Anime Girls - Duel of Duality

Recently I was subjected to the comedy/soft porn anime “Rosario + Vampire.” When the character Moka was revealed to essentially be two people I made the remark, “so we are doing the girl with one side childlike the other dangerous thing again are we?” I was asked to explain how many anime I had seen with this, because I boldly estimated a figure of roughly ONE THOUSAND!

How let us be clear here, I clearly said there must be ONE THOUSAND anime with the female characters with dual personality as a deliberate exaggeration, and my primary point is that this idea has been done before, MANY TIMES.

I did I quick search online and here is a list of anime girls with dual personalities;

Moka Akashiya from “Rosario + Vampire”
Lucy / Nyu from “Elfen Lied”
Pai Ayanokoji / The Sanjiyan from “3X3 Eyes”
Yumie / Yumiko from “Hellsing”
Harumi Chrono / Maria from “Paranoia Agent”
Koyomi Yuimachi / Yomi from “Zombie Loan”
Lady Une from “Mobile Suit Gundam Wing”
Lunch from “Dragon Ball”
Momoka Nizhizawa from “Sgt. Frog”
Sowoko Yumanka from “K-On!”
Shiro from “Deadman Wonderland”
Suzuho Hasegowa from “Magician’s Academy”
Yayu Higuchi / Nana from “Othello”
Lisette Vertorre from “Eleven Eyes”

I did not include on the list Run Elsie Jewelria (To Love-Ru) and Ranma Saotome (Ranma ½), since their metamorphisms is a purely physical one. In both examples their gender is switched, but they are still the same personality regardless of the body they are stuck in.

It should be noted that in this list I have seen only ever seen five of these anime and only two of those in their entirety. Furthermore of the three anime that I have only partially watched I never encountered two of the female character in question. In the brief time I spent looking at lists online of anime characters with split personalities I never once saw mention of Pai the Sanjiyan from “3X3 Eyes,” which in my opinion is one of the most obvious. What does this tell us? First, my basic working knowledge is not qualified to make a proper or thorough analysis on the matter under scientific standards to properly calculate an exact figure of how reoccurring this trend is. Second, even with my limited knowledge I was able to know of one very strong example that others, much more knowledgeable than myself on the subject matter, seemed to remember. Basically what I am saying is if we really wanted too we could expand this list easily.

The presented list is only fourteen, a far cry from a thousand I suppose, still enough to point out the reoccurring theme of characters with split personalities. A multiple personality disorder is too well known of a complex and too tempting a plot device to expect writers, regardless of genre, to ignore. So it only makes sense we would see this reoccurring theme in anime. We could probably just as easily compile a list just as long of females with split personalities in comic books or soap operas. However there is something more significant that was intended by my comment of “oh this again,” whilst watching “Rosario + Vampire.”

I have seen Moka’s personality split before twice, both times in anime.

I cannot say what the other eleven personalities on the list are like, but I suspect they are very different from Moka. Some of them sounded to be serious examples of the discomfort or horror of someone walking around with two or more set of thoughts and ambitions running around in their brain. While some sounded like they were very small adjustments in personality, as in, in order to have the courage to show off their true feelings the character would feel the need to don an alter ego. An alter ego is not a split personality, not really, Bruce Wayne doesn’t grapple with whether he is Batman or Bruce Wayne; he is both. Swamp Thing however did have that problem, but let’s not get too far off topic. Lunch from “Dragon Ball,” whom I have no recollection of, sounds very similar as far as basic premise, but Lunch is not a very important character I gather, she is not the female lead, or lead love interest, where as Pai Ayanokoji and Lucy / Nyu have identical story significance to Moka Akashiya.

He earned that kiss!

Pai is a Sanjiyan (Triclops) and the last of her kind. Yakumo Fujii inherits the responsibility of looking after Pai while she is in human mode. While the third eye on Pai head is closed she is young, naive, innocent... stupid, and utterly useless, hence why she needs a generic male protagonist to look after her, that is until she opens her third eye. Pai's alternative personality is the Sanjiyan, and when in her sanjiyan mode Pai shows her age (the character is suppose to be very old, like over a hundred years). The Sanjiyan is cold and ruthless; she does not care about anyone. She is no nonsense, and is very, very powerful. In order to make Yakumo not completely useless she steals his soul and turns him into a zombie. As a zombie servant to the Sanjiyan, Yakumo can survive any injury, and the writers abuse the hell out of this gimmick. Every episode of “3X3 Eyes,” Yakumo is getting the unholy hell beat out of him. On numerous occasions he is shot, gets limbs torn off, and even gets torn to pieces. It is pretty cool how Yakumo adjusts to this and becomes utterly fearless, by the third episode he is charging into battles against armed men and gigantic monsters knowing there is literally nothing they can do to him. Yakumo always gets smashed around until Pai opens her third eye and fixes everything. “3x3 Eyes,” was pretty good. 

Lucy is a Diclonii, a mutated human that has horns and four invisible/intangible physic arms that can tear people to pieces. Lucy is also a psychotic mass murderer, read more about her and “Eflen Lied,” here;   http://colinkellydreams.blogspot.ca/2012/08/the-mirror-elfen-lied.html

It is hard to forgive a mass murderer monster,
still she is still way more likable than Nyu.

However after suffering a nearly fatal gunshot wound to the head and washing up on shore and being rescued by our other two main characters Lucy is not present, she has become “Nyu.” Nyu is a functionally retarded child that perverts would love. Lucy is a ruthless murderer and Nyu is the childlike, innocent alter ego, the two extremes are a not so subtle way to show us just how damaged and tortured Lucy is. This is done in an effort to make us feel for Lucy, and they fail to do so, as far as I’m concerned in the anime, but I have high hopes for the manga which I am very slowly reading. 

Moka as a human/child.  Cute?

Moka Akashiya is a vampire, but... as long as she is wearing her rosary (it is actually an ornamental cross, but whatever) she is young, sweet and innocent, or childlike if you will. However when the cross is removed Moka turns into her true self (or other self I’m not sure which) which is more mature, more badass, and more frankly more vampire. Also her tits grow and since this is a comedy, why the hell not? But when you think about it a more serious, more mature, version of the same girl it may actually make sense that she would be more “developed.” She is more of a “woman” in this form, so a strengthening of her secondary sex characteristics actually makes sense. I’m reading into this though, the bigger boobs are obviously just a gag. 

