beyond the edge

Had another strange dream today, but unfortunately I forgot most of it.

There was an orphan kid who was rescued by a spy agency and trained as a spy. He gets stopped by a colleague who's interested in a relationship, but after getting rejected, suggested that they invest together in a business venture. He declined it and said he was saving his money up.

Then he ran into his boss (who looks like M ==;;; I haven't watched Bond for like 2 years so I dunno where that came from) who suggested he was lying. He was in fact donating all his money to some sort of research in digital espionage. Then he asked the boss if that was a good idea as it would be very powerful if the project succeeds, and she says there's always been the problem when you develop something that it could fall into the worng hands.

They walk into a research facility, and he gets concerned and says he shouldn't be privy to a lot of what he's seeing. She disagrees, and he gets angry and points out to her that field agents can get caught at any time and he doesn't want to have secrets he can give away. Then there was an interest discussion about how sometimes when they get caught they may have to pretend to agree to double cross, but that will plant a seed of doubt in their own loyalty which may grow to wonder which side they're loyal to.

Weird thing that no one died (oi..)

Argh, LJ has changed its posting layout again. I am getting too old to learn new tricks.

Speaking of Old Dogs, apparently you can get a silly china bulldog for yourself, at only 50 pounds from Royal Doulton.



Yes, even the most touchingly humorous scene in the movie is a product placement.

Obviously they're now out of stock and if you desperately need one for a Christmas gift, they're flying around Ebay at around 5 times the price.



It was very hot 2 nights ago and combined with the anxiety of having to work a 14.5 hour shift the next day, I had one of my classically vivid and mildly disturbing dreams.

It was at a train station: not any station I can recognise at all and appears pretty non-western to me. The open platform was long and dark. The train that drew into the station was very long too, and actually looks quite antique in construction, black metal shell and rounded frame and all.

When the train finally stopped (because it was so long), due to some construction problem, the friction of the wheels and the construction of the wheels makes it prone to catch fire. There's actually a few employees who are there for that purpose, and they go around dogmatically putting out the fires by pouring water down the gap between the train and the platform.

A few minutes the train appears clear, but then one of the workers notice the reflection of orange flames flickering on the belly of a middle carriage. He goes and pours some water down the tracks. The flames subside a little but doesn't extinguish. He pauses, and pours more water down, and suddenly the fire swells up and swallows up the middle section of the train and expands quickly down the length of the platform.

There is immediate panic, and people run to the stairs leading out of the station, but the fire is spreading too quickly and already the heat is unbearable. It's not enough time to get up the stairs. Instead, one of the workers led some of the people at the far end of the platform down the tracks and onto the other side of the train, where they were able to find a safe area about five meters from the burning train to climb over a wall and get out.

And then I woke up. And it was very hot.

I keep having medically-related dreams with a homocidal twist. Like, this morning I had a dream that some guy fell over near a slicing machine and nipped his carotid and was spurting blood everywhere and had to give pressure on the pumping artery while trying to get emergency surgical attention. And then somehow the dream developed into a gang cornering a guy and trying to knife him and then someone came and kung-fu'ed them into a pile of unconscious bodies.

Huh.

I finished off the Saiunkoku Monogatari side story novel I had bought and begun reading in Taiwan, which is probably what half-prompted me to draw this. I swear my artbook is under metaphorical lock and key now until after exams.


Click for bigger pic + rant

I suppose in a way it's a matching picture to the last one of them dressed in western-styled costume? LOL

I haven't finished a pencil picture in such a long time. Probably since last year O_o

Saiunkoku should really stick to comedy. Her angst is far too prosaic and she leaves gaping holes where there shouldn't be, and her attempts at working her particular brand of comical humour into it makes the tone really awkward. Maybe because the novel I bought was unfortunately entirely depressing, beginning with Seian/Seiran's backstory where he was stripped of his title and exiled, then fallen to become an imprisoned executioner in a group of bandits. It seemed to hint that the second leader of the bandits had some form of physical relationship with him and I am glad it did not go into any more than hinting =___= I'm pretty sure the guy reappeared in one of the current timeline stories but I have no idea what the outcome was.

