Dreams of Twilight Sparkle · 11:53pm Oct 15th, 2013
I took a nap today, and I dreamed of being Twilight Sparkle. It was a subtle thing. It was only when I woke up and thought, "That was an odd dream of Twilight and the two Princesses." Then I thought to myself, "Wait, who was Twilight? I don't remember talking to-oh. Huh. I was dreaming of myself in that role." (If you don't want to read about a dream of Twilight Sparkle, stop here; I would rather not waste anyone's time, and there will be no secret insights hidden in this post. At least not intentionally so.)
The events of the dream were, as dreams are wont to be, firmly secured at the intersection of Incoherent Boulevard and Bizarre Street. There is only one sequence I will describe (of what I would say were four major sequences; the other three being incoherent and not easily storified).
I was wandering blindly around an arena. It was surrounded by high white walls with the audience seated atop the walls directly, while the center of it was stone and earth, with a canyon and a stream through the middle. The canyon could be crossed at either end, or via a covered wooden bridge in the middle. For some reason, I very much wanted to be in this place. The stone ground was covered in spikes[1] of metal, dust, and papers. The spikes were basically harmless and I only avoided stepping on them to be polite. (Behold, dream logic!)
Meanwhile the audience laughed and fired crossbows at me. They were slinging around literal barbs, get it? It only hurt if I let myself pay attention. If I just let them hit me, it wasn't bad. I imagined myself fat and ugly, with the impenetrable hide of a rhinocerous, and kept walking around the arena (which I for some reason still wanted to do). As the barbs of the audience failed to harm me, traps started showing up in the arena, forcing me to pay attention even when I didn't want to. The traps got bigger and nastier, eroding my desire to remain in the area. I managed to detonate or dismantle a few of the dangerous ones from afar, and that was amusing, right up until snake traps started showing up. Each one accompanied by taunting pamphlets about poison control specialists and the effects of snake bites. I got away from the first one safely, but a snake from the second one lunged at me and bit my hoof before I threw it off.
That was twice enough. I made my way to the exit, badly hurting two audience members who had the misfortune of being near where I exited, and then stalked off angrily to go talk to Celestia. I even resolved not to talk to anyone about the poison until I got there. It seemed likely they were just trying to make me freak out, and I wasn't going to give them the pleasure. Besides, if I had actually been poisoned Princess Celestia would avenge me against my classmates, and imagining that made me feel at peace with my (potentially) impending doom.
That was the second sequence of the dream. The third sequence involved Celestia; the fourth involved Luna. I can't even make sense of the imagery involved. It was all in a whirl[2]. I will say this. I have dreamed of myself as Twilight Sparkle talking to Princess Celestia before. Whenever that happens, Princess Celestia seems to be an unreal kind of beauty, but at the same time in some very important way cold. Stern, distant, and untouchable. It's a gap I yearn to cross but cannot. Whereas Princess Luna lacks the same attraction, yet seems warm, grounded, approachable. She is capable of being impressive when she is very much trying to be, but she is almost banal the rest of the time.
I have no idea why my subconscious would drag me through so very much rumination about Twilight Sparkle. The dream lacked any kind of obvious relevance to my life. Ah well. Seeing as I don't get to choose my dreams, this one goes into the "could've been worse" bin, and also in the "thinking about this might improve my writing" bin. Why, it was almost intelligent[3].
[1] Actual spikes, not Spike-the-dragons. I believe I had a friendly one-sided conversation with one of the metal spikes about my math homework while clutching the symbol-laden papers that had comprised one of the paper spikes.
[2] Literally; as near as I can understand, sequences three and four involved conversations with Celestia and Luna while they flew circles around me. This was a dream with a penchant for literal metaphors.
[3] This blog is also titled, "In which my follower count is oddly high; let's fix that."
Dreams. Whatcha gonna do.
Maybe Luna was trolling you.
1423410
I swear I have some kind of medical condition that drastically increases the frequency and intensity of my dreams. It's no good thing. Maybe Luna seems banal because I've seen her too many times now.
> spikes of metal, dust, and papers
I suspect your subconscious is trolling you, unless you've been playing a great deal of Rock, Paper, Scissors lately. That's a pretty symbolically heavy detail, though I can't imagine it has any actual meaning.
1423671
I haven't played a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors in years. Thinking of the spikes in that context made me start giggling. I actually just assigned them to "dream nonsense" and hadn't thought about their potential symbolism at all.
Your mentioning of Celestia seeming cold and distant made me think of something else. I watched one of the 'special features' on the DVD of The Hunger Games the other night, and in it the actor who played President Snow (the bad guy, pretty much) remarked that (paraphrasing from memory) "You can't have someone play the role of the king. You have to have other people walking around, saying 'oh, there goes the king, look how evil, how generous, how ruthless, how benevolent he is'."
And I don't remember whether your post made me think of it or I thought of it earlier on my own, but I recall thinking "Huh. I think that says something interesting about Celestia. Or maybe not Celestia specifically, but about writing her and writing for her. Or maybe both."
Anyways, that definitely felt relevant.
Also, I notice that you don't say anything about your "first sequence" (at least, not in the blog post, I haven't read the comments yet). And now I'm curious. I have a sense that I probably shouldn't be, and another sense that maybe I should apologize for being so; certainly I don't think anything useful (at least, to me; maybe for you but I have no reason to believe so) can come of it. But still.
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I think I actually remember. The first sequence wasn't much related to ponies and has no connection I can divine to what followed. I believe it involved a haunted hotel? It was clean, well-kept, and well-lit. It was also inhabited by normal yet insubstantial people who faded away whenever too much attention was paid to them. The second sequence started when I found the arena somewhere on the hotel grounds.