Has Mysterious Benefactor broken through to a higher level of amazingness called NEW SUPERNAL SCEPTER?   Might this title be elaborated upon?   Did this happen upon hitting 15,000 posts?    Or have I misinterpreted the situation?   If this is a higher level, congratulations MB, and with your new, even greater powers, please don't kill me!!!

Robservations #1093

Thumbs in the fill-in-the-blank area won't enlarge... I forget the exact wording that pops up.   MB, Midnite, what might be happening here, please?

I just hit 6800 posts and also see "Full Ascendant"... is this new?  Is 6800 the threshhold?   Am I the top?   Am I the Tower of Pisa?   Is there anywhere to go from here?

Also, I saved a lot of money on my gypsy curse insurance!  But mainly, this post is about IluvBarnabas becoming a GOD!!   Congratulations!!

1st official DS dream... 1968 I guess, the setting, though dreamed today.   I was some unspecified man Julia was bringing into their situation without warning or explanation, just assurances that I was necessary and trustworthy.   This is just what Barnabas loves to hear, of course.   She splits, I'm left on my own with Barnabas, who then for some reason has to leave just that moment, leaving me completely on my own.   He's half mortified at the thought that I'm going to be alone there to do who know what, but he has to go.

I am trustworthy in this piece, but it was fun watching Barnabas not know that, not knowing how much I knew (everything), not even being able to have a real conversation because he couldn't afford to give anything away.   So a lot of tension from him, no tension from me, since I knew things were alright.

This thing veers back and forth between my being an actor speaking my first couple of lines in my first scene in DS (I'm not a professional and am anxious, hoping I just turn out to be a "natural" I guess), to my being the character.

This was not the Old House.  Barnabas had a cramped (studio?) apartment, a long but narrow room, crammed with wooden antiques, split level, with three or four steps up needed to get to one end, which was just big enough for a (rolltop?) desk and not much else.

Set-up:
Adam:  "Hey!  I know you!   Cousin Itt!   Can I have your autograph?"
CS:  "Don't be ridiculous, I ______________!"

Lydia has assigned to me my own individual Watching Project, probably because I'm a "special" student who needs extra attention.   She has just sent me more tapes, and since receiving them yesterday, I have been marathoning DS (much as the marathon runners of ancient Greece used to do).   I started with the scene where Nicholas Blair verbally spanks the ghost of Rev. No-First-Name-Available Trask, and I got through the ressurrection of Barnabas when the Dream Curse apparently fails.   

I decided that I couldn't stop last night until I said hi to all the major characters, who were avoiding me for the first few episodes.    In one, Joel Crothers actually got top billing, as the highest-ranking actor present.   (And separate billing for his two characters.)   Then later I decided I had to see Barnabas get through the Dream Curse.

This set of episodes is less silly than other stretches of this story, and I actually was getting caught up in it.    It helped that they stayed away from the actual Dream for long periods.  Instead, we see everyone gradually coming to grips with the apparently hopeless situation, and the DC came to life for the first time, for me.    As long as I didn't have to see the Dream itself, I could feel very much for Vicki, Barnabas, Julia, even Willie, as they tried to deal with it all.     

Miscellaneous observations:

Sam's ghost appears to Vicki, then immediately has to take a load off of his ghost-feet and sits down in Barnabas's chair!

Nice Nick line about being terribly middle-class in that he doesn't like to drink alone...a dig at Roger?

No Adam for a long, long time, and even when we see him, he's there to save Barnabas.    Ahhhh.... (sigh of relief)

Strange conversation betwixt Cass and Nicholas, in which they seem to acknowledge in the dialogue the absurdities of what they're trying to do, and how they're going about it.    Nick especially wonders at the ridiculousness of it, but never is tempted to call it off.    On behalf of the Devil, he's determined to press on with Angelandra's cunning plan to recurse Barnabas but to take a lot longer to do it than before.     Maybe it's the Devil who doesn't think these things through, and they're just following orders.

Before being hypnotized by Stokes, Jeff speculates that he himself may have been created by Lang.    That had only occured to me a short while before this... why?    It seems to be a pretty obvious implication, now.    Everyone else watching probably thought that from the word go.   Maybe it was knowing he was Bradford (how can he not be?) that blocked other possibilities out of my mind.

Barnabas and Angelique meet in the woods and say that it would probably be best if they avoided each other in the future....!!!   Nothing said about the past!

I'll be back.