, how often do I get to write something like that?  The answer is...just this once!  And it’s not really Yang, so it doesn’t count, right?

I’ve noticed lately that I enjoy writing the characters with personalities I haven’t gotten to try out before.  It’s nice to give something new a go, right?  I’m still doing my best to keep them in character, of course.  I’m merely...accentuating a part of their personality over the others.  

I was actually thinking on the way home from work the other day about how characters have so many personality traits, you can almost write all of them the same way and reasonably get away with it.  

I heard people scoff, but let me explain!

For simplicity, let’s say that we all have ten different primary personality traits.  (I’m using ten before any more seems like too many.)  These range from excitable, optimistic, etc., etc.  Each of these traits is basically set to a different level for each character, but every character has the trait.

For example, Yang could be about a five for excitability while Ruby might be an eight.  (Weiss and Blake are probably around three and two, respectively.)  But all four of them have that trait to some degree.  

Ok, here’s where it gets a little more complicated.  Let’s use Yang as our test subject.  If she’s a five for excitability (maybe a six…), then I’d say it’s reasonable for her range to be 3-7 based on the circumstances.  If she can have a +2/-2 spread, then everyone else does too.  Which means...she would overlap with everyone else, even Blake!

The extremes are a little harder, but they still get pretty close to each other.  Continuing our example, Ruby’s lower bound would be a six, and Blake’s upper bound is a four - still within two spots of each other!

Still with me?

We don’t need Ruby and Blake to overlap on excitement because of the nine other traits we still have!  We get them close on excitement, then we can probably overlap a majority of the rest. 

This makes a lot of sense in my head, but probably zero sense on paper.  And I’ve forgotten what my point is.

Basically, you have all these character trait dials that you can turn up or down to a certain degree while still being ‘in character,’ and if you turn the dials enough, you get the characters close to others.  It also depends on the situation, of course.  Don’t go turning dials without giving the characters good reasons to move out of their base states!

Well that was a tangent.

Let’s get back on track here...oh, of course, Blake can’t be the hero without being self-sacrificing, which is exactly what she does at the end of Chapter 19.  She blames herself because she trusted Lyla, and Lyla ended up being untrustworthy.

Trust is an important part of this story, especially as we compare Blake and Yang.  Blake trusted Lyla and got burned, badly.  Yang trusted Blake and also got burned (although not quite as much).  The difference between the two of them is that Yang is still willing to trust, whereas Blake kind of closed herself off and became determined to fix this on her own.

I’m not saying that Blake’s way is wrong or anything, but...in this story, her way kind of ends in her death, whereas Yang gets help and saves the day.  More on that now!

While Blake’s facing off with Lyla, Yang’s rushing around being cop-awesome.  

When I first thought about this chapter, it was pretty straightforward “Yang goes to the address and pulls Lyla out of the dream.” Well, that made for a very short chapter, and you know how I feel about short chapters.

That’s when I realized that I hadn’t given Yang the chance to shine in the story.  We got to see Ruby pulling off some tech magic, and Blake balling out in a dream, and Weiss sassing up a storm, but we never got to see Yang in her environment.  So she gets Chapter 20 to save the day and be awesome in the process.

She also gets to show off how awesome her arm really is.  She can make phone calls with it!  (Ok, that sounds really funny and ridiculous now that I think about it.)  She also has the Iron Man light in the palm of her hand!  (That sounds awesome…)  Plus, she can store data on it like a flash drive, display a holographic version of her badge (she’ll never forget that at home again!), and it has Ruby’s door hacking capabilities built right in.  

Her arm is basically more versatile than Batman’s utility belt, and it helps her track down Lyla and save the day.

A couple random notes about Lyla’s temporary apartment - the apartment number is the same one as Yang, Blake, and Ruby’s from Rush (seventeen - also my favorite number!).  I described the apartment very early on, complete with the flower vase, but had no idea that the vase would become usable in any way.  I was just thinking...what might be nice to have in an apartment you rent by the day?  How about some flowers to make it a little more homey?

So, literally as I’m typing Yang running around searching for an answer, I’m thinking ‘What the heck is in this apartment that I just said has nothing in it?’

‘Nothing except flowers!’

I love it when things work out.  Thank you, past me, for helping present me out.

What I liked about this chapter is that it allows Yang to realize that she and Blake aren’t so different, after all (their character traits overlap often on Miko’s sliding scale…).  Sure, they make different decisions, but when it comes down to it, they would do anything for each other.

In Blake’s case, it meant pretending to be dead while trying to keep Yang safe.

In Yang’s case, it meant seriously considering taking a life to save Blake.  And, as I pointed out before, Yang is Captain America.  She’s the moral center, and that’s the decision she nearly made.

If we go back to Chapter 16, when Yang finally finds out what Blake did, Blake says as much:

“You’re perfect, Yang,” Blake continued, her eyes shimmering with tears.  “You always make the right or moral choice, no matter how hard it is.”

Whereas Yang ponders in the same chapter whether she would or would not be that way:

Thinking about the advice, Yang looked at her hands and frowned.  It was so easy for her to feel hurt and betrayed, but she would probably do something equally reckless if Blake, Ruby, or Weiss fell in harm’s way.  

Chapter 20 proves that she’s not as Captain America as Blake thought she was.  Meanwhile, another character stepped up and grabbed the moral mantle - Weiss.

I thought it was really interesting for Weiss to be the one to convince Yang out of that decision.  As we’ve seen in the story so far, Weiss’ job requires her to partake in some more dubious actions to win a case (bribery, for one).  But, as has been suggested, that’s not who she really is, and I think she proves that in this chapter especially.

Ruby, however, proves that she falls more in line with Yang in the ‘do whatever it takes to save Blake’ department, as we see when she EMPs several city blocks.  (I’m sure she’s just been waiting for an opportunity to do that.)

I thought it was really important for Yang to have that moment where she realizes what she would do for Blake, in real time, for her to understand what Blake went through.  With that knowledge, forgiveness should come much easier for our two poor main characters.

But we’ll see how they fare next week, as our story reaches its conclusion!

Until next time, 

Miko