Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

OKAY LET'S SEE

Dream - Disappointment
So I dreamed that I somehow saw a brand new scene from the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, where Cloud was in the Forgotten City being interrogated by Kadaj on the location of something important (my brain apparently tried to come up with something important that Kadaj would want the location of, and came up with "glue"). I really liked this new scene and went looking for it on YouTube after I "woke up", but attempts to search for it by entering such scene-relevant quotes as "Give up the glue" for some reason only brought up videos I had no interest in, such as The Running Man "Give Up the Glue". I eventually became fully convinced, much to my disappointment, that it had only been a dream, and that I would likely never see the scene again. :c

False Awakenings
Lessee, then that YouTube false awakening aside, I had a couple more false awakenings re: something I had to do real quick at 7 AM-ish before falling asleep again. I had two different dreams where I accomplished the task, and when my alarm finally woke me up at 7 AM I was half-convinced I'd already done it a couple times, when in reality I'd never (as far as I can tell) left my bed.

Dream - Frustration
So this one started out with Jess and I chilling in this otherwise-empty house, perhaps abandoned by its previous residents. We were in the bathroom with the bathtub filled with water, but when I looked in it I saw two weird insect-things I'd never seen before. They seemed to be an aquatic version of house centipedes, though with marginally thicker legs and fewer of them, which were squirming on the surface of the water like protozoa (thanks BIO 101). I called in this strangeness to some radio or TV show, who promptly announced to everyone that some 14 million cases of these weird insect-things being in peoples' homes had been reported.

Then mom drove up and frickin' took me away from the house for some reason. I didn't particularly want to leave, but next thing I knew I was in the car and we were racing down the highway. I started sort of crying (it felt like I couldn't really cry, just sort of half-cry?) to try to convince her to take me back to the house, but it seemed to just make her annoyed. Then I tried to open the door to potentially jump out, but the force of the wind outside made it impossible to open. So I settled on crying and hoping Dad wouldn't suddenly appear in the front seat, since he would've seen right through this weirdness and told me to cut it out.

Then I'm not sure what happened. I ended up in the middle of nowhere at night, trying to find a way to head back. I seem to remember performing some stunt where I ramped a truck off something in a reckless manner, and I may have encountered a homeless guy or hitchhiker or something, who was my key to getting back to the house. But I'm not totally sure.

I somehow ended up back at the house. Still nighttime, and now Jess and Mom were on the front porch, apparently witnessing my arrival. I was incredibly irritated by having been relocated, and looked over to see what looked like an 18-wheeler fuel tanker chilling in the dark nearby. I reached out and grabbed it with psychic power, feeling a satisfying sense of weight as I lifted it into the air. I slammed it down on the front yard (apparently lifting things into the air and then slamming them to the ground is a thing I do nowadays). Then I hopped up on top of it, and started channeling intense heat around my hands. I pressed both palms against the truck, and the metal turned molten (though without glowing), allowing them to sink through. As I did this, I noticed that my hands felt at first cold, and then lukewarm; one of the things I worry about when I consider using fire powers is the potential that I would just burn myself, but it seems to be a nonissue.

I think I was trying to cause a gas explosion or something, though not with the intent to hurt anyone. I was just really irritated and lucid enough to realize that I could do what I wanted. I think that's where I woke up, though.

- - - - - - - - - -

Update: April 26 2014 (aka the next day)
At the time I had this dream there was some stuff about it that didn't make sense, like the part where I tried to manipulate mom by crying (very petty behavior, something I don't think I could ever do IWL) and the fact that I saw Dad as someone who would see right through my attempts at manipulation (IWL he's more clueless than shrewd).

Then, today, I got into a big shouting match with Dad. Apparently he'd been building up tension ever since Mom requested that we have the house totally cleaned up by Tuesday, so a photographer can take pictures. He tried to hint at how we should do a little at a time, say five minutes here and there, so it would get done early, although the rambling way he requested it made it a little hard to take seriously. And then he blew up tonight (after some prompting on my part). Some of the things he mentioned was the fact that he feels like Mom and him can't request favors from us (my sister and I) and that he feels like they're too easy on us. He felt that Mom in particular is helpless to request that we get things done, or maybe it's that we won't get things done without plenty of prompting and her being over my shoulder.

After his temper tantrum I certainly felt like slamming an eighteen-wheeler around. The obvious parallel aside, it seems to me that Mom driving me to somewhere I don't want to go while I act passive aggressive about it and hope Dad doesn't show up and make me stop is a parallel to Mom requesting that I get cleaning done while I put it off and Dad tries to have me get it done early.

Not trying to imply that I'm some kinda weird psychic or anything, I think I was just sort of unconsciously picking up on the stress signals Dad was sending out.

The sad thing is it's not like I'm some slacker who doesn't get things done. I'm going to sleep the stress off, wake up after a good night's sleep, grab a shower and some tea and bomb the absolute heck out of my to-do list, and it's gonna be super satisfying, especially after I got basically nothing done today. And all this drama will have been completely unnecessary, except for pushing my bedtime back another hour, and giving this dream some reasoning behind it.

In other news I'm thinking of reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Still pretty skeptical about him (my Psych professor doesn't like him), but the more one reads, the more ideas one has to draw from.

I do not have infinity time so I'll try to make this quick, this dream leading up to the lucid part was plenty long but also wildly uninteresting so I'll skip ahead~

Fragments before this:
Going to some kind of spa where the family hangs out fairly often?
Mom watching American Idol in the 1319 house. On the show, the guy on-stage throws another person at a third person in the audience, scoring a bulls-eye. Afterwards they figure out how he did it as part of his act, and demonstrate by throwing a sort of paralyzed and complaining Russian supermodel the same distance after the show. I'm right there with them as though I went through the TV to get there, but afterwards I return. Then the lucid events occur.

Lucid #11 - Justice
So I dreamed I was living back in the 1319 house, and there was a family down the street, a mother, father, and a boy. Then the boy got in trouble for stealing a ten cent comic book from a store, and his dad shot him in the forehead and killed him. I heard about this and decided to shoot the dad in the head with his own gun, so I went to confront him, taking a ten dollar bill as well. I think I figured the guy's wife might need the money.

I approach the guy on the street in broad daylight with the $10 fluttering outside my pocket in my left hand, and his gun in my right hand (both clearly visible). His wife is standing close by. I demand to know how much the kid stole. The dad sees the $10 I have and mutters something about it having been "zero dollars", which shocks me. I growl something like "You killed your son over nothing" and raise the gun to shoot the guy in the head with it. Pulling the trigger does nothing; I pull back on the top of it to reload, not losing any momentum (the gun feels like a nerf gun with a spring inside). The dad, meanwhile, isn't trying to defend himself or grab for the gun, only backing away. I try again to shoot him but again, nothing happens, and I give up on the murder attempt.

I think we keep talking, or at least communicating our mutual hatred, and then I turn to leave. He grabs my shoulder to spin me back but I just sort of turn my body to slide out of it, and now we're walking side by side, still talking but perhaps not saying anything. I'm not in the least afraid of him.

The guy keeps pace with me as I walk down the street to home, and I'm trying to figure out how to dispense justice on him. I walk inside and leave him and his wife on the front yard. I realize Iron Man's number is in my phone and I decide to call him up and have him deal with it, but I start to get confused as to whether this is real life or a dream. I get the impression that I got the number in a dream, but that now that I'm "awake" it won't work, or it'll be something realistic like a promotion for a movie and he'll just be some guy in a suit that doesn't work. Then the belief that it's a dream seems to win over, and I decide to try calling the number while anticipating that it will work, and the real Iron Man will show up and beat this guy up for me. I try calling the number (listed in my phone as "Iron Man #8"), but it turns out to be a movie promotion thing, and I hang up on an automated message.