The novel then continued with Ensei's (燕青) backstory. He's an awesomely funny guy, especially around Seiran, but she somehow made it dark and depressing too. I mean okay, his backstory wasn't all sunshine but if she's going to keep saying he's like the sun she should stop spending so much time painting a picture of his hate-filled vengeance, which didn't turn out to be particularly convincing anyway. She also has a habit of making characters sound far too old for their years. A five year old giving an almost Hamlet-like soliloquy on whether he should live in order to avenge his family just begs disbelief.

The last short story was Shuurei's father during his years as a young assassin, and how he met her mother. She spent so much of it building Shouka and the Rose Princess as two incredibly apathetic and unfazeable people that by the time they met, any chemistry between them was incredibly forced and awkward.

Or maybe I'm just in a mood to be displeased =___=

Her comedies are always so much more entertaining. She spends too much time on lamentations otherwise. Life, humans, politics, society...sometimes she should just get on with the plot.

Had a long, involved and complicated dream that felt like a fantasy novel, a game and a manga combined x___X

There was a lot going on before but I only remember it from a battle. It was a losing battle. The evil side (consisting of non-humans) were quickly overwhelming the good side. And then a girl/one of the main mages came up with an idea. There is a spell that she normally uses to protect other people when they're being targeted for a kill (so it protects only against a kill). She thought since that spell already exists, she could use it to protect the remaining allies, and she modified it to reflect the attack back at the killer. She knew the spell is a huge drain on magic, so she put the same spell in a number of bracelets and ran around the field finding the mages, so that the magic is shared and the load is reduced.

(On a funny side note, she couldn't find a lot of the mages she knew so she started asking random people if they knew magic, and one guy who was an acolyte-ish role said he only knew how to pray...and she gave him a bracelet anyway XD)

She didn't tell those people what the bracelets were for because she didn't want the evil side to find out and hence to launch a counter spell. After a while the forces of the evil side began to diminish, and her people thought it was because they were fighting well (rather than because of the spell bouncing back), while the mages were getting so tired that they couldn't stand. As one of them slips towards the ground to rest, the narration (LOL) comes on and says something like "even though this is a victory, little did they know that more awaited below".

After a few days, when the battle has passed and everyone is well-rested, the girl called all the mages who got bracelets together to explain to them what happened. They were amazed but some of them are dismissive about working on a better strategy because they thought the evil side is already defeated so they won't need it again. Worried once again about being overheard, they agree to move their discussion to a protected underground chamber they always used for secret discussions.

To get in, they have to walk through this big...umm, wooden statue shaped kind of like a Russian doll, but male with a very big tummy LOL. The statue itself is basically a physical manifest of the guardian of the chamber, so they first activate the statue, which opens up to review a set of stairs for them to walk down. As they filed down, one man who was sort of like a thief captain/pirate or something hesitated because he wasn't that interested in protecting the affairs of other people. He began to walk out the main door, and then changed his mind and came back to the statue, shaking his head because he couldn't believe how stupid he was being LOL

The others had already gone through so the guardian statue had closed up, and it was smirking a little because it knew it was very difficult to guess how to activate. The guy nonchalantly put his nose close to the statue's and said the spell, and the statue's face changed to one of surprise. Then its eyes glowed green and it fell open.

Once inside, the dark steps become wide pale stone steps near the bottom, and then where the chamber begins it's sort of like an orange/pinkish brick/tile floor. A few walked in and disappeared, and then they reappeared as multiple smaller (not younger) versions of themselves, but they seemed like just puppets (in that they couldn't move or speak or anything). The others realised the guardian of the chamber had betrayed them, and now their spell was known to the evil side already.

They ended up all stepping voluntarily into the chamber for some reason. The chamber floor opens up for a split second and they're actually taken to another world that's quite different to their original, and they all lose their memories.

Before I woke up, they've already spent seven years down their and they seem to be on the verge of finally getting to the point of starting to recover their memories...

D=


PS: For the one person who ritualistically asks me what I've been reading/watching lately, I have NOT been reading fantasy or playing RPGs for months =__=

So recently I went and watched Robin Hood (also known as Gladiator of the Dark Ages) on a spur of moment decision with friends.

The conclusions are: 1) Don't watch movies on spur of the moment and 2) SMH reviews are usually right.

It is only the second movie where I sniggered out loud at the most climatic, tension-charged, dramatic scene. The first movie was Star Wars III and Darth Vader's famous "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

(Twilight doesn't count because that movie is comedy.)

