Sunset Over Sea

Previous parts can be found here.

I had been warned, and I took it as the challenge it was. Time to talk to the tree man, I decided.

I found him in the chestnut grove, like he had said, sitting beneath the only pine tree in the group. The sky was clear for a change, not even a skein of clouds covering the blue like a veil, just a pure clean blue that spiraled softly into infinity. I took it for an omen.

( Read more )

Tu Publishing is trying to get off the ground. The idea of this Publisher is to print YA books where the characters are multicultural. However, like any new business a certain amount of money is needed to begin. This is where the auction to kickstart_tu comes in. People are auctioning off different they own, can make, or can do, in order to help raise money to get Tu Publishing started. The nice thing about this is if the specific goal is not met, Kickstarter, where the donations are made, will refund all donaters their money. The end date for the goal is December 14th, and so the auction closes on December 9th, to make sure all donations get in on time.

If this was confusing, go read sartorias 's post about Tu Publishing or asakiyume 's post about the auction because I'm tired and they say it better.

Anyway, I don't have so much extra cash at the moment, so I'm offering an auction item. I will make a video out of your photographs or artwork, with a song in the background, on the model of the example I show in my auction post.

For previous parts see here.


I was leaving class on Tuesday when I got a text from my friend Matt. There’s a cool dragon in the fountain. U should come c it.

Dragon? In Drumheller Fountain? There was a chance it was some awesome stunt by frat boys or a cool light show by the engineering club, but with my dream still pounding in my head I wasn’t going to take that chance.

Slipping through the chaos of the doorway I exited the building at a dead run. Luckily for me, my classes were near the center of campus, so I didn’t have far to go.

( Read more )

Sorry for the time between posts, schoolwork overwhelmed me. They'll be another one soon.
Previous parts can be found here.


We were trying to catch feathers.

But they floated away as we reached for them, a crazy blizzard from a sky of blue breaking with the weight of stars. We laughed as we ran in circles but the laughter turned to screaming.

I finally caught one, grasped its soft down and iron core, and it blazed in my hand like the winter moon, summer sun, a crackling star.

All the feathers disappeared, gone. Except the one in my hand faded like mist, leaving a lightning shimmer in the air, binding the unseen like a thread.

I looked around. I was alone, always alone, but there was someone I needed to find.

I woke with my head pounding, Remember this, remember this, remember this.

Previous parts can be found here.

    Magic has a feel to it; if you know what you’re sensing you can tell it’s being used.  Of course there are ways to conceal magic, but those are complicated and rarely done.  Nevertheless, if a small spell is created near an area with a constant magic flux, it will be difficult to pick the two apart.

    The stand of chestnut trees was close enough to the observatory that any magic I felt could have come from the gateway – but there had to be a reason Dola had brought me here.

    “Dola, what—”

    “Shh, just watch.”  She flapped her hand at me and took up a stance near the edge of the trees.

    I stared at her, framed by shadows with her gaze sweeping the ground, but she didn’t notice.  She normally chattered, and given a chance to talk would spill story after story – not stand there in silence next to someone who had questions to ask.  But maybe she just wanted to keep whatever-it-was a surprise.

    I turned back to the trees, scanning the shadows and fallen leaves for a clue.  At the base of a sapling my eyes landed on a small man covered by the glamour of a stone, with tree-bark patterns on his skin and hair like moss.  I recognized him as one of the Seelie fae who lived around campus. 

    He raised his hand as he saw me staring and patted the ground.  I nodded; I would ask him questions later, when Dola wasn’t here.

    Then the wind blew through the trees, shaking the branches, and a few chestnuts dropped off, striking the ground with a crack.

    The first turned into a butterfly, and fluttered woozily off into the gusting wind.  The second turned into a sparrow, which hopped a few times before taking off, and the third turned into a tiny garter snake that sped away into the grass.

    None of them stayed chestnuts.

