Now I'm curious, what do other people think the mechanic for shared dreaming is?

I'd like to note the irony (or whatever) that the Blu-Ray special edition of the DVD will apparently come in a mini-PASIV case... and with a top. Uhhhh.... (the case would be neato, though.)

I'm too tired to work through the totem logic right now. If I were to have one, it might be the necklace I wear everyday. It's pretty unique and the pendant is double-sided, which isn't obvious since I rarely take it off. So if it weren't, I'd be in someone else dream.

Okay, giving a try. If it's your dream, you will either wake up eventually or end up in limbo. In the first case, you're awake. In the second, your totem would not behave (I'm assuming since limbo is not anyone's dream). Unless your enemy keeps you permanently sedated and dreaming alone, in which case you're totally fucked unless you realize you're dreaming and kill yourself to get out. The reason you want to know if you are in someone else's dream is to guard against extraction and inception .

One thing we never learned - how does one designate the dreamer and the dreamee? The PASIV? Different compounds?

Maybe the dreamer doesn't intake drugs so much as send their own cortical fluids into the other participants? Maybe a more "realistic" approach would be if they'd all had two lines going in and out of them, one a sedative and one an intake from the shared machine, except for the dreamer, who has the sedative and an output line?

Or maybe I just really need to figure out my cable box and vcr...

Now I wish that they'd done something with a totem being compromised.

it's for the fanfic.

Or the sequel.

I'm not seeing how the totem would act differently in your own dream or someone else's.

The knowledge of the totem had to count for something, didn't it? I mean, otherwise why would it matter if someone else knew the details of your totem?

Okay, I think that makes sense.

Ha! PASIV xpost.

The totem behaves differently in someone else's dream because that someone doesn't know the details of your totem. So they get It wrong, like he rug in Saito's apartment . The top is weird, by that logic. Maybe it was an image and concept nolan couldn't resist.

ita, I hope I'm whitefonting enough, but if not can you fix it? I'm stupid tired and on my iPhone.

As for the Bechdel test, it's kind of like the BMI in that it is a simple tool that can show a trend if applied widely across a number of films and other media. It doesn't prove that a movie is good or bad (Bar Girls, anyone?). It's one indicator, and needs to be taken in context. Not that I'm saying any Buffista isn't.

Now I'm curious, what do other people think the mechanic for shared dreaming is?

Flobutnum.

It struck me as pretty silly that people are being trained to defend themselves against extraction when, to get you in a shared dream in the first place, someone has to have you at their mercy physically, sedate you, and hook you up to a machine linking you all together. If they can do that they can kill or kidnap you and do whatever they want in your absence anyway .

Slate discusses David Bowie's acting career:

Cracked Actor

By this point, Bowie seemed on the cusp of a full-fledged acting career. In 1983, in addition to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Bowie appeared in The Hunger as (typecasting again!) the 400-year-old lover of vampire goddess Catherine Deneuve. The movie is a schlockfest of early-MTV flourishes (flash cuts, flapping birds) and it's most noteworthy for a demure love scene between Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. But the opening credit sequence is irresistible: While Bauhaus perform the sinuous goth standard "Bela Lugosi's Dead," Deneuve and Bowie prowl a cavernous nightclub in search of fresh blood, smirking hotly at each other and blowing pheromones with their cigarette smoke.