Although I'm generally unimpressed with Russell Crowe (and YES he does have a funny Scottish accent - but Crowe would not be Crowe if he did not chuck a hissy fit at the suggestion), I'm usually quite enamoured with Cate Blanchett, but really...that mousy brown doesn't work on her. It managed to reduce the normally radiant Blanchett into a sour-faced, unremarkable OBASAN village woman.

And yet, Marion is nothing like your average medieval village woman. She can ride, she can snark, she can swashbuckle - she can even kill without so much as a blink. In fact, there is so much buttock prodding coming from Marion that she might have been a Discworld heroine...if only the movie didn't take itself so damn seriously.

The movie tries to put the legend back into history, but having never been a history buff myself the references to Richard the Lionheart and King John and King Philip and the Magna Carta all flew past without sticking. The movie painted King John as a puerile, jealous man-boy - but the funny thing is even though King John was a most unpopular king who led England into a series of defeats, he was also sharp and ruthless and supposedly a just man.

What did stick was all these random people riding horses - bloody expensive beauties they were, too, when surely it costs half a village to keep one. Where the hell did Marion learn to fight anyway? Why does she wear such a long robe when working in the fields? Does ten years really change a man so much that the entire hamlet is willing to accept a stranger into his shoes? Orz

The movie hinges too much on these improbably twists of logic and asks the audience to dispense too much of their disbelief. I refuse to believe that an old, level-headed, intelligent and worldly marshal would be so STUPID to announce to the King (knowing his temperament) that the men were celebrating for the sake of Robin Hood - especially when he did NOTHING, as far as the men were concerned.

And the most climatic moment I sniggered at? *SPOILERS*

Robin rises after nearly drowning from the ocean in a splash of salt water, draws his wet bowstring and fires an arrow in a spray of water, which flies more than 200 metres to shoot a man riding on horseback through the neck.

Oh, I love a good dose of drama any day but...PLEASE, keep it for science fiction or fantasy.

If you're trying to tote yourself as historical fiction, at least get basic physics correct.

I am no archer but bows and arrows are notoriously unreliable even in the best of conditions. That's why archers have to be so calm and steady to be able to hit their targets. Any projectile that is ejected along with a thousand droplets of water and buffeted by high winds is NOT going to fly straight.

And the neck is such a bloody small target too.

It is not wholly bad. The pace is quite enjoyable, even though I thought it dragged in the middle where they tried to build the relationship between Robin and Marion. You get to see your money's worth in cruel and unusual ways of dying, in any case.




I had a dream this morning where a ship (yes, a sailing ship) dropped from the sky and crashed in the distance in a 100 meter mountain of flames. And then the sky began to rain concrete shrapnel.

Hrm.

Had a dream this morning where I was outside a multilevel office building with glass doors and was being sniped at by someone on a distant highrise =0=;

For some reason I could actually see the bullets coming towards me so slowly I not only had time to dodge, I could dodge it walking ==;;

I ran inside the building and in the foyer there's a split level type thing where you go down a short flight of stairs and you hide behind the raise platform. The shots continued for a while through the glass doors and presumably people were running around screaming because I remember there were people there but not what they were doing.

I then remembered I had a handgun but obviously the range isn't far enough to reach wherever the sniper is. The cool thing about dreams is when you want something it often magically just appears, and a...some sort of long range gun appeared in my hands. I went outside but still somehow judged the distance between me and the sniper as too far, but then someone else began to shoot at me from a closeby building. Apparently the rooftop of that building was where a stash of firearms were kept, and I made a curved shot at it, and the rooftop exploded and a woman, clearly (just) dead, fell forward off the roof.

.......I think I've been watching too much NCIS.

Had a dream last night (yes, one of those again).

Actually it wasn't really scary, and it didn't make much sense, unlike some of my other dreams *cough*

It seemed to be some sort of story, because it jumped between the present and the past. It started off the day after a gruelling magic duel in which neither side won. The first (as in, main) general of the "bad side" met up with a few people on the good side, and they were all putting on the "I'm-so-righteous-I'll-even-be-nice-to-my-enemy, for-now" act. Someone on the good side was in the team fighting against the enemy king the previous day, but apparently the first general was also very strong, and they were laughing and handing out compliments etc...except then the first general said something very insightful and important and I'm annoyed because I can't remember what it was.

