memorable

Wrote out a looong dream for the dream contest even though, it being nonlucid, I would've only gotten a single point for posting it.

Then Dreamviews glitched out and was like "haha, it didn't post. why don't you hit back and then reload? "

I hit back. The dream was still there. I reloaded.

Poof.

Here's a couple more I couldn't write down 'cause I didn't have my computer.

Dream: Night before last
Dreamed I was having Alex (the bae) watch Pirates of the Caribbean with me 'cause he hadn't see it. But since I was dreaming it was a very different account of Pirates of the Caribbean... the pirates were all enslaved by a rather un-piratey, non-sea-related witch. As a result they were all pretty miserable. Then a somewhat younger girl showed up to try to free them all, and for a while I was her. I managed to halfway free the pirates, which got the now-angry witch's attention. She turned on me and I had the distinct impression, similar to what happened with Mr Blue Wife Beater a couple nights ago, that I didn't stand a chance vs her.

This is kind of an unusual feeling for me, because I sort of expected that if someone who wasn't a monster came at me ready to fight, I would be all over them because I love fighting. But now, not only did I not feel like trying to decimate these guys, I also got the impression that I had no hope of defending myself, so both times I didn't try and just got messed up. It's weird. I feel like defending myself should be an automatic instinct, but it hasn't been lately.

At any rate, in the next moment this crazy magic-using woman was all over me, throwing me to the ground and shaking me. And the dream cut back to Alex and I watching the movie on the couch together, watching this enraged magic lady slam this girl into the ground over and over. I was like, "This is just like when a spider's wrapping something up," 'cause that was honestly what I thought and honestly what it looked like, it wasn't the dream putting words in my mouth. It was so violent and deliberate.

When the magic lady stood she looked like a mix between the two of 'em, and the other girl was gone. So either she absorbed the girl, or she possessed her, I'm not sure which. The dream ended soon after.

Dream: Night before night before last
I dreamed about Leffen again which sucks for me 'cause he makes me feel SO insecure. But in the dream he was actually nice to me, which somehow makes me feel even worse... my dreams are just wish-fulfillment trying to convince me that he could actually like or care about me. *gets depressed*

Anyway, I dreamed that I was back in the Cheverly house, in the living room, and Leffen was using it to stream him playing some game. I felt like I was just getting in the way a bit, and then, at one point when he walked out of the room, he walked back in at the same time that I went blind. I was between him and his chair, and I wanted to hurry up and get out of his way, but my vision was totally frozen; looking around didn't change my view at all, I just had this locked-up scene stuck on my retina. I tried to explain this to him so he would get why I was just standing there. He actually seemed a bit concerned, which, when you think about it, is a pretty realistic reaction to someone going straight-up blind.

I managed to feel my way to the couch and lie down. Closing my eyes made everything black, so I stayed like that for a bit, and after a while my vision was back.

So then Leffen let me take over his stream for a bit, and I got on really hoping that his viewers would like me (all of which was unrealistic for a few reasons). The game he was playing was something like... you're trapped in a house with a whole bunch of almost-human monsters who really don't do much but slowly try to follow you around. Even if they caught up to you, they didn't try to attack you or anything, and YET, it was pretty scary. I ran into the bathroom and tried to lock it with a key, which was an almost paper thin piece of metal that did pretty much nothing. Still, I got the door kind of locked, enough that when they tried to get in, the doors bumped inwards but didn't open. I went deeper into the bathroom, which was quite a large bathroom as it turned out, and then lost track of where I was.

Next I was in a locked room, next to a door that had a little window above it that I could crawl through. So I did, and found a couple of monster-humans on the other side. One of them was this faceless thing with rubbery brown skin that looked up at me with a small, gaping mouth. For some reason I didn't find this guy disturbing, but I did have the brilliant idea to jump down on him as hard as I could. And it worked! Unlike some dreams where trying to do something weighty has unsatisfying, floaty results, this time it really felt like I was landing full-force on this unfortunate rubbery brown guy. And I crushed him. Then I ran off andddd I forget what else happened. WOO.

I think not having my computer has had a positive effect on my dreams... Might have to explore that further.

