Alright. Here are some dream write-ups, brought to you by overwork, sleep deprivation, sleep apnea, and beta blockers. Only the February 19 dream has anything to do with anime.
November 27, 2022
I had a really intense dream last night, where I was able to view the entire universe at once. I was flying from place to place, and the way that it warped from a local sector, to a galaxy, to the entire universe all at the same time was a f'ing rush. A bunch of other weird stuff happened, like white space and the area being filled with letters & symbols (with no discernible pattern) and other parts where, according to the plot of the dream, someone was filling space with immense geometric structures. Think long straight chains in a 5 shape, all 90 degree angles, of a size and density to fill enormous portions of space. I know that I visited a number of terrestrial areas, but don't remember much of it. The really intense parts were where all of space was visible at once.
The whole experience was some mix of wonder and terror, and probably the most intense dream I've had in well over a decade. I used to have really intense dreams when I was younger, but they started going away in my mid 20s.
//I know, reading about other people's dreams is really boring
January 7, 2023
Another one of those super-vivid dreams last night, what I would call a "house dream"
I had a series of those back when I was in my teens through early 20s, with the final one being the house got corrupted by some sort of evil, and I found and "killed" it. This was the first "house dream" in about 20 years. They just have a different feel and are much more vivid than a run-of-the-mill dream that happens to take place in a house.
This one was a bit different. It was in some sort of mansion. The place seemed overly idylic, with beautiful mountains covered with tall trees outside of gigantic view windows. There were a lot of other people there, who seemed to be enjoying themselves, in a quiet and understated way. Eventually, things happened, and the dream reset to the time where it started, but things were different. The people were the same (though none distinctive enough to remember) but the house changed in various ways, keeping its idylic nature, but clearly different.
As the loops continued, I started to explore different hallways of the house, which began normally enough, but eventually got darker, more decrepit. One such hallway started looking like old decaying drywall that was almost pitch black. I was with another person, and after the hallway reached a dead end, they said that we should turn around. On the way back, the walls shifted to looking like randomly assorted logs, stacked over eachother, then hastily painted over, which was *far* different than the splendor of the main areas. We eventually got out of the hallway, and back to the main part of the mansion, which was beautiful as ever.
I kept exploring the hallways, and after reaching a dead end (also with another person, though yet again, they were indistinct; benign yet unremarkable) and we reached another dead-end. After turning back, the hallway became more and more narrow, and slowly turned into flesh, to the point where I had to crawl to progress. We did eventually make it out, and the other person didn't seem to even register the ordeal. Once again the mansion was glamorous as before.
I think that it was about this point where my persona in the dream began to recognize the place as an afterlife, and the dream shifted yet again, this time becoming more openly nightmarish. The cycles continued, but rather than just resetting, they ended with me being killed, and the mansion seemingly being torn between an overly-beautiful facade and nightmarish, the outside remaining as beautiful as ever, and the other people there turned into monsters, as in, I watched them start as human, but get twisted into a monstrous form as if the form were forced upon them (as opposed to have been monsters all along in disguise). The cycles kind of blurred together at that point, but eventually the "gods" of that world began appearing, and I had some sort of conversation with them.
Eventually, my dream persona concluded that I was also a god of the afterlife, and gained the power to remake the world, and I began flying around the mansion, altering things to my will. However, when I tried to alter the ever-present tree-covered mountains to desert scenery, the world began to push back, quickly reverting to what it was before, should I change it from that. Yet more cycles occurred, with the mansion again reverting to its original opulent state. My persona was unsatisfied, and kept trying to remake it.
After some time (the dream taking on a montage quality at this point, indicating that more time was happening) the world began to shatter, with the gods once again appearing, and the world turning into one of endless sky in all directions with no visible ground below, the mountains flying in the air, and the land swirling in all directions and constantly remaking itself in different ways. All of it idylic in isolation, but with it swirling around me in strange ways, with a giant tornado in the center. The dream ended around here.
I had a normal dream sometime after that. I normally wouldn't post about it, but I wrote all that stuff above, so whatever. It was some sort of video game with early 2000s-level graphics where I needed to be stealthy. There were generic military dudes before I got detected, and monsters (scary human/bird-things) would flank me afterward. It even had really stupid gamey things like tooltips telling me to not alert the guards. I "quick saved" and "quick loaded" quite a few times, usually after being killed by the monster bird things, because, you know, video game logic. There was even a part where I was comically "non lethally" taking out the guards even after detection, throwing them in a big pile while other guards were advancing on my position, waking up unconscious guards in the pile, while I had to re-subdue them while also being aware of a spawn line where the monsters would begin to spawn in, so I had to keep myself from being pushed too far back. It was really dumb.
And I had a super-stressful day at work yesterday. then not getting to sleep until well past 1:00 AM (and I went to bed before 10:00). I also happened to wear my fitness tracker band, which has some level of oxygen monitoring. It read sustained levels of 89-90% and dips as low as 81% SpO2... which is really bad.