It then flashed back to a while earlier, to a man on the good side who was some sort of soldier/magician, one of those grim-faced stoic (and invariably middle-aged) ones. There was also another much younger guy on his team, who was a strange kind of healer, in that he absorbed other people's injuries, and as long as it is below a certain threshold, he can heal them (okay...I admit the name I immediately attached at this point was...Vivant). The stoic guy and the healer didn't get along very well, but one day he got in a fight against the "bad side" and was very badly injured even though he was a very strong magician. When the healer got to him, he told the healer to take his remaining life - and hence adding to the healer's threshold so that he can use it in the future to heal others - instead of trying to heal him.

Cut forward to a few months later, on some significant day for his death, and apparently I'm in this as some sort of onmyouji type person =__=;; I walked into this little Japan-esque garden, with lots of rocks and shrubbery. There's this space where a number of random items are arranged, stuff like small plants or lanterns or some sort of memento. There was a silver box that folded out, and as I unfolded it, I said to someone who was waiting nearby that we'll need to set the stoic guy's spirit to rest now, in case he's become a 怨鬼 (vengeful spirit), and to myself in the dream I thought that it's because he died in circumstances where he would have plenty of reason to hate the enemy side and hence turn vengeful.

As I opened the box and prayed or whatever it is I did, I said that he wasn't there any more. I remember tipping the box over in alarm, and saying to the mysterious someone standing beside me that even if he did not turn into a vengeful spirit, he should still be there - and here I pointed to the other mementos around the box where other people's spirits could be called through them - but his presence was completely gone. Then someone - or maybe it's me ==; - said that this probably means he's moved on to a better life, and in my dream I agreed, and yet still felt incredibly saddened by the absence of a ghost of some guy I've never seen before =__=;;;;

I'm going to emphasise that he's old and not good looking and in fact the sort of guy I generally find annoying =_=;;

And before you ask, I've been reading a rather unremarkable fantasy book with heroes so drab that I find myself cheering the bad guy on. Seriously. I just want him to conquer the world ="= I don't care if he kills the heroes or if he should have died 200 years ago and his true form looks like a rotted corpse. Benevolent dictatorship has potential, e.g. in Ankh-Morpork =D

I need to spend more time staring at people's groins and even as I say this I realise how embarrassing it sounds =__=; I don't know how to colour pants...specifically, the crotch area. SIGH.

We learned how to do urinary catheterisation on Thursday and wow...it looks really painful on a guy. Especially when you need to remove it. Ow. At least when it goes in you get some local anaesthetic.

---

Yay! My homocidal dreams have returned =D

There was an Asian family of four kids, the eldest was a guy in his midteens, and the second was a sister maybe a year or so younger. Then there were two much younger kids, one was probably four or five and the other one just a toddler. Their dad had just been assassinated by some organised crime group, and they were hiding out with their mum at a house.

As they were getting ready to leave the house to move onto their next hideout, someone knocked on the door. The eldest son is convinced that the assassins would come after them, but the mother isn't, so she opens the door while he takes the other kids and leaves through a second door (which comes out in the same direction). As they get out from the other side, they somehow recognise the guy as someone who wants them dead. There was a moment of confusion as they tried to get the mother to come with them, but she's too old to keep up (okay, she only looked forty, but who knows), so the two older kids each piggyback a young kid and make a run for it. They seem to think that the bad guys want to capture them rather than kill them off one by one.

They run through a huge park, but the sister is tiring out because of carrying the toddler and the pursuers are catching up. They turn out of the park onto a busy road and ran across it to the shops. They ran through the shops and I think at some point, they were forced to leave the four-year-old behind and the older brother carried the toddler just so the sister could keep up.

They then run into a corporate building looking for an adult friend, but glimpses someone they recognise as from the crime organisation. As they keep running, they're stopped by a receptionist, who after hearing what is going on, becomes sympathetic and leads them through the firestairs (where the bad guys who are chasing after them can't see - as the rest of the building has huge glass windows) to find the adult friend. She takes them to a room where an Indian(?) looking corporate woman is having a meeting with her secretary. The children tell her about what's going on and she seems very eager to help, but they see that the secretary is the crime organisation person they thought they glimpsed earlier and get a huge shock, but is told that she's not the same person, just happens to look alike.

Damn...I wish I remember more details =/ But in the end the children are looked after by someone who seemed like she was trustworthy. I wonder why the kids didn't go straight to the police, but went instead to a family friend =/ It felt like they refused to trust any authority.