L33tsaber

Before I forget...

I'm in a snack store out by my community college where all the food is behind glass and really expensive (e.g. $5 for a bag of four animal crackers). There were a couple of very tempting pastries, but instead I decide to munch on some graham crackers and a strawberry that I had brought from home. The cashier, however, rings up my snack and scolds me for eating before paying. The total comes to $13, which I argue is totally preposterous, especially because the strawberry was mine and I had cut it in half, while he was trying to charge me for two strawberries. I even try to show evidence that the food was totally mine, but he wouldn't believe me.

So I end up doing a Ghost in the Shell-style mind-link with the cashier, wiping his memory and sending him hurtling into cyberspace for good measure before I make my escape.

So... first dream-bits of the new year.

1. Riding horses to pack down soil that was recently plowed up.

2. Eating entire bags of carrots and celery at a picnic because I didn't want a ham sandwich.

3. A strange version of Bejeweled keeps booting itself and my laptop up.

4. Finding our family's cat, Sophie, in a cabin at a national park that had evidence of a bear break-in.

5. Investigating a strange hotel where the exterior doors all lead to different dimensions. One of my expedition partners has a wolf on a leash. Near one of the doors, there's a falcon of some sort with a reddish-brown back sitting on a dead tree. I say something along the lines of "Hey, Mr. Falcon" and it perches on my arm. As we all head toward the door, I notice a hot orange glow through the cracks of the door. The wolf starts straying in the opposite direction while its handler tries to pull it back toward the door. I ask the falcon if it thinks going through the door is a good idea, and it responds negatively. So instead of exploring that part of the hotel, we end up eating falafel and scrambled eggs from a food cart.

1. Someone projects images of creepy-crawlies all over my walls, and won't let me leave.

2. I can change my curtains by selecting an image on my computer.

3. I'm playing a very strange Mario-meets-Metal-Gear-esque game where Snake has to find and destroy an evil spinning top within a certain amount of time.

4. My friends and I are exploring a bunch of secret doors in my basement, which lead even further down to a fancy bathroom with a bunch of elevators in it. We get into one of them and end up in an elf-village that resembles a casino. There's a currency system where regular coins won't let you play the games, so you have to trade them for special ones by dancing. The leader of the elves kicks my friends out for being human, but for some reason, he allows me to stay. (At which point my alarm wakes me up)

1. Concerns the story of a lion who inherits leadership of the pride from his father, learns songs about roses from an old book, feels sorry for every antelope he eats, and must constantly stay ahead of his twin brother's attempts to usurp his position.

2. Concerns an art contest where the theme word was "snuggle". My entry was disqualified for depicting a girl/girl relationship, and everyone else's entries were also disqualified for equally silly reasons (shiny chins, Pokemon, stuff like that). There was a database of DQ'ed entries that could be sorted by reason for disqualification.

1. I had two goldfish instead of just my IRL goldie, Aristotle. The second one was named Socrates. Socrates mysteriously dies, and Aristotle begins exhibiting the same symptoms. I then have a false-awakening, and note that 'Stotle is still okay, and Soc never existed. Aristotle grows bigger and bigger and turns into an Orca. Someone makes me a saddle and harness for him, and I learn that I can ride (and even fly) on my goldfish-turned-whale friend. Then there's something about a mall, a chandelier, and a shoot-em-up game gone awry.

2. Intimate time with The Boss from MGS3. Woke up in the middle of the dream.

3. During a barbecue party, my older brother accidentally summons an Elder Horror, and everyone gets dragged to an alternate dimension to be said horror's minions. New recruits look like anthropomorphic cherries, and get kicked around a lot. There are rules about what we can say or do, restrictions on leisure time (such as players only getting two turns at pool and then the game is over), and weightlifting sessions are mandatory. Aside from this, however, it's not so bad. Once we get promoted, we go back to our regular form, and the higher-ups are less strict. Procedure in the weight-room, however, gets a bit weirder - every day, someone different gets kicked out of the room, until it's just myself and a few others... including, oddly enough, Anthony Head, to whom I - against better judgment, hey it's dream logic - proclaim my fangirlness and end up hugging him. Then there's some subplot about a guy who manages to escape by turning into a dog.


(So I guess the moral of the story is, it's not so bad being the minion of an Elder Horror, so long as I get to hug my favorite actor in the end?)

1. My family has a coupon for half-off four cones of premium ice cream. I get some sort of chocolate cookie dough flavor, but toward the end it turns to vanilla with the consistency of cream cheese, and I'm eating it out of a foil wrapper instead of a cone. Dad goes on a rant about someone leaving the bottom tip of a cone on the floor and irrationally blames me, even though I always eat the entire cone.

2. Trying to photograph ocean waves, but getting more interested in a plant on the boat.

3. I'm upset about the concept of some new game. (Something to the order of having Sonic the Hedgehog wash dishes and do housecleaning.)