I'm still half-convinced it's a dream, although the clarity of the dream, and also for some reason the fact that it's broad daylight, seem to be arguing otherwise. I ignore the apparent facts and decide that since it's a dream, I should be able to take justice into my own hands, do it myself... I'm now standing on our porch looking down at him with his wife next to me, and I reach out to psychically choke him. It works; he reaches for his throat with a look of frozen surprise as he starts to make choking noises. I try to lift him into the air, but at first can't figure out how. Then I sort of look away or block out my vision for a moment while I feel myself lifting him into the air, and next thing he's perhaps 20 feet in the air, maybe 25.

I hold him there for a moment and then slam him to his knees on the ground. I lift him up again, and slam him down again, wondering whether if I keep doing this, it'll break his knees or something like that. I apparently can't stomach that and stop choking him, but I DO take off his left hand somehow. He starts screaming. Now random people are walking by, not seeming to care what I'm doing. Three of them go into the apartment in the basement of the 1319 house; one of them makes eye contact with me. He has a sort of determined expression, though currently afraid, and I wonder whether the three of them are buddies of the guy I'm currently torturing, whether they'll be a problem later.

I release the guy, and he starts to stumble away, apparently with working legs but missing his left hand. Then I realize, once he's about two or three houses away, that he's holding a fairly large stick of dynamite. I yell something after him like, "Dynamite? Really? You want to play rough? Alright!" and open my fingers with my hand pointed at his dynamite (even though there's a random stranger walking past the guy at that point). It explodes, a rather small explosion for dynamite that size, engulfing his hand and not much else. When the smoke clears, his hand is gone. He stares down at the stump and frayed sleeve for a moment before starting to scream again.

I walk back inside, and explain to his wife that she can stay here. She seems perfectly happy to hear that. I say that because of the threat her husband poses, she should sleep on the second floor instead of the first floor, on the off chance that he figures out how to set dynamite without any hands. Shortly after that, I wake up.

-

WELL THAT WAS PRETTY VIOLENT.

SO LET'S SEE

first of all somethin' weird happened last night, I was drifting off to sleep and I suppose just sort of observing my thoughts (which is a concept I never really understood before but it seems to make sense in this context), and I started continuously knowing when my thoughts had shifted from IWL things that made sense to stories that seemed to be made up off the top of my head. I was just sort of ... listening to my own thoughts, and at some point that I couldn't quite pin down, they would start to get pretty crazy. And for some reason, rather than simply accepting this new development as "factual" (like most of my mind seemed to be doing), I would snap out of it and go "wait that's crazy". Hmm...

It was like part of my mind was the watcher, and the other part was simply dozing, and the dozing part would start to get invested in a story; I would catch myself thinking about something crazy, like maybe an IWL person who doesn't exist, or a story I once heard that I never actually heard, or a game I never played, but my dozing mind would treat it like something I was wholly familiar with, like an old friend. And I think what triggered the sudden realization that it was made-up was when I would think back for an instant, naturally expecting the memories to be a part of my recent past, my waking life, and that's when I would have this chill of "wait that was all just made up." And that happened like, three times in a row, and every time the chill was the exact same. So strange~

—

Now for the dreams. Don't remember too much, I know for a fact there were two separate dreams but since I can no longer remember what happened in which dream, I'm just putting 'em under one header.

Dream - lel my recall is so derpy lately gg
I guess rather than chronological order, I'll arrange this in the order of what I remember best. SO THEN...

Strongest memory would be the part where I was on a dark, fiery battlefield, lots of blackened earth, troops marching forward towards the enemy army or towards destruction or towards whatever waited over there. I was one of 'em, but I was a special snowflake; not exactly "just another soldier". I didn't really have a place in the dream, a prearranged role, no backstory. It was just me chillin' with everyone else, marching forward with everybody else.

AND USING ELEMENTAL CONTROL WHAAAAAT.

I wouldn't really call myself lucid but some part of my mind was naturally invested in the idea of controlling elements around me. And it wasn't really a feeling of "maybe if I do this I will be able to possibly get the elements to obey me", it was more like "hum-de-dum just gonna grab some fire from over there hm that's not very much oh well." Like, I had the confidence I needed, and there wasn't as strong a focus on "breaking the dream" or trying to use my expectations or anything like that. Quite natural.

So let's see I was walking forward and I think I tried to snatch a bit of fire from a fellow soldier's torch (think he was standing by the roadside), but I only ended up with a tiny flicker of flame. It survived for a brief moment, curled up in a ball of air that was cupped in my palm (I mean it was invisible air but I could feel something between the fire and my palm, holding it there). I think the reason I controlled it like that was because in general, when I imagine trying to control fire, I end up concerned that I'll lose control and get horribly burns and stuff like that. And my dreaming, non-lucid mind is apparently the part that likes to inventively come up with little solutions to those problems~ and new ideas for dream powers~ (as in, the psychic poke technique) aaah I love my brain :D

SO ANYWAY next I came to a surprisingly-untouched stream, clear water coursing through a channel in the black ground. I manipulated it a bit, lifting some of it out of the stream in a nice sort of curling trail, but I think my conclusion was that there was nothing I could really do with it, and also it felt sort of ... unsatisfying. Maybe it's just that water physics are so hard to render that I end up with a sort of approximation of water and it's not much fun manipulating an approximation? Who knows.

The third and last elemental control thing I tried was simply that I was still marching, when I noticed something burning coming up on my left. The start of a little wildfire, perhaps, and close enough on my left side that, as I walked past, I got a bit concerned that it might spread to me. So I waved my hand down at it, palm down, in a sort of calming gesture, and the fire almost completely extinguished. Really, given the size of it, it was sort of unexpected that the whole thing would be put out, but I got the feeling that it was easier to simply put a fire out than to try to control it. Fire is wild, but fragile, in my mind.

That was about the extent of that segment.

—

One of the only other things I remember is a brief bit where I was in a dark, rather small room with my parents (think there was a well-lit hallway outside it though), and then my shoe caught on fire. Or something like that happened. I was understandably upset, but my parents did nothing while I put it out myself (for a brief moment, the fire seemed borderline out of control, but it didn't hurt anything except my shoe). Afterwards, I examined the fire damage done to the rubber parts of my shoe with some disgust, irritated that my parents didn't care what happened to the shoes I've had for years and years. GEEZ.

—

UGH I keep getting such tantalizing flashes of how the rest of the dream went. But maybe the concepts just don't translate well to the waking world...

The only thing I really remember is that I was packing up to move, and going down to the basement to retrieve some stuff, and then there was something about a game or story. Impossible to retrieve now.

Last night's theme was my siblings and I as kids again b'awwwww

Dream 1 - Good Times Part I
So real quick uhhhmmm last night I dreamed my siblings and I were young again and the family was moving so we had to sort through all this old stuff in back rooms. A lot of it was bringing back memories of some of the business work we did for dad and stuff, which was interesting. I think we were all surprised how much we'd gotten done over the years.

And then alsooooo there were tide pools or creeks or somethin' in the floor with load of minnows in 'em, ranging from the tiny little guys that're impossible to catch to some big ones that were chilling all relaxed. I picked up one or two of the big ones 'cause they're so fascinating and stuff and they were perfectly cool with it. So that was a nice dream.

