kjorteo | Entries tagged with dream

A full and honest review of Alvin and the Chipmunks in: The Miden Istaria, a Chipmunks/Istaria isekai crossover movie that existed in the dream we just had last night.

Now that we're awake and can look this up, "miden" is not a fancy word for "place called" the way you all thought it was in the dream. Perhaps you meant "midden," because rodents and all, but even that is an incredible stretch.
Don't get me wrong; I love that Istaria of all things is getting some love and attention in the form of this crossover. However, I can't help fut feel like you had an ultra-generic fantasy world plot ready to go and just kind of put Istaria's name on it, rather than making any kind of actual investment into Istaria's lore or setting. I mean, there were no Withered Aegis, which are kind of a big deal. I don't think there were even any friendly good-guy non-enemy dragons, which, from what we can tell moderating their Discord, is basically the entire point and reason anyone still plays Istaria anymore.
That said, I have no idea who on your staff felt the need to include a Tolkienesque 100% fully functional and learnable for-real conlang complete with heiroglyphic-style alphabet just for the "Welcome to Istaria" signage and whatnot, but I do have to admit it was a really cool touch. Unnecessary, but cool. Appreciated.
The whole mood of this film was kind of... dark, for a Chipmunks movie, don't you think? Like, there was a part where one of the forgettable human companions had an in-peril cliffhanger shot that cut away as some enemies are approaching and then he didn't appear or get mentioned at all ever again for the entire rest of the movie (because the human companions are that forgettable.) Given the overall grittiness of this film, I got in actual arguments on the Internet over whether that person died or "no, don't be edgy, it's a goddamn Chipmunks movie, they just got captured or something and then the writers kind of forgot," and I have to admit that, even if I didn't want them to, team "this movie has an actual body count" really had a point.
Speaking of surprisingly dark elements in a film like this, did we really need the entire subplot of Alvin being addicted to prescription medication? Like, take that scene where they were all deep in a dungeon, Theodore was too gravely injured to move, and Simon stayed with him while they all pooled their money and gave it to Alvin and sent him off to find supplies and help. Was that all not already harrowing enough without Simon and Theodore then cynically taking actual moneyed bets (with the remaining coins they didn't pool, I guess) on whether Alvin would take the opportunity to go score more pills? Come on, you guys were in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. You're better than this.
Okay, so, that part where Alvin (on his quest to go find help) comes across a doctor's office where the little girl companion is being seen and he falls head over heels in love with her glamorous shimmering sparkling beauty pageant outfit. The line "I could make a man look like a woman in that, let alone a girl" is so deeply problematic on so many levels that I hate even having to type this. There are so many layers about what's wrong with this line to unpack that I'd kind of rather just throw out the entire suitcase.
That said, when Alvin triumphantly returned (without betraying the group to feed his addiction, thank you) with some kind of all-female Amazon warrior party that ended up being a Twilight Force-esque dorky D&D power metal band about being an Amazon warrior party, that was equal parts a funny joke, an epic and uplifting "Alvin came through and they have reinforcements now, hooray" moment, and an amazing musical number. Well played.

Overall, I have to say that this movie had an absolute boatload of problems, but somehow still nowhere near as many as I was expecting it to from the fact that it's a fucking Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel spinoff. I give it three stars out of five.

Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/395130.html

Dreamers' Game? Dreamer's Game? I never actually got a chance to see it, like, written down, so I'm just guessing whether the Dreamer(s) should be pluralized. (I mean, I'm the dreamer and I'm already pluralized, but shh you know what I mean.)

Anyway so this was a weird dream I had last night and it's long and very weird.

( wheeee )

Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/394809.html

Conversation from last night's dream:

---

Someone (fictitious coworker in a fictitious job I had in this setting? Basically just some NPC): *Handing us an old music album* So my friends and I were talking the other day about our greatest treasures. This is the demo album from the garage band my mom was in when she was young.

Me: Oh, neat!

Them: What's neat is they had this experimental trick where every track on the album is actually two songs. They wrote and composed everything in such a way that they could just play them together, on top of each other, and they'd blend and create the overall track you're hearing.

Me: (Immediately realizing the problem of, "Wait, if these are all original compositions from some indie garage band and not mashups of established songs, literally how would you tell the difference between the two original layered tracks and the one final flattened song?" but saying nothing)

Them: And every individual track was composed by a different composer, too. Unfortunately, my mom only remembers bits and pieces about who wrote what after all this time, but....

Me: (Sensing the "this story is a setup for a logic puzzle" vibe so strongly that we could practically hear the Professor Layton music kick in) So our job is to listen and identify the separate tracks, and use the clues provided to identify the composer of each.

Them: *Sheepish* ... Yeah.

---

... This is one or two giant Pokemon orgies away from being something Argon Vile drew.

When I was a teen, my parents had a dog I really loved. She eventually grew old and died, as they do.

It seems like, for whatever reason, she's been in my dreams off and on pretty much ever since. Like, constantly. Enough that it was sad at first but now I'm just kind of used to it. Enough that even my subconscious is somehow aware of how much this is becoming a running thing and is working that into the plot itself; in a series of dreams over several months or years, she has miraculously reappeared and reunited with us, been there in the background for a while, grew old, died again, and... is now back a third time, apparently.

