Content Warnings – mild internalized transphobia of the subconscious, pop culture-influenced ableism, boring dream stuff.

I remembered a dream when I woke up this morning, which doesn’t always happen.  I suppose I’d been thinking about TV shows I wasn’t current with as I went to bed last night, including The Flash.  The Flash has spent a lot of time with heavy duty villains making everybody lose hope and mope all season long, which is funny for something that was ostensibly more lighthearted than The Arrow.  Anyway, the most recent plot also has super-gaslighting and super-mental illness stuff going on, say about that what you will, and it influenced my dream.

To streamline the language I’m going to write this as if I’m certain of what happened in the dream, where I am not.  My memory of it is not perfect, but “or maybe this” after every line really kills reading comprehension.  Proceeding thus,

I was waiting for somebody to run an errand and to kill time I was told it was OK to bum around the abandoned insane asylum for ghosts.  I was the Reverse Flash, but not in total arch-nemesis mode, just chilling with the heroes awkwardly, but for the moment I was alone.  The asylum was empty and boring – no “environmental storytelling” to thrill – so I bailed.  The people I was waiting for caught up to me and we went for a stroll through a grotty run-down zoo that had nothing but unhealthy-looking birds.

I was with Cecile and some other random characters from the show and we were getting bad vibes from the birds but trying to ignore it, eating our potato chips.  During the conversation somebody mentioned The Flash having a weird relationship with gender, relating somehow to his superpowers.  A spooky old lady passed by us and we were like, ooh spooky.  We noticed the birds were being cruel to each other – not caring for chicks, squabbling over food, and so on.  The Flash met up with us and said he’d do something about the depressing bird park, and took off again.

Everybody went their separate ways and the dream went to some hapless random guy (also me?) walking the park.  He came to a fake looking cemetery with weirdos in bad samurai costumes, and talking to someone on his phone described them as “Rorouni Kenshin cosplayers.”  Turns out they were spooky Japanese ghosts, causing the park’s bad vibes with their “died-in-a-war” attitude.  They pursue and murder the random guy.

Back to me, el Reverse Flash.  I’m in the filthy bird park and I notice it still has alarming vibes.  I see a spoonbill ignoring its chick, and its bill is malformed into weird grubby strips at the end.  I run into the future because that’s something speed boyz can do on The Flash.  The park is looking nicer, I guess Flash made good on his promise.

The place has more people, more food, but there’s still a crusty edge there.  The Flash had traveled back in time and bought the park and devoted years of his life to offsetting the harm the birds were doing to each other, never knowing it was from the samurai ghosts, and he went insane.  He’d also transitioned and become… the spooky old lady from before.

Now I was the Flash, old ladying around the place and feeding colorful popcorn to my pretties.  Caw caw.

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