Man, my dreams have been more vivid lately. I've had plenty of dreams where I'm not totally present, where it doesn't feel like my decisions are totally up to me because I'm not really there myself... but lately my dreams have been giving me more control. Feels nice.

Dream: A Game
So I dreamed I was playing some kinda game, like I was on a game show. Everyone was paired up in teams and each team had a different official color. We were red, me and Handsome Jack. Well, he was sort of a combination of Handsome Jack and an acquaintance of mine with similar issues. I don't remember much about the other teams. Actually, there might even have been another person on our team, but I can't really remember.

So the game kinda consisted of a sort of obstacle course. It seemed to be set in an endless white void, or a massive white room, and I believe the first thing we encountered was a great deal of water, a veritable sea. It looked kinda strange since it was in a white room; like, much paler than the average sea.

Our first task was to cross this sea to the plasticky room about 60 yards away, and there was a selection of plasticky boats to use, maybe in little cubbyholes. They looked like those circular snow sled things, but a bit deeper. I think we just had to grab our appropriately red-colored boat, or maybe a couple of 'em, and somehow boat across the sea. The dream might've skipped that part. The impression I got was, the dream sort of thought that boat + sea was pretty self-explanatory, but then realized that my trying to get across the sea with just a circular boat and no paddle would actually be pretty difficult and time-consuming, so it just skipped it.

So we ended up on the island/room, where we quickly encountered SOME kind of obstacle. I kinda remember that there was a large group of people and there was some squabbling or fighting going on. I decided (and I don't always get to decide things like this, in dreams) to wander into the next room, where I encountered a kinda scary-lookin' old guy. And that was kind of important because by choosing to wander into the next dream I was sort of cutting into the dream's story; everything pointed to me being supposed to stick with my group and take the rooms one-by-one, but I instead chose to ignore this directive and try something else. And it's cool that I got to do that, it's been a bit of a trend lately. Hope it sticks! It's more fun when I can make up my own mind...

So I fought the scary-lookin' old guy who actually might've been a zombie, and soon enough Handsome Jack showed up, wondering where I went, and helped me take the old guy out. I'm not sure what the old guy's deal was. My first impression is... shopkeeper. But old and angry and sort of confused.

OK I don't remember too much else. I'm gonna make a post about the rest of my dreams 'cause like, I've had a couple over the last few days but I didn't write 'em down 'cause I didn't have my laptop.

wow Im back

Dream: Three Friends Aw Yeah
So I dreamed I was in this big building with three friends, which is more IRL friends than I've ever had at one time. And unlike most dreams where I'm, at best, just part of an impartial group, this time it was just these three original characters who really didn't have much in the way of defining characteristics, but were nevertheless chill friends of mine. It felt nice.

Anyway, one of them, for whatever reason, became a robot assassin who couldn't control himself. So next thing you know, he wanted to kill me and another friend. But the last friend stepped in and proved himself to be a capable fighter, able to go toe-to-toe with assassin friend. This was especially impressive because robo-assassin friend could turn invisible and was armed with a fairly long sword, but nevertheless fighter friend did a good job of taking him on.

So most of the dream was me and normal friend just kind of running around from place-to-place, either hiding and wondering if we were gonna die together, or checking in to see how the fight between robo-assassin friend and fighter friend was going. I don't know that one friend or the other ended up winning, but I do remember thinking that if this were a dream, it would be a prime opportunity for me to present myself to robo friend and see what getting stabbed with a sword felt like. Like, a really good opportunity. But I was loathe to actually try such a thing, mostly because I was pretty well convinced that if he stabbed me I would die, and if I died I'd be dead for good. So I didn't go for it.

In retrospect I should've done a reality check and then tried to make myself invincible or something. That would've been cool.

I want to remember these ones. They had a unique feel to 'em.

Dream - Earlier Boss
I remember being one of a group of three who were trying to bring down this one evil guy, sort of reminiscent of a mob boss but not as business-like. I'm not sure what he was even trying to accomplish.

