Dream Journal: StarGate SG1: The Atom and The Ritual

 So, I had a dream, that upon waking up, I felt the desire to post about it on the internet. Like I was obligated to share it with the world

I had this dream earlier this month (Decembre) and tried to wait for this sensation to go away. As often it will. Wait for a blog post that was not terrible--but the memory of this dream ate the other blog post ideas. So, here you guys go--hopefully this leaves my brain, and I can write about actually interesting not lame crap

Dream Preample

 One of the key bits of my dreams, that do not seem to reflect in what I've heard others talk about, is the "ambient environmental knowledge"

Think of it like how you know what cupboard the Golden Grams are located within. Think of how you know what to expect at the local convenience store. There are all kinds of stuff in your brain that exists as "environmental ambient knowledge" (there is likely a less wrong word) that you make use with when making decisions

 In this dream's worldscape, novelisations of media are expected. If a season of a television show is being made, a novelisation of every episode is expected as parcel and package of doing this. If a movie is filmed, a novelisation of the movie is expected to be available for people to read. This includes if the show, stage play, radio drama or movie is already based on a book. Another book is made that is derived from the adaptation

 Oh right, Radio Dramas are still a major thing. With Radio Guides giving the planned times for various episodes of Radio Dramas. Fun background noise

The novelisations are generally rushed, poorly done and often wildly divergent from the material it is adapting into print

This is why they are an important part of consuming the media. People read them with a bile fascination of what decisions the author of the novelisation is going to make. The various paragraphs where the author made a choice. A decision was made in that direction of the novelisation

The novels often contradict events in the show, events in other novels and even events in the current novel

The fun is in discussing all the different ways the novel just goes into insane crazy town for their nonsense. With a fair amount of socialisation on various media being the completely wild unreasonable unhinged things done in the novelisations

When a novel does a one to one adaptation of a show, drama, play or movie, it is received as fine and serviceable. Though people will say they are upset that we did not get to see inside the mind of the protagonists. Get their thoughts and feelings on the various decisions and actions

This is just polite talk though 

 Nobody is here for those entirely serviceable adaptations--they want to go over the dumb crap choices the completely out there novelisations do for a material

 A Television Show gets a season on air--its popularity is immediately improved by what the novelisations do with it

The Shows, Dramas, Plays and Movies mostly exist as a sort of anchor to hold stuff together. An entry point of sorts to get people in the door. With all the real interesting stuff being in the novelisations

You could just watch the Tv show--and you'd actually have a much more accurate understanding of the events and happening in the series. You'd be a much better authority on what happened that way. There is no fun with that at all though

I have no idea what year it is--but whatever year it is, it is extremely anachronistic in the details. As StarGate SG1 is having is third season on air. With the show going a bit of a different direction due to the novelisation being an important aspect of television shows being on air

The Novel Entry

The episode of StarGate SG1 wasn't a two parter. It was one episode, where they made contact with another planet. A planet that was comparable to Earth during the Cold War. The show ends with an SG team, SG-Delta, stuck on the planet when contact is lost shortly after a nuclear war breaks out. With the shelter containing the Star Gate being roasted from the increased amount of heat from the outside world having everybody inside catch fire. Sometimes they were lucky enough to have died from the extreme heat before catching fire, sometimes they were still alive

A probe to the planet at the end of the episode showed that even the ones in shelters did not survive. As the large amount of nuclear attacks turned the shelters into ovens

 The novel follows along a member of SG-Delta. I did not remember her name upon waking up. I'll call her "Natalie" as that feels right

This member was a woman who had an unhealthy obsession with Samantha Carter. Having been known to stalk her constantly, making her feel very unsafe. The character had made efforts to model her hair and appearance after Samantha Carter

Oh right, none of the members of SG-Delta were shown on the show. Their descriptions are novel only

Samantha Carter had brought up this character's stalking a few times--but it was dismissed as both of them are women. What could a woman want to do with another woman? The rest of SG1 backed up Samantha Carter on this one... but the rest of the Air Force did not seem to share Carter's concerns about this member of SG-Delta. Many accused her of being entitled and bossy--and having some issues with internalised misogyny for her own success at getting into the boys club

SG-Delta go to this other planet... and kind of quickly realise that a nuclear war is about to happen. They end up cutting ties with the local politicians and diplomats and start working to find a way to a decent bomb shelter or to the Star Gate itself. The cold war had gone hot--but the nukes were not fired off right away

