Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

woke up naturally after this dream and spent some time just lying in bed half-awake before remembering that oh snap I was lucid in this one whaaaat

Lucid #5 Aw Yee
So it started out with me just doing my usual dream thing of picking out various items from a large department store, except this time I tried to leave without paying with everything in my shopping cart, and managed to walk outside (nighttime) before a friendly employee had to lay down the law for me. She said that if I were going to do that, there was a certain price limit I'd need to adhere to, so I had to put back some things and then I could take the rest and pay it back later. I realized that I didn't actually need a bunch of Christmas decorations (mostly it was a lot of that fake green tree stuff you can put everywhere, and a wreath) and decided that those would be the thing to put back.

As I was carrying an armful of fake green tree stuff back through the store, I passed the stuffed animal section, where a kid and his dad were having some sort of strange, stuffed-animal-related argument. I recognized that my dad and I had, in fact, had that same argument before (false memory) and was quite tempted to say as much to the kid on my second pass, now unburdened of weird fake green tree stuff. But I ultimately decided not to. Oh well.

I went back outside, where the employee was waiting with a receipt for the rest of my things. Taking and looking over the receipt, I was quite disappointed to realize that yes, I would still have to eventually pay for all this. Just not at that exact moment.

The next thing I remember is spontaneously becoming lucid simply because it felt like a dream. No reality check, no examining of my surroundings, not even an "aha" moment of "maybe this is actually a dream". My mindset simply swapped right on over to "lucid", so quickly and completely that all I remember is picking out "shooting a concussive blast from my palm" as my dream task of the moment and hopping right to it.

So then I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to shoot a concussive blast from my palm, which was... hard to figure out...? (I'm currently tempted to say "difficult" or "impossible" but that's a bad idea.) The second floor of the department store had a wall of windows which I stood in front of, right arm out, palm forward, left arm gripping and stabilizing my right, and then there was a whole lot of "how do" (meanwhile, a store employee looked on in alarm). I imagined the blast shooting out. I tried to summon the energy from within my arm. I imagined that perhaps my right upper arm might glow, and it may have. I thought about the way I was positioning my arms, and how it felt. (One thing I DIDN'T try was a voice command.) I'm pretty sure I never actually succeeded, though one window did end up broken somehow, and I have a vague-yet-pleasant memory of flying through it to the rooftop of another building in the night. Yay <3 (sorry, store employee)

I also remember trying to stabilize the dream by rubbing my hands together. Like the realization that I was lucid, it felt spontaneous and seemed to come from nowhere. Normally my dream ideas are linked back to the DreamViews forums somehow, like "oh right, I should rub my hands together to stabilize *mental image of the dream views home page*," or something like that. But this time, again, the idea seemed to have no real source of generation. I just tried rubbing my hands together and paying attention to how it felt.

Then I made the mistake of putting my rubbing hands up by my ear to listen to the sound of it, which felt so distinctly real that I started to think I was in bed, starting to move around and wake myself up. At that point I lost my conscious lucidity, though I think my state still qualified as low-level-lucidity. FAIL STABILIZATION. NICE TRY DAWG.

Oh and since it feeling real made me LESS lucid, my guess is that this sort of lucidity was the spontaneous kind that comes from the dream feeling like a dream. Things can be fuzzier in dreams, darker, and the whole dream can have a strong "dreamy" feel that can be picked up on. Which is what happened in this case, and I assume what happens to Tman and Flotsam.

ANYWAY. The last part of the dream was about some physical fight I had with my sister's boyfriend in order to protect my mom. Mom was, I believe, starting to get up there in years (and now had her own little granny apartment), and my sister's boyfriend N had decided to arm himself with sharp implements and barricade himself in the 1319 front office. I'm not sure how that counted as a threat to my mom. I think I saw him as a threat, and since he wasn't a threat to me (it being a dream, still), it translated into him being a threat to my mom, so I couldn't simply leave him alone. I sought him out, armed with sharp implements of my own, though I'm not sure which ones. I know for sure he had a box cutter, I suppose because memories involving pain are easier to remember. (THAT'S CALLED FORESHADOWING)

hhhehehehe so anyway I'm getting sweaty palms remembering this but let's see here.* There was some sort of room divider a short space away from the door, which forced me to go right. He was trying to take advantage of this somehow, I think by blocking my way into the open area of the room, and it became a struggle. This mainly consisted of me trying to stab/slice him, and him trying to stab/slice me (which was of much greater concern to me), and I ended up mostly on the defensive. There were a great deal of "too-close-for-comfort" moments. The only thing preventing the box cutter from box cutting me was my continuous and determined preventive efforts, so it was a largely bloodless struggle at first.

Then my determination finally failed, for a moment. We were locked up, both my implements blocked and me managing to block one of his, but the box cutter was free and I couldn't rally the mental strength to stop it from cutting into my left hand. I was simply mentally exhausted by all my previous efforts and how useless it felt. The pain was quite strong and highly unpleasant and all sorts of other descriptive adjectives, but I think on the whole it was a sort of relief to get it over with after a great deal of worry and anticipation. Which says a lot about my mindset in the dream at that point. Like it was a scripted event. Weird.

Anyway after that I pulled myself together and "defeated" him somehow, though not by severely injuring or killing him. I'm not sure what happened. But next thing we were simply talking, both still armed, and mom was in the room with us, almost as a sort of referee to keep us from fighting again, with her presence. At some point he admitted that his plan, had he been unable to find something sharp, had been to use an ultrafine point red sharpie and scribble madly on my skin, to try to give the impression (in the heat of the moment) that I was bleeding. Not the worst plan ever, I suppose. I said something like "Psychological warfare?" in response to this, and he was like yeah.

