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For the past few weeks, I've had this nightmare that is accruing and I don't really understand it.

It's always me another person running away from something - not physically but like, packing our bags and trying to flee my house for example. When we are outside are house trying to reinforce our defences or escape, there are always people in a car or on the side walk just staring at us. They're not scary looking, they're never violent, they just stare, and that tips me and the other person of that we have been compromised.

I'm assuming these people are spies of some sort trying to kill us or "get us".

This dream always leaves me extremely paranoid and upset, and I'm worried because it happens so often. Every time I have it it's like my brain is trying to continue the narrative, the first night the dream started, the second night myself and the other person in the dream called our online friends to help us, the third night we barricade the doors etc etc, you know what I mean?

I have scary dreams on a regular basis, but they're never the same one with a continuing story like this. I don't mind getting stabbed in my sleep time to time, but this dream is scarier then all those for some reason, and I don't like it just repeating.

How do I get rid of it? Does this dream mean something I'm not seeing? Is it important to me somehow? At least, is there anyway to try and deal with the emotional stress the dream causes?

I just finished writing my NaNoWriMo Novel called "Sonya's Been Shot". I'm looking for some Beta-Readers and reviewers to take a look at my novel. Hunter and I are going to put it through editing first, and that may take a few weeks. Basically we're planning to do 3 edit sessions ourselves before we give it to Beta-Readers, and then edit based on their suggestions.

You don't need to necessarily be writers, but I would like to have a few writers take a look at it for advice as well. I don't have an application or anything to be filled out, but at the end of each chapter you read I'll need you some questions. An example of what I may ask could be found down below. Obviously if you find something isn't working, I'll ask questions to follow up.

Spoiler

READABILITY:

Does any chapter of the story drag? If so, which part?
Are there parts that you skipped to get to ‘the good part’?
Do I over-inform (info-dump) anywhere?
Did you understand every phrase / term I used?

FLOW:

Does one scene lead logically into the next?
Do the scenes flow smoothly from one action to the next, or did they jump as though something was skipped?
Is there enough downtime between intense scenes to allow it to build to the next?


THE WORLD

Can you see every action clearly while reading?
If you went there in real life, would you recognize the places?
Did you have to reread any part of the action sequences to understand who was doing what?


DIALOGUE:

Does the Dialogue sound realistic for the individual characters?
Could you see what the characters were doing while talking?
Could you see where the characters were while talking?


CHARACTERS:

Could you see what each character looked like clearly?
Do their actions and reactions seem logical and realistic?
Could you feel the emotions between the characters?
Does the story stay focused on my main characters?
Were any of my characters too much of a jerk or too aggressive?
Were any of my characters whiny, wimpy, or overly dramatic (when not intended to be)?
Are any of my characters too stereotypical?
Who did you like best and WHY?
Who did you hate and WHY?
Who got on your nerves and WHY?
Do any of the characters get in the way of the STORY?

If it sounds like you can do this, fantastic. But I'm sure you're wondering what my book is about:

Sonya's Been Shot is a LGBT Young Adult novel that centers around two female characters, Chloe and Sonya.


Sonya never imagined her boyfriend would be the executor of a school shooting. She never imagined his actions would leave her paralyzed. But she isn't angry at him. She's angry at Chloe, who had been her friend since before she could remember, who she blames for ruining her life. And when Chloe comes to see her a month after the tragedy that befell her, Chloe throws her life into chaos once again.

The two girls go through the long history they share together, showing each other both sides of the long narrative that contributed to the fate they have been condemned to, for better or for worse, and try to discover if they can move past it.



If it sounds like you are interested in a novel like this, feel free to post down below telling me you'd be interested in being a Beta-Reader. If you have any questions about the novel, I'll try to answer them without spoiling anything for you.

I will say though, as a trigger warning, there are parts of this book that deal with suicide and sexual abuse in detail. If you can't read about these topics, please don't push yourself to. If you feel like you can't continue at any time for whatever reason, it's okay. Your feedback up until that point, whether it's the first chapter or the first paragraph will be appreciated.

I started to think about this after remembering something that happened when I was little. When I was a kid, we a giant play area in the basement. I'll paint the scene for you:

First, we had a giant pink barbie castle:

Spoiler

Don't let the picture fool you, it was GIANT. It took up an entire coffee table that was behind one of the couches. Then, there was the couch in front of it: That would be the "village" area for these dolls. Then the couches on either side of it would be the other "village" areas, connected by "bridges" that my sister and I made. In the middle of the basement, there was a small pink table, a little "island". This was all "ground level". The floor and the OTHER castle on the floor

Spoiler

was the "water" level. All the mermaid dolls would go here. This was the normal everyday setting where these stories would take place, a Kingdom by the sea, and a mermaid kingdom on the floor. Suffice to say, no one ever was able to actually sit on the couches or walk through this area - it was 100% all dolls. The couches were all different parts of the Kingdom, too. The main couch where the castle was were for the festivals of the kingdom, the single couch was a standard house area that all of the dolls would use for a house "scene", and the second biggest couch would either be used as a forest area or beach as a backdrop for secret meetings between the dolls.


