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Lucid
Non-Lucid
Not Dreaming

Since I recently joined this site, I decided that I would start off with a more interesting dream from yesterday, also known as my fourth ever lucid dream. Let's get started.

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At this time, it was about six days from my last lucid dream. I had been doing WILD for quite some time, as well as a bunch of preparation before sleeping. This night, I jumped into bed and did something a little differently. I started out with WILD, then I went to simply saying in my mind "I am going to lucid dream tonight" about a hundred times over until I finally fell asleep.

-----
I found myself in a line of soldiers. Not in the modern militaristic sense, but more of a medieval sense. I think that this was because I had been playing Mount & Blade for hours last night and the world almost completely reflected it. There were at least eighteen men in the line, counting me. I could see a man on a donkey riding in front of me, holding a shortsword in his right arm. It's hard to explain, but he said something like "It's time to punish those dogs!" to all of us. We instinctively cheered in response and I teleported onto a brown horse while wearing a helmet. A soldier on foot walked up to me and said "Your sword is not right!" or something. At this time, I looked down at my sword when suddenly I obtained lucidity. I did a quick reality check and sure enough, I was completely lucid. I looked up to see that the sky looked more painted than realistic, and that the battlefield looked like its grass was from Mount & Blade. I decided to have some fun and kill my fellow soldiers, so I leaped off my donkey with my sword facing down as it landed right in the chest of my brother-in-arms. It seemed so real that even the blood was realistic as it dirtied my sword. I even felt a bit of remorse for the fake soldier. I checked his face and decided that he also looked like he was from the video game. I saw another soldier mounted up and I pointed my sword toward him. I'm not quite sure how I did it, but I managed to knock him off the side of his donkey with some sort of shockwave. He landed right on his head and his helmet rolled off. Unfortunately, I lost all lucidity after that as a bunch of flying imp-things wielding flaming spoons flew over me, swooped down, and tried to beat me to death with them. I must say, this was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. It was definitely the most vivid and enjoyable dream to date and I got to have some fun with mindless violence.

Quests Galore

I decide to play an old Harry Potter game for nostalgia's sake. I finished the main plot long ago, but there are a bunch of bonus quests that never did finish, and none of them are easy. You have to save up a lot of gold before doing them. After collecting some money, I try starting one of the quests that I've heard is particularly hard--not because of difficult battles, but because the quest is sort of a mystery and it's hard to guess where you're supposed to go next. Indeed, a glob-like creature rises out of the darkness, eats most of my gold, and vanishes without a trace. Well, that got me nowhere. So much wasted time gathering that gold.

I decide to give one of the other quests another try. It involves defeating a ghostly horse-riding warrior. I've tried it before, earlier tonight, and I know that he does a lot of damage, but at least the objective is straightforward. I ride down into his canyon lair and we immediately start fighting, repeatedly charging down the canyon and passing each other like we're jousting with swords. If I hold down one of the trigger buttons on my controller (like the R2 button on a PS2) it will charge my attack, so that if I release the button at the right time, the slash of my scimitar will do lots of extra damage. The trouble is, he's doing the same thing, and we're both losing health at about the same rate. In fact, I'm about to die!

Hurriedly, I pause the game and try to find a health potion in my inventory. While looking around in there, I realize that I also still should have Armageddon's Blade, an epic weapon that I received for completing the main storyline all those years ago. I drink the potion, unpause, and run away from the ghostly warrior to give myself time to search for the sword. I'll also have to ensure that I'm suitably fireproof so that I don't kill myself as well when activating the sword's epic power.

Somehow I end up in a village with a friend of mine, a girl, accompanying me. While I'm talking to some NPCs, she sets off to do a different quest. The NPC remarks upon her departure, saying in a commiserating tone of voice that "women are ever unfaithful." Irked by his sexism, I try to explain that women are people too, and this one just happens to be busy at the moment: "There are only ten slots in our inventory, and we're each trying to do about twenty quests at the same time," I say.

Circumlocution

I'm hanging out with my dad's friend's son, whose father is there as well. The father makes a casual remark that I respond to at face value--then I realize that between the lines, he was actually saying that his son is gay and he thinks I ought to start going out with him. Apparently he thinks I'm gay as well. I'm impressed that he can say this much without actually saying any of it outright: it's the only logical interpretation of his comment. [I can't remember the exact wording of the comment, but presumably it wouldn't make as much sense in waking life anyway.] I add something to my previous response, hopefully making clear that now I understand his second meaning and I'm actually not interested in guys. The son does indeed interpret it that way and hurriedly responds, "That's fine." I suppose he probably feels a bit uncomfortable about his dad's attempt at matchmaking.