So maybe my brain was being deprived of oxygen and came up with a bunch of weird stuff as it was dying of oxygen deprivation.
January 15, 2023
Another weird dream:
I woke up too early this morning, and after not getting back to sleep after a while, I started a Youtube video on my tablet, closed the cover so that I didn't see any light from the screen, and tried to get back to sleep while listening to it.
After whatever the first one was, it auto-played some series retrospective for Dark Souls, and the dream itself turned into an alternate version of Lost Izalith from Dark Souls 1. In-dream, my persona expected the regular Lost Izalith and was confused that it was different. I also drifted in and out of sleep enough to hear bits-and-pieces of the video while the dream was sitll going on
Now here's the cool part, rather than, you know, the real Lost Izalith (which is easily the worst level and has the worst boss of Dark Souls 1) it was this awesome mostly-open layered labyrinthine structure with heavy use of verticality, and designed so that you could see large parts of the lower levels from higher up. It was also filled with shortcut gates and otherwise inter-connected level design, secrets, a big variety of set pieces, at least 4 different bosses (one of which my dream character was under-leveled for, so I "save scummed" a bunch of times to try to use a homeward bone before it killed me, because I was carrying like 200,000 souls, and, you know, it was a video game dream.
I don't recall any regular monsters for some reason, and aside from the bosses, it was mostly just exploration.
Ok, this one probably sounds super-boring, but it was a regular dream (if somewhat longer than average) and not one of the more elaborate "movie dreams" that I sometimes had.
//Don't do Dark Souls when trying to sleep. Or do do Dark Souls when trying to sleep, if it leads to cool dreams and you're into that sort of thing.
January 30, 2023
Oh, and I had another weird dream again. A "regular" dream, so no super-lengthy writeup. I just found the ending funny:
In the dream, I was a boy who was preparing to go on some sort of trip with my family. The bulk of the dream was around the house, which seemed to be some sort of multi-family dwelling (but it wasn't nearly as detailed/vivid as a "house dream") We were on our way out, and I told them that needed to go back for something, but was actually wanting to get to something that I couldn't while they were around. After going back in, I fell through various hidden passages to stranger parts of the house (but my in-dream persona was unphased by it) until things drastically changed... and my persona and the other residents of the building were pursued by a giant Pac-Man who traveled on the walls (like a projection) and then leapt out of the walls to grab people.
The dream ended with me finding some kind of mobile elevator, and the building became flooded. and I used an aquarium scoop to fish out the people who the Pac-Man had caught from the water (it was a dream. Don't ask how that works) Once rescued, they returned to normal, and all of us (at least 20 people) ended up outside of the building.
K, so I just found it funny that I had a dream where I was pursued by a giant Pac-Man
Oh, and a weird aspect of my dreams: There is never any sound. If people speak, I intrinsically understand what they are supposed to be saying, but I don't actually hear anything. I've read about people's dreams lacking color (which mine do not) but nothing about lacking sound. Has anyone heard anything about this?
An early dream of mine directly addressed this: It was when I was quite young, and it was in the house that we lived in at the time. One of the rooms was on fire, and I tried to tell my parents. I was horrified when I couldn't hear anything that I tried to say.
No sense of smell or taste, either, and very very rarely touch. Almost entirely visual. The lack of the others seems to be normal.
I'm also not convinced that I have actual nightmares. Even if I could describe events as "nightmarish" and irrespectively of how my in-dream persona is acting, the "observer" part of my brain usually thinks more along the lines of "this is cool"
Feb 19, 2023
I guess only kinda-sorta crazy dream. This one may not be as interesting as the others.
In the dream, people were supposed to put on an individual performance short play where they acted out a scene using characters from the anime Odd Taxi. The setting was a forrest, with props of the Taxi, and other key locations. In case you aren't familiar with it, Odd Taxi takes place entirely in a city, so a forrest is already an odd choice to have such sort of play, but whatever.
As the plays started, my persona realized that they hadn't rehearsed or even worked out a script, and ran out to some sort of camp. There, they spent most of their time trying to figure out what they'd act out, thinking up entire plots that would go from prop to prop, and the logistics of running from place to place at each prop to pretend to be different characters having a conversation. I also practiced the voices of each of the characters, trying to capture their affects, and also trying to figure out where to get clothes to play each role (and this was out in the middle of the forrest, and even in a dream, there weren't other sets of clothes lying around)
At the camp, there was someone who looked like my brother, who I got the impression was (in the dream) some sort of scam artist. He was working on some sort of meal, and invited me to it once it was finished. I got a phone call from a fixed phone on the side of a tree (it's a dream, so of course there a phone on a random tree in the forrest), and I recognized the call as being from my IRL father. He warned me that the person I was with was trying to pull some sort of scam. The other person was gone at the time, and I agreed to get out of there (and of course, since my dreams are silent, I didn't actually hear any of the conversation and my brain merely filled in all of the details)
I snuck out of the camp, and the dream ended when the course of getting back involved walking through a weird spiral staircase that began fairly large, but shrank to the point where I couldn't keep going and got stuck.