It's getting to the point where I hardly even react anymore other than the sort of vague mild warm fuzzy one gets from hanging out with a friend for a couple hours. "Oh hey, how's things? Cool, cool, that's cool. Anyway, good to see you again. Catch you next time, yeah?"

Why her, though, I wonder? There have been at least a zillion family dogs we've gone through over the years.

Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/389612.html

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Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/389020.html

Dreamed that we went to see the Sonic movie now that it was apparently out. It was openly, and I mean openly furbait as hell. Like, to the point that they just straight up stole the Group Room (Honey Bee Inn) bit from FF7 only with Sonic and a heavily anthropomorphized, SpelunkerSal's "Roommates" style Roy Koopa and... one of the other koopalings, I forget which but he was bara. This was deliberate; Sal had actually landed a role working on this movie and put this bit of direction in himself.

It was still kind of a letdown, mostly because I was mentally contrasting the ending credits (which, in the dream, were a basic-ass no-frills text scroll set to absolute dead silence possibly for artsy reasons?) to those of Detective Pikachu (which in real life are a ParaNorman/Kubo and the Two Strings-tier feat of fanservice so great that I really want to watch Detective Pikachu again just so I can watch the credits again.)

Woke up with the sobering realization that this is still an improvement over what we're probably going to get.

Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/387788.html

Last night's dream, part 1:

Denny's unveiled a new set of menu additions for... I don't know if it had a name, but various kinds of grilled tortilla sandwiches.

Like, picture a grilled cheese sandwich, okay? Picture the texture of the bread, all buttered and crisp on the outside, fluffy and, well, breadlike on the inside. Now picture if someone took a somehow-thick-as-bread tortilla and did the same thing to it, then folded it in half and put sandwich filling in the middle. I might possibly be talking about the mutant offspring of a soft taco at this point.

But when I say sandwich filling, I mean, like, actual "things you feed your six-year-old" sandwiches. There was an entire line of them, but the three I remember include actual grilled cheese, peanut butter & jelly, and a lettuce/tomato/some sort of shredded meat (I think ham but could have been turkey) blend.

Last night's dream part 2:

I woke up about an hour before my alarm went off, tried to go back to sleep, and kept having 10-15 minute doze-off sessions, and every single one of them had a follow-up dream where I was telling someone (friends/family/etc.) about this and they reacted with equal parts "yeah that sounds like something Denny's would do all right" and "I want one."

Crossposts: https://kjorteo.livejournal.com/385581.html

Last night's dream was the trailer for the upcoming realistic CGI Winnie the Pooh movie Disney was apparently working on (a la Jungle Book, Lion King, etc.) I've never been a huge Winnie the Pooh fan, but I mean I've never been a huge Jungle Book fan either and I loved the new movie, so sure I'll bite.

We start in a farm setting where a certain baby runt pig is being nursed back to health after being caught in a rainstorm or something. The other major characters are introduced as he recovers. The bee non-aggressively snuggles up to him, and given the stylistic choice to go for total realism, no anthropomorphism, yet still scale the bee's size (and, uh, waspiness) up to match, it pretty much looked like a baby pig spooning a Japanese giant hornet. A bit "uh" but I mean if Charlotte's Web can make spiders endearing, sure I'll give it a chance I guess. 8| Then the pig looks up at a certain bear cub over by the fireplace and "you know these two are going to be best friends forever and form the entire plot of this movie" music starts playing. Etc.

It was very Piglet-centric for a movie ostensibly about and named after Winnie the Pooh, but I guess it works out because stylistically this was literally Babe. Christopher Robin was nowhere to be seen, unless he grew up and became Arthur Hoggett, so I guess the whole "child's imagination and adventures with his stuffed animals" framework is gone and everyone is just real now.

It built up to the big triumphant fanservicey shot of an entire barnful of miscellaneous animals singing... uh... the well-known fanservice song from Winnie the Pooh. Is there one? I'm sure there is and someone in the comments is going to be like "HOW DARE YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS NOT USE (song) HERE" but I DON'T KNOW, I WASN'T REALLY EVER INTO WINNIE THE POOH OKAY. I think it just pulled some other famous Disney number (possibly "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes"?) and in dream logic context I just sort of knew what they meant and had that "aaa it's the Winnie the Pooh song" reaction.

My ex from two relationships ago was squeeing with excitement proudly showing off this trailer because she somehow landed a voice-acting role and was in this movie, as a gamer(!?) named Snorch. Your guess is as good as mine how gamers get worked into the plot of a Winnie the Pooh movie, since Snorch wasn't actually in the trailer (but the "and (other ex) as Snorch" byline was) but I was told it was kind of a one-scene cameo type deal. Still, that's impressive! Congratulations and good job and etc.

I woke up about an hour before my alarm was going to go off, so I kind of rolled over and went over what I'd just witnessed, trying to commit it to waking memory so I could write this out later, then drifted back to sleep and--

Wait.

Wait just a goddamn minute.

Winnie the Pooh doesn't have a fucking bee in its main cast.