( Read more... )

 

 

sartorias has been summing up conversations and topics discussed at WFC while she's been there, and in her last post went a bit more in-depth on some interesting topics. The one that caught my eye was about Mormons writing spec fic, specifically touching on Orson Scott Card and Stephenie Meyer.  I haven't read much of Card's works, but I did read the first three Twilight books, and the relationship between Bella and Edward caused multiple rants disturbed me, considering I'm a strong feminist.  When I heard that Stephenie Meyer was Mormon, I wondered at the connection.  There is one, but it's different than I supposed.

seajules says,
"If you're a feminist who's gotten past the concept that of course women have our own goals and views and desires, and we are as entitled to them as men, and that our experiences are valuable as part of the human experience, and our sexuality is no more inherently dirty than men's, then Meyer's not going to seem to have much of value to say, and may in fact look like a giant step backwards. If, however, you're part of a population where positive messages about women's experiences, including sexuality, agency, desires, skills outside of child-rearing and man-assisting, and authority in telling our own stories, are still regarded with suspicion, then Meyer can actually be argued to be incredibly subversive. I can't help but wonder what the books would have looked like had they not passed through the filter of her bishop's patriarchal authoritative approval. Probably not much different, since I don't get the impression Meyer is much of one for self-reflection and may genuinely be naturally inclined toward the role her subculture has trained her to accept, but its the subtleties that tend to count most in subversive narratives."

She has a longer explanation/review of the series from an LDS point of view in the rest of the thread.  Or you can read it below.
( Read more... )

Part 1 can be found here.


            Magic is like drawing.  Everyone can draw, to a certain extent, but some are better at it than others.  Even those who are great artists have talents in particular areas – landscapes, portraits, anime – but all of them can draw a circle, a square, a moon and sun.
           Magic is the same.  Everyone can do magic, to a certain extent, but some are better at it, or have more power, than others; and different magic users have different talents.
           Like all magic users I know a few basic spells, but my talents lie in sight.  I have strong foresight and can create and see through lies, both visual like the faery glamour, and built into language.
            So last Thursday, after I walked around all day feeling naked without my sword, I took the hint and began wearing it constantly.  In Faery I wouldn’t have gotten a second glance, but on a college campus in the United States I decided discretion was in order, so covered it in an invisibility spell.
            On Monday, after my last midterm of the quarter, I was walking out of the library when I heard my name being called.
            “Pandora!  Pan!”  I turned to see my friend Dola sprinting across Red Square towards me.  “You just have to come see this, it’s the strangest thing.”  Her curly brown hair framed her face in a jumble, the wind having made a mess of everything.  But her eyes, her eyes were eerie, as if she’d seen something she never believed possible.
            A jolt of adrenaline shot through my bones, and I closed my hand over the hilt of my sword.  “Show me.”
            She took off running again, up towards the entrance to campus, and I pelted after her, backpack bouncing as I ran.  What was up at the front of campus?  I tried to consider as I ran uphill.  It’s a useless question, mostly, because Faery is everywhere and you can step into the In-Between at any point; but some places draw magic more than others and so are more likely to have strange occurrences.
            We reached the top of campus, Dola breathing hard as she led me into a stand of chestnut trees, and I had my answer.
            What was up at the entrance to campus?  The observatory: one of the easy accesses to the Unseelie Court.
            It’s why I think there aren’t any other Guardians in Seattle: who would want to live closer to the Unseelie Court than they had to?  I, tough girl that I am, ignored that consideration when choosing to come to UW.  Let’s hope it wasn’t a mistake.

When asakiyume asked if I was going to write a story to go with my "What if?"s I wasn't intending to do it immediately.  I've got two other projects I'm in the middle of already.  But then breathingbooks asked as well, and I've been walking around with this character in my head who had fit so nicely into a world already formed for a different story...  So I think Nanowrimo for me this year will be Na-finish the projects I'm working on-wrimo, meaning hopefully this story will be done by the end of November.  We'll see.  I hope you like it in the meanwhile.  And without further ado, Pandora part 1*.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            I had heard of a secret hidden in the Suzzallo Reading Room, a key of some sort left by the fae.  It wouldn’t get me through the Unseelie Court unscathed, but it should get me through faster, and if this kept up I might need the advantage.

            When I was little, I asked my mother why fae could use magic so easily, but most humans only used magic by accident.  She told me that humans were the dreams of gods, while fae were the dreams of angels; thus humans are closer to the makings of the world, while fae are closer to the workings of it.
            There are those of us for whom magic does not take great study and work, for whom magic comes naturally, like to the fae.  But we are not fae.  We are human: born of blood and dirt and the spit of gods – and being human has its advantages, as well as disadvantages.
            We are called Guardians by some, Witches by others, but our task is always the same: we walk the boundaries and edges, placed there by the power in our human blood, and protect those who are ours.
            I am the only Guardian in the city of Seattle, a junior at the University of Washington.  I’m the right age, and as I told my family when packing for school, sometimes I like to pretend I’m normal.
            But it never lasts for long.

