Hey everyone! Welcome back!
Today, I thought I would talk a little about something I've mentioned in a few of my posts about my comic, Dreamwalkers. That is, the group known as S.O.S, which the central plot revolves around. As mentioned, S.O.S, in this case, rather than the usual Save Our Souls meaning, stands for Somnus Oneirology Specialists.
Now, as you probably know from any of my previous posts, Somnus refers to one of the main characters and founders of this group, and I'm sure I don't need to explain the 'specialist' part. However, Oneirology, the middle part of this version of S.O.S, is not a standard word that everyone uses day to day. However, it's not a made up word. Oneirology comes from the Greek 'Oneiron', meaning 'dream', and 'Logia', meaning 'The Study of'. As such, the word Oneirology translates to 'The Study of Dreams'.
According to Wikipedia and similar sources, Onreiology researches the connection between dreams and known brain functions, the mechanisms of dreaming, how dreams can be influenced, as well as how the brain works in dreaming pertaining to memory formation and mental disorders. The aim is to study the process of dreams, rather than analysing the meaning behind them, so Onreiology is a completely different study than that of Dream Interpretation.
Considering that the creatures that Dreamwalkers revolves around, the Onreios, effect dreams on a physical level, enough that it can change brain functions to essentially kill the dreamer from their own dreams, Oneirology fit far more than dream interpretation. That is not to say that some dream interpretation couldn't be added to the specific dreams that each victim might have during the series, but the Dreamwalkers are mainly looking at brain function during the sleeping states of the victims to monitor their state and locate and classify the Oneiros, which is far closer to Oneirology.
In the story, S.O.S is meant to be a legitimate business. A character whom has yet to be introduced, is actually trained in Dreamology, and as such, they can still earn a living, even when an Oneiros-inflicted victim isn't the one walking through the doors, but as mentioned before, Oneirology in this case can only locate and classify the Oneiros. Now, you may be wondering where the 'Dreamwalking' is involved.
Using the Oneirology as a basis, the Dreamwalkers are then capable of traversing the dream on a conscious basis in order to neutralise the supernatural threat. Now, while Dreamwalkers on the level of this story might not exist, there are such things as people who are fully conscious of the fact they are dreaming, and are even capable of influencing their dreaming actions to a degree. This is referred to a Lucid Dreaming, and is the basis of the idea of Dreamwalking, and thus the basis of the idea for those characters that are capable of hopping into people's dreams. It is certainly an interesting idea that you could have this much control over your dreaming self, and certainly opens up interesting story related doors, especially since the trope of 'everything is a dream' is used less as a twist ending, and more as the premise you already know, but doesn't act as a buffer. Rather, the fact that everything is a dream is actually the reason things are so deadly during the waking parts of the story, where it is now 'real life'.
So, the S.O.S team essentially blend real studies with the supernatural aspect of the story to create the events that Dreamwalkers works around.
Still, I am interested in exploring the ideas of dream interpretations as well. After all, there are characters that only appear for a single case, so the fact that you could divine information about them due to the kind of dream they are having seems an interesting way of developing characters in this universe, if only slightly. Of course, relying only on that would make things very open to interpretation in some cases, so regular story telling applies as well, but since comics and manga are a visual medium, it certainly peeked my interest.
The world of dreams and its studies are certainly interesting ones!
Until next time!
Tara
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