Moka as a vampire/adult.  Sexy?

My point is this;

Pai, Nyu and human Moka are all sweet, innocent, stupid girls. While the Sanjiyan, Lucy and vampire Moka are all intelligent, powerful, dangerous women. They are all the primary female character and love interest to their generic male protagonist counterpart. They all have some “awakening” that causes their repeated transformation from one form to the other. They are all human and yet not human, and all of their human sides are weak and useless and in need of someone to protect them, while their inhuman side is a serious danger to all those around them. While the three inhuman sides of their characters are more or less unique, Pai being a mystic humanoid and last of her kind, Lucy being a desperate, angry, hunted animal, and Moka being a badass vampire, the purpose of these identities as far as the plot is concerned is the same. They are all depicted as tragic romantic characters because their inhuman side demands a lifestyle or destiny that prevents them from embracing the love they have found in their respected love interests. Meanwhile their human sides are essentially identical both in story purpose and personality. Basically the same character all three times.

Only in anime have I seen this specific character concept. So we are doing this again?

I think this is symbolic to some kind of power male fantasy; characters like Moka are a conquest relationship, a difficult woman to tame because of just how powerful she is. But I feel there is something more to be said here. The everyman that is the true protagonist in these stories is meant to be us, you know, every man  We are supposed to feel that we can tame a powerful woman, that no matter how powerful she is, she is still a sweet thing that just needs to be loved. I am sure some feminist somewhere is reading way too much into this and is completely losing her fucking mind, but this character arc is a charming one. With the exception of the most cold hearted bitches in the world everyone woman wants to be loved, just like every man.

One thing women like to hold over men’s heads is the “the boy inside,” the notion that men don’t grow up, and this appears true when you focus on the male tendency to ogle boobs, continue to love things from our childhood, and a unnecessary sense of competition, but women are just as guilty. A good number of women are guilty of being sensitive and well... childlike in their needs. Most powerful women still want someone to protect them when they are feeling weak. These are general sentiments not absolute, I am just saying even the strongest of men and women can be sensitive. Even the wisest of us can be youthful, or immature if you prefer to be judgemental. Woman who are powerful and wise... even inhuman I guess, are still women, they still want a man to do all the things a man is expected to do for them, you know, care for them, love them, and protect them.

I will probably never produce a thousand examples of female dual personality in anime, but I suspect someone other than me can think of a few more examples of female protagonist that are either identical or nearly identical to the three discussed here today. Furthermore I highly suspect we will see other characters like Moka in the future. The multiple personality disorder is just too much fun and in fiction we have the freedom to exaggerate the extremes of our characters personalities, and what better way to do that than to have one of the personalities a sweet loving girl and the other a inhuman powerhouse?

Dedicated to Peter Brown.

The Mirror - Elfen Lied

I dreamt I had found a new job as a security guard. This is not unfeasible, I have worked many jobs in my life, and I am a pretty cagy guy, I would probably make a pretty good security guard. However this dream was a little different. Of course it was. 

Deep within an office building’s basement, past a long winding hallway, completely unlike any real life office building, I was ordered to keep watch over a mirror. That’s right a mirror, a mirror that had a sink in front of it, and a two door floor cabinet beneath it. It looked very much like a bathroom sink, counter and mirror only it was placed on the far wall of a large office room. This looked very much like one of those open office rooms, not completely unlike the one I work in right now. The first thing to note about this office was the room was a mess. Tables and chairs were knocked over and various stationary was scattered about the floor. More alarming was the gouges in the wall and floor and how the concentration of such seemed to center around the mirror, the very thing I was being instructed to watch over.

Now this whole situation is strange, but that is the thing about dreams they only seem strange when you wake up. My instructions were simple, and cryptic, if anything unusual happens around the mirror I was to report it right away, and also no one was to enter this room without very specification authorization from people I never bothered to learn the names of. So basically I was going to be spending some alone time in front of the mirror, or I would have been if I was not told to stay at least two meters away from the mirror at all times, and to also beware broken glass being thrown at me. Also I was told it was unwise to talk to “her” because she had a temper.

Again this seems strange but I took it in stride. I just assume some kind of phantom, demon, ghost, something was trapped in the mirror and it had a maximum range of physical presence of two meters. Why not? I’ve had stranger jobs.

Time flies in dreams, and after the first few months, of working this boring job, I began to hope I could finally get hired by one of the accounting firms in the city (this is actual true of my real life), however I liked the pay to watch the listless mirror, and the very day I started to complain to myself about it I started hearing her voice.

“Let me out,” a woman’s voice quietly echoed from the mirror.

Now this seems very strange in retrospect, but again I took it in stride. I sat down in front of the mirror in one of the discarded chairs, at a distance of about three meters and began to ask casual questions like “who are you?” and “are you trapped in the mirror?” Before I knew it broken glass was being thrown at me. They were right she did have a temper. After a while she appeared in the broken mirror, a haggard young girl, her hair a mess and dark circles around her eyes. She probably would have been pretty if she was cleaned up.

This is around the time my suspensions of disbelief started to overcome me, and not because of the fantastic elements involved in the dream were impossible and strange, but rather because the fantastic elements involved in the dream were far too familiar, I was dealing with Lucy from “Elfen Leid.”

I have not watched much anime in the past ten years. What was once an exciting export of cartoon violence and nudity with mature subject matter and crazy Japanese storylines had become dominated by commercial tactics appealing to the most general audience. Storylines were contrived; characters had become androgynous, and worst of all the mature subject matter had been mostly replaced with teenage melodrama. Now my complaints are only generally true, not absolutely, but with a busy schedule and a worn out patience I no longer had the willingness to investigate the now oversaturated market of anime to find something I like. I watched “Elfen Lied” by chance.

Whilst youtube surfing I came across a “violent anime clip collection,” and not having any reason to not watch a bunch of violence I sat back and enjoyed myself. I recognized Guts from “Berserker,” chopping people in half, and Alucard from “Hellsing,” shooting people up, but I did not recognize naked pink haired girl tearing men to pieces. At first, it looked like a homage to Tetsuo’s escape scene in Akira where he rips a bunch of dudes to pieces while stumbling down the hallway, but no, it got worse (or better depending on your point of view), there were visuals of a younger pink haired girl getting her leg graphically torn off and her finger tips severed as she fell from her sudden dismemberment; that was the scene that really caught my attention. I thought “wow that anime isn’t holding anything back, that young girl is getting gruesomely murdered.” Since I did not have anything better to do with my weekend I looked up the series “Elfen Lied,” and watched all thirteen episodes in two days.