*Disclaimer: though the university is real, the people and occurrences are not.

I've been listening to Into the Woods quite a bit lately.  This is partially because I bought it this summer recently, but partially, I think, because it fits my life at the moment.  If you haven't heard of the musical, it's a combination of four fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and adds fourth, new story as the center plot: the Baker and his Wife who want a child.  The witch from Rapunzel has cursed the Baker and his Wife to be barren and if they want a child they must fetch four things for a potion: a cloak as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, a cow as white as milk, and a slipper as pure as gold.  So all the characters journey into the woods and meet one another.

"The woods" is this interstitial place where things that are outside the norm can occur.  In the woods you learn things and see things that you wouldn't otherwise know.  In the woods you grow up.

The songs aren't just musically beautiful, they're true to life.  Things that happen to people, that people think, that people really want and not just wish for, are all encompassed in the songs.  It's a great story, and one that makes you think.

( cut for songs )

What if...

...every time the leaves swirled up from the ground a leaf-beast was created that started wreaking havoc?

...the observatory on the edge of campus, covered by bushes and vines, was really an entrance to the Unseelie Court?

...you carried a sword around every day for protection?  And it was invisible?

...that blond spiky haired boy sitting next to you in class was really an elf in disguise?

...the chesnuts turned into butterflies when they hit the ground?

...shadows detached themselves from under trees and followed you until you walked through a patch of light?

...the things you see out of the corners of your eyes were really there?



...you turned all my questions into a story?  How would your story be different from mine?

One
I was watching pieces of Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones the other night and came up with a compromise for costumes.  The only woman main character wore either dresses with low bodices or skin tight pants outfits that "just happened" to have the bottom of the shirt ripped off during a fight scene.  Meanwhile, all the men in the movie are wearing what amounts to three layers of clothing -- three baggy layers of clothing.  This is quite normal for action movies, if not so heavily emphasized (though it can be worse).  So I came up with a compromise.  If all the women are going to run around in skin-tight midriff outfits then I think all the men should have to run around with their shirts off.  Turn and turn about is fair play.

Two
I was at home over the weekend and came to a realization about that "hit reflex" I mentioned in my last ramblings.  It didn't, as I had thought, come automatically with my reflexes.  My dad tends to to wave things like dishtowels or his hands in peoples' faces or ruffle their hair without warning.  He also tends to tickle without warning.  At some point I must have started wacking him to get him to stop tickling me or sticking things in my face (not like it worked) and that turned into wacking people when I was startled.  Well, duh.  No wonder the reflex became so easy to repress when I went off to college.

Three
...actually, this is just me whining about feeling dumb and not knowing enough about politics...I think I'll skip it...
Although, it is interesting how I can be watching these news programs about the health care bill and still feel like I'm only seeing a tiny piece of the picture, and then I read one comment on a post and suddenly things make more sense.  Part of that is definitely that I'm not really on my own yet, so I've never had to pay attention to stuff like health care before. 
...And suddenly my experience with learning MatLab on the go seems a lot more like life  ...That's not really a good thing, considering it's taking me forever to learn how to use MatLab (or what to me feels like forever -- I have no real way to gauge it).  Hope I'm better at life. *grin*

So I've been busy and the internet has been on the bottom of my to-do list.  Not that I posted much to begin with, but I do enjoy reading others' posts and commenting.  And letting people know I'm still alive, since for those of you who overlap with my fb friends, well, I haven't been on there much either.

But here's an interesting post about gender bias about authors, which I just read while madly skimming through all I've missed in the past, um, let's say month.  I've been thinking about gender differences for a while, off and on, and my train of thought started again when I visited my cousins earlier in the summer.  We were sitting at dinner (the whole family: mine, theirs, and the grandparents) and my cousin M (male) tells a story wherein a friend of his said something insulting about my cousin S (female) so he punched his friend.  The next day his friend apologized.  I wasn't really in this conversation, it was more my cousins talking about their plans for the weekend, so while my aunt says 'I don't condone violence' (that's a quote) even though his friend did apologize, I'm sitting there thinking 'yeah, but wouldn't it be nice sometimes to actually be able to hit someone when you want to?' 