We were using children to help us out, they had some sort of task that had to be done close to the end of the line. I really can't remember exactly what they were supposed to do, I just remember that they would all run past the boss's inner sanctum into another room with some minions in it, perhaps on their way to something more important, or maybe just in order to disorient the minions with the sudden appearance of children. There was something else about me having a gun but at some point it ran out of bullets, right in front of the boss, I think. I just remember pulling the trigger and it just clicking all lame and I was like frick. That seems to be a recurring thing.

I remember that the boss had somehow played the three of us; I was sitting with my back against some wall all defeated-like, while he explained how he'd tricked me. It had something to do with an origami folding made out of silver-grey paper. I was somewhat distressed when it somehow got unfolded while he was talking, but other than that small hint I have no idea what his ploy may have been.

Dream - Later Boss
In this one I actually worked for the boss I and others were trying to take out. This villain was a sort of jovial, sarcastic guy, trusting no one and confident in this lack of trust, since he didn't need trust for his plans to work out. Whereas the previous boss had seemed a little more direct and capable in the way he crushed opposition, this guy treated a lot of it like a game. But y'know, in a playing-with-lives sort of way.

One of the ways I tried to screw up his plans was by stealing away gems he needed. There was a blue/green gem and a red flame gem... I found the blue/green gem after seeing it shining from inside some guy's face (one of the minions, I think, given it for safe-keeping), between his eyes and a little off-center; he was smiling as though confident it was totally safe in there, but I distinctly remember plunging my hand into that area and pulling it out. I ended up with a few gem-sized chunks that were not gems and something that glistened blue-green through a slimy coating of blood. I'm pretty sure I put the whole mess in my hoodie's front pocket, since there wasn't time for me to sort through it and there were at least two minions looking at me, though for some reason they hadn't seen me flat-out take it.

I remember the feeling of fumbling to try to put another one of the gems in my front pocket; it must've been the flame gem, since it was totally clean. It was frustrating, I could feel exactly what my fingers were doing, and were the edge of the pocket was, and where the gem was, and it was critical that I not make it obvious that I was leaving with the gem, but I still couldn't seem to just pocket it and relax. I think one of the other minions who genuinely served the boss noticed me.

Note on that minion: he was some rather sneaky guy who didn't trust me. He was loyal to the boss and wanted to earn his favor, and he knew I was up to something, though he didn't yet have evidence. He wanted to be the one to catch me and show everyone what I really was.

I remember that particular minion stealing the gem back, saying something as an aside about how he was surprised I'd just been hiding it in my hoodie pocket (implying I was either stupid or lazy). A long chase ensued through a dark city of townhouses, where I tried to leverage flight powers focusing on speed. I managed to get in the air but couldn't work out how to move forward the way I wanted to (I envisioned skimming but couldn't quite figure out how to actually do it, also my initial launch was somehow nostalgic in the sense that I got the impression, while launching, that this was a technique I'd used to do in other dreams when quite young, but that could've been a false memory). He remained in the lead, running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop, some lower than others or forming a long ledge for him to run along. In the end we emerged from the houses to a street next to a large open area, the ground sloping away from the road to where the boss was waiting in his base of operations. I slowed down while the minion raced on, then walked forward and settled myself on the slope to watch from a distance, in plain view of them both, as he handed the gem over to the boss. There were no immediate repercussions for me.

On the other hand, another minion, and one who was actually on my side, was accused of having hidden another gem. She was some sort of flame fairy, accused of withholding the flame gem, and the boss had her stand over this odd sort of torch, with a platform for her to stand next to the fire (which was somehow holding a consistent cone sort of shape). He told her that he would ask her a few questions, and that she should move into the flame for yes, and away from the flame for no. For some reason it was assumed she couldn't really lie to him, and when he asked her whether she'd hidden the flame gem, she said no and moved away from the flame, but with guilt clear on her face nonetheless ... perhaps she hadn't hidden it herself, but she could have had a hand in it. The boss was about to ask her another question when I got sick of the interrogation scene, tackled him and tried to strangle him. I'm not sure what happened after that but it was pretty clear my attempts at subversion were over ggggg

Then there was an end to it, where my group somehow managed to finally bring down this boss. I can't remember many details more than that he assumed, right up until the end, that he'd won, and I had the satisfaction of demonstrating how wrong he was (somehow). Then he was dragged away to some insane asylum or hospital somewhere in the city, while I watched from a sort of overpass nearby.