There was something else about a Metro train, potentially because those are rad. I don't remember anything else about it, though.

*not that this is a particularly "bad" or traumatizing memory. just quite intense I suppose. I don't know, I wouldn't call it bad.

back to sleeeeep~

YAWN.
had a rather lengthy dream but the story was quite convoluted, not as bad as last night I suppose ... and anyway it feels like I forgot most of it already. too tired for this recall stuff. someone make me nap after class today. aaaaaa.

I'm breakin' this dream into two fragments cause recall so baaaad~

(note: when my alarm went off I totally laid in bed remembering my dream but I think it failed because I was tired, so I was too asleep to really think about why I needed to recall everything. and I sort of drifted in and out of sleep while I was doin' that so that may have made me forget some things. sleep so important, yo)

Fragment 1 - Spiny Shrimp Scientist
Bein' in a tide pool watching a couple different scientists perform experiments at various times. One of 'em was a spiky sea shrimp of some sort. I remember being impressed by his dexterity as he maneuvered around inside the tide pool, moving things around, doin' stuff like plugging a tube into something. Neat.

Fragment 2 - Time Travel Girl Mystery
There was a scientist girl who managed to travel through time into the future using a device she built, except it sort of went wrong. I remember seeing the actual attempt, with her in the machine she'd built in the middle of her lab. First it was just some sparks on her body and she was smiling like okay sure this will work, but then there was just a lot of electricity all over her and her screaming and it was like you know she dead. She wasn't, though. She time-traveled but I think she was sort of scarred by what happened.

Then I was there, in her lab after everything, just super intrigued by what had happened and wanting to know why she'd built it and what she'd been hoping to accomplish. I remember investigating a book shelf and checking out little devices on her desks. Meanwhile, my mom was chattering away in the background, which made it impossible to think, until I sort of got mad at her. And then I felt bad right away :U

Anyway the cool thing about this fragment is that I was genuinely emotionally invested and curious about her story. COOL.

IMMA TRY TO HURRY UP AND WRITE THIS OUT SO I CAN MOVE ON TO OTHER LIFE THINGS

Dream - Chewed-up Story Part II
Basically, in this dream... the perspective was all screwed up (no offense, brain), so that while the main story held strong ("An Unlikely Friendship"), the two main characters kept swapping out. Player 1 alternated between being a black kitten, me, and the Agro horse from Shadow of the Colossus, while the Player 2 character was either a black dog, my brother, a sort of horse/dog mix, or the apostle Paul.

At least I think that's what happened.

Overall it was as though someone had taken a bunch of story elements, chewed 'em up, and then spat them out, and pretty much left the story like that. Or it was sort of like the storyline being in the middle while the characters and setting mutate by turns.

So it started off in a school or a facility of SOME kind, where a tiny black kitten was found, apparently dead. Then it started to move, and boom, suddenly it was unexpectedly alive. Huzzah. A large black dog took a liking to it, and they became unlikely friends.

Then there was something about my brother and I being in the facility (I being the black kitten character, him being the black dog character), which was now leaning more towards a boarding school. Don't really remember that part, my outline isn't very helpful.

And lastly there was some third phase where I had been replaced by the horse Agro from Shadow of the Colossus, and Ben had been replaced by a large dog. Except I was now talking to Ben about this story, which had apparently happened some time ago in the past, about how happy I was that this was a thing that had actually happened in real life. I was like man, it's so exciting that a horse and a dog actually became friends, even though it was way back in the medieval ages. At this point the large dog had a sort of odd mane that I remember stroking. Very unusual texture to it.

Last part was something about the dog having become the apostle Paul and angrily arguing with/holding off some other people in order to protect his companion. Or something like that.

THE TAKEAWAY FROM THIS is that my brain has become overexcited by story elements and needs to calm down. Or something like that. I don't really know. IM TIRED. I have to do Linear Algebra homework right now. hhhhhaaaaaaa. brain i love stories but could you please be more consistent next time~

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.

Fragment 1 - 1319 house movie night aw yee
My sister and I are watching a movie in the 1319 living room. It starts to get quite violent, at which point mom turns it off. I'm like hey now, and Jess says that she's already seen the movie, so HA mom, can't protect her delicate eyes and sensibilities from nothin' 'cause it's too late. Except y'know she didn't talk like that. That's just me, writing this down now. Hello.

The movie itself featured something about a barbarian camp at night being invaded by women on horseback. Or maybe just a couple women. A small-scale invasion. I'm not sure what happened that was so violent.

Dream - Volcano Nostalgia Blast
I'm looking at a curly-haired toddler kid who's standing at the edge of this fricking lava stream. The point he's standing on is a sort of corner (from the lava's perspective), and he's definitely on the verge of falling in, but his parent, who's standing nearby, doesn't seem to care.

Actually the parent is literally just recording the kid with his video camera, which is what I'm seeing. A really crappy home video. It's like I'm watching it online, and like I'm there, and like I'm the parent looking through the camera lens. So it's basically all of those things. My dream brain isn't great at perspectives but I love it anyway <3

Anyway the kid kept performing this almost sort of childlike ritual, where he'd drop a ring that HE MADE (it looked fabulous, gold with a diamond on it, and he made it somehow I have no idea how it was a Dream Fact) into the lava, where it would sink. And he'd say something sad and regrettable about that. He seemed fairly like, distraught, and also very much in danger of falling right into the lava.

The parent didn't seem to care about this possibility. He just kept recording what was going on, as though very dedicated to capturing his son's antics without interruption or disruption by himself. Really though, an interruption would've been just the thing in my opinion.