I've always had pretty fast reflexes, and apparently, along with those reflexes came what I called my defensive* "hit-reflex."  As in, someone pokes me, startles me, or whacks me, and I hit back without even thinking about it.  I took kick boxing in 11th grade, but stopped because I was afraid I was going to hit someone and hurt them for no real reason.  I've since trained myself out of the reflex, at least enough that I don't hit people anymore when I'm startled.**

But my cousin's story got me thinking about the difference in gender -- how much is really built in, and how much is society?  Yes, women and men have different bodies, and slightly different hormones, but do we really have different brains?  There are articles every so often with things like "boys are better at science and math," etc, and I've always been skeptical.  Boys and girls start out very similar in make from the time they're fetuses; as we get older we get more different in body, but how different in mind?  Then there are those people who even have a strange conglomerate of chromosomes -- they may appear female or male, but in reality have chromosomes that mark them as the opposite sex -- does their brain then work according to how their body looks?

Back to the story: girls aren't allowed to hit, whereas it's expected in boys.  If you see two sets of people fighting, where one set are women and the other are men, who do you think is having the worse argument?  The women, usually.  In order to physically hit someone, a woman has to overcome all the social teachings that say nice girls don't hit.  Does that mean if they were taught that it's okay to hit, they would hit people more often?  Probably. 

I read a lot of books when I was younger with heroines in them.  Alanna who dresses up as a boy to become a knight, Cimorine who runs away to live with dragons and learns magic, Sabriel who becomes the anti-necromancer of her kingdom and was second place in her girls school fencing class.  I've since made it through puberty with a sense that it doesn't matter as much how "pretty" I look as how much I can do (and a strong desire to learn some type of martial arts enough to be at least competent).

I was sitting outside my office (where I'm an intern) eating lunch this afternoon when a family walked by and stood next to the resturant on the lower level of the building (which I was sitting outside of) and discussed whether they wanted to eat lunch yet.  (There was a mom, dad, grandma, daughter, and two sons, the kids all being middle school/high school age).  I ignored most of their conversation, but as they were walking away I heard the mother say to one of the sons "stop being so sensitive."  Presumably he'd lost an argument or something and not gotten what he wanted, so he was moping.  I thought "would the mom have said the same thing to the daughter?"  Maybe, I don't know her.  But from my observations of people up to this point, I would guess not.  It might have the same meaning in the end, but would most likely be phrased more like "stop moping, act nice."  That comes with its own set of problems, but both of them are genderized.

I grew up with a sister and never had many guy friends.  I think I'm more comfortable around girls because I'm used to them.  But I was talking with my friend A a while ago and she mentioned that she was living with a bunch of her guy friends next near and it would be a relief because there wouldn't be as much drama.  This harkened back to a conversation we'd had last year, where she talked about having too much "girl drama" and I realized I had no clue what she was talking about.  Reminder: mostly girl friends.  Still very little idea of what constitutes "drama" let alone "girl drama." 

I mentioned the story about my cousin to A and we embarked on a short discussion of girls vs guys.  She started with saying that guys, overall, were more chill than girls.  I replied that that may be so, I don't know enough guys to really say, but if it is so, how much is it society conditioning rather than natural temperments?

You can see I'm big on this society conditioning thing.  Most of my early stories have girls as main characters.  When I first started adding boys into my stories I realized that I did not know any boys -- as in, never really talked to them.  So what I decided then was that girls and boys were essentially the same, and if I was going to write a boy as a main character then I should ignore the "boy" part and focus on the "character" part.  That was probably a good decision (despite the fact that I had yet to learn how to actually make a "character" a "person").  

But there is a fact that I look at my stories now and still see females as the undisputed main characters.  Yes, there are guys too, but rather few compared to the women when looking at point-of-view characters.  When I ask myself why, one of the answers that often comes up (I don't really know the answer, these are more like suggestions to my mind about why it's thinking this way) is, well, I'm a woman, so I can better/more easily write how females think.  Wait.  Screech.  Halt.  Does this mean females and males think differently?

So then I run up against the thought that while I definitely think that guys and girls are essentially the same, some part of my brain is acknowledging the fact that I do also believe in a difference.  So what, exactly, creates that difference?