Previous hours:
Feb 20, 0:00-8:31
Feb 21, 3:40-8:30
Feb 22, 0:25-8:33; frag: doing touristy stuff

Sex with My Cousin (LUCID)

[Okay, yes, awkward subject. The label "lucid" makes it seem like incest was a dream goal of mine, which I assure you is not the case. And it should go without saying that in waking life, although I do think she is attractive, we are certainly just relatives, with all that that entails. Please don't shun me!]

I'm outside, near a cottonwood tree, when I realize that I'm dreaming. I try to force things to happen, but the dream blurs, and I remember that it's better to try to work within the dream logic. How might I fly into the air within this system? I notice a strong wind at my back: perfect! I let myself be blown into the sky.

What next? I know that it's considered cliche and unrefined to try to have sex in a lucid dream, but at the moment I feel like doing it, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. Again, I try to think of how to make this element come naturally into the dream. Where would I find an interested girl? Hmmm. Probably I can just imagine that she's flying in the sky somewhere out there in the distance where I'm going. And indeed, I soon notice a distant speck growing larger, which turns out, unexpectedly, to be my cousin. We hold on to each other to keep from flying apart. Clothes disappear and not much copulation happens, because I wake up.

Frags:

• playing a really awesome new platformer

Previous hours:
Feb 15, 1:40-3:25
Feb 16, 3:50-9:00
Feb 17, 23:56-9:26

Baby Ghost

I'm playing a video game. There are five main sections of the storyline and they all have a specific name.

I've just finished a quest involving a baby child in a crib, the heir of a royal family. Somehow I start watching a trailer for the game, which I slowly realize is a cinematic retelling of a later section of this same storyline! Spoilers! But on the other hand, who really cares about spoilers, and the story is interesting. Apparently the baby later dies, and his ghost comes back to haunt the crib. I'm standing in a corner of the room at night when the ghost appears in that corner of the room. It attacks me, and I have to defend myself with a magic sword. Later on, Snape is having a conversation with someone when the person betrays him, stabbing a dagger into his side and cutting all the way around the outline of his body.


[I've decided also to add a star rating system to the titles of these entries, since what's the point of titles if not to give some indication of how interesting the content is:

*: fairly uninteresting
**: mildly interesting
***: unusually interesting (e.g. unusually long, unusually detailed, or unusually important)
****: interesting in content and impressive technically (in dream recall or control)
*****: life-changing, awe-inspiring, and the like]

Previous sleep hours:
Fri Feb 1, 2:23-8:30

Cross-Dressing

A guest on a talk show demonstrates his attempt to dress like a woman. Then there's a video clip showing him in the outfit that the show's hosts create in order to teach him how to do it better. The outfit is red and black with bows in various places. I'm impressed. It makes a distinct statement while also seeming to suit the man quite well.

Group Project

We're working on our project (which is due soon) when suddenly we get assigned a new group member. That's really unfair. We have to add a new section on "Charm" (as in charisma) in order for there to be enough substance in the presentation to accommodate a new member. The rest of the group votes that I should work on this section, and it's clear that they mean this to be derogatory (by implying that my personality needs a lot of work). We sit in hostile silence for a few minutes. I decide to give them the silent treatment and work on my own for the rest of the project.

Saruman

I'm working with some friends on a level in a game. In a room near my character, a wizard starts leading a ritual which we cannot allow to be completed. We try to run amid the gathered orcs and kill things, but there are just so many of them! I score a lot of hits, but I can't see the health bars, so I don't know how much more work will be required. And I'm not focusing on just one target at a time, either: I'm just running in circles and loops, slashing at everything that I pass. I pass the wizard and take a swipe at him, but then I get a better look at his face. It's Saruman. I feel scared, now--I'm not prepared to face him.

Slightly Daring

I'm sitting in someone's lap. Feeling a bit daring, I squirm around a bit, ostensibly in order to get more comfortable.

Climbing

It's the beginning of the last level of a game. I have to climb up a rocky slope on a mountainside.

Hanging Roller Coaster (1:32)

[This dream isn't very cohesive. I had trouble falling asleep.]

I'm in line for a roller coaster. It's the last ride of the day, and the line is long. You ride the roller coaster like a zipline. Suddenly all of the hangers start moving at once, which surprises me, because I expected everyone to go one at a time, for safety reasons. Then I reach the end of the coaster and start going backwards. No wonder people went one at a time [??], because otherwise we'd run into each other at this part of the ride. Somehow I realize that I'm dreaming. I exit the boarding platform by using a series of coat hangers along the wall as if they were monkey bars. I realize that I'm not having much fun, and what I'd really like to be doing is having sex. I sort of just start imagining the accompanying pumping motion, and before long I wake up somewhat messily.

