non-lucid

Mechanics Realms (NLD) 08.10.2023

I don't know if I was lucid because I would have gone with the plot either way. I was the creator of a video game that is very similar to minecraft creative mode except the voxels are 1 decimeter and there is mechanics that allows for non grid snapped creations that work with physics simulations. The map is an infinite fractal where each voxel just has a color. Players move out from the center and claim voxels that they can then color and manipulate. Most voxels are smooth but you can instead choose to have a little stud which is like a lego stud and the voxels can rotate around them. I think it was called "mechanics realms" or something like that because the physics simulations let you make advanced physical mechanisms like zeplins and such.

When the game started out, the player base was claiming the area immediately around 0,0,0. I could see a map of the players progress sort of like r/pixel. People seemed to like the game but it wasn't catching on right away. This is where I started alternating with another plot line. Outside the game I was one of the friends of the teenage aged kids from Stranger Things. I tried to get them to play the game but they lost interest quickly. Lucas had a big basketball game coming up and I really didn't like some of the players on the other team. They were bullies. Luckily the other team sucked so Lucas won the game.

Back in the game, I added a mechanic similar to the nether in minecraft where there is a plane you can teleport to to travel faster relative to the overworld. When I came back to the overworld I was in a complex and colorful fractal like cave!

Back in the "real" world I tried to tell them about the game while hanging out. I think there was some dialogue but I suck at remembering dialogue. Then I woke up to my alarm.

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• BT: ~23:57, OOB: ~07:34, fitbit score: 80 (6:49 asleep, 0:54 awake, 1:19 deep, 1:41 REM), 200mg L-theanine, 510mg GABA, 50mg apigenin
• Wakings:
  
  1. 01:55 [fb] b/r, no recall
  2. 05:23 [fb], b/r, recall, Failed BTS. Got very relaxed. Several "involuntary breaths". Did MILD on recalled dreams, some relaxing SSILD. At this waking, need to immediately "surrender," "let go," and "pretend I'm asleep". No TYoDaS visualizations for now, too stimulating. Just need to get back to sleep ASAP. Lost my best dreaming cycle, although W2 was actually quite decent compared to recently. L-theanine + GABA may make for better
  3. 07:34 OOB

---

W2: Billiard [DS] Performance
Outdoors, dark/twilight, some wide open space. A performance troupe is putting on a life-sized replay of a world famous billiards match. The actors are encased in person-sized billiard ball costumes and roll around and can bounce off other "ball" actors. Most of the balls are red, I'm looking for other colors. I may see a white. The balls are not perfectly spherical, more egg shaped. There is a strange structure with something suspended from up high, an object (ball actor?) is "shot" suddenly upwards and there is a sharp THWACK or ringing bell sound when it hits what I imagine to be a (slate?) horizontal plate.

W2: Instrument Performance [DS]: Mozart Concerto
Several scenes with me unpacking and assembling my instrument. I can't find a place to put my case and to balance my inst. while doing this. I don't want to do this on the floor. I need to soak my mouthpiece. There are a couple additional players: both female. I hear them playing, one of them is reputed to be quite good, she sounds OK. I see the sheet music for the Mozart concerto?

W2: Mob Bicycle
There is a group of "mobsters" (?), and a very strange "bicycle" made out of a rectangle of metal tubes (about 2-inch diameter). It is large, about 1 meter high, and two meters long. It has a strange "gear shift" device about 2/3 of the way along the top bar that is like a horizontal combination lock of separately spinning wheels. There are no wheels that I see. I'm trying to get (my son S2?) to ride it. I'm pushing it down a hallway(?) it doesn't seem to roll very well. I'm twisting the "gear/lock" mechanism with both hands.

W2: Green Guys
Big group of people indoors. There is a long counter. A group of (four?) identical looking guys, short, wearing green shirts, approach the counter, and begin to sing(?). My son is watching with me(?)

W2: Problematic Audience
Inside a lecture hall, I'm standing at the stage/front. The hall is filled with wide tables, like in a convention auditorium. Everything is on one level. There are people seated all along these tables, there are about 5-6 rows of tables and the tables run the width of the room. There's a person seated every couple of feet. I'm thinking about the people there, I see their faces. They all look older/retired. One guy in particular, to the left and in the 2nd row, I think is a known trouble maker. He's looking at me. He has gray hair. He has a sort of mischievous expression. I know that he likes to ask the speaker very challenging questions, to try to throw the speaker off his rhythm.

