#yes yes yes i know suspension of belief but i do like thinking abt the fact that cutting off gotham from the rest of the country after a

[honeyoats]

reading no man’s land is just like. i want to track down a lawyer who specializes in constitutional law and have them react to this

[r0h1rr1m]

rambly inception thoughts bc i watched this movie for like the fifth time this week and i can’t let it go

i just saw a lil post about an umbrella academy/inception crossover and that au is not really relevant to this but it made me think. i got to wondering whether someone w superpowers would be able to use them in a dream, or if that would violate the suspension of disbelief/make-no-waves rules and call the projections down on u. the specific rules of this mechanism--and of forging, and limbo, and lots of other stuff--have a definitively movie-logic ambiguousness to them, but let’s say that using powers in a dream, even if you have them in real life, stretches belief a little too much and angers the projections. it would also explain why (from a watsonian perspective, at least) dreamsharers don’t just give themselves fantastic abilites to make things easier. (i kinda wanna go off on another tangent about what that implies about who you have fool, be it dreamer or mark or both, and the effect of varying levels of imagination, but few enough people are gonna read this whole thing as is :’))

but then (in this extremely niche and overly specific hypothetical situation, yes, i’m sorry) if powered ppl using real powers in a dream would be too unbelievable, it follows that dreamsharers would have to be at least slightly more boring versions of themselves in a dream, probably less skilled and just less weird. real life is consistently stranger and more unexpected than imagination

this is where this veers off into unrelated territory a lil bit bc then i started imagining the conversation that would happen if Ariadne started figuring this out or if Eames told her. without any effort at good or in-character dialogue, it might go something like this:

A <<so then the stablest/most forgiving dreams would be of the people with the most imagination? like children?>>

E <<probably, but who would go in the mind of a child?>>

A <<u literally make a career made a career out of violating people in a way so profound u’d have to be clinically paranoid to even worry about protecting against it, but u draw the line there? at children? why is it okay to do it to adults?>>

and so on until i started having some characterization hcs. bc i see Eames as the coldest/most ruthlessly pragmatic character in the movie (i’ve had conversations where ppl argue it’s Cobb, but he’s not ruthless. he is, in fact, sabotaging his own career w an overabundance of ruth. he’s just desperate and making some kind of myopic justifications. like that scene early on in the first level? i get the distinct sense that when he’s blowing up at Arthur he’s overcompensating to separate himself from the blame of a situation for which he’s at least 50% but arguably more responsible for. sorry tangent over) and i don’t think he’d worry abt this too much.

he knows that he lives his life in a bit of a moral gray area and unless he wants to make sm srs changes to his lifestyle there’s not a lot of point stressing. he’s not like totally relativistic, bc relativism isn’t that useful and he’s pretty utilitarian (i think these words also have, like, official philosophical definitions but idk anything abt that n i’m not using em that way), but he’s aware that a moral code is a tricky thing, even for ppl who are not international career criminals. rules like “no kids as marks” are easy to follow, and make simple, instinctive sense. i think he’d make a lot of moral decisions js on gut feeling.

in the hypothetical convo above where he tells Ariadne as much, mbe he adds:

<<if u want to talk abt it w someone who’s actually thought abt this, i’m sure Arthur has, but i don’t think it’ll make u feel better>>

bc Arthur is mbe a bit too good at compartmentalizing and justifications (not like Cobb, tho. Arthur is loyal to a fault and dedicated to looking after other ppl in a way he seems generally disinterested in doing for himself), seeing as he’s apparently the kind of person who can cheerfully ID someone’s murderer to their face and then just casually switch topics after like 5 words of explanation.

he’s characterized as v focused on planning/details and thoroughness/coherency, so it tracks that he’d want to articulate/organize his thoughts on Why I Do What I Do, but the subjectivity of his justifications would be especially apparent to Ariadne after this convo w Eames. and like, “convince ur friend to go to therapy” and “follow ur friend around the globe enabling his increasingly aimless and self-destructive mission to break into ppl’s heads for money” are on opposite ends of a spectrum i don’t want to know anything about. js bc this dude gets prissy abt Eames js Feeling Things Out and is convinced he’s Mr. Logic doesn’t mean his logic isn’t absolutely fckn buck-wild.

so Ariadne’s reaction to all this is what? it’s highly unlikely anything could make her give up dreamshare, so. are there legit alternatives to the criminal side of things? in the movie it’s not rly clear. when Dom goes to Miles and says that becoming a fugitive took away his legitimate options for his skills, it seems like that would imply there are, in fact, legitimate options. but then why was Miles only training/able to suggest a normal ass architect and not a dreamshare Architect?

anyway, the point is if legit dreamshare work exists, Ari could hand the work of deciding on ethics and regulations off to a boss or legislation. whether or not she’d choose to do that i think is a matter of personal hc and the movie could support it either way. if on the other hand, tho, only illegal uses for dreamshare exist, she has to find her own moral guidelines in criminal work (i like the hc that Arthur helps her be more selective than a newbie would typically be allowed to be. helps her vet jobs and keep from getting in over her head/beholden to someone. it just seems like something he would do. and mbe his reputation needs a little repair after however long he ran w an increasingly unstable and unreliable Dom Cobb, but if ppl like Eames are still calling him the best pointman he must have enough clout to help Ari get some good jobs). for myself, i think even if there are legit jobs Ari would choose to stay on the illegal side of things anyway, at least at first. she’s addicted to the limitation-free aspect of it, and, in the proud tradition of geniuses and prodigies everywhere, she’s demonstrably bad at taking censure/advice. she has to make her own mistakes. not to mention, her own morals might be a lil wobbly anyway, from how easily and entitledly she invaded Dom’s privacy. like, it turned out to be for the best, but it was still kinda fcked up

anyway surprise i wasn’t working towards any sort of point but i can’t stop thinking abt this movie and my family’s sick of hearing about it. thanks for reading. vote