Nyu the childlike half of Lucy's personality.  Reminds me of an ex.

"Elfen Leid,” is about a young girl named Lucy. She has a rare birth defect that has given her horns that look a lot like cat ears, oh Japan, anyway they call her kind Dicloniis. Also she has physic powers; she can control four invisible physic arms with tremendous strength. The opening scene in “Elfen Lied,” is Lucy escaping from the lab where she has been kept hostage. Wearing only some strange helmet she walks down the hall slaughtering everyone she encounters, even the innocent, albeit it stupid and clumsy, secretary, Lucy tears the poor girls head off and uses the headless corpse as a human shield to block the barrage of bullets being fired at her, which seems needless since her arms proved more than capable of repelling any such attack   repeatedly seconds earlier. She escapes but suffers a nearly fatal gunshot wound from a sniper, then she is found by cousins Kohta and Yuka, and she is reduced to an ignorant childlike state where she can only say the word “nyu.” Kohta and Yuka decide to take her in and they name her Nyu. Oh Japan, I’ve never understood the sexual interest in ignorant childlike girls, effectively Nyu’s personality and mental capacity is that of a mentally challenged person, and I fail to see why that is either cute or sexy. Also no other review mentions the oddness that Kohta and Yuka, who are love interests to each other, are cousins, and hey, incest, is no one going to say anything? So yeah this whole love triangle didn’t work for me at all.

There are two primary perspectives about the character Lucy/Nyu we are witness to, we see Lucy as a terrible force of murder and destruction, and we also get to see her as a tragic romantic figure. Lucy goes on multiple berserk murdering sprees, but at the same time she lives a life of misfortune. If we look at the list of murders Lucy commits over the course of the series we can see how the story sets her up a dangerous entity.

When Lucy is a child she first kills when three bullies tease her and kill a stray puppy dog she found, arguably the three bullies had what was coming to them though I doubt anyone who actually believe that three out of control children deserve to be brutally murdered, but in addition to these three deaths Lucy also kills her friend who happens to be in the room. I suppose we could write these four murders off as a fit of anger from a child who did not understand her powers.

Next Lucy kills her own family. This happens off screen so we do not get any insight into what caused her to snap, but it is suggest to us in a prior scene that her family treats her like she is a black sheep, so perhaps it could be argued that this is yet again another outburst from a young girl that resulted in unintentional mass murder.

Lucy murders a random family so she has somewhere to sleep for the night. The only member of the family we actually see Lucy kill is the father of the family when he gets home from work, or something. This is really bad, it cannot be suggested that Lucy killed them out of necessity or a child’s misdirected self preservation. Lucy has killed multiple innocent people at this point.

Lucy then murders additional random and presumably innocent people as a festival, and following this even kills Kohta’s sister and father out of jealousy, for his affections for his cousin Yuka. A selfish motivation and more accounts of first degree murder.

As an adult Lucy kills multiple people while breaking free of her captivity, including the innocent secretary, and men running away from her and those begging for mercy.  She has been essentially tortured and this is her anger unleashed so no one was safe once she got loose.

Lucy kills again when the organization responsibly for her captivity come after her. A few more kills in self defense.

Lucy kills a college professor after being raped by him (this is a dark series), which is understandable. While walking home Lucy casually kills a random woman walking by primarily out of curiosity. 

Poor Nana, you are actually a good person.

Lucy brutally dismembers Nana a fellow Diclonii. While Nana does survive the incident, Lucy does enjoy torturing her in this scene, and this is after Nana makes it clear she will not hurt Lucy if she does not have too, and she will not kill her under any circumstance. The only reason Lucy is able to do this terrible thing to Nana is because Nana shows her mercy.

Lucy fights off an army of soldiers who come for her in the end. She also kills an innocent scientist who poses no threat to her. 

That is the list and it is an impressive one, and it well accomplishes the goal of establishing Lucy as an incredibly dangerous person. What I liked about Lucy is that her powers were finite and there could be a way to defeat her with or without powers similar to her own. The intrigue to most creature feature horror movies is trying to figure out how the characters are going to overcome the monster, and “Elfen Lied,” did a great job of making me think about how were they going to bring down Lucy. These murders by Lucy also did a great job of making me feel that she must be destroyed.

This is where “Elfen Lied” fails as a story. It is not impossible to have a character who is both dangerous/evil and a victim/good, this is clearly what “Elfen Lied,” is trying to accomplish but fails to do so. The extremes of Lucy’s wrong doings far exceed any believability of her innocence as a forced victim. She has killed multiple innocent people in multiple situations under a variety of emotional conditions and circumstances. She kills innocent people without mercy and even tortures for fun, and this is not a onetime mistake but an ongoing problem, Lucy at no point ever stops killing people. Any sort of redemption that could be tangible for Lucy is washed away by the flood of blood she produces over the course of the series.

It could be argued that the duality of Lucy’s character still works since her powers do incur a sort of demonic possession. It is told to us the viewers that all Dicloniis end up merciless killers. We see demons in Lucy’s mind urging her to kill and slaughter. We see other examples of Dicloniis going on murdering sprees. This is a satisfactory explanation, or it would be if not for Nana.

All Dicloniis go crazy and start killing people... except Nana. Nana is a Diclonii with all the powers and everything but she never goes on a killing spree, she never hurts anyone, in fact when she is asked to help kill Lucy she out right refuses to do so, stating she would never kill anyone, which shows a lot of character on Nana’s behalf since at this point in the series it is very evident that Lucy must die. Nana shows high moral qualities and never exhibits any of the rage or lust to kill that Lucy does.

I liked Nana. She was one of the only characters I was rooting for in “Elfen Lied,” which is unfortunate because her mere existences makes the entire plot of “Elfen Lied,” a self defeating one. Lucy is crazy because of her powers only that doesn’t work because Nana is not crazy and she has the same powers. Lucy is tragic because all her emotional outbursts resulting in death and destruction are a result of living a painful life, only they are her fault, because Nana lived no less a painful life and yet she has never killed anyone. Lucy, as a young woman, is aware of her powers and feels guilt for her terrible deeds yet makes no effort to stop killing innocent people. I could not help but notice that a lot of people really bought into this character and really liked Lucy but while watching "Elfen Lied," I was assuming the conclusion of this story must be her death, a very necessary and well deserved death.