So far air fighters, bomber runs and attempts to have infantry storm various locations were the main things being done. All out invasions were happening, and the finger would be on the button as soon as one side started losing too much 

A diplomatic group with a small envoy of security protection meet up with SG-Delta again. However, several of them are actually sleeper spy agents, and start to attack the Diplomats, SG-Delta and the other envoy members. This results in a fight where SG-Delta are the only survivors. Well... some of SG-Delta

 Somehow SG-Delta learns that the White House (this planet also has one of those) has also been cleared out. The sleeper spy agents were apparently a bit more feral than the ones SG-Delta dealt with... so there are a bunch of mindless shrieking human shaped killers running around this planet's White House

I suspect they got it from listening to radio chatter, but this novel kind of rushes past that point, and doesn't actually explain that talking point

Natalie decides that she should perform The Ritual

You see, she knows she is in trouble. She wishes to be bullet proof. She knows she is not. She does have The Ritual though

Natalie strips completely naked on the beach. Natalie wades out into the beach of a nearby ocean. She walks until the water goes up to her shoulders. She commences the ritual by releasing her period blood into the ocean. She had been menstruating for this entire mission. She noticed that people treated her like she was more focused and less wreckless when she was on her monthly. She took it to mean that she was able to better commune with the Moon and Mother Earth

It was actually because she was all kinds of crazy, and when she was PMS'ing she was still crazy, but she was crazy in a much much more comprehensible way to the people around her. Nobody thought she was sane. They just knew how to better point her crazy at things they did not like while she was PMS'ing than when she wasn't. It took a bit of time to explain to people outside the unit that her PMS'ing was actually a really really good thing

Standing in ocean water up to her shoulders in a cloud of her own period blood she waited

Sharks started to swim around her. Enticed by her offerings to the ritual. She would wait for the Sharks to take the ritual to the next level

Just as swift as a Shark moved to strike her, she lashed out her hands and claws--using her fingers to tear the sharks face off of its body. Just like deboning frozen chicken with her bare hands, she tore every sharks face apart that approach her. Some she tore through their abdomen 

Soon there was more Shark viscera around her, than there was of her own offering

She then relaxes her vaginal wall. Waiting for one of the Remora that now no longer had a shark to call home to swim in, hoping for a possible way out of the terrible situation they now found themselves in. Stuck in this area of the ocean, unable to get around and access food stuffs. Given the option of starving to death, or eating the shark that they once called home before they starve to death. If they ate their shark home, every shark in the ocean would know of their act, and would not allow them a home. Would a new shark come by to take pity on them before they starved to death? Or would they just die alone and scared in the ocean?

A Remora decides to chance things, and slides into Natalie's cooter. Before the Remora can release is caustic mucus Natalie squeezes her vaginal walls tight, crushing the Remora into a paste of meat

Natalie commenting that if her vagina can bring life into the world, that it was the right of her vagina to take life from the world. To keep things perfectly balanced, she smothered a living creature in the walls of her that could give life 

With the dead Remora inside her, and the jaw of a shark she killed, Natalie walks back to the shore. Having completed the Ritual

The book goes on to have SG-Delta actually make it to the bomb shelter with the Star Gate. Everybody in there dead not from being baked alive, but from a gas attack with a fairly short half life to dissipate. Having the book's ending contradict the Tv Show's ending. On top of all the other "choices" made in this adaptation

 -=-

 Upon waking up, I am kind of sad that we don't have a similar strong book culture that was present in the dream. With or without Radio Dramas being a major part of culture

 The idea of having unhinged adaptations does seem like a fun time. Honestly, the two chapters the novel took to describe Natalie's Ritual--as well as at least a chapter before and after going over Natalie's mindset around it--were not even that overly out there for nonsense you could expect

Part of the conversation around these "choices" would be explaining everything that went wrong there. Do you focus on the bits talking about menstruation? The comparing attacking sharks to deboning frozen chicken? The confused understanding of Remora biology (where it appears to mix them up with Hagfish)? The Ritual somehow being one of the saner actions of Natalie? How exactly is Natalie in the Air Force? 

Nobody is upset about this. With the most negative response being, "but of course. What was I expecting?". There is just no end to the amount of conversation you can have. With anybody behind on the books having people going, "hold on--you are not prepared for what is coming up. It is gonna get real GOOD in a bit, buddy. By 'Good' I mean--you know what I mean that the word 'good' is not a usual descriptor here"