ETA:  This is further compounded by an article I read a few months ago which was a well written personal story talking about the bias against transsexuals in our society.  I didn't want to ask this question, and be branded rude or insensitive, but I kept wondering how the author, when he was a kid, knew he was a girl.  I never "knew" I was a girl.  I was told "you are a girl because of how you look" and was given dresses to wear and was sent to dance class.  If I had been told I was a boy and had been sent to play baseball I would have followed just the same.  Matter of fact, I was sent to kiddy soccer, probably for the same length of time I was sent to kiddy ballet and tap.  I played outside and climbed all over our swing set, climbed the tree in our backyard until my mom yelled to stop because wh was afraid I was going to fall and kill myself (though how she saw that but missed the swing set adventures, I'm not sure).

So again, what's the innate difference?






* I realized while at home that my dad tends to to wave things like dishtowels or his hands in peoples' faces or ruffle their hair without warning.  He also tends to tickle without warning.  At some point I must have started wacking him to get him to stop tickling me or sticking things in my face and that turned into wacking people when I was startled.  Well, duh.

** No wonder it was so easy to train myself out of the reflex when I went off to college.

I saw the Star Trek movie last week, and thought it was very good. I'm not a Trekkie -- I've seen maybe a couple shows, and so had very little knowledge of when "in jokes" were used in the movie. But I still thought it was good. Although there were scenes with lots of things blowing up (I actually like those), and some scenes where minions or side characters you didn't know got killed just to show the danger of the situation, those instances were rare, and sometimes even had a purpose. Also, there was rarely violence or disaster without a purpose, it was there either to make a point or as humor. (Although, by the third time Kirk got into a life-threatening situation, especially when he did it by almost falling off something-with-a-long-drop again, there wasn't much of a danger feeling left. And I'm discounting the fact that we know he's going to survive anyway.) In the way of good things, there were a few scenes with a heavy emotional impact, and I don't just mean when people are killed. I hesitate to call those scenes dramatic, because I feel like drama is often used to describe a scene where emotion is shown but not felt by the audience, whereas these scenes were good. So, overall, a positive rating and I wouldn't mind seeing it again myself.

As a side note, the actor who plays Kirk, Chris Pine, could play Lucivar in Black Jewels if it gets made into a movie. He does the arrogant insolence well, among other things.

A flyby post, as I'm behind in my homework schedule.  I hadn't been following the google book drama intensively, due to homework and time, lack of direct consequences to me, and lack of perceived personal impact on said situation.  Nevertheless, here is a new outlook on the situation, one I hadn't seen in my original skimming of events, penned by Mike Briggs.  It doesn't sound too happy, and makes me wonder what people can do to affect the outcome.  (If the article's not there, go to the archive and scroll to the bottom.)

I've been thinking about names -- surnames and family names -- and mostly in the context of my story; as in, what type of last names should characters have, if they have any.  It started a couple weeks ago with a discussion of medieval names with londubh, continued through a google search, a conversation the other day with traumerin about international last names, and another google search.  (And might I add that google is not your friend when searching for something like "history of surnames."  Go ahead, type it in, see what you get.  Creativity with search topics doesn't really help either.)

Still, I seem to have gathered some general ideas about the purpose of last names.  Nonhereditary last names seem to fill a slightly different function than hereditary ones -- or rather, they fill the same purpose, but for a different reason.  Names as a whole are descriptive and/or markers: they tell people who you are, and how you are different from someone else.  Nonhereditary names, then, would more likely fill the descriptive function than just being a marker (for example, "dark haired girl" rather than "sophie."  One has a meaning we recognize while the other, on the whole, is merely a collection of syllables).  Even "son/daughter of" surnames would be descriptive if you knew the father or mother.

Hereditary surnames, then, would serve a similar purpose of describing a person, but add familial information.  Some reasons I thought of might be:

1)  Information on a group of people -- your family -- is made necessary by paper-makers, aka government.  This probably aids in keeping track of people.  If your last name is something you're born with, and not something you gain, it adds a descriptive.  Though this is true of "son/daughter of" surnames as well (except for the group part).

And considering that in Iceland people still go by "son/daughter of" surnames, and the phonebook is listed by first name (thank you traumerin for that trivia) then I'm not sure why an hereditary family name would be necessary for a bureaucracy.  Although the one helpful website I found mentioned "Government became more and more a matter of written record. As the activities of government, particularly in the levying of taxation and the exaction of military service, touched an ever widening range of the population, perhaps it became necessary to identify individuals accurately."