The scene replayed a couple times, with the kid opening his grubby fist to drop the ring into the lava, where it would sink in a sort of non-violent kind of way, barely melting. As though it were simply disappearing into the lava. And the kid would rave about that in his childish way, and I'd be concerned for his safety, and then at one point he finally just fell right in. He dropped in like he was doing a pencil dive into a swimming pool, and pretty soon all you could see was his curly hair, and then nothing. Once again, the parent was just remarkably entirely not-the-least-bit upset.

This was probably inspired by the fact that I listened to Gollum's song last night, for the first time in years. It's actually basically the end of Lord of the Rings III, come to think of it. THAT IS VERY, VERY STRANGE.

Another part of the dream (I'm pretty sure) was watching the volcano that caused this lava stream erupt, and watching the glorious golden sparkling lava follow a sort of path down towards a village. There was an indentation down the side of the mountain that led to the village, because that was the path the villagers would use. It was sort of a perfectly rectangular channel, quite shallow, but the lava nevertheless followed it without overflowing.

I distinctly remember walking up the path, only to see the lava coming my way, and quickly going back the other direction to find lava already down that way as well. Crazy stuff! I did a lot of running around and freaking out. Also it was night time or perhaps just incredibly smoggy, and the lava was quite bright and nice to look at. I wasn't super afraid of it either, which was nice. Lava used to be the stuff of nightmares for me, when I was a kid.

Dream - Airplane Game => Infiltration Anime
SO LET'S SEE HERE

Alright so first off I was just watching my brother play this airplane game, where you were this chubby little bumblebee-shaped airplane flying over an ocean in a warzone. Your objective was to sneak past the battlefield without attracting the attention of other planes, because you didn't have ammo (you had to use cover a lot but I'm not sure what the cover was), grab up some ammo from behind enemy lines (two ammo bunkers), and then unload it on these two battleships that were side-by-side in the water (between the two ammo bunkers), apparently sitting targets for an airplane. Also there were these two walls, each between a battleship and an ammo bunker, so you could snatch up ammo in relative peace before curving overtop the wall and divebombing the battleship of your choice with bombs and machine guns. At this point, you'd be noticed by the enemy planes (also bumblebee-shaped, I think?), who would fly in, and it would become a battle mission instead of ... bumblebee stealth. So all in all it was a pretty neat game that I kinda wish existed IWL. OH WELL. Maybe someday.

Anyway I watched him play and then gave it a shot myself, managing to sneak behind enemy lines, grabbing up as much ammo as I could in one go, and then going over the wall and trying to bomb the battleship closest to me. Once the enemy planes engaged, however, I got a bit distracted trying to shoot one down with machine gunnery, and yo it was pretty hard to aim.

At some point I stopped being a plane and became a person, the ocean battlezone turned into an underground car garage sort of area, and the battleships stayed where they were. I didn't actually notice when all these changes occurred. I seriously have no idea, maybe the dream blacked me out or something. I should try to pay more attention to weird changes in dreams, amiright?

Also there was a door and hallway that led to the first floor of the 1319 house somehow. So that was pretty neat! :3

(Oh I could note that in recent dreams it's been relatively easy to see the connections between the dreams and recent real life experiences. I could do a ton of that, but last time I did that my dreams started to reflect reality more and more and that sucked. So nah.

This has inspired my belief that the way you write your dreams down, and what you write down, goes on to affect your dreams in turn. So if you focus on the emotions, you'll start to be more invested emotionally in your dreams, and if you're struck by the details and note them down, it'll show in your dreams by them bein' more detailed, and if you start to notice logical discrepancies you'll notice 'em in your dreams as well. That's my theory~)

Anyway the dream started to have another odd change. It was no longer about the game at all, the battleships weren't even relevant to anything anymore, and it even started to change so that I wasn't a central character, I was myself on the outside of the scenario, watching it as an anime with my boyfriend. But that change was more gradual, because when it started out I was totally a main character, even as the anime's side characters started to show up.

So now the scenario was that I and my group were assassins or infiltrators trying to get into the 1319 house so we could take somebody out (not anyone in my family, although they were in the house as well). Unfortunately, we were pretty incompetent, so we couldn't figure out how to get past this one locked door. (I think, in the dream, I was sort of surprised by the fact that we hadn't planned for any locked doors.)

Then a couple female cops showed up and started patrolling with guard dogs. I was surprised by another thing, which was that the dogs didn't sniff us out at all. Really, they didn't change anything.

At this point I somehow managed to get right past the cops and up to the locked door, now expecting them to have left it open (even though that would've been awfully shoddy of them), and found that it was not simply unlocked but actually cracked slightly open. I ducked through and proceeded without stopping, trying to find a hiding place so that when the cops went back inside they wouldn't run into me. My plan was to head back later and open the door from the inside for my assassin buddies.

The indoor bit looked like the first floor of the 1319 house, heading towards the kitchen. Neat.

I saw white wooden closet doors to my left (all nostalgic with them wooden slats) and went in to find myself in an orange-lit concrete sort of machinery back room. I was a bit nervous about their being bugs, but I hid back there anyway. There was a sort of drop-off ledge thing (FRICKIN. ARCHITECTURE.), basically a drop in the floor by about two feet. I crouched down there, with some junk to either side of me, still worrying about/imagining a cricket or spider crawling up the wall. I also managed to control those thoughts, however. I think I didn't really want my expectations to start being self-fulfilling prophecies.

At this point someone walked by the door outside, casting a bit of a shadow or somethin', and I crouched down against the ledge. It really hid me quite well. Also it was pretty nice and clear, semi-HD. Like, the feeling of crouching there was quite vivid.