Dream 2 - Good Times Part II
I fell back asleep after that, and the setting was about the same, but now we were in the 1319 church auditorium. I don't remember too much about what happened there, except I had Spiderman powers and if I held my hand in that classic Spiderman hand pose I could shoot a web out. The web was super elastic, so it seemed to have about the same physics as one of those weird grappling hooks that pulls the person up after it attaches to something. So I had a lot of fun just shooting web at the ceiling and then bein' launched up there and clinging to it.

I also tried launching myself off the ceiling using two webs as a sort of makeshift slingshot. Looking back the physics were totally wrong but it worked exactly as expected. So that was fun.

Hmm fell back asleep and had a nicer sort of a lucid, although I'm tempted to call it low-level lucidity since I was so immersed in the dream and yet using dream powers... but the exploration of dream powers was super nice so 8>

Lucid #7 - Condensed Milk Run
Finally a dream with a straightforward title. Guess that means it's one of the more rational ones I've had...

... OR IS IT the dream starts out with my mom, dad, sister, sister's boyfriend, and some stranger and I all eating cake in the 1319 backyard together. The cake itself is so big it's essentially the dinner table, and we're all sitting around it at various spots just eating it with forks.

Unfortunately it's not the best cake ever; whoever made it definitely made an excellent attempt, but we still find fault with it. So Dad tells me to go up the street to the CVS and get some condensed milk.

I'm still sort of lucid so I'm happy to oblige so I can have a chance to try out dream powers; I fly overtop our house, land on the sidewalk, and start to make my way up the street.

I start experimenting with a new way to fly: I hop up in the air, and then sort of skim forward somehow. I'm really moving, and the speed feels great, but as I'm going forward I'm also drifting back down to the ground as well, and finally I land. I decide to try again, this time thinking "What if there was less gravity?" ... now my initial leap carries me a fair bit higher, and I can really feel the weightlessness; I start skimming forward, just as fast as before, and make it all the way up the street. I end up passing the CVS and skid to a stop when I land; it takes me probably like 10 feet to come to a complete stop, and it feels great.

(I love this kind of flying. I think it's the same I did in my dream where I was part of the alien-dinosaur resistance hehehe, I forgot to try to revisit it though. Puttin' that on my dream powers list.)

So I enter the CVS and a clerk helps me find the condensed milk; it's in a fridge just standing by itself against the end of an aisle. He's super helpful and takes out the condensed milk to show it to me. There're two types in a bottle with a wrapper: half of it is mixed with lemon juice, the other half is just regular condensed milk.

By this time I've realized I don't have money to pay for it. Dad completely failed to give me any cash. For a moment, part of my mind reminds me that it's a dream, I can do whatever I want, I could take the condensed milk and leave, nobody would be able to stop me—but that train of thought is utterly overruled by a different decision-maker in my brain. I choose instead to use the psychic poke technique, where I stick two fingers into someone's mind and concentrate on what I want them to believe or do.

So I try it on him, trying to give him the idea that he should just give me the condensed milk for free, as a gift. He seems perturbed by this train of thought. It seems he's pretty dedicated to his job, because the idea doesn't stick the first time. Also, there're four or five people who all seem intent on getting help from him, and they're all just sort of standing by in a semi-circle around him. I have to move somebody out of the way to get up front, close by him again, and I try the psychic poke again.

This time he's slightly more convinced, but before giving the milk to me he decides to do something in the back of the store.

I don't think I was lucid by this time. I remember Mom showing up in the store to tell me about a game I was supposed to play with Ben in the back of the store.

I head back there, go through a door and head up some stairs, and suddenly I'm playing a video game. It's like the video game's world was existing in a 3D space, and I just walked into it and was suddenly playing it.

It was some sort of Final Fantasy fighting game. The characters I remembered were Sephiroth (who I played as/was for a short time, and having that frickin' long sword was awesome), and Cloud/Zack. When you chose to play as Cloud, initially Zack would show up lugging a young, comatose Cloud over his shoulder. I was like "I thought I chose Cloud" but yeah Zack was just there to drop him off. And Cloud would get better and stuff. Like, grow up and turn into normal, Advent Children Cloud. Good times.

-

I've gotten into a good habit of thinking about my dream while I'm still waking up, just sort of automatically musing on it and trying to remember it. This time, it took me sort of a while to realize that the dream I was musing on was new, and not just a continuation of the one I'd had a couple hours back. So that was cool.

sleepyyy

This one was lucid but Imma be relatively brief writing it out 'cause first of all it was long as crap and secondly it was sort of
... off.

But y'know I did get SOME things done so let's see here.

Lucid #6 - Various Dream Powers Aw Yee
The whole dream was centered in 1319 but with a great deal of frickin' random, off-the-wall weirdness and so many different things happening so quickly that it was just incredibly difficult to keep track. For example, there was

- a segment about my brother and I back when we were young/living in 1319/being homeschooled
- a segment where a few others and I were fighting something that could totally bean us with these green spiky projectiles that we had to throw back, and our best hope was the white-haired girl with the tweezers who could pick them up before they exploded
- a short bit afterward where I had to fix the swollen lumps that I'd gotten from a couple projectile blows (and it was super icky, don't ask)
- a segment where I and some others encountered a sort of tribe living in a nearby 1319 house
- a segment where we were shipping pizzas "downstream" but there was no stream
- a segment where an anthropomorphic cat was trying to do the right thing but just ended up getting totally screwed over but continued to cling to her hopefulness (had to do with the tribe as well)
- something about me having some nasty, jaded little comrade, and for some reason we were quite close by necessity,

and then I guess I finally got lucid. Not that weird stuff stopped happening, because weird stuff continued to happen almost immediately.

I was standing on the 1319 back porch at night, and there'd been snow recently. It looked pretty great. I once again had the realization that I was dreaming, though there didn't seem to be any conscious rationalization involved. It was like, once even the flicker of "I could be dreaming" appeared in my head, it slid naturally into place because it made perfect sense. Also things were, once again, a bit fuzzy and dark and "dreamish".

So I went down the stairs and crossed the alley to the houses back there so I could fly up onto one. As I did that I had the stupidest spontaneous thought I've probably ever had in my life, which was something like "Demons, help me fly", and I noticed that my flaps (because I always fly by using my arms as wings) were now more powerful. This lasted about three flaps and fifteen feet, and then there was a green flash and I was boosted another five feet, and it felt like I hit my head on something. Strange. I had by this time grown fully uncomfortable with my earlier train of thought, and proceeded to fly the rest of the way "myself". >:U

So then I was on a snow-covered roof just kinda chillin', not sure what to do. Kept heading in that direction with a (maybe false) memory of how the street in that direction would look, and stumbled upon a parade with a literally larger-than-life Beyonce as the main performer AND the person the parade was for. So I guess it was sort of a moving Beyonce concert. There were colorful shops and junk to either side of the street, plenty of neon lights creating a festive air. Woo.

I remembered one of my dream power intentions, walked up behind a dude in the parade, stuck two fingers into his mind and convinced him I was an opponent. At this point either a second version of him jumped out from in front of him or from inside him or maybe it was just some dude who'd been directly in front of him and looked a lot like him who'd accidentally got my transmission. Either way he whirled to face me and pulled out a black handgun, and I had a good time wrestling it from him before (I think) shooting him with it and then immediately losing track of it. Nobody around us paid the slightest attention.

Beyonce had by this time managed to climb up onto the glass display of a nearby open-air sort of shop selling baked goods (with, I noted, a fairly liberal amount of dead bugs around them, as though the shop had had to fix an infestation), and I had decided to try my two-finger mind-control technique again (or idk it needs a FAR better name). I walked up to a dude who was sort of off to the side staring longingly at her from a distance, stuck two fingers in his mind, and told him he was in love with her. He immediately moved forward, climbed up onto the display case, and started making out with her. She was cool with it. It was like it was all part of the show.

Not sure what happened then. I DO recall at one point thinking that my lucid dreams last pretty long (a guy in the Skype Dream Views chat was hearing about another lucid I'd had and said 10 minutes was a pretty good length for a lucid and some part of my brain was like "OH YEAH WELL I'll show you grrrr" or whatever), or that I stay lucid pretty long. I even looked over at my bedside clock for confirmation (in the dream) and saw that it was 5:something AM, which apparently meant that an hour had passed since I'd become lucid, which I'm pretty sure meant that I definitively have no ability to track time in a dream. Bummer.

Then there was a bit where I crawled through a bunch of objects. I wanted to get back to the 1319 house and apparently the best way to do that was by going through a junk-filled tunnel that would open out back onto the alley. It being filled with junk, though, I decided to try phasing through it.

At this point, as though to distance myself from the discomfort of crawling along blind through a bunch of objects (I was ghosting through 'em but still) with the uncomfortable though that a random can might get lodged in my kidney, I switched to a sort of third person perspective. It was almost like the sequence wasn't really happening because I seemed to just be sort of imagining and narrating it. But it was, because next thing I'd phased through basically half a house and was back on the outside, in the alley. Neato.

Think I lost some lucidity; then there was more stuff about my small, unwholesome companion, and then some stuff about super cute kids, and then I woke up. Like seriously I can't be bothered to try to write this all out, especially since my mindset during the whole dream was sort of off and strange and not all there. So oh well. 8>

OKAY I outlined this dream last night and reading it now it's crazy. Geez.

Dream - Chewed-up Story Part I
So I was in some office or perhaps a school building, and there were all kinds of crazy things happening. For instance, at one point Mr and Mrs Incredible showed up. He was totally in love with her, and she had a similar body shape to him and bright orange curly hair and a weird crazy face, and also she was a fake version of his wife.

I may have been a college kid or somethin'. I remember bein' on a field trip, we were just walking around outside following the professor around while she showed us various wildlife. Or something like that. I guess we were the type of students to just never go outside, 'cause the wildlife was just regular old sparrows and squirrels and junk.

UHHH then at some point Ben was explaining something to me, I'm not sure what. Just, y'know, fillin' me in on information.

The thing he was explaining was the backstory of this bicycle-athlete and/or tennis player, who I believe was originally shown passed out on the university building's front porch, before getting up and proceeding to be absolutely fabulous. But he had a dark side... he may have been a spy of some sort. Super popular though.

Uh so next I should explain about this one dream power where I was able to change how other people thought simply by sticking two fingers into their head (phasing harmlessly right through to their brain), and then concentrating on the new idea I wanted them to have. Which was pretty neat. I remember doing that to the bicycle guy, and also to the Mrs Incredible lady, because Mr and Mrs Incredible were havin' to travel down these tube slide things and she was kinda scared and then I just changed her thought to make her not scared! Wooo.

Maybe next time I'm lucid I'll make that a conscious dream power. Like, it was really cool because I could sort of feel their thoughts, and being able to change them was a powerful ability... I'd like for that to be a dream skill of mine, like flying. Make allies out of enemies and enemies out of allies, turn one guy against his comrades, convince another to lead me to a stronghold, really the opportunities are endless~

Oh yeah I think at the time I was a ghost, though. It was a lot like that game, The Novelist, in that way.

UHM then there was a third-person bit about students going outside to see the wildlife, same as before, and then them trying out a professor-led experiment where they offered free food to sparrows. And the sparrows were like, all eager to try it out, but at the same time very suspicious because there were no humans nearby for them to gauge things by. They weren't sure what the proper course of action was, without humans.

Uhhh I may have also been a business person at another time. I remember there being some co-worker that I really hated, I remember him being just so whiny and me sitting there getting ready to punch him in the face just to get him to be quiet. Think that was the last thing before my alarm went off.

This is just, probably not in the right order at all. It's really impossible to tell. And y'know there were no callbacks to other parts of the dreams so you could pretty much arrange them however the heck you wanted. I wouldn't worry about it.

Part twooooo of the same dream, after I fell asleep again~

Dream - Devil Destruction ?? wow that sounds really lame
So I was back in the same convention center as before, only this time I was an established hero in my own right, and the Justice League and bear/Godzilla were gone. In their place was a new opponent: the devil. Or basically some dude in a red suit with horns and a goat's tail and all that jazz, wandering around the center with these two inflatable devil minions of his. People were kinda wary of the guy, but I don't think it was the general consensus that I needed to take him on. Too bad though 'cause that's what I did! I wasn't really a hero of the people or anything, more like some suspicious powerful person wandering around looking for threats to dispense with. A sort of semi-paranoid protector. (Also my IRL family wasn't part of the dream anymore.)

So first I encountered him 'n' his two minions and I was like, are those... actually minions? They look like inflatable demon decorations (they were about as tall as he was and super wide), but then they started sort of toddling around on their own, one just sort of pacing a route in the middle of the floor, the other following close by him. People were giving the pacing one a lot of space, but didn't seem to mind when the devil and his other minion wandered off in their midst.

I decided to take down the pacing minion, which wasn't particularly hard and was actually pretty stinking rad. The low-level lucidity was gone, but my expectations were still sort of managing the dream, so when I noticed that the minion could only toddle around on his little legs, MY movement leveled up. Then I had some kinda torch or a brand or somethin', and the fight consisted of me dancing around the dude, dodging his pitiful rushes, jabbing at him with the torch/brand, and moving in this exceedingly quick and graceful way that was just, loads of fun. I quite enjoyed that. Also Imma call that a dream power.

In the end, the minion was just a little deflated pile on the ground. He hadn't even touched me. And the people around me seemed borderline disapproving, but I didn't caaaaare~

After that, it's a bit harder to remember the different pieces of what happened. I remember an interlude where I was sitting in a classroom doing schoolwork, when the clock caught on fire. This was our cue to get out before the place burned down, but I chilled there still working, and so did a few other cool kids, though some left over time. At one point a girl and boy walked by, and the girl noticed I'd dropped a bunch of hair bands on the floor, and decided to claim them for herself. Think I gave her an evil look. Eventually the clock just stopped being on fire, which was sort of anti-climactic.

Another part seemed to be some TV reporter woman trying to explain, on camera, why she couldn't do a certain thing... which had to do with efforts to stop bad guys. They wanted her to be part of the offensive somehow, maybe owing to some power she hadn't known she'd had, but she was pretty persistent in saying it wouldn't work out.

Lastlyyyy the dream took a rather more dark turn and seemed to be falling apart, with details getting mixed up with various thoughts I was having. I do remember that I entirely ceased to be quick and/or graceful, and my method of taking out the devil culminated with me straddling his chest on the ground and wildly stabbing his eyes out with some sort of dual-hooked claw. Also I was watching myself from third person—I seemed furious and out of control, and the devil guy wasn't putting up much of a fight at all. Then I stopped, seeming struck by the carnage, and my thoughts turned to what could've inspired this, which resulted in a shot of some eyeless woman in a white dress. And then I think the same thing happened twice, or something. Which is always just confusing as anything. Repetition is a no-no, dreams.