4. I'm walking home at night in the rain through a maze of sidewalks, courtyards, and imposing Victorian architecture. I get to a house that is apparently mine, and head up to the bathroom, while telling my butler (apparently I have a butler in this dream) to have a fresh change of clothes ready. I get undressed, but before I can take my bath, I have to break a bunch of gems that represent some enemy. I'm about to break the last one, but it's chained to one that represents me, and if I break it, it would kill me. So instead, I pull a sword out of my chest (Revolutionary Girl Utena-style) and use it to slice the chain. Then there's a copy of myself on the floor in agony as part of her face breaks into purple light. I kneel down to hold her still and comfort her until it's over.

5. I'm at an anime convention, but I can't find the dealer's hall. The artist's alley is a set of bleachers with the different artists progressively higher on the benches in proportion to their prices. There's a room with food, but I wasn't allowed in, because they said it was "exchange only" - you have to bring food to trade for theirs. But it was all potatoes and zucchini anyway, so I wasn't missing much. I also wander into an art installation where there's a big screen behind you that shows your silhouette in trails of color as you move around (something I remember from the Lincoln Children's Museum when I was a kid, and miss dearly - curse the "adults must be accompanied by at least one child" rule!). I spend a lot of time playing, because I'd probably never get the chance to relive those memories again. When I'm done, the person in charge of the installation invites me to a ballet, but it's scheduled for several months after the convention, at which point I'd be in a different state.

1. I'm on a train with a bunch of drow-elves.
2. I'm in a classroom, sitting on top of a set of cupboards, making a watercolor painting of a bunch of pink butterflies.
3. As an odd form of transportation, I'm among a bunch of people who chase cows to their next destination while riding small horses that can be switched for other horses on a bus. I think I eventually get kicked out because I'm too short for the next horse.
4. I'm forced to attend a church camp. All I want to do is read a comic book I'd brought in peace and quiet, but everyone keeps bothering me because I'm non-religious. Eventually, I can't put up with it anymore, and with the help of The Flash, Green Lantern, Superman, and Wonder Woman, I escape (by opening a window, oddly enough). I try to steal a horse from part 3 of the dream, but instead, I have to take the long route home in order to shake pursuers. There's a lot of hiding in boxes and cupboards, and I don't think I ever manage to get anywhere.
5. I'm running through a forest with a bunch of oddly-patterned wolves. Then we spot a deer, and next thing I know, I've turned into a wolf, too, and I help the pack bring it down.

1. I'm going to a weird school where every day, we have physics class on the moon. I keep floating during the lecture while everyone else manages to remain seated. Eventually, I have to be stuck in a brick structure in the closet just so I can stay on the floor during class. When class is over, I have to walk through the hallways where the school's enormous marching band is lined up on either side with ridiculously fancy diamond-encrusted instruments. During one of the classes, I figure out that I can sort of fly (well, more like gliding) given a place to jump from, and that I tend to notice things the other students don't.

2. I go missing from one of the classes, and it turns out I've gotten aboard a ship in another star system where somebody had set up a bunch of explosives. I deactivate the bombs and return to Earth with the ship, which somehow doubles as a cruise ship when it lands in water.

In light of the rescue, the physics professor decides to give special rings to people in the class who have powers (even if it's just the power of observation) and tells us to be careful with them. At this point, we're starting to resemble a rag-tag bunch of DC characters - we've got a Superman, a couple of Green Lanterns, a Robin, and a few others I don't recall. I wind up being Batman, even though I'm constantly commenting on the fact that Batman can't fly.

3. Our improvised Justice League is wandering around a bookstore. Robin is holding hands with one of the Green Lanterns, and I can't help but note how cute it was. On the top floor of the bookstore, there's a guy who wants to be a Star Sapphire for some reason, even though that's a females-only corps.

4. One of the guys is upset that he wasn't picked for the League. He tries to find the bookstore again, but all he ends up doing is flying around and knocking parts off of assorted buildings because he's too big and he's not paying attention to where he's going.

5. I'm staying over at my friends' apartment where you need a key card from a nearby hotel in order to get Internet access. I decide to go out on the town and have a five-part chocolate cake dessert. Each of the parts has a different unusual flavoring (rosemary-ginger, blood and plums, sour cherries, and so on) and is served in a wine glass. Then I end up drinking something that disorients me, and finding my way back to the apartment is difficult. When I get back, I take a bath, but my towel falls into the bathwater and gets soaked.

1. I'm performing in a play of some sort. My older brother is unusually angry at me, and tears up the costume I was supposed to change into next. As it turns out, he didn't like the subject matter of the play because he'd been given eight days to live.