Then I heard (and sort of visualized) my Dad walking through the house calling to my sister. She responded from another floor, and he corrected his path.

I think this is about the point the perspective started to shift from first person to me watching an anime with my boyfriend. I saw my character from outside, and saw he was a brown-skinned dude with orangeish curly hair, in sort of an anime style. He presumably let the rest of the assassins in, and they all proceeded to be ambushed by loads of police.

At this point it was revealed that every assassin had some sort of communicator thing on one ear, which was actually controlling their actions and turning them into very professional robots. The police broke them (the communicators now had frayed wires sticking out the end), and at this point every one of the perhaps six or seven assassins was now bleeding from that side of their head. The police were saying that with the controllers broken, they'd be free to make their own decisions ... but judging by the looks on the assassins' faces, they still had every intention of carrying out their mission. Maybe the programming was more than skin-deep, or maybe the transistors hadn't been controlling their actions after all.

ANYWAY THEN I WOKE UP 8)

yo so for this post I just wrote out the outline yesterday (March 24th), and then I came back today (March 25th) and actually filled it out. I feel I should note that when I put down the outline, even when it doesn't have all the information, it still saves 90% of my memories. It's like, the little details come attached with the larger pieces. which is useful. SO YEH. outlines, dawg.

(also this was originally published March 25th but I later went back and altered history so that it was actually published on March 24th. because you can do that on this website. and I like being able to look back and see that I've updated this blog every day/remembered dreams every night.)

Dream - Fighting Freaks
WOW COMING UP WITH TITLES FOR THESE DREAMS IS THE WORST

So I dreamed I was invading some sort of school building or church at night, for a specific reason. First off, it had this neato feeling because empty buildings at night are the best, but secondly it had an even cooler feel to it because the building was not, in fact, empty, but was filled with female mooks attempting to OBSTRUCT OUR FORWARD MOTION. That is, I was wearing a headset with information or songs on it that I wanted to put on the internet, or perhaps I wanted to download songs to it (not the most noble or high-minded motivation, I suppose), and their building had an internet connection that would allow this. (At some point later on I realized I actually had an internet connection at home, and I didn't even have to be here, which was sort of a huge relief.)

So of course then it turned into a giant shoot-out, with I and one or two companions (family? friends?) fighting off a massive horde from inside one of their rooms. And I call them a horde, because they were sort of ... willing to throw themselves at anything in their attempts to stop us. It really wasn't about the internet connection, it was just their zombie-like mindless intensity causing them to over-react to whatever entered their building.

For self-defense, I had a really stupid gun that I hated. To get it to fire, you had to be holding down a button that turned off the safety, and then to actually fire you had to press one of two buttons, depending on which direction you were aiming. Also, I'm pretty sure pressing the fire button only fired a single, less-than-pea-sized bullet (which were still fairly effective), so I had to keep spamming the dumb fire button while also holding down the safety-off button. It sort of felt, to my hands, like a ceiling fan remote, although I'm fairly certain it looked like a gun.

So originally we were on the second or third floor, working on that internet connection ... then we fought our way through the mob. I remember a point at which I managed to shut the door on a couple dozen that were trying to rush me, and then fire over top of it at them as they piled up against it (the ceiling was just sort of missing, I think, or maybe the upper section of the wall). It felt like an incredibly effective strategy, which was nice, but trying to spam the fire button while holding down the safety was a real pain, and I'm pretty sure I got the two fire buttons mixed up at one point. Also, it didn't really feel like I was killing people. It felt like a video game: you shoot 'em, they fall over and vanish, you got one less angry opponent to worry about.

Shortly after the door massacre, I decided to hop down a stairwell, by which I mean fall down the open space in the middle of all the flights. It was the easiest way to escape them all, and I've done so much falling in dreams that it's a toss-up whether a 200-foot fall will even slightly damage me. I remember having a bit of trouble managing a straight fall, since the railings were sort of crowding me, but even though my fall was occasionally interrupted by brief pauses as I had to re-orient myself (generally close by some female mook on the stairwell), I eventually managed to complete my dive to the first floor. Or perhaps the basement.

This was where I stumbled upon a rather tormented and wandering kitty, the apparent victim of scientific experiments. I was pretty happy to meet him and vice versa, and the two of us regrouped with some others on the first floor of what was now clearly the church I used to attend.

We stood around near the enclosed foyer as we planned our next move. Jessica was there now, and Nathan, and some tormented bunny they'd rescued.

I didn't particularly like that bunny, notwithstanding its tortured past. It had sort of an ugly face and its nature seemed to be that it would absolutely bite you unprovoked, and it would be your fault because it was a victimized bunny. Jess managed to see past its faults somehow, probably owing to her larger heart or something. I remained suspicious of the bunny up until the point at which it started biting me, which was when I decided I hated the thing, and that might be why we left it behind.

So then we trooped outside, and Jess got in the car that was waiting. Nathan was driving, I think, and I was either staying forever, or simply waiting for another ride. The tormented cat followed Jess and leapt into her lap in the car, which was pretty adorable. I think it was sort of a dream version of our IWL cat Moses (at the time, naming him that made sense, but now I HAVE NO IDEA WHY WE NAMED HIM THAT), except his normally gray fur had been turned a sort of snazzy red and black by whatever had been done to him. Which, by the way, he seemed mostly okay with. His attitude was mainly one of being happy to see us and glad to go home, and not terrified and traumatized like one might expect.

There was one last scene, I think, that had to do with this dream. The female mooks had clearly been doing a lot of Outlast-style experimentation on not only animals, but also people, and frankly their human experiments seemed far, far more twisted. This scene focused on two (or one?) victims of their experimenting, a brother and sister who'd been somehow combined into one body. It was sort of as though their bodies had been mashed together until they simply combined, with their face being a sort of mix of both people's faces. There wasn't any obvious stitching or anything like that, they were just sort of an uncomfortable combination.