Other Fragments
- Being in legions with x-friend and a friend I was dueling last night. X-friend was being all happy and excited and my friend and I were just sort of chilling, dueling or following him around while he chattered and showed off his prowess and confidence.

- Seeing two sort of malnourished looking kids, a girl and a boy with small, thin bodies, big heads, and huge eyes, both floating with inflatable red floaty rings in some sort of pool supposedly designed just for this purpose. However, the pool itself was, to my surprise, a good five feet deep, so that if either of them stopped floating and sank to the bottom they'd be pretty much screwed. I ended up pulling them both out of the pool after the boy almost sank right to the bottom before I managed to fish him out.

- - - - - - - - -

GOSH IT'S SO ANNOYING THERE'S STUFF I WANT TO REMEMBER AND PLACE BUT EVEN THOUGH I CAN SORT OF REMEMBER IT I CANT PLACE IT ANYWHERE >8UUU

gosh

w/e I just really liked trying to bring down these fricking bad guys and totally failing at being sneaky and always risking being found out and talking to them and hhhhhh good times

SO LET'S SEE

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

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

—

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

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

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

AND USING ELEMENTAL CONTROL WHAAAAAT.

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

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

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

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

That was about the extent of that segment.

—

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

So yeh after falling asleep I had a dream I was in Stone Harbor and/or in a movie.

Dream - Stone Harbor in Winter, and Overpriced Pizza
I really hate these Stone Harbor dreams sometimes because Stone Harbor is where we vacation every year and I love love LOVE that place, and generally the dream starts out the day we're leaving. This time was no exception, with the implication being that we'd been there for two weeks, and now it was Sunday and we were leaving (I even checked the day on my computer, whoa that's kinda trippy) and were starting to get packed up. I told Ben that we hadn't even done anything this time, not for the whole two weeks: we hadn't gone to the beach, or into town, and now we were leaving? It would be an entire year before we came back here again! At this point Ben corrected me, saying that HE had gone into town and to the beach, or perhaps implying that I had done those things and just didn't remember. I found this incredibly unfair.

There was another bit focusing more on Jess, where she'd been part of a movie or something. That may have been before the Stone Harbor bit, but it still tied in, with us watching her movie at some point. She was a relatively minor character, I think.

There also may have been some tie-in between the movie and our "real life" in Stone Harbor but I don't quiiiiite recall. Like, maybe some of the characters were wandering around the apartment for a little while, being dramatic. But I'm not sure.

Anyway then Jess and I decided to go into town that night, on rollerblades. On ice. For no reason. Which was pretty fun. I somehow managed to master skating uphill in roller blades over ice while near the water (which I recall being ... somehow very striking). However, the risk of falling in made me a bit uncomfortable, so we decided to move a street over and head back down.

On this street there was a more lively feel, as though it were daylight, perhaps, although it probably wasn't. It was still pretty icy and I had to be careful, but although we were going downhill it didn't FEEL like it was going downhill. Also, where the street would normally be, right at the edge of the sidewalk with no railing, was a deep channel with ice at the bottom, where various ice skaters were happily skating. Close by, a bridge connected the two adjacent sidewalks. Jess was, at first, unconvinced that such a large safety hazard would be allowed to exist like that, but when she neared the edge she realized that not only was the sidewalk around there icy, yes, there were no safety precautions at all.

At this point I got hungry! And I'm pretty sure this is a first in my dreams. It led me to decide to wander into a nearby pizza store that sort of doubled as a fairy tale store place. A strong fairy tale theme, where one would normally expect a beach theme. It was run by a young lady and her macho male assistant, who was a pretty cool guy I suppose. In waking life he probably would've been considered borderline insane.

So yeah I went in there and decided to order a slice of pizza. She said if I had a slice of pizza from another place, I could take advantage of her "two for $6" bargain, or something like that, and get a slice of her pizza for $3. I did not have a slice of pizza from another place but nevertheless I somehow managed to give that impression up until the point at which I was actually ordering, which took like 10 minutes, because of reasons.

