![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cut ties off the shirt he wear
Probably thanks to the quantity of televised science fiction I had recently subjected myself to, I crashed sleeplessly into a nap and dreamed a complex plot full of interstellar politics of which the sole scene I retained was set at an intergalactic university, during a lecture by a diplomat on staff. He's middle-aged, human, conservatively dressed, and he is saying something about protocols when a bucket of water out of nowhere hits him in the face. The students don't know how to react, especially when he just takes off his glasses, dries them on his handkerchief, wipes his face, and keeps talking as if he hadn't been so startlingly interrupted. And a second bucket of water out of nowhere hits him in the face. Now the students giggle nervously and then they just giggle, because it keeps happening, at intervals as unpredictable and unimpeachable as slapstick comedy—catching him mid-sentence with a sputter, forcing him to start over each time and sometimes get dashed twice in a row for his troubles. Few things are funnier than an authority figure losing their dignity despite their best efforts. He keeps lecturing. By the end of it he's soaked to the skin and the class stopped paying attention to anything he was saying several buckets back, when he wasn't dripping into such an impressive puddle. More out of habit than efficacy, since his handkerchief's as damp as the rest of him, he's polishing his glasses again as he says matter-of-factly, "And now you're wondering how you can ever take me seriously again. But I can tell you that sooner or later out there, worse is going to happen to every one of you and you're going to have to make sure they still do," and he puts his still-wet glasses back on and looks out over the class without a trace of embarrassment and they realize that was the lesson and they should probably have been taking notes on the lecture, too. I woke feeling I had just gotten unsubtle advice from my id and feeling a bit weird about it.
no subject
Alas, Star Trek. And tonight I subjected myself to further in the forms of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. I should probably watch, like, a noir to recalibrate soon.
(It has been unclear from your posts whether you actively recommend The Expanse or just really loved the physics and the third season.)
That is one heck of a dream. I feel as if an intergalactic university would make a good setting for something or other.
I believe there's one in Phyllis Gotlieb's GalFed, but I don't think it was ever used as a central setting. If you feel inspired . . .
no subject
I actually do really recommend it! I think in terms of technical quality it might be the best sci-fi show I've ever seen. It's certainly the smartest. It occasionally misses the mark for me, sometimes in emotional ways and sometimes in ways that I think are objective issues, but on the whole it hits much more than it misses, and I think I'd recommend it to people across the board, at least if they're not too offput by a certain level of gore and darkness.