As if that weren't enough, the experimenters had taken the liberty of adding three or so random eyes to their face. The arrangement was something like, one on their cheek, one by their right eyebrow, and one around their forehead. They all were sort of looking around independent of where the boy-girl combination was looking (which tended to be off to the side with a depressed and sort of embarrassed expression).

SO YUP that was one dream.

Fragment - TITLES, MAN
Playing Age of Empires against someone (local internet). I remember roaming the map a bit checking things out, and then realizing that I really needed stone. I grabbed some workers and set 'em on stone, then watched as they swarmed it like ants, just sort of piling on it like crazy. It was sort of a never-ending fountain of villagers.

I remember being struck by how very many there were. I think, once again, I was waiting for them to stop appearing. Is that a dream power ?? Waiting for something to stop happening and then it never does?? >:U HOW COULD I USE THAT. AAHHH.

Fragment - Frickin bears, man
Had another walking-in-the-forest-and-then-had-to-save-my-sister-and-parent-from-a-massive-bear dream. This time I was with my sister and dad, and this fricking, just, ENORMOUS BEAR poked its head up over some ridge that was alongside the path. My sister and I were like "maybe it didn't spot us ????" but it totally did. And it started chasing us.

So then my dad, my sister and I were all running from this bear and, of course, not managing to lose it. I realize that my dad is actually having a pretty hard time running because he's older and has stuff like health problems and a bad knee and junk, and that's enough to trigger my complete lack of self-preservation. Must've been semi-lucid, because it wasn't about fricking dying to the bear, it was more about taking pity on my dad. I'm not sure though.

...I think as a rule, low-level lucidity should entail deliberately using dream powers or trying to trick the dream, whereas... something like facing a bear without being concerned about it has more to do with emotions (or the lack of 'em), and immersion in the dream, and what the dream considers to be "normal"... hmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMM.

Anyway I saw my dad and sister going down one path to the right, and the bear was off behind me at some distance. So, rather than keep following them, I went left, which led down a dead-leaf-covered slope to a large flat area, sort of like a giant crater. The bear followed me to the center, where I PROBABLY PUNCHED IT. I'm not sure, though. I don't remember. I just know that after that encounter, my dad and sister came back out of hiding and everything was mostly okay. My brother showed up, too.

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.

aaaaaaaaaafter this I'm just gonna sleep without an alarm because sleepyyyy

note: WILD-wise, my problem doesn't seem to be "not being able to fall asleep" anymore ... now it's that I fall asleep easily and aaaa

Fragment 1
I was watchin' some anime or movie or something, and these free-spirit good guys (members of some larger good guy group but banded together with each other) woke up during the night and hopped on horses to ride out of town for some reason. Somethin' important to accomplish out there. Kind of an Old West sort of town. There were maybe about six horse guys and then as they rode they started boundin' along the roofs, leaping from one building to the next; and one guy even leapt up to some tall buildings near the front of the town, and then leapt to the top of the welcome gate thing, and then leapt down.

I was like whoaaa at that one guy, and mom was watching or had just started watching, so I rewound the anime/movie/whatever so she could watch this crazy daredevil guy. But he didn't do it this time. He did some other thing. I was just sort of annoyed 'cause I kept waiting for the same thing to happen and then before you know it they were outta the town. Huh.

Also some bit about the six of 'em bein' in a cave at night.

Fragment 2
Mom, Ben, Jess and I are riding up and down these escalators. There're like, three floors of this building. Think it had glass walls but I couldn't really see outside.

Anyway the basic premise was that we had to ride the escalators in a certain (short) order, because that would unlock the sliding automatic doors on the first floor. Apparently they were trying to make sure that we looked outside and caught a glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial during our escalator riding, "Lincoln Memorial" being the password that flashed when you'd done it right. Pretty sure I said that to Ben in the dream so it's probably dream canon!

On our last go-round I looked down and saw an old lady going up, so I had to move to the left. Shoot, I know I'm missing something. It was more than just escalator riding but aaaaaaaaa.

The whole thing was pretty vivid, which was nice. *yaawwnn* back to bed...

UH SHOOT. I dreamed something... then I woke up at some point and remembered it... and then fell back asleep and then at some point alarm went off, so gg.

I think when I started doing WBTB's my intent and my mind were so in sync that I would wake up from a dream to my WBTB alarm, and BAM: fantastic recall. But now I'm slackin' off in that regard, so I wake up a bit earlier, then fall back asleep and forget ... which might mean I'll have to get used to getting up even if my alarm isn't going off. And if that's the case I may as well put my computer next to my bed so I can blind myself with the screen's light at will. We shall seeeeee~

Also I tried somethin' a bit different for this WBTB: turned on the light and drank a cup of apple cider while I was writing this. Maybe it'll make some kinda difference? Also gonna try sleeping for another 1.5 hours and then doing another WBTB. Maybe.

Fragment
Uhhhmmm okay so one part that I remember was that Mom and I were walking to some kind of bus stop as part of the larger dream (which featured a fairly evil Big Bad), and then I started using dream powers of some sort. Wasn't lucid at all, so they were just dream facts. Think I mighta been hovering around. There was some sort of larger point to that scene, and my actions.

Uhhhhhh... the overall scheme of the dream revolved around this Big Bad sort of guy, some kind of mega-evil ghost or god of some sort, and the Saturday-morning-cartoon-style child protagonists who dared to defy him.