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• Wakings:
  
  1. 02:02 b/r no recall,
  2. 04:57, b/r, recall?
  3. 07:04, b/r recall, tried for sleeping until 07:30, ended up sleeping or drifting until 09:00
  4. 09:00 almost no recall
• BT: ~00:09, OOB: ~09:00, fitbit: 83 (7:48 sleep 1:09 awake, 0:50 REM, 1:39 deep)
• Recall quality: generally poor, not vivid, little presence
• I seem to be getting a bit better at falling back asleep, I've had a lot of success this week

---

W2: Final Fist Fight
I'm entering a room indoors, there are 3 guys there, they are my enemies. As I enter the room two of them are securing the door so nobody can get in or out. I say, "So, this is it, eh? OK, let's finish it!" and I immediately put up my fists and assume a boxing position. I'm fighting FrstGrd (WFP). This is a serious fight. We're circling each other. I periodically land some quick jabs: some to his body, and some to his face. [I don't think he ever hit me]. I'm keeping my guard up with my fists in front of my face.

W2: Archery Teacher
Outdoors (?) in some large open area, I'm an archery instructor talking to a group of people about archery, the different sorts of bows and arrows (?).

W3: Roller Coaster
I'm on a roller coaster at a theme part with son S2. I'm saying something about how there are convenient entrances to this ride at different points in the park. We're getting in to the cars, and I'm reaching back and pulling down the safety harness from behind my head down over my body. It's not clear which train we're getting in to, there are two trains there, facing in opposite directions. We're getting in to the last car of a train.

W3?: Button down shirt
I'm (at work?) putting on a button down dress shirt. I think I'll be getting too hot in this shirt.

W4: Woman teasing
There is a man who fell unconscious because the woman he loves doesn't love him back. He is lying on his stomach, and this woman is lying perpendicularly across his lower back and facing me. She unbuttons her blouse flashes her boobs at me. I become aroused and think about going behind her and interacting with her.

W4: Several Brief Fragments

• outside a building, looking up, through a glass wall [DS] I see a naked woman (vague)
• a guy is drinking coffee and walking with his boss

The dream started in a house that was a mix of my house, my guitarist's, and my fiance's houses. My girlfriend and I were getting ready to go to a concert for a band that doesn't exist. We ended up just walking through some suburbs in fancy goth outfits but it was still nice. We then went outback, where there was a super nature-y neighborhood (mainly trailers and tents and stuff but also some houses) where she wanted to check out a listing for a 3 bedroom trailer. We got there and it was a one bedroom/studio trailer with a giant pylon installed through it. Needless to say, she needed to keep searching.

Later, I show a friend (either it was Edynn or one of my headmates, hard to tell) the listing, and it was gone. We continued through the neighborhood and saw drive in theaters playing sci-fi movies about robots and 3D models of trailers. We then came upon an exact replica of my childhood home.

Upon entering, my grandma was in the kitchen. She was talking incoherently and on the stand in front of the back window was a small paperback cook book she authored after she lost lucidity. The book was page after page of incoherent nonsense with illustrations of recipes made from ingredients that don't exist. Think AI generated food but it looked as if they were actual photos. I go up to her and ask "hey grandma, what made you decide to make a cook book?" And she responded by taking it out of my hands, mumbling vaguely about regret, and beginning to tear it up page by page. I panicked and took it out of her hands, to which she responded by screaming at me and chasing me and my friend out the front door.

Before we could fully leave, she stopped and began to apologize to her late husband, which we soon connected the dots as representing an attempt to apologize to me directly. For a moment, we saw a glimpse into the memories she was living through in that moment, sitting on a recliner in front of a shadowy, warped figure. It was like it was projected in front of us and the grandma that was in front of me temporarily vanished. When she came back, we hugged as she talked, and an illustration of a lion showed up behind us, after which I audibly said "oh my god, you're still alive" and began crying in her arms. The whole time I should mention that sad symphonic movie music was playing. I don't remember if I told her I loved her or not. I suppose this whole scene was my brain's roundabout way of saying she was still alive in my heart or something like that.