2)  You want to be known by who you are related to and therefore who you know.  If you're related to royalty, say, and an hereditary last name shows this, that would be a benefit if you're trying to gain prestige.

Or to combine 1 and 2, if information on a group of people is made necessary by the group itself, that can create an hereditary surname.  For example, hereditary clan names for peoples that consider history and geneology important.

3)  And last thought, once again from the one helpful article: if hereditary surnames first became fixed through hereditary lands, and the lower class tried to imitate the upper class to be thought better, they would create hereditary surnames as well.



 

Disclaimer:  To the best of my ability, this review will contain no spoilers (besides what you learn from the blurb), however, there are probably hints contained that may tip you off.  So if you already know you're going to buy the book and don't want to know anything beforehand, don't read past the cut.

I first read a piece of Once a Princess, part of the Sasharia en Garde duo by Sherwood Smith, about five years ago, to my best bet.  Sherwood had put the first chapter, or piece of a chapter, on her website; even though I never read the end, I remembered it four years later and wanted to read it again, hoping that my memory was cutting off the rest of the story.  It took me a while to figure out where I'd first found it, and realize the chapter was off her website.  Then I found out it was coming out in ebook last June, and then print this April, by Samhain Publishing -- so by the time I actually got the book in the mail I had a lot of pent up excitement.  I was not dissapointed.

I have read most of Sherwood Smith's books, and Once a Princess is definitely one of my favorites.  I described it to my friend as a cross between Crown Duel and the Inda series.  It involves a kick-ass heroine, a troubled kingdom, and pirates.  The story is told in first person by Sasha and third person for the other characters, which I barely noticed until I just looked it up, showing how well the different POVs are integrated.  It is a romantic fantasy, but the story is run by the characters and plot, not by the romance -- that grows organically out of the people in the story.

( Read more... )

The cherry trees are in bloom on the quad and it's finally sunny outside (at least for a day or two) so everyone and their sister is out here having a picnic.  I don't know if even half of them are college students -- it's like the surrounding neighborhood comes here for a park.  It's a fun atmosphere, even if I'm just doing homework.


Sweet chaos
is the shriek of a laughing child
multiplied by
10
or perhaps 50
a frisby thrown
blankets and books on a green lawn
the chatter of 100 people
out having a picnic
music from computer speakers
the click of cameras
the sound of wheels on brick:
bicycles and strollers
pink-white blossoms like fluffy cotton candy balls
of fallen flowers
white on the green
grass

I came up with this song earlier, and thought it fit the oracle quest that's been growing near my corner of the blogosphere, so I turned it into nine verses.

When the rosemary blooms
and rememberance awakes
there'll be time to wonder
and time to wait

if you swim to the bay
with the water clear as glass
it will mirror the future
though you don't ask

and the moonlight
with its silver stream
it will shine on the leaves
as a glowing dream

and if you find the garden
can you bury the past
but the bay leaves will show you
all the future unasked

and the rosemary blooms
causing memory to wake
and with thyme to ponder
you'll have thyme to wait

and the sun will shine
on the golden streams of memory
and the moon will glow
and show dreams until eternity

so you swim to the bay
and the water clear as glass
you must find your future
and look for it unmasked

as the bay leaves grow
twining in the moonlight's glow
then the garden will bloom
under sunlight and moon

when the rosemary blooms
then will memory kindle
on the tapestry of thyme
through the growing spindle

Peristalsis.  Isn't that a pretty word?  It makes me think of flowers.  But then, from my biology notes, when I remember what it means: 'contraction of the digestive system to move food along.'  Useful, I'm sure, but not as pretty.  Guess I'm not naming any characters peristalsis...

An off-topic answer to asakiyume's post about dreams while I'm procrastinating on physics (which I have been doing way too much of lately).

A few days ago I was talking to traumerin about time travel and time loops, and how people react if they're suddenly dropped into another place or time.  She said, "why do people consistently react as if it's not real at first?  For example, if I disappeared right now, what would you think?"  And I answered, "truthfully, I would think at first I was either dreaming or hallucinating, and since I don't tend to hallucinate, the best bet would be a dream.  Because we tend to know the rules of reality, and the rules of reality say that someone cannot just disappear."  Sooner or later I'd figure out it was real, and think "way cool!" but before then I'd have to test reality vs. dream.