She killed your family and a whole bunch of other people's
families but that's okay because you love her... wait what?

Spoiler she does not die, and we are suppose to feel bad for her, and we are suppose to love her because Kohta does... even though she murdered his family... and she is not done murdering people and shows no intention of stopping. This does not work, Kohta forgiveness (he says he can't forgive her, but he basically does) of Lucy is too farfetched, and it is should be obvious to everyone that Lucy is an evil person who must be stopped. The series probably should have ended with Kohta strangling Lucy to death, and Lucy letting him do it because she is overwhelmed with guilt. It would have been a very sad ending but the entire series was dark, this would have been a good ending.  

Now this may sound unsettling, but I really enjoy graphic violence. I am not some sadist that revels in misery of others, nor am I some sycophant with a twisted blood lust, I like extreme and intense drama and excitement, and there within lies my love of graphic violence. The two things that are most interesting to us humans is love and death as I have talked about in so many essays, which is only natural since we see love as the greatest of beginnings and death as the greatest end. But death can be peaceful and quiet and frankly not so scary or terrible, or it can be hideous and painful and consequentially terrifying. Violence in war is not as unsettling as violence at home, and violence against men is not as unsettling as violence against women. Soldiers are prepared to die even gruesomely, men comprise the vast majority of soldiers throughout the history of the world but also even the average male is often thought of as a protector and fighter, this going back all the way to the days of hunter gatherers. The sad truth about being male is that we are disposable. One bull can impregnate many cows, and this is true of humans as well (while not to the same degree) and this is why the population of the human race has always been a slight majority female. We call them the fairer sex for a reason, not only is the average female less physically equipped to deal with a violent confrontation, but their life is typically more precious. I do not intend to ramble on any further about gender differences here; I just want to break down our mental disposition about why seeing a female die horribly is so much more shocking than watching a man die the same death.

Adults are much more mentally and physically prepared for violent encounters than children, this a much easier detail of discomfort to explain, in fact I don’t even feel the need to bother. Seeing young people die is more terrible then watching the old perish.

Given these two details watching Lucy dismember Nana in “Elfen Lied,” is the scene that sticks with us the most. Fans of “Elfen Lied,” may not even be aware of it, but what made “Elfen Lied,” so memorable, among other things, was the violence against young female characters. But this makes “Elfen Lied,” a little unnerving. I would like to assume the reason for this is to shock us at just bad the Dicloniis are, that they would even kill women and children, and yes, that works, but the direction of the animation gave me pause. A lot of men are killed in “Elfen Lied” but their deaths are rarely graphic. The male deaths are plenty violent, there is blood everywhere and everything but the attention to detail is typically vague while the deaths of women are routinely showcased with full exposure of the violence set upon them.

Examples, when Bando gets his arm ripped off, we see a spray of blood, and where his arm once was there is now a torn sleeve of his shirt and a blood stain, while in contrast, when Nana is dismembered we see the skin stretch, tear and snap every time one of her limps is removed and we see the exposed wounds in all their gory details, we can see the severed muscle tissue and the broken bones. In the opening scene when Lucy is killing a massive number of soldiers many are torn in half but we never see innards or bones exposed, just big sprays of blood, however when the secretary gets her head ripped off we see everything. We do see a man get his heart torn out and thrown onto another soldier, that’s something, but we also see a woman torn in half later in the series and we see her innards and broken ribs tear through her torso as it happens. Another reason this is worrisome is that violence against women appears to be a reoccurring theme in anime now. Claymore was about a bunch of blonde haired demon warrior women fighting demons and sometimes each other, and it was a very violent show. Higurashi, is about a group of friends losing their minds and turning on each other and killing each other, and five of the six friends were female. But in both Claymore and Higurashi they just happen to star a cast of characters that are predominately female so the eventual violence that happens to them seems more like part of the overall story and not a sick indulgence. Furthermore the attention to detail in both Claymore and Higurashi is consistent throughout the series, everyone dies with a similar degree of showcased violence. In fact Higurashi which is definitely my favorite of the three almost always shied away from the violence, because it was not the violence that made that show interesting, it was the insanity and paranoia the characters were experiencing that was intense and exciting. Once the plot collapsed in “Elfen Lied,” I made the sad realization that I had just watched murder porn. The self defeating plot of “Elfen Lied,” is just a poorly written excuse for to see young girls naked and brutally killed.

While I was very disappointed by the gapping plot hole that was Nana’s sweet kind innocence among other less important inconsistencies, I did find the concept of Dicloniis and Lucy very interesting. “Elfen Lied,” did not know what it wanted to be, you know other than female murder porn, it succeeded in setting up the dark side of Lucy but failed to win me over to feeling any sympathy for her. I guess the best thing about “Eflen Lied,” is that it was an original idea and even with its shortcomings it managed to capture my imagination, so much so I dreamt about it, but you know in that dream the primary intrigue was trying to find a way to destroy the evil of the girl behind the mirror, or at least to avoid her dangerous attacks.

In the manga, which I have not read, it looks like they address my concerns regarding Lucy’s unforgivable acts of violence and the ending not holding up. At least it looks that way.

Lucy dying a gruesome and well deserved death.
I actually feel bad for her now.

Just One Dream

It was the zombie apocalypse. I was trying to survive with a group of survivors in a mall, and after careful measures we had managed to wipe out the horde of zombies in the parking lot. Over the next few months we were clearing out the vehicles and salvaging what we could. I was part of a team that had survived by taking over a mall, not unlike “Dawn of the Dead.” We had cleared out the mall, and the surrounding area and were starting to stock up when a herd of zombies came our way. I was on the outside when it happened and was forced to hide in a van full of supplies that I had just brought back. I was the only one.

Everyone else ran back inside, I was cut off from them for a long time, many days. After a while I decided I needed to make a run for it. Even though I still had plenty of food, the living conditions within the van were not tolerable for me, so I opened the door with my shovel in hand and fought my way through. I struck down a few zombies and ran for my life.