I woke up crying for the first time ever about my grandmother's death since it happened in September 2019. I suppose I deliberately prevented myself from saying goodbye in the waking world so as to not have to handle emotions that I was still afraid of at the time. I don't know if she would have approved of me being trans or any of the other stuff I came out as since her death, but she tried her hardest to raise me even as her dementia got worse, so I have something to thank her for regardless.


RIP Martha Flinchum, 1933-2019

A very long, completely non-linear, nonsensical dream. I won't try and make any story out of it, just writing as I remember things...


It was around Christmas time and millions of people had gathered to see a Christmas play in a theater. All of the people, including myself, were large nesting doll type things. I was much older, maybe 40-50, and had a husband. The line to the theater was inside a dimly lit hallway, and was so long it seemed to stretch out forever. By the time we got to the theater, the play was ending. We were the last to leave, the stage and hallway so eerily empty now. At the door to the exit a receptionist told us we needed a key to leave, which would have been given to us during the show. I tried explaining to her that we'd got in late and weren't given a key. The three of us talked like old friends for a while before my husband pulled out a key and placed it in it's lock, and we left the theater.

Then, I was in a shop that had tables and chairs set up like a classroom. Outside it had been snowing heavily, and I was covered head to toe in winter gear. I was also my own age again, human, and had no husband. I'd wanted to go out to ski, but didn't have any skis. At the entrance to the shop was a row of pigeonholes with different footwear in each hole. As I thought about stealing a pair of skis, my inner monologue in the form of a pink fairy flew around me and told me not to, but I did it anyways. Then I went outside and skied up and down a large hill of snow for a while. When I reached the bottom of the hill for the last time, I walked into white light.

Now I was in a shopping mall at night, putting on an interpretive dance performance. The mall was covered in a faint purple glow. At some point in the dance, I had a flashback.

In the flashback, there was a large green hill above a small town. At the top of the hill was a giant oak tree. Under the tree, I saw hundreds of bubbles, every bubble containing a moment in someone's life. In one particular bubble, I saw a young girl asleep at her schooldesk. Underneath all the bubbles is a field of roses covered in thick thorns. I had the knowledge that the girl could either return to her life at her desk and wake up, or remain asleep and pop the bubble, falling into the endless field of thorns.

Then I was in a bustling street, and it was the middle of summer. At an intersection in the street a famous band was performing, and thousands of people were packed tightly around them to watch. I was with a friend and wearing a shirt that had a quote from one of the band members on it. The person in front of me turned around, revealing to be the member of the band that said the quote. He saw my shirt and laughed. After the show was over, everyone dispersed into the city. I was walking along a row of shops with my friend and realised I was wearing shorts, even though I hate wearing shorts in public. We went into a clothes shop and I asked my friend to buy me a pair of pants as I went to hide in a changing room. At the back of the shop where the change rooms are, I saw a row of stalls and 2 bathrooms, each with very specific signs above them. The signs had strange requirements like "for very smart women" or "for hat people". I decided to go into a few of them to see what could set them apart. In each of the stalls, every surface had a fullbody funhouse-like mirror that reflected different versions of myself depending on the sign outside. I saw myself with long blonde hair and a purple dress.
There weren't any bathrooms or stalls labeled explicitly for men, so I went into the bathroom labeled "for very smart women". Inside, instead of mirrors there were screens. As I sat down on the lid of the toilet the screens lit up and started to tell me facts about myself. My star sign, my favourite foods, how likely I am to do certain things than other people in my lifetime. When I stood up, the tiles under my feet lit up. The screen told me my height and weight: 4 grams. When I left the bathroom my friend gave me a pair of pink leggings, and we left without paying.

And then I woke up.

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning

Summary of the Night

• Wakings:
  
  1. 01:30 b/r, no recall
  2. 04:45, no b/r at first, recall, BTS challenge, then did b/r even though urge wasn't strong, removed blanket (bed very warm)
  3. ???? recall
  4. 08:07 recall
• BT: ~22:55, OOB: ~08:07, fitbit: 91 (8h 5m asleep, 50m awake, 1:48 REM, 1:28 deep)
• Recall quality: low, not very present, not very detailed or long scenes. Didn't write key words on every waking (particularly the 2nd one?). Ate chips and cookies right before bedtime.

---

W2: Dl's at the door
In house, (someone's at the front door?) I got to the door, grab the handle and give a sudden, fast jerk to open it, in order to surprise whoever's standing there. The Dls (Mk, Rt, old friends of wife E). I'm also walking around with a naked woman, rubbing her (ahem), telling her how much I like it.

W2: Cleaning CH Driveway
Standing outside CH on the driveway up to the street. My mom's there, and perhaps my S1 and/or S2. She is directing the cleaning of branches, and telling us to put them into orderly piles off to the side of the driveway where the ivy grows. (Then she says she's going to move the car up to the street?). I see the branches lying around.

W3: Finding the Gate
Buying airline tickets, them moving to find the gate. I walk away from the counter and am juggling all my belongings in my hands, it's hard to hold on to them all at once. FrFshr is there and is with me, I see him (putting on sunglasses?) standing in some sort of a booth and call him to follow me. I'm talking to people trying to find the way to the gate for my flight. One person is a woman operating a mimeographing machine making a bunch of copies. (Something to do with my credit card?)

W3(?): Eating CD's Cheez-its
Walking outside, suburban streets, (Large tree off to my right?) I'm crossing a road, and thinking while I walk that I need to complete some sort of programming project, and the issue is that I need to something with one IP address in different locations (?), and this is why I'm walking because I need to get to another location. I enter a sort of private walled area (like a plant nursery?), there are people there, then I go farther, and reach a sort of dead-end. (There's a bus here?) (There's a fence?) Then I'm looking at a large collection of crackers, like round Ritz crackers, and square Cheez-its. There are not a lot of Cheez-its, and they're not mine, but belong to ChDw (company "3"), he's not here but I eat them anyway. Then I head back to the "nursery" where I was earlier, and I'm hoping to find a key (to a briefcase?) that I left there earlier, but I have low hopes that it's still there if it's been hanging in public for so long.

W4: Underwater Ballet
Pants down in the b/r

I'm going to the bathroom in a b/r inside a house, and a (housemaid?) comes around the corner into the hallway leading to the b/r, the door is open, I have my pants down, and I decide I should pull them up.

Ballet

I'm observing a performance put on my a group of students. 10-12 are performing. Not on a stage, just in a room in a house. It is a sort of dance/ballet performance. The
"offstage" students and the teachers are standing together immediately just next to the performance area. One of the students is sent in as replacement for a current performer, and then a male student says "I can go in, too!" and he is also sent in as a replacement. Then I'm looking at the performance, and realize that all of a sudden the performance is under water: some of the performers are floating around, and their hair is floating around in in "clouds" like when a person with long hair is under water

My parents and I were driving home on a stormy night and I look outside to see a sign with a red skull and crossbones, and a cloud shaped like one of those diagrams where they have lines branching out in rectangles. A cloud stream went past the car, and I just knew it was called tornado lightning. I asked my father if he had experienced it before and he said yes, and my mother wasn't safe to go outside or even open the car door. We turn onto our street and park next to out mailbox and there's a gray semi truck in front of us, and there's some woman outside. Father rolls down the window and tells her that we can' go to work today. Then the car doors to my left open up and it's a little lighter outside, but I see yellow sparks in the air so I start yelling and telling them to shut the doors, and I go to the front of the car because it's more sheltered, and father asks me 'Why do most of your freakouts happen in enclosed spaces?' I am then skipping down our driveway while holding a knife. I see everything brighten as the clouds clear. I enter the garage, and walk past our three toilets, and into the house. I bump into our roommate and I'm embarrassed because I'm only wearing a t shirt and holding 2 knives. She tells me that "nothing is weird to her" and I feel better, and start walking into my house, and she asks "Can I use your laundry machine? I have so much dirty laundry , it's filled up my bathtub." I then hear my washing machine.

looked through an old dream journal i kept before i found this website and saw this:

6/4/23 (6th of April)
"i was walking down a sunny neighbourhood street with a group of people my age that i didn't recognise. Then i walked off with one of the girls from the group and ended up at her house, asleep in her lap as she watched a video in the middle of the night."

I don't remember this at all, but I thought it was cute :- )

Ethernet Hunt (NLD) 07.19.2023

I had this dream in a nap. I felt really guilty for taking a nap but this dream was funny to me. I am on a street corner with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and my nephew. Mark is explaining that there are ethernets running underneath the city and hackers like to go in there to spy on peoples data. We walk up to a manhole cover. He starts loading a large revolver that has a a flashlight on it. Elon opens the manhole cover and I look in. It's dark in there and I can't see anything. I really want to catch a hacker so I jump in. It is much more spacious and lit up now and there are sets of ethernet cables everywhere. I see a person sitting with a laptop further in and he sees me so he picks up and runs. I chase after him and then the tunnel ends and I find myself in a Subway resturaunt. I find this very strange. I see the hacker run out the door and I chase after him. He steals a bike and takes off but somehow I can run faster than he can bike. I push him over and wake up for a moment.

I see this as a good chance to DEILD so I try to stay still. I am semi lucid and now I'm in a car with Mark and Elon driving on a freeway. I somehow know they are chasing the hacker. They are on the phone with another bilionair who is saying silacious things about my nephew and I somehow know that the person they are talking to is in a car driving behind us. I blink myself into their car and try to stop him from saying these things and I wake up.

Rock Wall (NLD) 07.17.2023

I am currently between jobs IWL but in the dream I have a job that required a lot of communting. After work me and some friends from the job car pool to a convention in full cosplay. I think we chose a theme of Star Wars and I am Darth Maul. At the convention we get to have some fun mock lightsaber fights. It is time to get in line for some event but to get in line you have to climb a rock climbing wall without a harness. My friends ditch me and one of them even makes fun of me saying I will never make it. I feel like he reminds me of a couple of my ex friends combined into one person I no longer like them very much. When I make it near the top of the rock wall the hand holds become very parilous and I look down wondering how hurt I would be from the fall. It is very far. A few people in cosplay at the top try to help me up and when I am locking hands with them I wake up.


Fight Pits (NLD) 07.17.2023

When I fall back asleep the dream continues but it is changed. Now instead of cosplaying at a convention I am am playing a computer game where I am playing a kobold character. The friends from before are now a clan I was in that betrayed me. There is a big gladiator PVP minigame I am joining. It is a lot like Runescape and I know my chances of winning are really slim. I have a oak long bow with iron arrows and a bronze scimitar. My armor is leather. I tell a much higher level wizard that my friends abandoned me and he says he will look out for me durring the fight.

It is time for the game to start and the coloseum gates open. Everyone runs in and starts fighting eachother. I use my long bow to widdle people down and somehow get the last hit on some people! Finally there is only one other player left and I am out of arrows. It is a woman with mithril armor on. She says she is impressed I made it that far and raises my hand saying "And in second place!" The crowd is very happy. Then she finishes me off. lol

I'm sitting on a couch in my grandmother's old house. Next to me is a boy I feel a faint familiarity towards, and at least a dozen cats. There are cats everywhere, and they can talk. The boy is talking at me and I acknowledge what he's saying with nods and gestures, but I don't engage in conversation, I'm more focused on this house full of talking cats. Their ability to harness the English language is normal to me. There is one cat in particular im talking to, and she's telling me that my grandmother had left all of them here and that they were starving. It's been years since my grandmother had lived there, so I feel incredibly guilty. I ask the cat why they didn't just leave, but I forget what she said in response.

I start walking to the cats' food bowl and a mastiff-looking dog appears from behind me, who can also talk. I fill up both the dogs and the cats food bowls and sit back on the couch with the boy. As I look out the window into the backyard, I see the shadow of a man walking along the hedges. Everyone in the house quietens. The cats seem to know what this is, but I don't. Then, a small jack russell appears from around the corner of the house where the man seems to be standing, and starts sniffing along the hedgeline. Strapped to the jack russell is a backpack seemingly loaded with gadgets, similar to a crude bomb in appearance.

Seeing this, a deep primal fear is now seated within me. I shakily ask the cat who the two are, and then I woke up.

I snoozed several times as I set my alarm hours before work started.

