Controlling BA

[Mkaos]

Yesterday, Dante & I were kissing and making up over our little forum spat and I realized a few things.

First of all, I realized that I owe everybody an explanation and not just him. I was a bit more upset about (possibly) appearing in the Craigslist posts than I wanted to let on. After Bryce and Kevin, you can imagine that it was a bit unsettling. I wanted answers and I felt like Dante was just wanting to let it all go because it didn't matter. I didn't listen to what he was actually saying which wasn't fair to any of us, but most of all, it wasn't fair to him.

If I had listened, I would have understood that we actually wanted the same thing - to find some sort of "base understanding" that we could build off of. For him, it meant seeing what the Craigslists would be like if we took away all of our influence on them (making no contact with her). For me, it was taking an influence that we already had and repeating it to see how it changed (calling in my recurring dream).

Dante called it a control condition. Thinking about that, I wonder if that's even possible. For as good of an idea as it is, I don't think Dante's suggestion is possible. Heck, we haven't been able to agree on a focused distributed attack, would we be able to agree to not call anything in? That's not even considering the fact that we probably aren't the only people calling things in. My idea didn't pan out either - I did call in my dream and there was nothing similar (it wasn't placed in the same city, it didn't occur in the same location in her dream, the accident didn't happen at the same place, etc). I was really angry about that until I started thinking about "control".

I was wanting to create a very specific scenario and I didn't get the "control" over it that I wanted. That doesn't mean that we don't have control, though. I think we do. I got her to walk around a car accident. We've done all sorts of things to BA over the course of the past few months. So, we do have control, at least some.

Dante keeps getting angry about BA's resistance to nouns or love of pronouns, depending on how you want to look at it. That got me to thinking about "people, places, and things." Why are we just letting her tell us this stuff? Why don't we try and see what she has to say about the people, places, and things that we give her. That doesn't sound quite right. I know that we have been doing that, but have we been doing it as well as we could be?

For example, places. BA has gone to places that we have called in. The hotel is the best example that I can think of off the top of my head. Raven dreamt about a hotel and then, suddenly, BA started including the hotel in her dreams. We saw it more than once. Now, I don't know if that place was always in her dreams or if he put it in there. But suddenly we had a new place that she was going to. What if we called in a few different places? What would happen? Would the city change or would we suddenly see places that she hadn't mentioned before? In that Tampa post, she said that she wondered if she was remember more things because there were more things to remember. Can we change "things" to "places"? Will we learn more "things" by her remembering more "places"? Will it help us to map out the dream city if we force BA to go to various places? Would mapping out the city be of any importance?

As for things, we’ve actually done a few different things here. We know that things that we tell her wind up in there. Can we use that to our advantage? Can we use it to hers? She's not very clear about things that she needs or wants, so probably not. She does, however carry things around with her. And whatever happened to those other tarot cards? Is anybody else curious as to what they might be? I wonder if we could get her to tell us.

That leaves us with people. Honestly, people make me a bit nervous. I know how uncomfortable I felt seeing myself in her dreams (or possibly me), But, maybe there's another way we can get her to tell us more about the people she sees. We got her to see the little girl. Do we want to try that again?

Eeee! I really long post without a single smiley! How did that happen?
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One man gathers what another man spills.

[Dante]

*mwah*

Oh Marie I >heart< how naive and hopeful you are. Where is your learned helplessness when it comes to the B.A. postings? Hasn't the arbitrary whimsy of Saint Feline beaten your will into submission? Apparently not.

I am going to repeat a complaint that I've said too many times now to count: We don't have a GOAL. We don't know what she wants. We don't know what's important. She won't answer direct questions, the bitch, so we can't ask her anything. The other huge problem is that now we're having to wait 2 weeks between batches. That kind of dampens experimentation.

Still, I think you have some decent suggestions: we can introduce new places. Maybe a casino? A Wal-Mart? We can have her pull all the things out of her bag and show them off again. And for people, I think we should all do our best Hiro-squint and focus really hard and dream Stu into the dreamworld. That's one way to test whether Art is right about monkey-boy.

That being said, I hadn't planned this time around to submit anything but this morning I was struck by an inspiration and so I just sent in something rather out of the box. We'll see.

[Mkaos]

[Econjen]

[Dante]

[Mapmaker]

So I bit. I left a dream. Haven't been able to work (something in my lunch must have disagreed with me) so I figured why the hell not. Suffice to say that if BA is trolling the site, she better be able to easily figure out which of the ones she's getting is mine.

[Sinyx]

Marie, the dream bombardment is a great idea. I'm all for trying anything at this point. Have we concluded that BA only uses dreams sent in by phone, or will replies to Craigslist postings work? Dante, you got an email reply through didn't you?

I tried looking over the dream list on the wiki to find some sort of pattern. Of the 16 sent in dreams (there must be more, right?), only 6 seem to have seen play in BA's dreamworld; Dante's Tampa post reply and Ravenwolf's hotel episode being the most successful in my opinion. Actually directing BA's movements and real environment seemed to get a reaction there.


Now to only come up with something to submit...

[Dante]

[Lovek]

I don't know why but this thread keeps making me want to yell, "Professor Plum! In The Study! With The Candlestick!"

That said, I'll submit a dream shortly. I had a dream I was stuck in an old barn a few nights ago, and I'm sure parts of that dream can be put to use. I can't imagine there will be an old barn in the middle of the city BA has been at, but you never know.

At least it's a location not many others will probably have had

[Gcdoa]

sent mine. Tried the whole you show me everything in your bag scheme.
Doubt it will work.
_________________
A "scream" is always just that - a noise and not music.
Carl Jung

[Dante]

[Mapmaker]

[Mkaos]

[WolfHawk]

Ok, I just called in my very first dream. Hopefully it'll help us get somewhere. I have to say her voice didn't sound like I thought it would. I guess from the CL posts I was expecting a soft, spacey sounding voice. Her voice was deeper and a lot more friendly sounding than I expected.

Anyway, here's hoping.
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Having abandoned my search for the truth I am now looking for a good fantasy.

I think I am therefore I am I think.

[Jjason]

Well I'm game. I sent her to a college, where I saw her talking to the professors and men of learning.
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WHO IS SAINT FENLINE?

"We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains." - from The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross