DarkestDarkness

2nd September 2021

Dream:

Aboard a spaceship. It's dark in most hallways and rooms and there's a general eerie feel, like how I used to feel about the dark as a child. Some parts of the ship look like the Nostromo in a Weyland-Yutani style. There's discussion with some characters and we're talking about Vulcan. I seem to have future knowledge that it will be destroyed by an explosion but I keep it to myself. A guy is talking about his brother having gone to Vulcan as a trader.

I see out a central window in a dark room and there's a planet with a green atmosphere, framed perfectly by the round window.

I go away from the rest of the group on my own, I think just through into some other nearby rooms. There's a WY wall-mounted bulky junction thing, over a doorway (resembling corridors in the Pods). This thing has a flashing red light, possibly beeping too. I notice that the flash seems to slowly be gaining speed. This unsettles me, telling me something is wrong. In the dream I can't seem to remember what the thing is for and when I ask nobody else seems to know or care, being preoccupied with their own conversations or thoughts. Nobody takes this seriously. I feel there may be an alien (xeno) aboard.

(recall gap)

Then, I'm in the mess hall, which is nearby to where I was before. There are two or three dozen people here, all eating from bowls and stuff, but there are no tables or chairs. There are a few kids too. An adjoined kitchen has workshop-like tools, like buzz saws, table saws and the like. All of this just makes me feel uneasy and I imagine or fear accidents relating to these tools. One kid in the mess hall has a cyborg hand with a circular saw attached. He's cutting beef jerky with it, or some other kind of stringy meat.

I am or become one of the kids at some point, possibly early teens? Everyone eventually leaves except for myself and a couple of other kids. This unsettles me, like something terrible is going to happen, still because of that eerie feeling about the darkness. The other two kids, a tall slim boy and a short fat boy, start picking on me and won't let me leave. We get into a slow struggle but I eventually break free. I forget the rest of this part.

(recall gap)

Somewhere outdoors-like and sunny, but I just walked there in the ship, it's just some section of it. Some other characters, I'm accompanying them I think. Despite the changed environment the eerie feeling remains in some places that are indoors here. I forget most of this segment but at the end I'm talking to a male doctor, a psychologist. We're sitting at a bench in an outdoor cloister bit with benches. There are other people around, passing by or whatever. We discuss some problems of mine (which specific to this dream-life) but I forget what is said exactly.

---

Notes:

- For quite some time I have been wondering if or when I'd ever dream about one of the Alien films. Oddly enough, after waking from this dream, I didn't remember this, despite realising there were some similarities between the dream environment and the setting of the first film.

- I haven't known or felt that fear of darkness in a number of long years, it's a fear that I think I must have worked a bit to overcome but that also kind of just went away on its own.
-- It's notable that I can't remember ever having felt this eerie feeling in a dream before, but it's possible I just don't remember any specific instance anymore.

- I couldn't notice any outer details of the ship from the windows.
-- The planet I saw was probably based off space games I've recently been playing. But the (vivid, tending toward yellows) green atmosphere is probably symbolic, as it's a colour I associate with death, envy and other sinister feelings or effects. This seems pertinent with the rest of the setting and mood.

- The unwillingness of other characters to cooperate or listen probably relates to how characters are often portrayed in the sort of film like Alien, where you always seem to have stubborn or ignorant characters that make everything worse.

- On some level, the ship having the self-contained outdoor-but-indoors environment is probably related to a story I've been working on for a while now.

- Despite the feelings in the dream, this wasn't really a bad dream, especially since I've been waiting for something like it to come up.

3rd April 2021

Some in-line thoughts and notes.

Dream:

I am in a car with H. We are driving down a hilly area. I'm sitting facing the back of the car, but I'm in the copilot seat next to H who is at the driver's seat. The steering is not on the side it should be. It's sunny and I can see sharp shadows from the sunlight. H doesn't seem to b ewearing sunglasses or straining despite direct sunlight in his eyes.

Behind us, or in front of me, I see a teal van coming down the same road. As they get close I see through our windows it's an old man and his young daughter. They are somewhat playfully fighting over the wheel but it concerns me. It's not somethign to fool around with, I feel. And I fear they may collide with us as they are going past us.

There's a transition but I don't become aware of it in the dream. I am now walking towards a table which seems to be part of an esplanade on a plaza. It's in a tight spot between two buildings with white painted render.

H is sitting down at the table and I take the seat directly in front of him. Adjoining our table is another table. Sat to my right, is the girl from before. I try to tell her something about some dangers? And then, before I talk about the whole steering thing, H tells me not to bother and I realise at this point that I have no memory of the last few minutes.

I think I ask about what happened but don't get a clear answer and now the father is also coming back and sitting in front of his daughter at the table. We each have a meal, but oddly enough I don't pay any attention to mine.