I sit on my train to class, and a bunch of girls sit with me, giggling. I skip class and end up going to the Bahamas instead, I meet an American internet friend whom I share memes with every day as well as my friend from the Bahamas. We have a deep amd personal conversation together with a lot of laughs. we have our our photo taken together, but the guy we ask to take a pic of us Snapchats himself instead. A photographer then takes a poor quality pic of us. I then go home. My mom asks where I goes because my teacher from 3rd grade said I apparently went to "Monaco" that day, I laugh as I knew she'd say something like that, giving a speech about how I'm misunderstood by the people while cycling home, but she's too far away to hear me and stopped listening as she came across a friend and had a long conversation with them instead. My imaginary friend Elise makes a cameo and takes a photo of me as a robot part, saying "You're my little screwdriver, aren't you?" while winking at me before I wake up.

I went to elementary school where I, because I apparently kicked over their drinks at one point, kept getting beaten up my this group of very big and strong men. This would occur every lunch break for weeks and I'm pretty sure people ssw me get beaten up but we're too afraid to interfere. At some point I was considering getting my strong friends to become my bodyguard and help me. I was sitting at home on a rainy day, about to have to leave for school when I told my parents, who looked like Boards of Canada for some reason, slowly what was going on, I was building up slowly to that part when I suddenly woke up.

Dream was in English

Another long lucid! Even if it was split in the middle. And a TON of dreams overall! Though they took forever to type. Slept at 12:30.

Dream #1 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Something about driving and LGBTQ. Woke up at 4:00 and WBTB.


Dream #2 (Non-Lucid):
I was reading about a closeted gay eighth grader, and of course since it was a dream the scenes popped into my head like a TV show. MC was in a warehouse with his friends, goofing around, when he looked in the mirror and said, "You know what, guys? I'm going to go do it, I'm just gonna do it, why am I waiting for high school? It doesn't even make sense."

He was talking about doing the nasty with a girl, but he didn't really want to. He was just trying to prove to himself and everyone else that he wasn't gay. When he headed for the door, my feelings of opposition seemed to affect him. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. I physically typed out the words I wanted him to say: "You're not gonna stop me?!?!"

Then I wrote out his friends' response: "No?"

One laughed in confusion, another scowled. I remember crossing out a comma and replacing it with the question mark, then being sure to emphasize that one of them was scowling.

MC said something about "three men," and the angry friend became even angrier. "Of course not," he snapped.

After that MC was tempted to say the same thing about "four men," but he chickened out because there were four of his friends there and the risk of them catching on was too high. I accepted that, just glad that he'd changed his mind, and he left the warehouse.

The plot changed. I was now actively in the dream, as myself yet not myself. I lived in a big house with my "grandma" and brother Z. He and I were in "our room," and when I gazed out the arched window into the night, I saw a peculiar black cat rummaging around, eating trash. I was fascinated by its strange appearance and wanted to interact with it.

It was past midnight, so I waited for "Grandma" to go to the basement before sneaking downstairs and opening the front door. I whispered for it to come inside and eat something edible. It obeyed, but the granny was coming back upstairs so I fled to my room.

She definitely knew I'd been down there, despite Z trying to cover for me. (He was not himself either.) However, she let it go and sat down with the cat at the table, saying that they had to have a long chat regarding me.

At one point she called sweetly to me from the kitchen and snapped at Z when he spoke up. He was holding a "full" glass of regurgitated yogurt (it reached the fill line, but that line was barely one fourth of the cup). It was not abnormal in the dream, but I was disgusted all the same.

———

Woke up at 5:00 and, after journaling, sat up and really focused on becoming lucid. I explained what it meant, quickly performed MILD, and upped my awareness of myself and my surroundings. Then I went back to sleep, lucidity the last thing on my mind. (As in, the final thing I was thinking about, not something I didn't care about at all... I hate English.)

———

Dream #3 (Lucid):
First thing I remember is tagging along as a man led Harlequin down a flight of stairs. We were in her dream. Once we reached the bottom of the steps, we could see an oasis-like place at the end of the hallway. But when we looked back up, we realized we had descended 2000-feet-worth of stairs, and Harlequin's family was screaming her name at the top of their lungs as if she had died.

Trying to keep things under control, I asked, "Are you going to go to the oasis?"

She frowned and scoffed, "My brain drew that with MS paint." Then she left the dream. [I don't remember what she looked like because I wasn't paying attention.]

What a waste, I thought, and went to check out the oasis myself. It was really just a small room with a pool of water, cabinet, window, and carpet, but I sat down on that carpet and became lucid.

I attempted to increase the vividness and thought it was working, but when I woke up I couldn't remember how it looked so maybe it wasn't. I also believed myself to be more clear-headed than I really was. To my credit, I was able to remember the Task of the Season and decided to complete a basic task: asking a dream character what will happen tomorrow!

I phased through the window and emerged a couple stories above the ground, a tree swaying in the wind below me. Everything was a bit unstable so I grabbed a leaf and tried to focus my attention on it as a stabilization technique (as Oneirin suggested), but it didn't work very well.

Somehow I got out of there and ended up flying down a street, chasing after people in cars and trying to get them to answer the question, but every one of them just flashed weird looks and drove faster. Finally I peered into the passenger window of one car and saw a one-year-old baby strapped into a baby seat in the middle. Next to him, on the far side, was a 12-ish-year-old blond boy.

"Hey!" I yelled to the baby. "What do you think will happen tomorrow?"

He glanced at me and started lifting his arms out of the harness straps. I assumed he wanted to get closer to the window, but if a car struck them from behind and he was unbuckled I knew he'd be dead.

"Uhh, no, no, don't do that," I said, and suddenly a horde of skinny, black-bodied, white-headed, Bendy-like creatures rushed toward the car with their arms outstretched. Altogether they resembled the Wall of Flesh in Terraria. I was kicked out of the dream and replaced by a fourteen-year old anime girl.

She flew through the car and grabbed the twelve-year old, sending them tumbling out the other side into an alleyway. The car was destroyed and the boy watched his baby brother get ripped to shreds, one layer at a time. But he wasn't fazed at all! In fact, when the girl held out a hand to him (third person POV), he blushed and took it!

She was a dream superhero of some sort, and there was the sense that she had saved many people from those creatures many times before. She wore red gloves and a short red skirt, black sweatpants, and a black sweater.

At some point they were hiding in the "|" part of a "T"-shaped alleyway, and the boy was able to keep the creatures out by stretching his body to disturbing proportions. Even as the nonexistent observer I was very confused.

Once the creatures cleared out, the boss of the girl appeared. With a smile they said, "You must be [name]'s reincarnation."

[Name] was a very powerful Dream Hero, the most legendary of them all, but the girl was not her reincarnation. No, that was a different girl, and she was back at the lab undergoing testing. MC reminded me of Akko, and the reincarnated girl reminded me of Diana (though she looked like Neiru from Wonder Egg Priority).

MC was having trouble keeping her face stable (it was actually glitching) and started to deny it, but cut herself off. "Is- is Izzy here?" (Another Dream Hero.)

Don't remember if anyone responded, but somehow it was revealed that the boy had "done this before" and was actually a member of their organization. When she heard that, MC flushed with rage and grabbed his collar.

"Say that sooner!" she shouted. She was embarrassed because she'd been under the impression that she'd saved a helpless civilian, and now felt stupid for being so proud.

She stormed out of the room (the alley had gradually morphed into a hotel room) and I returned to the dream, lucid again. I had very little memory of what had happened and zero awareness of having switched with the girl. But I realized I still hadn't gotten an answer to the TotS question, and ran back to the boy. He was being carried like a sack of potatoes by an invisible person.

"What should I do tomorrow?" I asked. (Phrased it that way because I thought he might not respond to "what will happen tomorrow?")

He glared at me, and the vividness of his voice increased tenfold as he spat, "I think you should die."

I actually got goosebumps from how clear and angry his tone was, but brushed it off. The style of the dream had become cheap and pixelated, and I turned to see Mafuyu lying flat on the ground.

I sat next to her. "Mafuyu, what will happen tomorrow?"

She probably assumed I was asking her out and responded, "Saturday is sad day." (Both she and I were under the impression that tomorrow was Saturday.)

"I see. Sad day, huh." I sat by her a little while longer before standing up.

Each hotel door was themed to match a Project Sekai character. Kanade's was first, light blue and decorated with solid circles and hollow triangles. I cracked it open and found her wrapped up in blankets like a burrito. Sensing that I would wake up soon, I decided it wasn't worth interacting with her her.

I hurriedly moved on to Mizuki's sparkly pink door, but for some reason, I knocked this time. I called her name, excited to hear her response, as she and Mafuyu are my favorite characters.