Think I woke up after that.

didn't set an alarm but did decide to try to write down what dreams I might have, which is why I'm awake right noww~
low-level lucidity is the best yo
callin' it night 'cause I'm going back to sleep after this.

Dream - Bear Battle
So the dream started off with me and my sister and mom in a forest just walking down the forest path ... and then a bear started hunting us. Not a good feeling. We couldn't shake it, either, had to constantly keep moving. I think I may have done some flying at this point. I'm not sure how that helped though, since it would've left my family behind.

We came to a giant slide in the forest, like you'd see at a Renaissance festival, and Mom said something about how she couldn't believe a girl had died there. Apparently the (teenage) girl had been alone in the forest and been killed and eaten by the bear on or near the slide. Notwithstanding that we jumped on it and slid down, and I was in the front so when I reached the bottom and mom started to go past, I reached out and grabbed/saved her (with a bit of low-level lucidity trying to control my expectations so I wouldn't miss) and she grabbed Jess. Then we hopped off the slide and started heading back up the hill towards the path at an angle to it, presumably to throw the bear off when it went down the slide.

Next thing, we were in a convention center, which the bear was attacking. Ben and Dad were there, and people around us were fleeing in various directions. I had the thought that my family should be safe from the bear with so many other people around to get eaten by it.

But then, for whatever reason, we headed towards the back of the building, towards a more closed-off-from-the-public area. We came across an enterprising dude who was trying to rig the elevator shaft into a makeshift bear-killer using his electricity skills. I remember thick black wires going down this empty elevator shaft which had no doors of any kind, it just opened out onto each floor. Notwithstanding his intentions, the elevator shaft seemed like the safest place for my family to be, especially when it turned out that the bear was actually in THIS area, and part of the reason it was so empty was because everyone had fled. Apparently he'd broken through the wall somehow, from the more public area into here.

I sent my family to the bottom of the elevator shaft. At this point the main focus was protecting mom, so with that in mind I set off to fight the bear. My expectations were that it might not work but I didn't exactly have a choice; I'd have to do whatever it took to protect her.

At this point the bear had gradually gained sentience, and become something of a cyborg (white robotic add-ons, sort of Portal-esque), and was now treating killing my mother as the top item on his to-do list.

A lot of bear-fighting ensued! I had flying skills, and some level of invulnerability, as well as super strength, but the best I could do was hold him off, I think. I wish I could remember more about this part, although, maybe there wasn't more? Maybe it really was just a scant approximation of a bear fight. I do remember some parts, such as one time when I got Ben to tag in against the bear temporarily, and another where the bear got past me and dove down the elevator shaft, and I dove after him and caught up in midair (my brain was like "it's because I'm lighter, it makes sense! >8O", nice try brain), but he simply said something mocking (also he sort of was warping and changing shape, like the dream couldn't be bothered to have steady graphics), and I missed my chance to punch him in midair.

I'm pretty sure I punched him loads of other times though.

And I remember we had to keep shuffling mom around to keep her away from him. He was fricking persistent.

I think one of my favorite things about the dream was the feeling I got when I decided I was going to take a bear on to protect my mother. Protecting her with my life, y'know? And since I couldn't afford to lose, I got them dream powers. There was more to it, though. I wish I could remember moooreeee aaaaaa

Uhhh and the last phase of the dream was where we left the convention center, and the bear had evolved to a stronger form, aka Godzilla. He was towering over everything and STILL wanted to kill my mother, so we had to move her away/keep her hidden in the crowd. He was angrily demanding of me to give up already, and I was calculating how far up I would have to fly just to get by his face so I could punch it. At this point I didn't stand a chance (also, he had cheater bubble powers that could vaporize things).

WHICH IS WHYYYY the Justice League showed up. I prefer The Avengers, but oh well. Superman was very handy to have. They even had a bit of a dramatic reveal, where Godzilla flung something that had a person or two inside, and Superman caught it before it could hit the ground. Then it turned into a movie, with an off-screen crowd watching from some theater somewhere.

Godzilla became a bear again, I think, which retreated into an upper floor of some building. Superman challenged it and said he would take it on anytime, and the bear/Godzilla responded sort of sulkily, while I was thinking yes, please let Superman just kill this thing already. But he didn't. He got in an argument with another Justice League member and told them "You are not battery powered," and I was like "ah yes of course that makes sense." even though it did not, while the off-screen audience laughed. And then he argued with some super-speed lady, and more laughter ensued, and the bear may have left, and then I woke up.

LUCID SUCCESSSSSS just in time for the end of the competition (#17)
Imma try extra hard to get the dream timing figured out AHH I feel like my recall is so bad now, I keep losing important pieces of the dreams and the timing gets so confused whyyyyy
To be fair I've never tried to recall dreams every morning. So that might be why. But this is a LUCID DREAM. WHY WOULD I FORGET THE DETAILS OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT ...
is my recall getting worse or am I just gradually becoming more demanding...
you know what, looking back I'm pretty sure it's that I'm being more demanding. I want to have PERFECT RECALL and when I don't I act like that's some huge problem. And my poor brain's just trying its best every time, probably, and I'm just running it into the ground because nothing's ever good enough. so I think I'll just accept what happens and not worry too much about somehow forcing my brain to have non-stop perfect recall.
step one for having a less stressful liiiiiiife~
plus I just feel like crap, maybe I'm getting sick or something. Huh.

*some caffeine later*

expect some tense changes at random 'cause it took me forever to write this...

Dream 1 - At the Beach (Lucid #3)
Alright, I remember for sure this is the first dream I had.

So I think the family's driving to this beach and we pull up, in the dream I was like "aha, this is [Spring Whatever Beach Name from IWL]!" like we'd been here before and it was familiar, but now I'm realizing it was just some place my brain made up. Weird.

Whatever let's call it Spring Beach, we hop out and it's this sweet, Stone Harbory sort of place, with white sand and hotels by the shore. Very nice.

We head into the hotel and get situated. We're all in some room that reminds me of a college dorm or something, and I'm off near the back, closer to the window while the rest of the family's having a grand old time taking pictures. Of each other. In a way that wasn't weird at all. *blacks out memories* Then Ben wandered over to me asking why I was chilling over there and I was like, eh. Just 'cause.

Next, mom and dad had wandered off, and Jess and Ben and I were kinda meandering the hotel because that's the best thing to do when you're at a hotel with your siblings, and then it just starts storming like crazy. I look out this large window to the right, and see the white beach with the waves crashing and all that good stuff, and lighting going from the sky to the sea, looks pretty amazing. And then, probably because I'm anticipating when the lightning stops, it just kind of keeps going, just lightning pretty much all the time. Scary. I start thinking about how close the hotel is to the ocean, and how oceanside storms are crazy or whatever.

Then I look left and there's FLOODWATER WASHING UP AGAINST THE WINDOW. AND RISING. I'm like WHAT. I think this is about when I did a reality check and became lucid, but since I can't truly remember I ain't countin' the reality check. I just know I became lucid at some point.

Uhhh I don't knowwww why there's a hole in my memory at this point, but I believe I wandered outside and I remember quite clearly attempting to summon matches (like I'd been planning since I picked my three-step tasks for Scionox's: pass hand through object, because I'd never done it before, pull matches out of my pocket, and then make a fire and control it). I reached into my pocket (which was very small and tight because jeans) and dug around for a sec, experiencing a brief moment of doubt before discovering a box of matches and pulling them out.