I believe I made comfortable small talk for a little bit (which is unusual in dreams, probably because it's unusual IWL, except when I've had caffeine, which I did yesterday, and which I noticed allowed me to be a bit more comfortable in social settings so maybe that's whyyyyyy~), asking her what it was like to run a shop (because I was genuinely curious, which is great because in previous dreams my reactions hadn't been feeling self-motivated and it's great to be back in the swing of things). I tried to ask what she did during the off-seasons when nobody was at Stone Harbor, but what I accidentally said instead was "What do you do on nights and weekends?" and she responded with an uncomfortable silence. I only realized my slip when I woke up, and now I realize it looked like I was going to ask her out or something. And I didn't realize that until I woke up and had a slightly different perspective. THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH HAS BEEN VERY STRANGE AND INTERESTING TO ME. AHHHH.

Anyway, then while she was getting the pizza ready I had to wait like ten minutes, or I don't know there was something about how I had to be read a fairy tale by her assistant. So he gets a book that's really just a bunch of sheets of paper with illustrations and writing on 'em, and starts to sing/read me this long poem/fairy tale. I can't remember the specifics at all, but it was really interesting because we were sitting on the floor, him singing with an absolutely astonishing amount of emotion in his voice, just absolutely belting it out and somehow managing to be very sad at the same time ... and me moving the pages out of the way as he read them, and laying them on the floor in a pile. I must've been semi-lucid, because while he was singing I noticed that I felt totally comfortable, whereas IWL, when somebody fakes strong displays of emotions near me, I automatically feel awkward and uncomfortable. Same when people are singing, though that's been improving lately. And I think the thought had occurred to me earlier as well, while Jess was acting. So I was certain it was a dream and not waking life, since I was directly comparing the two, but that was the extent of my interest at the time (as opposed to wandering out and trying dream powers). I think dream powers just weren't a focus for the moment. Maybe I was too sad about leaving Stone Harbor, and too immersed in what was happening.

Anyway he sang the whole stinking thing, and I listened, and then one of us helped the other up (I was wearing rollerblades so getting up was a problem) and I went to get my pizza. Or something. I think there was a brief bit where he'd picked me up and I was trying to make sure I didn't rollerblade his feet as he was setting me down.

Anyway then I finally told her that I didn't have an outside slice of pizza and she produced a second piece like it wasn't even a problem, and said something about it being 2 for $6. At this point I took a look at the slices of pizza and realized that she'd cut off about half of each of them with a semi-diagonal cut. All in all, I thought it was an absolutely terrible price, and as I was starting to move my pizza slices towards the cashier to pay for them (for some reason she'd given them to me at a different counter than the one with the register), I tried to remember what the pizza back home was like (I wasn't semi-lucid anymore, so instead of comparing her dream pizza shop to one IWL, I was actually comparing her Stone Harbor pizza shop to one back home), semi-successfully managing to remember that in my (IWL current) home county, a small pizza from Little Caesar's is about $8 (home IWL happening to equal the home in the dream, but not because I was semi-lucid). But Little Caesar's couldn't compare to this pizza. I said about as much, making a sort of awkward hushed comment about how the pizza at home was cheaper, but then stating that this pizza was of a far superior quality, so it worked out (which is a lie, because at my college campus I can get a slice of pizza about as big as her two slices, and just as delicious, for $2 and now I'm really hungry, frick).

I was about to dig through my (IWL) Mega Man 10 bag for a good $9 (apparently the price had jumped thanks to my mental number-juggling), but I woke up soon after, I think. Which sucked because I was really looking forward to that pizza, yo.

-

Btw I think I prefer not being in a lucid dreaming competition right now. Like, I just took an hour or so to write out that dream, I think, and were I in the competition right now it would've been worth one point. Goodness.

In other news I'm going to differentiate between what "low-level lucidity" and being "semi-lucid" mean to me. I'll consider myself semi-lucid when I can compare the dream and waking life to some degree, while not viewing the dream as something to be manipulated or changed. I'll consider it low-level lucidity when I'm thinking about how to trick the dream and use dream powers, but am not necessarily aware of the fact that I have a separate life outside the dream. YUP. I hope I made that clear because otherwise it will give me a headache :U

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.

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)

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.

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.

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~