Stronghold Minigame (9:43)

I've had this game for a while, but on a whim, I decide to explore the menus for a bit. I find out about a prison minigame, which supposedly happens any time you get captured in the main storyline. The rules say that the game is only 6 minutes long, and you have to complete five smaller minigames in that time. Sounds like it would be pretty challenging to finish. I decide to try it. Next thing I know, I'm browsing through a menu of screenshots for each of the possible castles that you can try to escape from. The screenshots all have different dimensions, and they fit together like a well-planned, orthogonal collage. It's pretty cool. One of the wider screenshots catches my eye, and I choose it.

My character (a female) appears on the roof of an apparently vacant castle. Something bad happened here to drive out all of the inhabitants. A voice-over explains to me that my guards were killed as soon as I landed here, and they'll be no more help to me now. I see a soldier pacing a nearby tower, but I'm not sure how to reach it. Presumably he's an enemy, and the pathway for the level will bring me over there eventually to fight him.

I immediately start grabbing as much loot as I can. I need armor and weapons. I look behind me and see a dead dragon that apparently crash-landed into the edge of the roof. That must have been how I landed here--I rode the dragon. I run over there to see if there's any good loot. The dragon's saddle is decorated with two lightsabers, which are of course totally outside the universe of the game. I must have downloaded a Star Wars texture pack. I turn away from the dragon and notice my own lightsaber floating in the air about twenty feet up. It's hard to see because the camera is at about the same height and it's difficult to manipulate. I use the Force to pull my lightsaber toward me and pick it up. Then I find some armor and start investigating the rest of the rooftop. I keep picking up everything using the Force.

There's a child standing near the edge of the roof. When I approach her, she comes alive and starts talking to me. She lost her family in the chaos of whatever just happened, and she's willing to help me now. I cast a glamour spell to make the child look like an old woman. This will protect her somehow. The spell animation looks like a flying dragon's head.

Inside a small rooftop building, I find a furnished room. This is where the child's grandmother lived. I find a wooden box lined with felt rows, each containing smooth, round stones colored pastel green and red. The stones are about the size of a penny, and they have various lumpy irregularities. They are powerful magical artifacts, and I want to take them with me. I use the Force to group them into a ball, but the stones have a Force of their own which repels them from each other. I can't close my pocket, so as soon as I put them in there, most of them will pop right back out. I try anyway, but things happen exactly as I expected they would. That's probably why the wolf that invaded the castle didn't take these stones with him. The wolf was good, but the grandmother was better. I wish I had a ziploc bag or something to hold the stones together.

Suddenly Dad calls from a nearby doorway. The family is loading up the car RIGHT NOW, and I'm expected to do my part to help out. Obediently, I wake up.

This was the second dream that night....
I was friend with a girl that I believe was Srey. I think I fancied her, but she was not very interested as I felt. Once I went to meet up with here at a Ponton Bar. This was a place like somewhere in Hawaii, nice, wooden bar on the water. Srey and some other people were diving and I could see them in the water. But I also noticed some sharks swimming around. I think someone got bitten when they come out of the water. The bar inside was dark as if not used.

Next, I went to see Srey to a shopping mall where she was working in a little shop. I was there and she had a female friend there. We were talking what we doing this weekend, and she told me that she is really busy, even without me asking her out or anything. I saw her calendar, and a red bar as it was filling up on the weekend days.

Later I walk on a street and meet this friend of Srey. She stops me and asks me if I cold help her to get refund for her bikini that she bought on the market. I remember asking her whether she worn them at all. They didnt want to take it back from her. We went with her to a big warehouse where all sorts of stuff was sold from vietnamese and other sellers. I dont know what happened after....