2. We've managed to patch things up enough that my parents and I take him to a weird place where you can finish a college degree by solving a special jigsaw puzzle. There, we meet a death-spirit who looks like a giant Pikachu with an entirely black tail and has a soothing, deep voice. I have to leave the puzzle-room, but promise that I'll visit in dreams and give my bro a big hug. I eventually find out he summoned the spirit by drawing a special symbol on himself.

3. My friends, my goldfish, and I move into this house that's a miniature nation-state for people who are part Irish. Inside the house, we have to fight a bunch of bosses from Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy. To get our powers, we raise fake swords and Keyblades and recite a somewhat Green Lantern-esque oath to turn them into real weapons. During the fight, I cause significant damage by dancing on the long hair of one of the bosses.

4. I'm utterly depressed by earlier dream events, and decide it's time to summon the Pikachu-looking spirit to myself. My friends don't want me to leave, but they understand. So they help me assemble a comfy bed out of pillows and blankets, while I remove my clothes and draw the symbol- a small circle on the forehead, a vertical line all the way down the body ending in another circle, and upward-curving lines across my eyes, throat, chest, and hips. I lie down on the bed, and the yellow spirit arrives. He tells me to close my eyes, and then when I open them again, to get up. As I do so, I step out of my own body. Before we leave, I gently kiss my forehead, and the glass of my aquarium, where my fish has been trying to get above the water to join me. The spirit informs me that another of his kind will bring me my goldfish later, as it wouldn't want to be without me.


Gah. If there are two kinds of dreams I hate, they involve bad things happening to my brother or to my fishy. The first thing I did when I woke up was check Aristotle's aquarium and reassure him I'd never leave him behind like that, and the second thing I did was check my brother's Twitter feed to make sure he'd tweeted recently. (I must admit the scene of kissing the brow of my own body would make for a kinda neat sketch, though...)

1. The whole town is full of busloads of secret agents who are looking for something. So in order to stay out of their way, I decide to spend the day at a children's museum. In various places throughout the museum, there are little displays, all playing a story about a girl at a dance recital who is trying to impress Bruce Wayne. I go to the museum's theater to see what's playing. Nothing interesting is on the list, but I get a ticket anyway. There's a concession stand outside, right next to a "no food or drink inside the theater" sign.

At some point, the scene changes. I'm going up a set of stairs, and by knocking on secret panels, I find myself at a performance hall, where a dance recital is just wrapping up. I ask somebody where I can find a Mr. Wayne, and I'm led right to him. And then we go out for pizza for some reason.

2. I'm baking a pizza at the house of my former baby-sitter. It's half-meatball, half-maple bacon. She eats the whole darn thing. I go outside and sit on a curb, and somehow find myself complaining about my stolen dinner to Bruce Wayne. So he has Alfred make me some sort of tomato-based pasta soup thing.

3. In some sort of weird alternate universe where Bruce's parents survive, but he doesn't, I end up living with them. There's also something about eggs made of a bunch of different colors of quartz.

4. I'm angry at one of my former classmates for trying to read some stories I've written, so I turn into a great big blue fox-demon and scare her off.

5. One of my aunts gets my Legos mixed up with my cousins' Legos, and can't sort them out again.

6. Batman breathes rainbows when he performs CPR.

7. Something about my brother having to hotwire a really tiny car, the whole sky being like a Lite-Brite, and being attacked by a great big blue lizard-monster with a mane of spikes.


Jeez, just how many times did I dream about running into the Waynes? I swear, there were even repeats of the dance recital scenario. However, in retrospect, I must admit Rainbow Breath Batman is hilarious.

Something about...

1. A woman using a spell that petrifies people and binds their spirit guides.

2. A sheet music book with a lot of unusual selections (like "The Hounds" by The Protomen)

3. Working out on some really weird weight equipment, and then being unable to choose a drink afterward.

4. A room full of pinball tables that functioned a bit more like skeeball machines with ball bearings. A stuck-up lady was protesting a table that depicted some sort of mountain because said mountain got covered in trash.

5. Looking for interesting things at a thrift store. There was a neat black hair-bow with a cute-ified skull bead on it that I liked, but it was attached to a not-so-neat baseball cap.

6. Being stuck outside in a tornado and trying to get to the shelter, which was a combination of a hospital and a huge preschool. And then it turns out that anyone who seeks shelter there has to stay until they graduate, sometimes even after.

1. I'm competing in a race where the winner gets an iPad, and the next few runners-up also get awesome prizes. I actually manage to win, but before I can get my prize, the dream transitions.

2. I can't find our copy of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.

3. I'm at a weird political convention. This crazy guy impersonating the President starts rolling around on a stolen Segway and throwing stuff at people. Then there was something about accidentally eating some spicy food.

4. At a supermarket, none of the prices on the shelves and on the items match up. All the shelves for items that are supposed to store and preserve food are empty. I find a package of adorable little cucumbers for 92 cents.