Not that it worked out for them in a saturday-morning-cartoon sort of way. Had a bit of an Animorphs vibe, I think. I can sort of remember a bit where some Jake or Toby-esque (from Animorphs) leader kid was physically trapped in some kinda inescapable magic hold of the evil guy's. For now the bad guy was just talking to him .. but he was the sort of villain that could drive a person crazy just by talking to them, just by very deliberately toying with their mind and emotions and whatever else he could use.

Also, it didn't matter to him that his opponents were children. The fact that they were challenging him was, in his mind, justification enough for him being utterly ruthless. But he did seem to realize that they posed less of a threat, and with apparently no other, more pressing issues to face, he made slowly and deliberately taking them apart his sole and temporary focus. He was immortal for whatever reason (leaning more towards god than ghost), so he had that sort of "entertain me" or "alleviate my boredom" vibe that immortal people tend to have in stories.

Over the course of the dream some crazy things happened that I don't recall, as the bad guy proceeded to gradually win and convince some of the kids that fighting simply wasn't worth it anymore, and they might as well switch to his side. That's about where the dream ended, I think, with a shot of a room strongly featuring his presence, and with a few dejected kids sitting around waiting for his orders or whatever.

Anyway I'm callin' all that a fragment because the dream as it exists in my memory is a mere shadow of its former self, and while the story's background remains relatively strong in my mind, any events of the story have, for the most part, fled. Which is kind of annoying because it was such a weird and unique and interesting story, to me, and the only copy was in my mind and I dropped the baaaallllllll~

LET'S MAKE THIS HAPPENNNNN
so last night was another attempt to get a good, uninterrupted night's sleep, mostly successful I'd say. Soon I'll get back to WBTB's, although the uhh, sort of expectation that comes with an attempt is a little stressful and I end up in weird, half-awake moods. I'd say it's worth it though. As long as I know what I'm getting into, right?

Fragment - Crisis Core Cloud Kill-off
hahaha ALLITERATION

OK so basically I dreamed about a story in a big desert. I don't really remember the earlier parts, but at the end it kinda segued into the end of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core ... except this time, Cloud was the one who died, instead of Zack. :U ... I actually found that to be a pretty interesting concept, and I really enjoyed the sort of emotions of the dream, especially when my alarm went off with "How'm I Supposed To Die" by Civil Twilight playing.

Anyway it was quite sad. Zack carried on, still managing to maintain his sense of humor despite being quite alone now, and in the middle of a desert. Think he had to fend off some kinda weird zombie things, which also made an appearance in my later dream. SPEAKING OF WHICH—>>>

Dream - "Assassin's Creed" Vidya Game
I'm putting this one in a spoiler because I ended up rambling for a good, uh, 1500 words. Wow.

Spoiler for SO MANY WOOOOORDS:

ALRIGHT this one was pretty cool hey alright. Set in a video game which is pretty interesting. Let's capture these details~

So it started off supposedly set in an Assassin's Creed video game. I didn't think it was a dream, I just knew I was gaming, even though, y'know, I was physically present in the game. Which I guess is kind of how it is in real life too so that makes sense. I mean, you don't spend the whole game thinking "I am a person looking at a screen," you think something like "IM CORVO AND I HAVE MAGIC POWERS OH CRAP THAT GUARD IS LOOKING RIGHT AT ME" SO ANYWAY

Started off in some kinda dungeon. There were big cages with prisoners inside nearby, arranged along the wall in front of me and to my right, and an empty cage to my left. Behind me was an open space and some kinda drop-down ledge thing, and ahead there was a left turn (rounding the empty cage) which led "forward". As in progress in the game.

The first thing I did, though, was head backwards, and drop off the ledge. I think there may have been a bit of a slant and some stairs leading down slightly. Fricking. Architecture. NEVERMIND.

Abruptly there were four zombie things blocking the way I'd just come from. They were pretty awful looking, their skin blotched dark red and white as though they'd taken burns to most of their bodies, with disfigurations all over their faces and y'know, no eyes, no hair, gaping mouths, the whole shebang. They weren't scary at all, for whatever reason. They flailed to demonstrate their willingness to attack me, and then I took 'em out. Don't remember how. What is with my brain and just skipping the good parts? PAY ATTENTION TO THE FIGHT SCENES, DUDE.

Anyway then I decided it was time for sneaky sneak things. My brain decided I was playing Assassin's Creed, but as far as I know it wasn't much like it. Stronger focus on not being seen at all, not much in the way of assassinations. Sort of more of an Outlast vibe.

Arright so anyway I moved forward and climbed up onto the empty cage, probably making some simply amazing clanging noises as I went. Then I crouched up there, because some weirdo crouched on top of an empty cage is basically invisible, I guess. People don't look up so maybe...?

At the end of the (short) hallway was a door with yellow light and fancy-lookin' carpeting beyond it, and a right turn leading down another hallway that had some doors along the side. That was my goal. Eventually.

Then a frickin' parade of people went by. Like, everyone needed to use this fricking prison hallway. They were actually pretty interesting, though. Like, you'd have a group that might consist of four or five people, maybe two paired together, maybe some dude in a rolling cage, a girl wearing makeup and fancy clothes, all of 'em just loaded with detail... that would be just one group. And there were probably like six of those groups going by. EVERYONE NEEDED TO USE THIS HALLWAY. WHAT WAS THEIR DEAL. I was just waiting for the "game" to stop throwing new people at me, which may have been part of the problem.