But why am I telling you all this? I'm trying to show you how thought out 7-year-old Cal's layout was for every single story she ever made in the basement. And this is just for the average, everyday "doll session". Things got even crazier when multiple "realms" were introduced (once I got fairy dolls and what not). But I digress, you get the idea. Everything was extremely specific.

And it wasn't just the kids acting out the movies they've seen with dolls, either. It was all original stories, sometimes using the characters from the movies (for example, my Belle doll was still Belle, just in a different universe), or having the character play a different role (The Belle doll playing the role of Marlene the assassin)

I would give anything to be able to go back in time and see what kinda of crazy stories I made, because even though I can remember some of them vaguely, I will never be able to remember them all in great enough detail that I could come up with an outline for a story.

I spend a lot of time down in that basement making stories, none of them were ever written down. They were original stories, cross-overs, and some of them were probably "fanfiction" (I remember this one story where Sora was in love with Ariel, but Ariel was in love with Eric so she turned into a human, leaving Sora so brokenhearted he tried to kill Eric) when I didn't even know fanfiction existed.




I played with these dolls, I made these stories until the very last year of elementary school. So what happened?

My Nonno would kindly smile as he came down the stairs, the sort of smile that you would give a 8 year old with a soother: "you're a little bit old for that, aren't you"? But he never said anything to me, so I didn't think anything of it.

But I did stop speaking outloud. Usually I said all the character lines outloud to myself, or sung their songs, instead I did everything in my head. I was trying to hide.


My sister would start to make fun of me for playing with dolls. She would tease me about being "too old", but when I was her age I still played. I ignored her.

But eventually it wasn't just my family, or my sister, but also strangers. People would come over to the house, see me playing and pull my mom aside and ask "Is Cailyn 'okay'?" They didn't mean "okay" as in feeling well, it became obvious to me they were asking my mom if I was a "special" kid, because I was going into highschool next year and I was still playing with dolls.

So slowly, I stopped playing. I remember the first time I heard a stranger ask my mom if there was something wrong with me, I felt sad. I didn't want to play anymore. I went upstairs and I did something else. Then next time we had to clean the dolls up for a party or a get together - they never came out again.



I think I stopped because people made me embarrassed or ashamed, and so I didn't want to feel that way anymore. I joined Roleplays and it was enough to keep my creativity going, enough to keep me from giving up on creating stories all together, and recently I started writing again.

But I don't think I've retained the amount of imagination and creativity I had as a kid. I don't have the same endless bounds of imagination I did as a kid anymore.


It's important to grow up, but does part of growing up necessarily need to be to stop playing?


This isn't just a question with dolls either, it could be with anything their child enjoys that they seem to think is "childish": Dolls, action figures, lego, pokemon cards.


Now luckily, I looked up this question online "when should I tell my child to stop playing with dolls", and I've seen two types of answers: "Don't tell her to stop! There are worse things kids could be doing these days let her have fun!" or "the normal age is 12. your daughter will be bullied if she doesn't stop soon, you're an awful parent if you continue to let her when she gets to highschool"


These are paraphrased with gray areas in between, but this made me feel better. Obviously this isn't a big enough sample size to know how many parents force their children to stop playing with toys, but it made me feel better knowing that the comments I saw were mostly of the opinion that they should stop when they're ready, and making them feel bad for it could be harmful to them.



If my child was my age now, and wanted to play with dolls, hell I would play with them. Because I think by forcing them to give up these things we are killing their imagination and their will to create.

I can only speak for myself and what happened to me, but I can tell you that I cannot make up stories as easily as I know I could when I was a kid, or as easily as I see my cousins do when they play with their dolls.

I think if I had continued using that part of my mind and continued to play, I would have been better off for it. Now I've written a lot of different things, many different stories that are original and fanfiction, but I know it's missing the essence of what I used to have.


I don't think it's damaging to let children continue to play with dolls or play pretend, or whatever they play with into highschool. I think if anything, it's healthy for them to do an activity they want where they are escaping from reality for a while. And unlike writing, no one is going to see you. Creating the stories you do with your dolls is for you and yourself, no one will criticize you for a line or make you feel like your story is bad, because it's all for you.

For me, I feel a lot of pressure writing, it's definitely not like playing with toys.

I wouldn't want to be responsible for making my child give up something they really love, especially if it's not some unhealthy obsession. I would want to embrace it, and like I said, play with them. I don't know if it would stop them from growing up properly, if anything doing something with them they enjoy could bring us closer together. I think they should stop when they're bored, because otherwise I would feel like I was hurting them by making them ashamed of something they loved, and I would be afraid I'm hurting their imagination.




If you would, what age would your make your kids stop playing with their favorite toys/games, whether it be dolls/action figures, playing "pretend" outside, etc?:

Could letting children continue on with playing into highschool+ harm their development?

Do you think by forcing children to stop playing we are killing parts of their imagination and creativity?

I want to do a RWBY play-through with the game, Sims Medieval. If you guys don't know, you basically make your own sims to put in premade fantasy roles.

I want my sims to be RWBY characters, but I can't decide which RWBY characters should fill up each role! That's where I'm hoping you guys who watch RWBY can help me.

Here are the roles:

Monarch:
Knight:
Physician:
Spy:
Priest:
Monk:
Wizard:
Blacksmith:
Merchant:
Bard:

My question is, which RWBY character should go in each role and why do you think are they perfect for it?