Before all this. Me and H are in a town. It's dark and night time. Can't see too well except for some faint light at the edge of street light fall-off, away from where we are. We are going back to the car but H can't remember where it is exactly, but I did know exactly where it was. The car was like dad's car?

Before that, not sure what the place is anymore. Looking through a cabinet of some sort. There are drawing pads and other things. Me and H talk, they apparently belong to a childhood friend of his, called Tania. I ask what kind of things she drew? He tells me that when they played in the garden she would pretend to have superpowers she'd imagined/come up with and she drew some furry characters, in answer to my question. I vaguely recall seeing one or two drawings, focusing on faces and muzzles.

Fragment:

Before the other dream, before the first morning awakening. Something in a town, medieval-like but also old home like? There's a WoW feel. My old best friend, D is present in the dream somehow and we talk or something. There's something about T3 gear and tanking. I can't remember anything else but even writing about this made me feel nostalgic for some reason, not just for the game but for this friend too.

4th April 2021

Scraps and fragment:

Dream recall mostly faded and no notes taken. I remember at the end of one dream, I realised faintly that I was dreaming and so it was time to wake up or something. There was a hazard situation? But I'm not sure in what context now.

I had a very long dream sequence. In the dream I am in a dark land. I think it was brighter before, but it was night time and I am in some countryside area. In the distance I see burning towns and things like that. The path I am walking along is patrolled by demons accompanied by a dog-like creature on a chain lead. I am able to use some sort of invisibility ability, every twelve seconds or so. It lasts just long enough that I can hide in a corner and when they go past me, I use the ability to make sure they can't see me. I feel like there's some kind of spotlight on the three of us.

The dog senses me on some level but they leave and my invisibility fades and I move along. There are other patrols and so instead of continuing down this road going downhill I instead take an uphill fork in the road, which is narrower and seemingly goes unpatrolled. I don't feel any negative emotions, but I suppose I just feel neutral about everything.

Transition? I am at a town of some sort. It's seemingly the last surviving settlement in this area. At some point I see the settlement from an RTS-like point of view. There are many sub-cultures in this town, who are seemingly self-segregating in cultural terms. But I also remember going into shops and talking to people. Life seems normal and there is a modern feel to most things. There were many little plots involving interaction with others in this dream but I don't recall any in enough to detail to remember any of them fully.

21st May

Bits from one or two dreams? Didn't make notes in the morning, was too tired.

Dream Fragment:

I was in a desert or barren canyon type of place. I was driving some kind of motorbike, called the "MotorBeast" or something to that effect. I remember accelerating with my right hand and making note of the extremely loud roar from the exhaust. I did some acrobatics or was in some high speed sequence?

Next thing I remember, different place, but related in some way. There was a dream character, he was simultaneously my teacher and an avatar of Anubis. But we had to fight and so he was like a boss of some sort. I remember chasing him through this dark and ancient Egyptian temple/crypt place. There was a dark red tint to everything and even though daylight broke through the ceiling in certain parts, it was still dark, like the exposure made dark places appear brighter but bright places appear much darker.

I remember the character taunted me from behind a half wall and pillars. I couldn't reach him but shot him with a Torgue grenade launcher set to sticky mode. I remember the feeling of holding the weapon with only my right hand and the feeling of pointing it. It felt intuitive, but in retrospect it seemed far too light for what it was. After emptying my clip, the explosives went off in sequence, causing him heavy damage. He was nearly dead (I knew through some interface display?) but he was able to run very fast through a narrow hall crowded with unknown dream characters, which were his minions. I believe they looked like mummies.

Eventually I caught up to him, finding him in a small room around a corner, where he was using some kind of self-bandaging ability (like in WoW). I tried shooting him to interrupt it, but I think something happened right after I did that, and the dream ended.

---

Notes:
- The bit where the Anubis character ran away at high speed when on low health now reminds me that some boss in Killing Floor did something similar.
- The Torgue weapon was notable because I'd recently been playing BL3 and I always loved the Torgue shotguns in BL2; it should have been a somewhat obvious dream-sign here since it was somewhat out of place in the rest of the dream's context.
- Though I didn't think of this at the time of this dream, I now feel as though there is a bit of a link between the motorbike and the Torgue gun since those guns are typically modelled after big engines and the like. The dream felt more randomly put together at the time but I feel like I could unpick it better now in terms of contextual/schematic associations.

Non-dream stuff - I wrote most of this non-lucid dream on a tablet while cooking lunch, as I didn't get a chance to do so before that. Managed to remember a lot of detail, but not some missing bits from transitions and the like, unfortunately.

---

Dream:
I remember being some place outside. I was getting a big weapon. The poor memory I have of the outline makes me think of a black bfg. I had a small van like the one my partner has. It was a cloudy and grey day. I put the weapon in the back of the van.

I remember the presence of my middle sibling and I think we spoke at some point, about the weapon. It was very rare and valuable.

Then there's a transition and it implied I took it some place else. I was now in my "lair" and I was a dinosaur/monster like something out of the game Monster Hunter. The weapon was on a rock, safely secured somehow and I remembering seing an orange glow on its outline, like an item pickup in a game.

Then I looked at the top right corner of a visual interface and it said 33,000,000 or so, and it was money I had.

Another big black monster that looked like a Komodo dragon or some sort of lizard appeared and he wanted the weapon. I remember he had a deep voice but I don't remember any words. He wanted to take it by force so we fought for a bit and he tried to attack the things making the weapon secure, without much success. I think he ended up scurrying away.

I then was in a human form and in a black mustang-y type car, seeing it from third person like in many free roam games, and I drove at some speed toward a "waypoint" where I would find the black lizard. I was driving through a city and it was a bit dark at first. I got to a wide river, and I remember I could see an industrial estate type place across the way. I couldn't cross with the car and "remembered" I could summon a jet, so I summoned a bomber jet and got in and took off; the city was more like a complex megapolis now and it was a clear and sunny day.

Somewhat unexpectedly I wasn't controlling the jet too well, and had a few near-hits with buildings; there were drag forces I don't remember noticing before when flying these in games and the tall and branched buildings made it difficult to navigate at high speed but after through the mega city jungle I was arriving over my waypoint so I jumped out of the jet, landing somewhere near my waypoint, which was a bunker entrance. It became night again and there were military personnel that didn't look like they were going to let me inside but they didn't threaten me with their weapons so I rushed through the entrance, into some dark and dimly lit concrete halls. The few lights that existed were weak fluorescent lights.

There wasn't much staff inside this bunker and I seemed to have lost the guards. In this section of the dream I can't actually remember what form I took, possibly alternating between human and lizard form; but I found the black lizard in a small room behind a classroom place that had window panes to an "open" underground area. It was still very dark but there was bright blue light from the large underground area. I assumed some kind of high tech generator though I don't remember looking.

The black lizard was smaller than before, but though he was the same one as before, it was like he was younger now, hence his reduced size. I remember confronting him with more aggression and likewise back at me. I also remember thinking "why couldn't he just pay me a few millions for the weapon", also making me wonder how much money he had, which I assumed to be a lot.

Unfortunately I can't remember what happened next in any detail and the dream ended shortly after.

---

Notes (going into a bit of dream interpretation more than usual because of the dream's plot/context):
- To me, the jet, the military staff and bunker are clearly based off my recent experience of playing Just Cause 3. Other elements from games are obviously present, like the weapon.
- In the dream I did expect the jet control to be a lot more intuitive than it ended up being, but the giant branched buildings were very unexpected, because when I was on the ground I never spotted any.

- Black seems to have been a very prevalent colour in this dream.
- Black BFG, black lizard, black car, grey rocks, lots of places of darkness... Of contrast was the white van, the blue or tan jet and the shiny city buildings and blue sky when flying the jet.
- Of note to me is that I immediately referenced the black lizard as male, and the fact that I was a lizard too, of some other colour, probably yellow or orange, indicates to me that the black lizard was likely a part of my Shadow and that I was playing some sort of Hero role.

- I find that the Hero as represented by my less conscious mind tends to be too antagonistic towards the Shadow. This may just be a reflection of Hero portrayals in many typical stories. I personally see the Shadow archetype in general as a poor repressed fellow who needs attention or affection, rather than violence.
- In my childhood pre-sleep lucids, the form of choice was usually a giant black lizard/dinosaur.

- The last part of the dream has the most significance to me and follows a general pattern that my dreams sometimes take;
-- The underground bunker goes down and deeper and gets darker and darker, which is a common process in my dreams, but the presence of a bright blue light at the end when confronting the black lizard in the darkness was somewhat unusual. I do usually have meaningful interactions with dark characters in these dream stages however.
-- The fact that the black lizard was smaller and/or younger at the end makes me think that it is a part of my childhood that I've lost that I haven't been able to regain yet. As a child I was easily angry and aggressive, which was more or less the behaviour of the black lizard.

---

Edit from 2 years after having first made this entry (altered some spacings above and corrected typos too):

- As I re-read my dream and the notes, I realised that not once did I actually mention the colour of the black lizard's eyes, but I think due to some "memory corruption" I have mistakenly defined them as being blue. I think my error came from the memory of the light in the final scenes of the dream, where there was that incredible bright blue light beyond the glass.

- My only guess is that my brain linked the two things together to define that the lizard's eyes were blue of the same colour. I think I am fine with this association either way and perhaps while it wasn't the actual colour in the dream, it doesn't really matter seeing as it was my subconscious that made that association to begin with!

- Although I didn't describe it as such in the entry, I do remember that it was a semi-spherical room that the blue energy was contained in. It was a room of very large proportion, definitely based on some sci-fi stuff I've seen.