At some point I snuck off the cage and managed to hide under some stairs, also along the left wall, and a bit closer to the door. They were these weird, rickety, pointless stairs leading up to nothing, and they had some more rickety wood stuff between me and the still-continuing parade of random people, which apparently served as SUFFICIENT HIDING in this game. Btw all these indignant reactions I'm having are post-dream. During the dream I was just like, "AW YEAH RICKETY STAIRS. The ultimate hiding spot."

Next I had to sneak around in a brightly lit hallway with absolutely no cover, around an entire group of courtiers or whatever you call 'ems, the people who hang out in large groups wearing fancy dresses and talk about fans or whatever. This was accomplished by, I don't know, doing that somehow. The game didn't exactly present some expected scenario, so I ended up crouch-running around them like a weirdo. You know what, maybe it wasn't even really a stealth game. Maybe it was just an exploration of how much weirdness people are willing to ignore from one man.

Uhhh and then also there was some bit where I was lying in wait back at the stairs and caught sight of some weird butler guy. He had kind of a wrinkled pug-dog sort of a face, not actually a pug-dog. It was really just what I would call a dumb face, no offense to anyone in the real world. Like, he clearly made an excellent butler, was perhaps the best butler a castle could have, but as a king he would've been the nicest, most well-meaning king a country could have, before being executed by rioting peasants because he forgot to attend to important peasant life things, like food or whatever. He was that kind of guy.

He also had a couple clones, which was neat. Just him and his two clones lined up in preparation for more butler things. Good times.

Then I was back to sneaking around courtiers, who fortunately all decided to bow to someone at the same time, mere moments after I had sprinted out from hiding while somehow still in a crouch. I skirted the group and hid under a decorative table against the hallway's wall, before shortly deciding to sneak into a particular door across the hall.

I walked into the room like a normal person and encountered some kindly American watchmaker who was totally on my side. How I knew he was on my side, I have no idea. It was a Dream Fact™. He welcomed me and was all nice and stuff, and then someone entered the tiny room and I had to duck under the table, which was about waist height and plain wood with four legs and no cover, so as you can imagine it didn't prevent someone from seeing me at all. The game was satisfied, though. Way to take cover, the game seemed to be saying, judging by the fact that the soldier who was now chatting up the watchmaker hadn't decided to shoot and/or stab and/or notice me.

He eventually left, and I crawled out from under the table and commissioned a watch from the watchmaker. He happily obliged and I watched in wonder as he made a watch that I just absolutely adored. I remember looking at it super closely and seeing absolutely nothing weird about it, all the numbers in the right place and the whole thing made of some material that was glorious to behold. I loved that frickin' watch. Also, I think it turned me back into my normal shape as a girl instead of some grown man assassin thief. I mean, the process of being made a watch that I loved turned me back into me, and the game sort of stopped being a game at that point.

Hmmm so at that point we walked out of the room and were suddenly in a Metro, and Ben was with me being my personal second shadow again (gonna have to make that boy a dreamsign, unless the process of going "oh my brother whom I adore is here, I MUST BE DREAMING" is just too depressing). I think the watchmaker finished the watch then?? I am not sure ?? Dream timing is so weird.

And to wrap all this up, Ben and I hopped on a Metro train and accidentally left the watchmaker behind, who turned into Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes and started throwing important things that we needed to us while somehow keeping pace with the train (but not so much that he could catch up and jump aboard). I remember trying to catch thing while my arms were full, but it worked out.

THEN HE WAS DEAD. Ben and I hopped off the train and were abruptly at a giant monument that had been erected in his honor, in the middle of a park. It was daytime and the whole thing had a sort of pleasant springtime feel. GOOD TIMES.

Oh yeah, last thing is that at some point there was a brief flash where I saw a part of the game I hadn't gotten to yet. Something about being in some lovely marble room with a fireplace, above which was a mantel, from which things were falling, some of which broke on the ground. PREPOSITION CHAINING. Not a recommended way to extend a sentence...

UH ANYWAY. The important thing about this flash was that the whole scene was in some kinda HD. Even more HD than the parts of the dream I'd already encountered. This was exciting to me in the dream, but it's even more exciting to me now because THAT MEANS HD IN DREAMS. SUPER HD. GLORIOUS HD. I'm excited~

YOOOO last night didn't do a WBTB, still got a super long dream. Hm.
...
Hmmmmm...
OK so BAAHHHHH why does my mind have to come up with semi-awkward things. Hope you guys like American race relations!

Fragment
I'm at the store buyin' somethin' tasty. I forget what it was. I think I also dreamed about that again later, and that time I got myself some brie. Yay~
Since that happens so often Imma make it a dream sign.

Dream
So uh let's see here.
The original premise of the dream was ... three black guys killed this white guy and his two friends for some reason. And some of that reasoning dated back to how black people were systematically mistreated and killed by white people for the longest time. But there was some other reasoning based on what the guy himself had done.
On his part he struck me as sort of a Gatsby-type character, well-meaning and the sort of person who sincerely does not expect to be murdered. But hoo boy he got murdered a lot. I b'lieve fire was involved, they were very thorough.
Hm so yeah that bit was set in a sort of a maze of a mansion, part of it underground I think. Hard to remember details but basically he and his friends did some running and hiding only to fall directly into various traps set by the other guys. Not physical traps, I mean like they expected him to go in that direction and one of them was lying in wait. That kinda thing.
And yeah when he actually died I believe it was fairly climactic. Like, he'd just made it to the area right behind the front door WHATEVER THE FRICK THAT'S CALLED and was about to run outside and escape or whatever. But instead he just died there. I forget what actually killed him. Hrm. But yeah the sunlight was shining all around him. He was a pretty dramatic guy! 8)

So then the dream shifted to this Irish guy who was goin' to a bar, but since he was Irish he couldn't sit down anywhere. He had to go up to this specific counter for Irish and stand there waiting to be served or somethin'. He got a shot of something, downed it, got some more and walked outside with it, downed that in front of errbody, and then began to wander towards the street. Also I think I may have been him for a moment, but if I drank the alcohol I didn't taste anything.