The next thing I remember was coming across a community that was in ruin, there were survivors but things were collapsing as soon as I arrived. I joined the fray with my shovel and the others soon recognized me as a helpful ally. At one point a few children were told to go hide inside with their parents, and from the screams we could tell their parents were already zombies and we had inadvertently sent them to their deaths.

Roughly forty survivors including myself built up fortifications, we were planning a major fight. We would draw the zombies in with a huge bonfire, it was a disaster. I remember faces which seemed familiar even though they were fleeting, and all dead or dying. I fought and fought, as I am want to do, and after dozens, maybe even hundreds of slain zombies piled up around me, the number of the living had thinned to nearly nothing. I fought into the crowd and out of the two. I found a clearly and ran. The fire behind me burning and drawing the attention of the zombies. I was holding a woman’s hand dragging her behind me. She was wearing the garb of a police woman; perhaps I was thinking about “Silent Hill” at that point, I cannot be certain.

The fire burned though out the night and allowed me and the police woman to escape.

It’s strange in dreams... how time warps. Many years must had passed in an instant, me and the police woman were holding up in a warehouse with a bunch of college students and a group of needlessly hostile minorities, not unlike the scene in “Diary of the Dead,” everyone hated each other. The college students were meek and had insane and judgemental leftist views about the whole situation, and the blacks and Hispanics who had banded together to survive were racist and untrusting towards all these “whites.” It was stupid but it was just like some of the badly written social commentary forced into so many zombie films. The only people I could rely on was myself, the police woman, and the leader of the minorities a man named Marcus, he and I had become friends. The three of us were the only competent level headed people in the group.

The events that transpired were more like a montage of tragedy, one of the students broke their leg, it got infected and he died. There was a rape, and I murdered the rapists when they were drunk, and that drove the conflict between us more. Mistakes were made and we were overrun. Some of us escaped, but slowly we dwindled. Zombies got a few of us, we had begun to kill each other, and others literally broke down laid down and refused to go on. I lost the police woman... she died trying to help a child... though the child was already gone. Her mind had gone, the police woman, the stress and the despair of the situation was too great, she lost her sanity and soon after she lost her life, and with her gone there was only Marcus and me left.

We stopped speaking to each other, Marcus and me, there was nothing to say, we had gone well over a year with the police woman before she was taken from us and at least another year before we lost the rest of the group, and another two or three years walled up in that warehouse. We had survived for so many years and never seen another survivor, and now without the police woman... we were just two men waiting to die. The human race was finished we were its last representatives.

Marcus died, in the night. We were starving, and all the canned food we were finding was expired, I grew tired and weak, but he grew ill, and slowly he decayed in front of me. We never spoke, I knew he was dying, and I could tell we wanted to die, and there was nothing left. With Marcus gone I was alone, just one man waiting to die. I was the human race’s last representative.

Years passed. Roaming alone was easier than with the others, even Marcus and the police woman as capable as they were had slowed me down. I no longer had to share the scraps of food I found and hiding, moving, and running were all easier when you only had to worry about yourself. I wore the police woman’s helmet, she had become important to me, I did not want to forget her, also the helmet kept me safe. I wore a leather jacket and gloves even when the sun was high in the sky, the only exposed skin I had was my lower face. I carried a rifle, a pistol, a shovel, a knife, and an axe, I had gotten so good at taken out the living dead that I rarely made any sound and I never broke a sweat anymore.

I lost count of the days and the years. I prowled through the ruins of Calgary wishing for any sign of life. Then slowly I awoke. I stirred in my sleep for a moment feeling the full effect of my zombie apocalypse dream, and the feeling I had was not unlike the inspiration I drew from Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend.” I was proud to know I fought until the end even when there was nothing left to fight for.

When I drifted back to sleep I dreamt I was an interloper in a foreign farm community, I had my secrets but they only came to me as they developed within the confines of the story. I have always been a hard worker and an agreeable helping hand, so even though I was un-trusted for being a foreigner I soon gained the trust of the many locals with my willingness to work. I became one of them, only I was really a spy.

This dream was a little more complicated. Everyone knows what a zombie apocalypse looks like, we have all seen the movies. This dream, it was like Stargate, sort of, some alien had come to this technologically backward world and declared themselves a god. I was sent here to find out about this alien and arrest him while doing the minimal amount of shock to the locals. I was not just a foreigner, I was an alien to this world. That was the secret I was keeping from her.

I had fallen in love with one of the girls in this village, but she was very dedicated to her god, the alien I knew to be a fraud. She was golden like a sunflower, and eyes blue as the sky, well as blue as the earth sky, here the sky was often a pale shade of purple. She had a twin sister who was much more tomboyish then her with short cropped black hair and eyes just as dark. Though one was gold and the other black they were very alike in their behaviour, the only difference being I got along a lot better with the one I was not in love with.

The girl’s father was very fond of me, I worked for him and he was very happy to learn my intentions to be with his golden daughter, I had his blessings and everything. He was their only parent since his wife had died birthing the two girls, and that loss had haunted them all. The greatest hurdle to winning my golden lady’s heart was the fact that I was a foreigner and I had not shown much love or respect to their idol god, and that was something the golden girl could not look past. This had created a huge emotional and sexual tension between the two of us, and in my sleep my body was twitching in response to an agony I knew all too well in real life.

The technology of this place was backward yet complicated in a way only orthogonal thinking could create. Their cotton jinn and steam engines were designed so very differently than earth’s. While surrounded by all these strange machinery I had begun to learn that the prays the girls made to their god were more than just wishful words, there was a literal voice in their heads answering them, and I knew through them I would find and arrest this false Stargate-esq god.

I tried to talk to my love, the golden girl about it but she grew very distant and untrusting of me for asking, saying a lot of things that hurt my soul, how I was unworthy of her and never a true member of the community as long as I was doubted their god. I was hurt but I had a job to do so I turned to the black sister. She was more cooperative but she warned me a great many times that their god did not like anyone seeking him or his voice out, especially outsiders. She also warned me that my inquires about their god would drive a great distance wedge between her sister and me.

I caught the two sisters praying together and I tried to spy on them but their god, or whatever voice in their heads told them I was close and they discovered my presences. I was successful at acting aloof, but the golden girl would not have any of it, she did not trust me. She stormed out of the farm and into the fields. I chased after her. I took her hand and pulled her close to me. I told her I loved her and I only wanted to help her. I could not explain that her god was an alien fraud or how I knew I could not chance blowing my cover I still had a job to do.

