The Effects of Somnacin

[fae_boleyn]

OK, so this is the first time I've gone and posted an entire meta on the comm, but I didn't want to have some discussion on my LJ and some here, I'd rather have it all in one spot, so here it is. :D

Comments

[scarlet_ebony]

Ahhhh, you've really got me thinking about this, Fae. Reason why I love Inception so much. It encourages so much thought.

I've thought about this issue before, reading fanfics. I do agree with you that the effects of Somnacin can't be similar for every single person, but I'm pretty set on the fact that there must be at least one side-effect that affects every user

[darkhavens]

But as Cobb did say, 'after awhile it becomes the only way you can dream', and I'm not about to mess with Chris Nolan's logic on that.

Ah, but that's not Chris Nolan's logic. That is what Chris Nolan has Cobb saying, and, as we learned in the movie, Cobb is not always the most reliable, trustworthy guy in the world.

I can easily see him take the thought 'Mal and I can no longer dream without Somnacin', and extrapolate it out to a general warning of 'after awhile it becomes the only way you can dream'.

(The man has an ego. He cavalierly risked the lives of five other people so that his kids could grow up in his care, instead of in the care of loving grandparents. [YMMV]*g*)

[got_quiet]

I see where you're coming from, but there's also the issue of Yusuf agreeing with him.

Yusuf: Tell him, Mr. Cobb.
Cobb: After a while it becomes the only way you can dream.

So it's not just Cobb claiming this. It appears that at the very least Yusuf also believes this, and since they've never met each other before this scene that would suggest that it's a common opinion.

But it also seems obvious that there are multiple types of compounds that can be used for shared dreaming, so it might be possible that one could be developed that removes that side effect.

[darkhavens]

Interesting... Now I'm thinking about side-effects such as waking dreams and hallucinations. If you spent an extended time under, when you came out, would you snap back to treating everyone equally, or would you still view anyone you didn't know as a projection, a shade of no consequence? If you were being swarmed by a crowd of strangers, would your first reaction still be to pull out a weapon and start taking them down before they tore you apart

[tabaqui]

OMG I LOVE ALL OF THIS.
*cough*

I like it when details are picked apart. Now i want to see them *used in fic*!!
Go! Go!

:)

[darkhavens]

Hee! And now I'm thinking about how I could use it all in fic! *flails*

[fae_boleyn]

I know exactly what you mean. :D

[white_aster]

Stuff like this is always fun to ponder, pretty much because sleeping IS so much a black box: we don't know how it works, and we don't know what all Somnacin might do, so yeah. Handwaving. Fun! :D

I think pretty much anything involved with sleep might be side effects: more vivid natural dreams, narcolepsy, insomnia, etc.

Inception-related, I can see a few things happening to the chronic Somnacin-user:

• Projection effects - their projections become either hyperviolent (in reaction to being messed with them so much) or not violent at all (getting USED to being messed with so much). Either one is probably a big red warning sign to any experienced extraction team: these people aren't someone you want on your team. The first because it's usually a sign of a building subconscious resistance to what they're supposed to be doing for a living and the second because some of those people tend to lose their sense of urgency in dreams (it's all a dream, so nothing is a real worry).
  
  
• Reality/dream effects - pretty obvious: Mal-like

[fae_boleyn]

*salutes* Very detailed response! :)

Weirdly enough, your telepathy headcanon actually explains something in a fic of mine. It's tied in with a crossover series, so there's a telepathic character who only went under once or twice, and refused to do so again, because it messed with her. I never knew why, and you just sort of told me. o_o

[white_aster]

I...possibly have thought too much about things like this. ^_^;;

The telepathy is the ONLY THING I can think of that makes Somnacin make anything like sense. But yay for making your fic make sense! And yeah, if someone was a telepath/empath before taking Somnacin? GAH. Yeah, i can see it really messing them up in a whole new host of ways. I guess if we assume that it is canon that such things exist, that could be a whole new range of "side effects".

[fae_boleyn]

It was only canon because it's an epic crossover series - as in, seven fandoms and the fics never include all of them, but there's still underlying connections built in. But it works with what I'd said, which is wicked cool.

Thinking too much about this kind of thing is never bad.