![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo over in the comments to this post of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala's, a discussion got going about telling details in description, in the course of which I postulated a difference between telling details and significant details.
And then, because this is my brain, I had a dream last night about it.
In this dream, which was sort of gothic-with-modern-technology (and set in Seattle, which is the second time in two nights I've ended up there--my subconscious is probably trying to tell me something, but I don't know what), I was a governess. I'd been set up with the job by some sort of charitable/intellectual foundation, and been given mentors, one of whom was a stockbroker, and I think one of the others was a lawyer. High-powered types, anyway. In compliance with their genre, these mentors were adoring but not very helpful.
The family I was working for: husband, wife, two kids. The kids might as well have been Miles and Flora from The Turn of the Screw, and you can more or less just take them as read. The parents were young, wealthy socialites, and very very much in love with each other. Fond of their children, but not interested in them. They left them to the servants, being me, their nurse, and their maid (I would say nursery maid, but that's not quite right).
The maid was an ifrit.
She and the nurse were plotting to kill the children. I overheard them, realized they were going to frame me for it, and desperately arranged to meet with one of my mentors on my afternoon off. She believed me about the maid being an ifrit ("What does she look like, inside?" "Like a piece of coal, hard and black."), but not about how urgent it was. She and the other mentors came up with this very soothing, very rational plan, and then walked me home. They came into the kitchen with me, and one of them finished the Coke he'd been drinking and handed me the can to put in the recycling.
At which point, my dream-self rolled her eyes and said, "Okay, here, this is incredibly obvious. No one in this household drinks Coke, so when the maid goes to take out the recycling, she's going to know I had someone here, and she's going to know why. This is a significant detail. And it's really clumsy, too."
"Oh," said my mentors and shuffled their feet, and the dream started moving forward again, and I put the can in the recycling. Because, I mean, I'm a gothic heroine. What else can I do?
And, of course, inevitably, the nurse and the ifrit realized I was a danger and bricked me up in the cellar, and the dream wobbled away from its original plot and got lost.
I could stand to have less didactic dreams.
matociquala's, a discussion got going about telling details in description, in the course of which I postulated a difference between telling details and significant details.And then, because this is my brain, I had a dream last night about it.
In this dream, which was sort of gothic-with-modern-technology (and set in Seattle, which is the second time in two nights I've ended up there--my subconscious is probably trying to tell me something, but I don't know what), I was a governess. I'd been set up with the job by some sort of charitable/intellectual foundation, and been given mentors, one of whom was a stockbroker, and I think one of the others was a lawyer. High-powered types, anyway. In compliance with their genre, these mentors were adoring but not very helpful.
The family I was working for: husband, wife, two kids. The kids might as well have been Miles and Flora from The Turn of the Screw, and you can more or less just take them as read. The parents were young, wealthy socialites, and very very much in love with each other. Fond of their children, but not interested in them. They left them to the servants, being me, their nurse, and their maid (I would say nursery maid, but that's not quite right).
The maid was an ifrit.
She and the nurse were plotting to kill the children. I overheard them, realized they were going to frame me for it, and desperately arranged to meet with one of my mentors on my afternoon off. She believed me about the maid being an ifrit ("What does she look like, inside?" "Like a piece of coal, hard and black."), but not about how urgent it was. She and the other mentors came up with this very soothing, very rational plan, and then walked me home. They came into the kitchen with me, and one of them finished the Coke he'd been drinking and handed me the can to put in the recycling.
At which point, my dream-self rolled her eyes and said, "Okay, here, this is incredibly obvious. No one in this household drinks Coke, so when the maid goes to take out the recycling, she's going to know I had someone here, and she's going to know why. This is a significant detail. And it's really clumsy, too."
"Oh," said my mentors and shuffled their feet, and the dream started moving forward again, and I put the can in the recycling. Because, I mean, I'm a gothic heroine. What else can I do?
And, of course, inevitably, the nurse and the ifrit realized I was a danger and bricked me up in the cellar, and the dream wobbled away from its original plot and got lost.
I could stand to have less didactic dreams.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*looks at your subject line*
Date: 2004-01-07 07:00 am (UTC)Re: *looks at your subject line*
Date: 2004-01-07 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 10:02 am (UTC)Maybe
no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 10:56 am (UTC)