She broke into tears telling me that I could never understand her, how I would never know what it was like to be hurt like her. She never even knew her mother.

I lost my temper then.

I shouted at her “Everyone I ever knew is dead. My entire planet is over run zombies. I have no home to return to. You have a father and sister who love you, and me, I love you. I have lost everything, never dare complain to me about your insignificant pain.” While this would be an interesting line of dialogue to absorb and ponder over as to just why does my mind create such scenarios of sadness, but at the time all I could think was, “holy shit, is this still the same dream?”

Insanely this was still the same dream, and it came back to me how the two completely different scenarios had come to be connected. As I walked the ruin earth one desperate lonely night I saw a light in the sky and the light encompassed me and took me aboard a rocket ship. Aliens from another world had seen what sad fate had become of the human race on earth and taken pity upon the few survivors left. They had rescued me and a handful of others. In my gratefulness I agreed to help them in any way I could and since I was genetically so similar to these other creatures who had been victimized by an alien opportunist they had sent me in to investigate.

After a few days of being awake and thinking about what a crazy story my mind had come up with in that long dream I came to think that it might be a good idea for a short story, or a collection of short stories. The situation was so complicated that if I made the many levels of science fiction play off each other I may just have a story crazy enough to be considered acceptable to a popular mainstream audience.

As of now I am left unsure whether my imagination is amazing or if my dreams are just crazy.  I may or may not have a great idea for a novel series on my hands.

Dreams of the Workplace, and Zombies.

Dreams are little more than what you are thinking about when you go to sleep. If you are anything like me than you work hard, and you think hard about the work you do, and subsequently you dream about work sometimes... or a lot, it really depends on two variables. How hard do you work, and how crazy are you. Again if you work as hard as me (no one does) than you have an intensity and pride that makes doing a perfect job take precedence over everything else in your life. Also you need to be crazy in order to live this way. Also you need to be crazy to invest the amount of time necessary to think about work so much outside of work to haunt your dreams.

Here are a few examples of dreams I have had where work was a major presence.

I was studying hard for a calculus exam and taking periodic breaks to watch the anime “One Piece.” This was before “One Piece” was known in North America, before it had been touched or translated by 4kids and sub-sequentially ruined. I went to bed hoping to get my average two hours of sleep a night and I began to dream I was navigating a pirate ship, only some asshole had made the ships controls only responsive to advanced mathematical equations, as if that was now seafaring was done. So I would guide the pirate ship along and dodge cannon balls with math, you know, cause that made sense. It was not a very good sleep. I did pass every calculus course I ever took though.

The sound of chit printer on a kitchen line. Working the line was vivid enough in dream to consume my thoughts and drive my imagination throughout my sleep with this one endless task, but there was one thing that was inescapable; the sound of the printer. Anyone who has worked in a kitchen knows what I am talking about. The sound of the printer is the sound of more work, and the sound rings and rings when you are busy. It becomes a bad omen after one too many busy lunches, and then it becomes a horrible echo that will not go away. As the heat and long hours wear on you, you begin to hear it even when it is no longer printing. Then you start hearing it in your fucking dreams! It took about as many years to get the sound out of my head as it did for me to grow hair on the fingers back after quitting my job as a chef. It took many years.

I worked an average of sixty hours a week for every week in December 2011 in a warehouse. The commute was so bad that I would lose roughly fifteen to twenty hours a week just getting there and back again. Needless to say, I was tired. At nights I would toss and turn in my bed thinking about skid picking, but I was trying really hard to sleep, and I was so tired. I began to dream that I had fallen asleep on the job and was lying passed out on the skid on the pallet jack I was using to pick dog food (I worked at a veterinary supply warehouse) and I was trying to pick product while sprawled out on my skid. It was a pathetic effort, and I am sure if someone awake was watching me squirm in my sleep they would have to wonder what my out stretched body was trying to accomplish. Lying on the skid and reaching out to the lot to grab product was difficult in the dream, which made sense, doing that would be difficult. The real lack of realism coincidence with the fact that I was able to drive the pallet jack around while lying on the skid, that’s just impossible. I guess exhausted sleeping Colin didn’t notice.

Recently I have been working a good job for a good company. This may not sound like a big deal, but since it is the first time in my life that either of those two variables as described have been present in my life it is pretty exciting to me. I work asset management, and record, name, tag, and place key assets in the company’s records. Small mistakes are easy to make, like recording a CRN number with an “OG” instead of “0G,” and then somebody has to go through and fix them all. I had this terrible dream someone had misspelled “Chinook,” as “Chinnook,” and I was going to have to go through thousands of records and fix them. Unfortunately given the nature of the assets and software program in use there is no easy way to search for an error like. Such a misspelling could occur in so many different fields of data and the auto-populate feature means it could be a reoccurring problem over many assets in many fields. So I was hunting the errors down in the dream and then we were attacked by zombies. This was the same night season 2 of the Walking Dead aired their season finale, so you can piece together what I was thinking about as I fell asleep. Getting attacked by zombies in the work place just seems appropriate to me. I fought zombies in the University of Calgary, at the restaurants I worked, in my office as a book keeper, in a warehouse, and even on a pirate ship. Every story should end with a zombie apocalypse. You never know when the zombies are going to show up at work, and I guess subconsciously I am ready for that.

It might seem that I work too hard and sleep too little, but frankly I enjoy crazy dreams like these, they make going to bed all the more interesting. Sometimes you dream about work. Sometimes you dream about school. Sometimes zombies show up. Whatever you are thinking about can and will happen in dreams.

My Favorite Girl in the Whole World

A long time ago someone asked me what I liked in a girl, both ascetically and personality wise. The physical characteristics I seemed to find most alluring were interesting. I like fancy short cut hair-dos. I like a slender face. I like blue eyes. I like a turned up nose. I like a slight pronunciation of the front teeth. I like pouty lips and perky tits, and a round ass. I liked those things specifically, and all at once, all those things I saw on a single perfect human being.

I was cleaning dishes, as is part of the job as cook, and I saw this pretty girl with fancy hair. I thought she had great hair and from what I could tell a nice body. She turned and I saw her. It was the first and perhaps only time I have ever stared at someone.

