A Strike Witches Dream Of Wanna-be Magical Girls – From the Dream Diary of Digital Boy – An Otaku Gonzo Experience

As long as I’m going around calling myself the ‘otaku gonzo journalist’ or whatever, I might as well write about some actual gonzo experiences. If you were going to tell someone what ‘life as an otaku is like’ it’d be pretty easy to just say ‘well, you’ll spend a lot of time alone in your room doing a lot of nothing.’ However, it’s not like otakudom doesn’t effect people in unique ways as well, so I’ll be sharing a little bit of that with you. I’ve been trying to keep a dream diary anyway, so now I’ll recount the dream I had last night about Strike Witches, which was probably one of the best dreams I’ve ever had (which isn’t saying much because 99% of my dreams are horrifying nightmares, but whatever.)

The earliest point of the dream that I can remember had myself and several of the Strike Witches characters (Lynnette and Mio for sure, others came and went) on some sort of large aircraft, like one of those big cargo helicopters from Avatar. Evidently, I was supposed to be Miyafuji, but it was not clear at this point whether or not I was actually her, or just myself wishing that I were her, and the rest of the dream makes this distinction even more difficult. I distinctly remember that the door to the chopper was open, and there was lots of ferocious wind sound flapping about. A few hundred feet below was a massive aircraft, some kind of flying base, like an airship, but with fully modern stylings. Mio was yelling commands to Lynnette and I over the wind. I can’t remember hearing her voice, but it was apparent to me that Lynette and I were new trainees, and we were supposed to be boarding this sky base as a living quarters while we learned to be proper strike witches. Whether or not we jumped, I do not recall.

Especially because the rest of the dream did not take place on that airship, but in some kind of mansion. Now, the good reason for this is that literally 90% of my dreams take place in large houses or buildings, usually which I’ve just moved into (no doubt because I have moved 19 times in my life) and which I have not actually fully explored yet because they are so huge. This was yet another of those gigantic houses, and apparently it was the base of Strike Witch operations or whatever.

There was a guy there who was just a couple of years older than myself, but not apparently anyone I’ve ever known, who was like the ‘boss’ here, and was supposed to be teaching Lynette and I how to become Strike Witches. This is the part where I make the important distinction that regardless of whether or not we were beforehand, Lynette and I were definitely male at this point. I am pretty sure that I looked exactly like myself, only skinnier because my mental image of myself is always sans a good 40 pounds. As it would happen ‘becoming a strike witch’ literally meant ‘becoming female’ at this point. The guy who was our trainer seemed to be understanding that this was a very serious emotional undertaking – I want to say that this transformation had all of the emotional gravity of a real-life sex change operation.

Prospective me.

The easy way to explain this is that I had a Twitter conversation last night wherein Shance tried to convince me that he had an indeterminate multitude of sexual organs, and it got me thinking again about gender identity. I had a pretty big gender identity crisis between the ages of 14 and 16 wherein I had even considered sex change, and I spoke to quite a few sex change patients in various stages of ‘transformation’ along the way. Even after I largely got over my identity crisis and became (very) comfortable with being a dude, I’ve always had a strong interest in gender identity, and have tried to work themes of it into the various stories I’ve been failing to write over the years.

Anyway, so this guy is supposed to be training us to magically turn ourselves female. It seemed like male-Lynette got this down pretty easily, because s/he was gone in no time. I actually think I remember a moment of the front door opening to reveal just the sky outside, and her flying out, implying that this mansion was, in fact, still a part of the airship I’d seen before. I, however, who was evidently supposed to be turning into Yoshika Miyafuji, was having a hard time, so the trainer dude decided to help me.

He basically took me aside and gave me some ‘girls clothes’ that I was supposed to wear around until I felt comfortable enough with being not-male that I could transform. This, once again, should stem from my real-life interest in women’s clothing, no doubt a relic of that old identity crisis. I have always been jealous of women for being able to wear such awesome clothes, and I think it was out of some level of spite for this that I developed my signature wardrobe (I only wear pajama pants and overly large T-shirts.) Oddly enough, the outfit I wore in the dream in no way resembled women’s clothes, and was in fact a navy blue pear of sweat pants and a hoodie that said something in reflective silver writing along the lines of ‘I love China’ (a reference to the clothes worn by girl-Ranma in Ranma 1/2 no doubt.) Under that, I was wearing panty hoes, so I guess that counts, but in any case I was REALLY happy in the dream to be wearing women’s clothing, so at least there’s that.

Next began a requisite part in any of my dreams wherein I begin to explore the mansion, and I believe in one room I caught a glimpse of Erica Hartmann suiting up, which she did not have any reaction to, and in my mind I sensed that she was considering me as ‘one of the girls’ which was pretty cool. However, as I was passing through the main hall, somehow it became that I had accidentally put both of my legs into the same panty-hoes sleeve, and began to trip over myself. I was struggling to get to the stairs so that I could return to the second-floor bathroom and fix my pants when the ‘janitor’ appeared. I am mostly certain that the janitor was, in fact, Whoopi Goldberg, from back when she was skinny. Whoopi made some kind of snarky comments about me prancing around like a girl and implied something about pedophilia, which made me upset, but I ignored her and continued to hop up to the bathroom.

And you were there!

At this point, the dream was starting to slide into the nightmare area (as you may have guessed when Whoopi Goldberg showed up). Apparently, some of my family members had entered the building as I reached the second floor, and I was becoming paranoid. I didn’t want them to see me in ‘girl clothes’ on my way to being turned into a magical girl, especially when I couldn’t walk correctly. Luckily I made it to the bathroom in time to fix my panty-hoes, and when I exited, the trainer dude was there, and he was tryinng to help me escape down the hall, since it was almost time for me to take off.

And then I woke up. In some ways, it’s a sad dream, because I never got to turn into Miyafuji and fly off on the winds of my dreams, but at the same time, it actually filled me with a very good feeling when I reflected on it. I was just glad that in the end, I was actually full of joy that I would be able to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a magical girl, and even if the dream ended too soon, at least I know that I was well on my way. What this means is that I cannot let the dream down. I must fulfill my dreams in real life (not the one of being a magical girl though) so that I can experience the winsauce of that dream all over again!

And now, you understand the psyche of an otaku. I wish I was a potentially lesbian magical girl.