5. I'm a dragon. The dragon society is a complex one, and could for all I know have come from a book I read or a show I watched. I'm out by myself trying to practice flight, which for beginners is more about climbing to a suitable high point and then gliding off it. There are a few favorite peaks that have sort of difficulty levels among the dragons, and being able to successfully glide from certain ones earns you a certain amount of popularity. In order to fly, there's a certain type of rock you have to consume and process into gas. For some odd reason, this rock is produced by bees.

Anyway, after several mishaps, I eventually manage something that vaguely resembles flight. Afterward, I decide to just explore around and try to find answers to things that puzzle me about dragon society, but I'm told by this great big fire-and-shadow figure to go home since I've already found one big answer today (that is, how to fly).

On my way back home, I notice a bunch of dragons in shackles that identify which clan they belong to - prisoners of war - and I find out that several of the clans, including the one I belong to, are involved in a war against humanity. One of the members of my clan, a hotheaded young upstart, has gotten it into his head that he can destroy all humans by attacking the source of all magic, which humans have grown to depend on heavily. I realize this can only end in disaster, so I set out to warn a wizard. But before I can get very far in this, my alarm goes off and I wake up.

1. My family and I are visiting my paternal-side grandparents. In our car, there's a weird bottle with the Joker's eyes, hair, and mouth on it, the idea being that you hold the empty bottle up in front of your face and it makes you look like said Clown Prince of Crime. For the lulz, I end up singing "no, he can't read-a my Joker face~" (despite how much I can't stand the actual song in waking life)

When we get to the grandparents' house, I get a call from my friend that she's not going to pick me up for our vacation until a day later. I get remarkably upset.

2. Something about a machine that weaves incredibly soft T-shirts out of only a handful of cotton fluff. Threading the machine is a bit of a challenge, and you have to hold on to the end of the cotton throughout the entire process, but the results are cool.

3. Something about sneaking into a building through an air vent.

The only thing I can really remember about this dream is trying to do the stage makeup for my cosplay of Sander Cohen from BioShock, except for some reason I keep putting green, black, and gray base on (from my Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name Zombie cosplay, I presume) instead.

This dream fragment involves messing up a cosplay. I normally have dreams about forgetting the costume entirely halfway to the convention, but sometimes they involve putting on the wrong parts. They usually serve to remind me to finish up my costume for an upcoming convention, but Zombie's already finished, and Sander was for last year's cons. I do need to get to work on GraveRobber from Repo! The Genetic Opera, though.

I'm attending some kind of school for ninja. Dinnertime involves putting all the food on a merry-go-round and spinning it so that the faster and more clever students are able to grab more to eat, and the less adept tend not to get as much. I fall into the second category, of course, but I do manage to snag at least a couple handfuls of blueberries.

For some reason, a lot of the other students are moving out, including one who oddly resembles Sasuke from Naruto. I beg him not to leave, since he's one of the few friends I've got. Though I couldn't persuade him to stay, he gave me a big stuffed animal, and then asked if he could keep a box of crayons I'd just had lying around the room.

Some time later, I'm outside an enormous school building where some of the other students are standing around, including one of my IRL friends with whom I've fallen out of touch. I say hello to him, but he doesn't respond, and turns around and walks inside.

Inside, the building is fraught with tunnels and booby-traps, and to get anywhere is a challenge. One such challenge involved getting through a series of rooms, some of which were full of lava, in order to find cat toys to appease an evil kitty in control of that section of the building. Getting to the top rooms is even trickier, because there are guards everywhere - especially just hanging around the walls on the outside. I take out some of the guards with an energy whip that I produce from the palm of my hand (somewhat like a cross between a grappling beam and a Spidey-esque webshot, only invisible and not sticky) but I have to be careful which ones, as they start shooting at me if they notice, and I have to duck back inside.

At some point, I find myself over a football field, where a bunch of guys are kicking balls off the balcony and seeing how far they fly. I use my energy whip to throw balls, hoping to knock off more of the guards. Then just about everybody in the school gets called into the field (including the guards) to practice singing a graduation song, and I duck back outside thinking I'll be in the clear for at least a while. But soon the guards are right back where they were again. The next time I get spotted, the guards call in a helicopter, and I cycle through a Metal Gear Solid-esque weapons menu to find a rocket launcher with which I take down the copter. This causes a little message to pop up saying I've earned an achievement for saving this one girl who may or may not have been one of my ninja classmates.

Another guy tells me he's taken care of most of the guards, and that I should be able to get to the top of the building now, where there's supposedly some sort of party or dance going on. I'm very nearly there, but there are two more guards on a catwalk a few feet below the spot where I'm hiding, and I cycle through my weapons menu again to find a tranquilizer pistol. I manage to hit the guards, but after that point I wake up.


This dream contains video game influences (especially MGS), people I haven't seen in forever, anime characters, and being back in high school.