The personality of someone I like is a little more difficult to explain, as is such things. I like someone smart, not just smart in general, but someone logical, someone who can learn and grasp complex subjects. I like someone who is tough, tough enough to argue with me when I am wrong, tough enough to stand their ground and speak their mind. I like someone who is honest, honest about their life, and honest with themselves. I like someone who is mischievous, someone willing to get into a little bit of trouble, someone daring enough to make things interesting on their own initiative. I like someone good. Someone who is loyal, and morally strong, someone who believes one's word still means something, someone who treats other with the respect they deserve.

As I got to know the princess, I saw that she was all these things. I learned a lot about myself, and about what I wanted in life. I gained validation knowing that all those things I listed above could be contained within a single girl and that I could love. I could love.

I have spent the last four years fawning over my favourite girl in the whole world. Whenever someone who knows is broached with the subject of Colin Kelly and his princess, they often point out how one-sided and terrible our relationship is, because we do not have one. Some see inspiration and feel admiration for me for my exemplarily work in wooing the princess, as it has become very much like a real life romantic comedy, her being a beautiful princess and me a hopeless romantic. Still I have slept alone in a cold bed every night for the past five years.

You see my favourite girl in the whole world has one crippling character flaw, one thing that prevents us from being together; my favourite girl in the whole world does not love me.

Sometimes I worry. It hurts me to know that these arms of mine that would keep her safe and hold her dear are wasted while another, an ingrate perhaps, may takes advantage of a girl so sweet.

Sometimes I feel stupid for loving the princess so. The inequality of our relationship is so off balance that I am the victim of my own reproach.

Sometimes I feel stupid for not moving on... but then I recall... I am unable to find anywhere to move on too for my favourite girl in the whole world has set a standard so high that I cannot find comfort, joy, or even interest with the women I meet. I have met my dream girl and there is no going back.

The princess was not alone in scorning me, her entire gender has spoken, and the word is not good. I am not so arrogant to argue with a unanimous vote, and the female gender has been united for as long as I can remember that I, Colin Kelly, was considered best to be ignored and forgotten. My favourite girl in the whole world is no exception.

I see things... I see things so differently than others... because I am on the outside looking within. I have a bird's eye view of others in their relationships, and I see their interactions and their compassions without bias. I spend long hours thinking about why I think so much and contemplating the motives and desires of all people, myself included. And I see things... sad things... but beautiful things too... I see flowers growing out of mud, and I see hardships hardening people, I see strength stem from suffering. I see lust turn to love, and I see cowardice disguised as romance. I see women constantly mistake kindness for weakness and cruelty for strength. I see people judge themselves for the relationships they do not have, or need.

And all these thoughts that spur my imagination to far away fantasies, come to a halt and I contemplate the single issue before me... no one loves me... and the odds of that changing are not promising.... and strangely I feel brave. I look upon my misery and I both smirk and cringe, because I know that I can take it. I almost laugh as my troubles and I say to myself a mantra, "happiness is for wimps." I am Colin Fucking Kelly, I am the King of Braves. I can make a good life with or without the princess, or anyone for that matter.

When I look in the mirror I see many things. I see a man haggard from an unfair and lonely life... but I also see a man with the endurance to live through it all over again a thousand times if need be. I think of the man I wanted to be when I was young, and I see that man looking back at me in the mirror now, lonely and hurt, but strong and noble. I see myself in the mirror and I see a man complete within himself, in need of nothing, in need of no one, and I am proud to be, me. All that pain and all that unhappiness, that is only the past and nothing more.

I love the princess, but she will never love me. I do not call her. I do not see her. I just hope she is happy... it is all I can do... it is all she will let me do. These feelings in my heart... wasted though they are... is love, real love, true love, the kind of love people should be looking for, and it pleases me, it pleases me to know I can feel this way. It is hard to stay mad when there are so many other things to enjoy in this endless odyssey we call life. I am a man of many things; having failed in this does not make me a failure elsewhere.

I see her in dreams, my favourite girl in the whole world, and she makes me calm. Her blue eyes cool my angry spirit, her smile makes me smile, and her company gives me something to look forward too. She speaks to me in words that suit her as if the dream were real, and she says the same encouraging and wonderful things she has said to me in real life. Even in dreams she is just beyond my touch, but I see her there as the friend she sometimes was to me and the symbol she always was to me. She gives me strength, and reminds me just how much I can do when motivated, and she motivates me. Suddenly the cold courage I feel when faced with my own inner demons becomes god like when I bask in her light. I walk invincible through life knowing what few do, I know what love is, and I know what it means to stand strong for something you believe in, and I believe in the princess... and I believe in myself... and I believe the princess believes in me... and that so much to hold dear to I do not know how I hold it all in.

One day, when this age of loneliness has finally come to an end, I will find her, or another like her, and I will love her again... and she will love me... it is a dream I have.

Dreams Within Dreams

The most reoccurring dream within a dream people seem to have is the waking dream. The dream where your alarm goes off, you wake up and start getting ready for your day, but then you wake up and realize that was all a dream, and then you have to go through all of that again. That is a dream within a dream, the more times you wake up and go through the waking motions of getting ready for your day, the more levels of dreams within dreams you are experiencing.

Being the odd fellow that I am, I have little to no memory of these sorts of dreams within dreams. No, my dreams within dreams are usual TV and movies.

A stated in the last rambling essay I stated that it is the strangest things that set us off and wake us, and that has everything to do with personality. Different people, different personalities, and different triggers that upset us and our minds wander to different dreams. A very reoccurring dream setting is through the eyes of others, namely the black knight and other characters from the fantasy world. But Hunter, Bombos, and Guy Morgan are all characters I created and the adventures they go on are also derivative of my own imagination, so waking from dreams from their points of view usual are struggles since everything is either a preset of my own understanding or a development further into the same creative thought patterns. Things become a little more impossible and difficult to accept when I see the world through the eyes of other characters, ones I did not create.

A few examples of the more reoccurring characters I have seen the world throw the eyes of in dreams are; Sir Gawain, or King Arthur, or Merlin from Arthurian lore, Autobots Prowl, Ultra Magnus or Optimus Prime; ninja turtle Leonardo; or sometimes Batman or other superheroes. This is not too surprising I really like all the stories and mythologies surrounding the above mentioned characters, and if I go to sleep thinking about them at length it is only natural to dream about them and through their eyes.