I opened them and took a match out, and was considering striking it ... but I was standing in grass in front of a forest, and some old forest guardian was freaking out because he thought I was going to burn the place down, so I just dropped it on the ground instead.

HMMM I think I woke up. I also know for a fact that I flew around at times, but the memories are hard to fit anywhere.

Oh well I suppose I'll give up on this one.

Dream 2 - FA (Lucid #4)
So I'm lying in bed face-down thinking that I'm going to fall asleep soon, when I feel this crazy wave of vibrations go through my body. It basically felt like, uh, vibrating. I was going to get all fancy and describe it but I can't totally sum it up. Felt familiar though, for some reason. I experience a bit of fear that this might be another SP episode and for a moment it almost seems that way, but then I realize I can move? Or something? GAHHH MEMORYYYYY

Anyway I didn't really get what was going on, was lying still again, then felt a second wave of those crazy vibrations and had the idea that this was my dream body. Did a reality check, success, sat up in bed and looked out the window. Crazy. The blinds were raised or gone and looking outside I see my front yard, except it's not my front yard because it's far more fancy. It looks amazing, actually. Much better than my REAL front yard...

I want to get outside, so I start tracing a hole in the glass. Once I complete a circuit, the enclosed glass just falls out and basically vanishes. I do this a few times, then stop and try to fit through and fail, so I keep doin' it. Eventually I manage to fit through and drop to the ground.

There's a road leading away from my house, which quickly becomes a city street that branches left and right (visual aid: T). I proceed and go right, then left into a sort of alley that opens up into a nice behind-a-restaurant eating area. There are two black cows chillin', and I decide to try to use my arm cannon on them, but it fails. Maybe I just can't make up my mind what exactly is supposed to happen? Then some dude runs up behind me panicking because I look like I'm about to blast his cows. Apparently he came all the way from the countryside chasing these dumb cows.

Think I had another FA, but this time when I did the nose pinch check, my IWL nose kinda sniffled and I realized I was close to waking up. I focused on immersing myself in the dream until I felt that I was fairly distant from my IWL body (sniffling stopped), and then proceededdd...

It was raining and I was thinking about how I'd already done match summoning, and now I had to do elemental manipulation. I decided to try to control the rain, and reached out towards a car going down the street to my right, trying to imagine the rain somehow converging to stop it. Not much happened.

Next I decided to try simply moving cars around (the idea being that it was metal manipulation somehow), but that failed as well. Then I saw a giant firetruck and stepped out in front of it, holding out my hand and imagining it coming to a stop, which it did—but I figured it was because the drivers hadn't wanted to run me over. The firetruck was so large that I only came up to its grill; the window the drivers were looking out of was well over my head.

I reached out, put my fingers under the grill somewhere, and started lifting, still thinking about metal manipulation, and the firetruck suddenly became as light as anything, and the whole thing lifted off the ground. I tried to throw it, but it being so light it sort of drifted backward through the air unsatisfactorily, instead of crashing to the ground with an earth-shattering rumble. I'm not sure it ever really hit the ground, but it did arc somewhat.

I was going for some kind of elemental manipulation but yes, under the stress of the moment I performed mass-TK instead.

And then there was one last bit where I was at some kind of theater and tried to clear a space on the wall for a portal, moving bulletins and junk out of the way only to find more under them. Finally I'd cleared a semi-workable space and drew a tall rectangle on the wall, four sides with four colors, and then tried to imagine Stone Harbor on the other side. It didn't quiiite work...

And uhh one last fragment where I was by my window again, but this time there was some ... video-game, anime sort of girl sitting to my left, wearing odd clothes (black but with bright colorful highlights as well), never seen her before. I demonstrated my ability to drop out pieces of the windowpane by drawing two parallel lines at the same time, horizontally right across the window, at which point a wide, flat rectangle dropped out.

I'm callin' that two dreams 'cause who knows. Could've been more, maybe less, so I'm working with the middle. HMMM.

Hehe I woke up like "aw I didn't dream anything" and then it all came back to me in a flash yo. Hmm I liked this oonee...
Let's see, I want another color for low-level lucidity, 'cause I do neato things when I'm like that and I wanna encourage it. Uhhmm.
Testing.

The Dream In Question (Lucid #2)
Yo okay this is gonna be loooooong. Also I know I'm forgetting some details but the durned things won't line up so screwit.

Basically I dreamed humanity was in some vast war with these frickin' space dinosaurs. The space dinosaurs also had those tan, humanoid Star Wars droids on their side, which they'd built and programmed. I was the son of the general who led the entire human resistance (though I think at the start of the dream I either was, or wanted to be, just another regular soldier). We were positioned behind two massive walls, with a fairly large gap between, occupied by shells of former buildings on either side of a vast street, very post-apocalyptic; the dinos would pour over the first wall and we'd light 'em up as best we could to prevent them from reaching the second wall. Directly behind that wall was the general's (and my) house, which also functioned as a sort of meeting place for the media and government. My dad kept them all close as a necessary part of the war effort. He had all his bases covered, it seemed.

So that day there were two waves of dinosaur attacks I think. Oh also I could fly, despite not being particularly lucid. I guess I was sort of lucid but not enough to plan anything or go for dream goals; just enough to try to manipulate the dream a bit and perform unrealistic shenanigans such as flight. Good times. (Flying wasn't a normal thing in the dream either, it was just how I chose to get around.)

So the first attack I remember flyin' my way towards the middle of the map, and oh man it was great flying. I remember drifting down like it was slow motion, skidding a few feet along the ground despite my light landing, and the physics just felt really really GOOD. I don't even know what the deal was but it was amazing. I'm gonna figure out how to fly like that it felt fantastic.

Then I presumably did some dinosaur fighting, though I can't recall the details, which is a real bummer. I DO remember the way the dinosaurs would approach: the frickin' pterodactyls gliding in ranks overhead, the brachiosauri looming in the distance with smaller dinos in the lead. Fairly picturesque, I just wish the quality had been a bit better. But a striking image all the same.

Hmmm we held off that attack fairly well. The next one though, I started behind the wall again, but this time I couldn't find a weapon. I made my way to the building on the far side of the first wall. There were media peeps in there I think, despite it being a shell, walls and windows blasted out; I guess that was where they shot footage from. Also had weapons right under 'em on a lower floor. I tried to get a sniper rifle from there (I remember another soldier making off with one) but I couldn't seem to get one. I thought it might've been because I was the general's son.

Notwithstanding this problem I headed out into the battle and probably accomplished just absolutely nothing at all. Absolute zip. Then the general noticed I was there (close by the first wall) and pointed out a droid that was about to cross the finish line tower-defense-style. I tried to sprint after the thing so I could take it out, I was gonna snap its skinny neck with one hand (dream powerrrzzzz) but I couldn't even catch up to the dang thing before it blooped through the finish line. Then the general pointed out ANOTHER one, a bit closer but still just a bit too far away (how had these singles droids gotten through everything?). I sprinted after it, and this time looked away from it so I could sort of catch up to it, like sneak up on it more quickly than I could if I were staring at it the whole time (dreeeaaam poweerrrzzz), but I still couldn't catch up. The general was equal parts angry and disappointed, but I was pretty mad at him myself. I told him if he'd let me have a gun, I would've been able to stop them easily. He didn't deny it, so mystery solved.

