watched inception again tonight and i'm so obsessed with the implied world this movie builds that we never actually get to see. dream sharing was invented for military training purposes but has since apparently moved into the mainstream enough that people use it to design architecture and commit crimes - do people who regularly engage in shared dreaming risk becoming desensitized to things like pain and violence and death because they experience it so much in the dream world? what are some of the other applications of shared dreaming? is it treated like virtual reality? is there, say, dream torture interrogation? dream-based entertainment, providing experiences reality can't? and then there's the implication that dream theft is common enough that high-level criminal organizations build themselves around it and people can receive training to allow their subconscious mind to defend itself (at least, if they're influential and/or wealthy enough). are dream crimes a recognized thing? is there such thing as dream laws? could you make a court case out of things that happened in a dream in the inception universe, or is it a legal loophole because if if happened in a dream it wasn't technically real (no matter how real it felt) and that's why people exploit it? also, regularly engaging with the dream world in favor of real life is shown to have the potential to be addictive and to affect your perception of reality, particularly whether your world and everyone in it is real or not. is this something that's widely recognized and can you get support for it? or is this kept quiet and/or stigmatized in order to promote progress and profit? i desperately need to see more of the world nolan created with this film because it's all just so fucking fascinating to think about