However I am not any of these characters, and while I may feel a kindred connection to their motivation, personalities, and emotions, there are differences enough that usually I will begin to struggle between what Batman would do and what I would do. Once that debate starts going through my head it is hard to accept and process, something is wrong and I know it... I know that I am not Batman... I am someone else.

Interestingly enough that debate of identity never occurs when I see the world through the eyes of Hunter, Bombos, or Guy, probably because I have always had complete creative control over them. I decide what their motivations and actions are, I do not have to respect or consider other writers interpretations of them to remain “realistic” within the given confides of the premise and who they are and what worlds they live in. In my fantasy world I am god like in what happens; there are no conflicts of creativity.

I find it quite amusing how my mind usual deals with the dreams through the eyes of fictional characters, what I am seeing cannot be real, so it must be... a movie.

Then the dream takes a dramatic turn, I am sitting in front of the TV watching a new movie or TV show about whichever character I have dreamt about. This is a dream within a dream, the movie or TV show was the dream within the dream of me watching it. I find this an interesting turn, an interesting and highly logical way for my brain to make sense of the situation. “No Colin, you are not ninja turtle Leonardo, you are watching a new ninja turtle movie,” makes sense.

Sometimes I think my imagination unhinged comes up with much more powerful and interesting ideas then Hollywood or Showtime can, but come to think of it, pretty much everyone who loves movies and TV feels that way about the mythologies they love, so I guess I am not so special in that regard. Still my imagination unhinge has greatly entertained me in such dreams, there was some good ideas in there, so some nonsensical ideas, but mostly good.

Detective Casmir in Calgary

The second dream where I saw the world through the eyes of Detective Casmir took place in my home city, Calgary Alberta.

I was planning something or I was here to stop something from happening. I was talking to a woman on a cell phone and promising her the spell would work.

The spell would work? Somehow I knew what this meant; I had cast a sleep spell on the entire city, ensuring they would not be awakened when the dead came back to life. Oh and by the way the dead are coming back to life tonight.

At midnight everyone was asleep and safe. I walked my way to the Bow River and waited for the first signs of life, or death depending on your perspective. Slowly zombies emerged from river, and I drew my long sword and began to cleave their heads off. I was quick and graceful and never in any danger, killing zombies at my own leisure. I was keeping the city clean from some strange necromancy.

In many dreams a flood of ideas enter your mind explaining the impossible location or scenario you are in. You just know who you are and what you are doing like you have lived this life your whole life. As this dream stood I was Detective Casmir and apparently the natives of the area used to bury their dead underneath the currents of the Bow River. But old forces had awakened these restless souls and they were emerging slowly. How I knew any of this, and how did I know to be where I was needed and when, no explanation, but that is one of the funny things about dreams, if you do not think it is important you will not think about it, and therefore you will never think of an explanation. Dreams are after all, all in your head.

As I was working away killing zombies with incredible efficiency, I saw out of the corner of my eye a young girl watching me. I finished the zombies quickly and rushed over to her. She should have been asleep, I had cast the sleep spell, and it had worked on everyone else in the city, but here she was awake.

She said something nice to me, about how amazing I was for taking out all those zombies. She was remarkably unfazed by what she had seen. Her enthusiasm along with her heavy compliments was a delightful thing, but I was curious about her. She was clearly immune to my spell, and the only explanation I could think of was that she was immune to all magic. She was a miracle birth, a random human completely immune to the affects of magical spells, so rare that I needed to remember her.

I asked her name, “Samantha.” I asked her how old she was “ten.” I asked her how curious she was about what she had just seen, and she told me she thought it was amazing, amazing to learn that zombies and sword wielding necromancer detectives were real, which is fair. I promised her I would show her more of the world of magic when she was older, but she had to promise me that she would not tell anyone what she had seen here tonight. She agreed, and I took her hand and cast some spell marking her. With this mark I could find her again ten years from now, and I would remember her, Samantha.

So that was nice, but the dream continued.

I report to my boss, the woman I was talking on the phone with earlier. She is sturdy black woman, and she is mad about Samantha, but much less mad when I explain her amazing immunization to magic. Samantha would be very useful to us when she is all grown up, she could help us fight the evil of the world.

This woman, Doris, and I talk at length about the world of magic, and now humanity has forgotten all about it, which has made us vulnerable to the forces of evil that use magic. I remember only one specific line of dialogue I said to her, I was responding to her concerns of all the recent magically activities across the globe, to which I said;

“That is why I came to this world;” ominous.

She says something about how she does not care for my strange ways, but she knows she needs my help, the lone necromancer in the world.

Later we go to a building, a tall skyscraper, and break into the underground of the building. There are traces of magic everywhere, they light up to me like a pale green fog or dim grey lights in a prison cell, but I see them, I can even fell them. This was why Doris brought me here; she wants me to find the hidden cult hideaway.

A very elaborate maze of tunnels and secrete doors unravel before me. I find the secrete passages and solve the winding tunnels with remarkable speed, but then again, of course I do, I am a necromancer detective. This is reminiscent of the “Death Maze Race,” insofar that I am able to solve the maze and secretes before me incredibly easily because it’s all me. This whole situation is all in my head, I literally have to invent the hidden passageways before I discover them, but in this dream there was an excuse preset to explain to my brain why it was possible; I am Detective Casmir.

Eventually we come to a hidden meeting room/sleeping quarters. It is empty but there is evidence of recent use, I recommend to Doris we station some men and try to set up an ambush. She agrees but is concerned, the sleeping quarters could house hundreds of people, and she never thought the cult could have become so great in number. Furthermore the ridiculous number of spells that were cast to hide this place was alarming; they clearly had some strong sorcery on their side. I promise her I’ll look into it.

This was about the time I woke up.

I really enjoyed this dream. Nothing haunting or horrible was happening to anyone. I was incredibly capable and enjoyed killing zombies, and unravelling a mystery. But most of all, it was such a pleasant display of my imagination. I learned a lot about the fictional character Casmir, he was clearly not form earth or at least not from this earth, he was sociable and kind, he hides a long sword under his grey trench coat, somehow, and he can sense and see magic. Also the world building was nice, this world there is a lack of use of magic, but evil doers are aware of this and hope to catch civilizations off guard by using ancient evil magic to cause havoc. The best thing of all, there is still the air of mystery to everything. We still don’t know who or what Casmir is, and we don’t know what were up against in regards to the cult.

I am a story teller, even in my dreams.