Then it was nighttime and we'd all retired to the house behind the wall. The general was keeping tabs on the media and strengthening his ties to the government, making sure he had their support and all that. Meanwhile I was wandering around, went into a bathroom and stumbled upon a girl taking a bubble bath. I didn't leave right away, 'cause I was looking for somethin' (and you'll never know what it was), and meanwhile she gave some speech about how our sense of privacy was, in these times, only an illusion. Something to do with the changes the general had put in place. I could sort of see her point but I didn't feel like dwelling on it too long.

I wandered into another bathroom, which looked like the one from my IWL house (2nd floor), except right by the lightswitch was a little screen, maybe 6 inches across, that was blaring some sort of propaganda. Not exactly the untruthful kind, though. It was showing footage of three unarmed soldiers being ripped apart, screaming, by a couple of the droids (who seemed to be having a good time). Lotta blood and guts. The lesson was "these dinosaur guys sure are the worst." I watched it rather morosely, though for me the main connection was "hm, that doesn't seem far removed from how humans used to treat each other back in the earlier wars." I was kinda cynical about that stuff. Part of it was probably just good ol' teenage rebellion against my parent (pretty sure I only had the one).

And speaking of that guy, he started makin' really awful coughing sounds and presumably dying right then and there. While a few people attended to him, I wandered outside (he was in good hands and I was a terrible person). Now I was in the front yard of the house I currently live in IWL, at night.

Just then my IWL parents pulled up in the street, lookin' a bit wild-eyed for some reason. By this time I had somehow grasped it was a dream (no reality check though) and had decided to forge my own path. Also said somethin' like "I'm dreaming" just to confirm.

I took off flying up to the roofs across the street (in the background my parents took off again) and explored a bit. Then I sensed that the house below me belonged to some meditation specialist, and I decided to try to dig my way through the roof to get inside. At my touch, the roof split into 2x1 giant foam lego blocks, which divided into even smaller blocks upon further handling. These shenanigans may have distracted me from my goal a little, as I found myself digging through several layers with no sign of getting through her presumably-3-foot-thick ceiling. I'm pretty sure I woke up soon after.

Not the most lucid I've ever been (it didn't occur to me to perform powers from the competition) but it still feels pretty good, yo. Hasn't even been two weeks since I started this journal and I'm well on my way, hohohoho *evil laughter*.

WELL WELL WELL.

Lucid Dream #1
Note: I've had lucid dreams before, but only a few. I'm starting at 1 anyway.

It started off with a false awakening, which are rare for me.

I wake up in the 1319 house (J room) and start getting ready for my morning (not even remotely realistic for a false awakening). The first thing I do is take a bath in the 2nd floor bathroom, and it's sort of strange and scary; the water is oddly dark and near both edges lengthways (how 2 describe ??) I can feel an uneven edge in the floor, some sort of precipice, little rough bits that threaten to cut me. I can't see anything, though. I'm also wondering whether a bath is really how I start my mornings, wouldn't a shower be faster? Don't I usually shower? Or I suppose it's usually a bath. My mentality seems to be present-day, despite the surroundings.

I may have spent a brief amount of time getting ready in my (J) room post-bath, but the next thing I remember is sitting next to Ben (he's wearing a grey t-shirt) in the living room, on the blue couch. There are some hints towards present-day reality, such as the fancy computers he and I are using, BLEHEHH. I'll write this part later it's too frickin' sad. (My brother was home over spring break and yesterday he headed back on a train so yeah he's one of my favorite people ever)

*SIIIGH* so at first I'm just brushing skin foundation over someone else's artwork in a big notebook, I'm not sure why. They used some sort of wet clay marker or something, so the skin foundation sticks to the art but not the paper. I'm havin' a good time just brushin' it everywhere even though on some level idk if I'm just hurting their art. The feeling was pretty cool though, very realistic. Nice detail.

Then I'm showing Ben some kinda audiovisual webcomic, or more that I'm just letting it play on my computer and he looks over sometimes. I don't remember the storyline very well, although I do remember it was kinda urban and at one point four guys were in a car, and the driver guy suddenly passed out or something, maybe he pulled over first, they were kinda just waiting for him to wake up. One of 'em gets out and takes a phone call from their boss, tells him the situation, gets his orders, and then leans down, sticks his gun in the car, and shoots the driver. The perspective was from outside the car so you couldn't see anything violent.

Lastly... ;-; I said something to Ben like "did you miss your train?" in a sort of awkward teasing voice, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said no, he didn't. I said "So you're in [college] right now?", and he said yes. This all came as sort of a shock. I considered the implications of this, that I must have been talking to him over Steam while interacting with a hologram, except that explanation wasn't a way to cling to reality; it was more that, because this was a dream, that sort of thing was possible. I did the nose-plug reality check, found I could breathe, and fully realized I was dreaming. (sry for tense change)

I get up from the couch and say "I'm dreaming" out loud just to confirm it. Everything feels very real. I walk towards the front door; I'm standing in the living room doorway when I hear Ben on the couch behind me. I look back half-expecting him to have changed somehow (something I'm worried about in dreams, you'll see later with the lifeguards), but instead he's completely gone. Dad's grey blanket is piled up where I'd just been sitting.

I focus on trying to get outside. My first thought is to phase through the glass; it seems like glass would be the easiest thing to phase through, but I find myself pressing my hands up against it instead. I'm sort of frustrated by this. I try for a bit longer, and then I decide to simply break the glass.

I slam it with my fist and manage to break it somewhat. The door is actually split into two sections of glass, top and bottom, separated by a wooden bar piece. I figure I'll have to break both, though the logic isn't all there, and continue punching the glass and broken edges (sustaining no pain or damage). At some point, because it's not really working either, I stand back, hold out my right arm, sort of brace it by putting my left hand on top, and try to summon some sort of concussive blast to shatter all the glass, thinking of Mega Man or perhaps Kadaj with his materia. Nothing happens. Then I try breaking the lower section of the glass with my eyes closed so it'll be easier to crawl through (logic ??). (My eyes-closed view was sort of interesting, because it was all dark except for a mental picture of the broken edges of the glass around the hole.) Finally I just stand up and try the (old, loose) doorknob like a normal person, and it comes off in my hand. Underneath is another one, slightly larger but also very old and sort of ugly. I try that one and finally manage to get out the door, opening the next door after it easily.

Now I'm outside in the 1319 area, in the daylight, taking in how real everything feels. I start flying up to the roof, thinking about the dreamviews competition (#17), and have no problems getting to the roofs of the townhomes. There are some smaller townhomes on top, minis. One of them has sort of a colorful beach house design, with a sign out front explaining that it was designed by a 6-year-old and is up for auction. There's an open house going on inside.

I get the idea to summon Ben back, and start calling his name, then turning around expecting him to be behind me. That doesn't work, so I head into the 6-year-old-designer house, still calling him. He's sitting on the stairs inside (green shirt now), which are so small no one else can get by, and I hear people on the second floor. I come sit by him, a bit lower on the stairs.

There's a sort of odd brown mug with a cover/lid of some sort on a convenient wooden platform (there's a better word) in front of us. I decide to try passing my hand through it. I hold my hand out palm down, fingers together, and try moving it horizontally through the mug. At first it doesn't quite work, and then I find my fingers passing through it rather slowly. It seems to be solid all the way through, not really a mug. The sensation of moving my fingers through it is like passing them through slime of some sort. One successful pass later, neither the mug nor my fingers are changed in any way. I try it again, a couple times, and while I'm trying the last time I say "it's like air!" out loud, in the hopes that it'll be a more "professional" sort of "passing through", more like a ghost. It doesn't work, though. At least I'm optimistic.