The reason why I posted this is because:
A) I'm having trouble getting back to sleep
B) It's another sign that anime is corrupting my brain when I have an anime-related dream
C) The main character of Odd Taxi is a 41 year-old walrus, and I find a dream about pretending to be a 41-year-old walrus funny.
September 3, 2023
Weird dream time.
Not a particularly interesting one, but I remembered it with enough details to write it up:
This took place in an office building. It started outside, and then kind of skipped over to what I understood to be the second floor. I was walking with someone who quite clearly was my brother (who died many years ago in the real world) and the main thing that stuck out were the walls of the area. They had a sense of being hastily constructed white brick and poorly painted, and there was intensely bright office-style light. Many doors were also missing. We walked around the perimeter, and I felt an uncanny sense of dread, but I couldn't quite place it. About halfway through, we reached a kitchen-like area, which looked like a square area with wood-grain veneer over particle board kitchen fixtures, in stark contrast to everything else. We didn't stop, and kept walking. The sense of dread kept growing, and I had a sense that the building was haunted.
The man who looked like my brother then said "I died."
I replied "When?
"About 5 minutes ago."
He kept walking, and then walked into a doorless room, and I followed. He then said that he was going to explain everything, and I abruptly woke up.
Normally when I have "scary" dreams, I'm usually more intrigued than anything else, but this one managed to make me feel really unnerved in the real world, probably because of my brother's presence.
After falling asleep again, I had another dream that was clearly in the same building. This time, my in-dream avatar didn't remember the person who looked like my brother, and was apparently staying in a room parallel to the room that we walked into at the end of the first dream. It looked similar to a hotel room, but looked vandalized, and just past the entry way, there was a mirror that had the words "You can only resist" in painted graffiti with a few words after that that were unreadable.
There was a pervasive sense of dread, and I walked in and out of the room a number of times, eventually finding some other "guests" of the building, who were curious about my room. I'm not sure why, but I lead them to it. When I got there, I packed up a few valuable items to "lock them in my car". While outside, I saw that there were actually many occupied rooms, on both floors of the building, and it looked completely different from the outside than the inside.
I walked back to the room, and once again, I looked at the mirror with the "You can only resist" writings. This time, there was a branching hallway, with the other side looking decrepit. I walked down the "normal" path to the hotel room, which was now crowded with people just hanging out, but my in-dream avatar didn't think anything of it, but was concerned about the mirror. I walked back to it, and after looking at it again, both branches from it looked equally decrepit, and I walked down the one that was normal, just moments earlier.
When the hallway opened up to the room, it looked in a decrepit state, and everyone was gone. The dream ended there.
The weirdest thing about dream #2 was that it took place in what was clearly the same place, even if my dream persona didn't remember the first half. After awakening, I had to spend several minutes convincing myself that I wasn't still there, and the walls of my room looked red for some reason (in the dream the walls weren't red and were more run down/partially destroyed, and in the room, it was dim but not *that* dark). My real-world room is really dark, so all I could see was the faint red.
September 12, 2023
Man, I had the weirdest freaking dream last night.
Details are sparse, and the highlight of the dream is something that I can't describe, but it basically started in what was basically a shopping mall, and I was some sort of laboratory experiment, something that existed between a living creature and electricity. There were many others like me, and the setting was garishly designed like an overly-expensive commercial district, with an absolutely unfathomable number of lights, banners, and thick crowds. I recall performing some sort of test, but somehow ending up in what was the wrong place.
The dream shifted perspective to someone else, who was now looking for the first point-of-view character. They wandered the area, fighting through the crowds from test area to test area, eventually finding it, and then deciding that their utmost priority was to find Ryu from Street Fighter and let him know, so that the first character could be pulled out of whatever it was that they were in. I did eventually find him, and other Street Fighter characters (who looked like CG people in an otherwise realistic world (if one with way, way too many sparkling effects and lights), but didn't match the games at all) but they ignored me.
Some time later, I found that the spirits of former test subjects in the area were ready to exact their revenge on their handlers. The countless lights on the wall formed messages saying that they were going to exact their revenge, then turned into an indistinct fuzziness. It was at this point that the people there (my avatar included) began to panic. Everyone there was then lifted up and torn apart in an explosion of ticker tape, streamers, confetti, in perhaps the most festive explosion of death I've ever seen in a dream (though no gore... everyone was reduced to party decorations)
The remainder of the dream was the ball of death expanding through the shopping mall, and I was basically a disembodied floating POV at this point. The ball of death didn't seem to harm anyone outside of the "store" / lab / whatever it was that the dream started in, and if anything, the people outside seemed to be celebrating. I recall one group of people holding a banner that said "we love cinnamon man" and the dream ended with the POV switching over to a flattened string of what looked like bubblegum that I understood was the 2nd character of the dream.
I think that my brain is broken.
[EDIT: Added a few paragraph breaks for easier readability. -TK]
|