After a pause, a very accurate voice responded, "Yeah?"

I asked the question, but before she could answer the dream faded and I woke up! Nooo! But at the same time, yesss, to this amazing lucid!

———

I was surprised to find it was only 6:25, but it took me an hour to finish writing, so I didn't get back to sleep till 7:30-ish. I wasn't very tired, so maybe that's why I kept waking up and had all these dreamlets.

———

Dream #4 (Non-Lucid):
This was on the border between a hypnagogic hallucination and a dream. I was in the kitchen and one of my parents dumped milk and acid in my head. Then I was in a dark void, walking down a floating runway and smashing open doors with an axe. I found my dad in one of them. He had murdered my mom. I raised my axe and killed him. Woke around 8:00 and WBTB.


Dream #5 (Non-Lucid):
I was being driven somewhere in the middle of nowhere to tutor a kid my age. I was very confused, saying that A was the tutor, not me. But they didn't listen. We nearly ran over a fallen tree and had to get out of the car. It was foggy outside and there was a lake nearby.

When I demanded answers, my mom grilled me in return about how I got my voice recorder. [Answer: I biked to the store and bought it without her knowledge.]

"I told you, I just found it in my stuff!" I protested, speedwalking away.

I came across my brothers and a group of old friends, the only one I could see properly was a kid named Blake. He was holding a football and I asked if he was copying me, as I was playing catch with a football for two hours a couple days ago.

Don't remember his response, but I took the football and asked if I could punt it. He refused because there was a lake in the distance and he didn't want it going in.

Woke at 8:27 and WBTB.


Dream #6 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Forgot everything when I opened my eyes. Something about flowers. 8:46 WBTB.


Dream #7 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
(Illegible.) 9:06 WBTB.


Dream #8 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Lifting weights. Later I was in a store and Harlequin was there, asking how to get home. I directed her to a staff member. 9:19 WBTB.


Dream #9 (Non-Lucid):
I was driving to a therapy session, though not doing a very good job. In the end I had to lift it up like a chair and force it into a parking spot within the building. Switched the parking brake on and it finally settled down. A girl next to me was doing the same. Some time later people were watching the dream on a screen, admiring the "perspectives" and skill of my "internal camera." I was a little uncomfortable.

Plot change. Someone had filmed a TikTok of me saying, "Do you want your madlad chicken? -goes off-screen and returns a couple seconds later- Sorry, they aren't allowed in the café but here are some french fries and ketchup."

It had 12K likes and I was wearing a dark blue plaid jacket and mask. It repeated a few times before showing the aftermath. S was grabbing me and pointing to a bundled-up customer.

"Merlin," they said. (Not my real name but that's what they called me in the dream.) "You have to figure out their identity. Once you do, you'll be shocked."

But I could already tell that the twist was that they were gonna be my doppelganger.

At some point I had a false awakening and when I was writing down the dream I added, I was covered in leaves (thank goodness I remembered that!).

Woke at 9:47 and got up for good. Kinda sad that none of them were lucids, but oh well.

Pics of the dream scenes, and a map of the third dream (yes I am totally copying Harlequin):

I'm in the car with my dad and we're driving into the town that I grew up in. As we're driving down the streets, I look around and notice how much it has changed. The school I used to go to is all new and so much bigger than it used to be, the roads have been updated, everything is so much flashier than it used to be. There are new shops and houses all over the place that I've never seen before. We park in the parking lot of the shopping centre my dad and I used to go to every week, and we enter in through the back way that we'd always use. For the most part, it looks the same.
I'm excited to see the people that I grew up with again, considering its been about 3 years since I'd been here. In the grocery store, each aisle is littered with teenagers talking and messing around with each other, but there isn't a single kid I used to play with. I recognise some of the faces, being kids who live in my new town, but none of the ones who went to my old school. None are kids who I'd shared classrooms with. I realise it's been so long that I've forgotten the faces of everyone who made my childhood what it was. I go back to my dad whos in the self checkout and dejectedly tell him none of my old friends are here.
We walk back through the rest of the shopping centre to the car park. I look around, the shopping centre is the same. The neighbourhood and the school and the people might've changed, but this mall is the same as it always was. The $2 store, the fish and chips shop, the spices store, it's all the same. And then I woke up.

Also, tomorrow is my birthday