Then I was arguing with Dad about whether the three black guys killing the three white guys was justified and his reaction was that yes, it was allowed, because white people had killed loads of black people in the past (he and I are white just sayin'). I was trying to argue against that line of thought but I had the nagging suspicion that he was actually correct, and I was just arguing against it because I was white, and y'know, didn't want to die if someone decided we oughta be part of repairing race relations through extended violence. It was pretty confusing.

Speaking of which, then I was back in time and observed a black mother who was trying to take care of her kid, but thanks to some systematic oppression, she was having a real hard time of it. Like white women got free diapers or something, and she couldn't. The details are kind of all mixed up though.

Then I was arguing with a couple black ladies about the murder case, except now I think we were in the past. Actually the dream itself somehow was existing both in the past and the future, both during and after the mistreatment and murder of blacks by whites. Which, during the dream, was kind of interesting because I could just go with these time shenanigans, but afterwards it's like HOW DO I COMPREHEND THIS.
Anyway, we were sitting at a restaurant table just outside the restaurant talking about the murder case, and they were all for the white guy getting murdered. I think he'd done somethin' to a young black lady, like maybe led her on and broken her heart or somethin' (there was this little mental image of her standing on a representation of a map, at the edge of her country looking towards the ocean at him, very forlorn). Also I think they were pretty angry about the conditions black people had to face to begin with, although they didn't seem very angry at me specifically, for some reason.
Speaking of time shenanigans, I think it was implied that, when I'd talked to Dad about it, the murder of the guy had been in the past, and when I talked to the two ladies about it, the murder of the guy was still off in the future. Which would make sense, because the next bit was me actively at the murder scene while it was happening and trying to stop it and/or not get killed myself.

I think Ben might've been there too, the dream version of him that follows me like a second shadow, and we were just running around the mansion being witnesses and all that. To their credit, the black guys didn't seem the least bit interested in murdering us, despite us being potential witnesses. They had a sort of laser-focus on the one guy, and his two friends were collateral damage because... they tried to protect him, or smuggle him to safety or somethin'. idk maybe Ben and I were ghosts or somethin *throws hands in the air*
Anyway we didn't manage to save the guy and he totes died again and then I woke up and a few minutes later my alarm went off and that's that. Hmmmm...

Spoiler for No dreams here ;U just thoughts:

Man every time I make one of these entries I'm somehow surprised that another day has passed. Almost the 20th of March? That was ... fast.

I had a couple dreams but for once I can't be bothered to remember 'em. Feels like they were just too boring/strange/pointless. Mostly pointless. I suppose I'll give myself free passes every so often 8)

In other news I get the feeling being well-rested is a better motivator for recall/investment than just thinking about dreams during the day. And anyway, I don't want to spend every day thinking about dreams... at least not right now. Think I just need a small break ;3 .. and more sleep ... and to get all kinds of school down now that spring break is overrrrr~

heck I don't even wanna think about anything emotional or exciting. I literally just want to get my school done and then rest some more. Maybe that's why my dreams were boring? Maybe part of dreaming is anticipation of the next day? How would that work...

Alternatively, maybe my waking mood colored my dreaming experience. I was relatively unconscious during those dreams so I suppose the only time I could properly react to them was after I was awake. And I mean "unconscious" as in, I couldn't properly react to things, and it felt like I was operating on some sort of auto-pilot. A pretty intelligent auto-pilot compared to some dreams, but auto-pilot all the same. Is that more a reflection of my dream mood or my current mood? Huh.

Also if I retain this mood the whole day, that would be sort of unexpected. I'm usually fairly inconsistent mood-wise. We'll see. I just feel tired and kinda sick right now so I guess I can see that mood lasting the whole day.

*squints at screen*

Pfeh. These dreams had almost no emotion, no investment, no consciousness. But on the bright side they're pretty easy to write down.

Impression
Somethin' about bein' in some unfamiliar college. It had some fairly dim lighting.

Fragment
Chillin' with my mom. First we were .. watching church together? Maybe trying to determine whether a certain church was worth going to?

Then we just ate a whole lotta cake. My fave was this rainbow-marbled stuff with chocolate chunks in it.

Mom had a certain air of nervousness or stressed-out-ness about her like, the whole time. I think that's why we were eating cake, to try to help her deal widdit.

We tried a whole lotta cake and the whole time there was this odd sense of caring for each other. I mean, not odd as in unusual or whatever, odd as in "oh I won't start eating this cake type until you're ready for us both to have some". As if we were either of one mind, or just paranoid and wanting to be as nice as possible. Weird dream.

-

Need theories for drop in recall during WBTB's lately. Hypothesis: Gradual drop in motivation/investment. Not thinking too hard about dreams during the day, not super psyched about dreams as I fall asleep. Leaning more towards the former as cause. I imagine that somethin' about dream-related awareness during the day could improve recall; paying more attention to my surroundings in the interests of having neato dreams translates to remembering more detail? Or am I confusing that with simply having more motivation?
That said, I imagine more memorable dreams will automatically stick more, so maybe it's not a real concern.
Hm. I want more investment. That means I need more motivation. What's my motivation?
I don't think I have tooooo much motivation to remember every tiny dream I have. Actually I know for a fact I've started flagging a bit on that. Bwah. Thoughts.
WBTB recall not a huge concern compared to Morning recall. Both seem like they're slipping, though.
I cannot organize my thoughts right now >:U