I go outside next, and, still on the rooftops, head up the street towards the mall. (I think, for the sake of convenience, I'll designate the direction I'm currently heading "North". The houses I'm walking on face West.) I see some sort of Stone Harbor-esque structures in the distance (Northeast) and go towards them; there seems to be an ocean or perhaps a bay on the East side up ahead. There's also a weird metal structure that I'm interested in flying to the top of, for no particular reason.

Now I'm walking North-ish down the street in the Stone Harbor area, no longer on rooftops. I start thinking about whether I can turn this into some kind of chase dream (or more specifically, "being chased"). As I'm thinking this, I notice five-ish lifeguard guys behind me, reminiscent of some sort of gang. I wonder if they're going to chase me, and decide to keep a low profile for a moment. I go around a corner and then busy myself admiring the detail of the dream, peering very closely at the white-washed wall, which has some ugly yellow spotted stains on it, while they walk by to my right. Then I investigate another wall (slate gray?) so my back is to them.

At some point as they walk by, I think about the way that things can change easily in dreams. It tends to surprise me how stable dreams are, given that when I try to imagine things IWL, I can't get anything right visually and it can't seem to hold steady. At this point, thanks to my thought process, one of the lifeguards abruptly doesn't have a head; only a sewn-up and scarred neck stump (thx Outlast). He keeps walking just fine, and I think his head may have returned after a moment. idk if that counts as a dream power so much as a mistake.

Next I fly around a bit more, maybe up to the metal structure, and then land next to a tide pool with minnows inside. On closer inspection, however, I realize they're actually small piranhas (some are still actively switching to being a mini piranha). I say something surprised out loud about piranhas. Then I hear a sound nearby, and look down to see a small frog/toad-looking thing sort of snuggled among the wet stones. I wonder if my dream wanted me to throw him to the piranhas, but decline to and move on. I think I probably woke up shortly after, without my alarm going off.

Re: the WILD attempt.
I woke up after 6 hours, tried to remember dreams but only got fragments, decided to write them down anyway, briefly reviewed BillyBob's WILD tutorial, set my alarm to wake me up in an hour and a half, and then laid down, on my back, to sleep. Then, for a while, I could feel myself slipping closer to sleep by degrees. I was trying to monitor how exactly it felt: the heaviness in my chest, the deepening layers of almost-sleep, my mentality. I could feel it when I slipped down another layer, and realized this was the closest to sleep I'd ever been while WILDing. However, at some point I rolled over onto my side; it's more comfortable. I should probably just start out there.

Eventually I started getting the hallucinations, and this time I tried to simply observe them, smothering my impulse to tense up. I was surprised to realize that I'd felt this sort of thing as I was falling asleep before, where I would hear-without-hearing someone's voice or some noise close by my ear, although the visual hallucinations were less familiar. First they were quick, flashing images, and then, a bit later, some static and fuzz. I kept trying to focus on clapping my hands in the front office of the 1319 house, and when I fell asleep I woke up in the 1319 house. I wasn't lucid, though. Could still use improvement.

Fell asleep at 12:30, woke up naturally at 6:30 after a non-lucid(?) dream with dream powerrrrss~
arright so let's see

okay so first was a rather strange part about me and others living under a table in the dining room of the 1319 house. most of us were just trying to get by, but there were two, maybe three who were in danger of killing others ... they ended up in critical condition thanks to me but I don't fully remember what I did. some kinda desperate, bloody fighting. hrm.

neeeext part was probably Ben and I just outside the 1319 door discussing the defensive mechanisms of the house. between the glass door and the gate were two black computers stacked on top of each other with red numbers displaying how many TBs of "protection" they offered, as far as security measures for the house went. It was nighttime, close to bedtime. Ben was lecturing me about how it wasn't really necessary or we owed it to our fellow man to not wall ourselves off from them; he even punctuated his speech by hailing some woman with a baby walking by, though I'm not sure what that proved. Mostly I remember checking out some weird bugs on the porch's stone railing, and then realizing that the computer on top, the more powerful one (with 128 TB), wasn't even on. flipping that switch was very satisfying somehow. per Ben's lecture, though, I left the front gate open.

there was something abouuut some teenagers hanging out in a group in the 1319 living room. I remember one or two girls walking over ... I think it was partially About Time-inspired. I picked one girl to be my friend or something, and then there was a short discussion about R-rated movies during which I heartily insisted I wouldn't watch a particular one whose theme was "boiling" (just eggs out-of-shell, but it seemed like the type of movie that would get quite a bit worse).

then I walked into the dining room where the two-ish people I'd incapacitated were still lying under the table, and then it was time to take them to a hospital or prison or wherever.

now I started to use some dream powers automatically. I wasn't thinking anything like "I'm lucid" and I imagine the thought would've surprised me, but at the same time I was conscious of the need to trick my brain so I could get away with classic maneuvers like flying and breaking windows. Still, I'm not counting it as lucid yet. I don't want to settle... xP

the next bit was about the half-dead guys being driven away in the back of a prison van; but then there was something about a group of teenager chasing me along the nighttime streets. same teenagers, maybe. I think slightly before that was a brief segment during which I practiced floating as opposed to flapping, but it was remarkably hard to stay in the air that way. I found it took far too much energy to simply believe I was able to hover, and any lapse in concentration or belief sent me drifting downwards. I had some success but eh.

Next I was in the streets being chased by eager teenagers for some reason, and I remember gleefully clinging to the top of a red van as it drove along. that was definitely giving them some trouble, my choice to cling to a van. gosh I'm tired and my writing sucks. at least I'm getting this down. I don't remember that part too well anyway, though I was having a great time defying them.

the last piece of dream was set in a museum, and now I was starting to settle into old patterns: breaking windows to fly out. I remember a friend leading me up to the top floor of the museum, where some lady was setting up an exhibit about her writing, which was some sort of fantasy series about warrior rabbits; somehow this was also a lecture presented by the professor of an online class I was taking, and am taking IWL, though the subject matter is different. the only people around were me, my friend, and some hint of the writer lady, such as her voice narrating something about her writing, or the impression that she was nearby, setting things up; the room was set up rather nicely, with a staircase along the east side (top-down view), dark carpeting, dim lighting, a row of windows along the south wall, and some cardboard cut-outs arranged in front of them. there was more exhibit to the north beyond a wall with two doorways, but I was mostly interested in the very many windows.

likely in opposition to my friend's wishes, I started trying to kick or punch out one of the windows to let me through. There really wasn't much time before teenagers would come flooding up the stairs, as far as I could tell, so my main focus was simply on managing to break a window. It took a few good tries on a few good windows; I was trying to lever my self-belief into the equation but it backfired somewhat when I started self-believing that some of the windows were made of two layers of glass, and were therefore much harder to break. Also some had blinds in the way, but I don't think I really cared; it just made it a bit more difficult and awkward.

Finally I broke a window and climbed through, clinging to the outside of the building where I would probably be safe; next, I flew down a bit to land on some wall structure nearby, and then my next plan was to fly up to the roof. I think that's when I woke up, though.

There was also some weird fragment about being in the CVS in that area and someone describing how certain ... things would hide in the displays. Uhhh. Basically how Easter eggs would conceal themselves in their ... packages. Which seems lazy to me but whateverz.