***At some point in the dream I was going through my hair and tried to make it spiky at the back. I then felt that there is way too little hair on my crown area. I look in to the mirror and saw that the hair at the back of my head is too long to keep it spiky, and how ridiculous it looked. But I also saw that I had only patches of hair left on my crown. Also the skin on that area was all red and with dry pieces of skin. I got quite scared of how quickly it progressed!!I was actually thinking, whether I should cut my hair short like Martin. I was there deciding what to do!! I should have realised it was a dream, or do reality check!!! Next time I will
Then I see Richard Bandler. I look at his hair, he has just a little left. Then I see a video of him from the time when he was young! He has head full of thick, curly hair! I think, shit!! If this is how he changed, than we all be like this. And then I start to think about life, how quickly it passes and when one gets old, its too late for anything. We should enjoy our life when we can. I start considering to go and travel, to see the world, even for the price of not developing great carrier...... ***

Next, I am PA for some guy that plays computer games all the time. He lives in a room in some kind of complex of flats, but the place is very empty and simple. He sits in the corner and plays on his phone. I notice that he is playing ASPHALT like I do. Next I see as if I was in the game. He shows me how to do different tricks. He has the best car in the game, its black, Lamburgini style. He uses big black rock and pushes them in to the way of others so they crash. He also waits, facing the opponents with car and when they run him over, his car is like a jump, and propels them to some kind of blue tunnel, where are concrete block to which they crash. I think, how smart it is.

Then, as if in the game, I am standing by the race track and walk on the side a little, near some gas station. I stand there by the railing and watch across the scenery. Then 3 guys came near by, and start talking about me (as I think). They talk about my back and posture, how bad it is and how I am sloughing. I notice that, it shocks me!! How bad my posture must be, and I slowly adjust my posture again so that they wont notice.

Modesty (6:57)

I've stayed the night at an acquaintance's house, but we're not exactly friends. In the morning, I'm looking for a bathroom when I pass a room where he's talking with some friends. They see me. I'm not wearing a shirt at the moment, and I hope they don't think that's rude of me.

Challenge Level (6:57)

I and a friend have decided to play the challenge dungeon in this game. It's the sort of freakishly difficult level that's unlockable at the end of a game in order to get the player to put in a few more hours playing it. So my friend and I are running around this dungeon, working together to kill monsters. So far, it's only been one monster at a time, albeit tough ones. Then we run around a corner and I accidentally step in a shallow pool of lava. I jump out again quickly. Then we're attacked by a Charizard. It almost kills us before we hide behind a corner. I charge up my breath attack, then step around the corner to hit the Charizard with it. It takes two shots, but finally, we succeed. Then there's a cutscene showing about a dozen monsters marching in formation down the hallway towards us. No more of this one-at-a-time business, apparently. This must be where the dungeon gets freakishly difficult. My friend and I share a laugh, accepting that this is probably the end of our playing today.

Spoiler for sexual content:

Now the camera switches to the inside of the next room. Sort of a sneak peek at what's waiting for us there if we get through the monsters. There's a naked woman having a conversation with some other people. She's distressed about something; something related to living in a dungeon. I'm impressed by the realism of the graphics for her body. It's definitely sexy. Another naked woman comes into the room, and to demonstrate her point about everyone always wanting her around just to be sexy, the first woman says, "Everyone always wants me to do this:" And then she and the other woman get on the floor and start grinding. A couple moments later, I wake up for the predictable reason.

New Digs (8:33)

I'm exploring an outdoor area in a game. There are shiny, giant river rocks buried in the dirt. One of them you can pick up and add to your inventory; the rocks are worth something. It surprises me that there are so many other rocks available--if they make it that easy to make money, inflation will skyrocket. I'm still contemplating the patch of ground when someone else comes by and tries to pick up another rock, a differently colored one. It doesn't work. I laugh and point out that the rock is much bigger than it looks. Together we brush off some of the dirt to see that it's far to big to pick up and add to your inventory. Ah, so that's how the game developers solved it.

Later, I brush off some more dirt, and two beer canisters come rolling out from where they were buried. These canisters are three or four feet long and about as wide around as a typical beer bottle. They must have been left behind by the previous campers. Well, they're ours now, and I'm sure we'll make good use of them.

Still later, I'm looking around the cabin with my new roommates. I remember the beer canisters and I go back to where I found them, in a corner of the room. I find two more canisters, and soon after, I find the original ones, as well. I distribute them to people around the house, then wonder whether it may have been a mistake to break out the alcohol so soon. Another girl is giving me a worried look that says she's wondering the same thing, so I try to reassure her (and myself) that it'll be fine.

I declare to my friends that I believe I've "met the room." You see, I've been feeling stressed and out of sorts, and I think it's probably just from the change of circumstances to this new home. Now that I've had a look around it, I have a much clearer idea of where everything is, and hopefully I'll start feeling more comfortable. But as soon as I say so, I realize that I'm still not clear on a lot of the details. I take another look at the cabinets around the walls, opening them one at a time to see what's inside. Some of them might be wardrobes for my roommates, and I avoid those, because looking in there would be a bit rude. When I get to the kitchen, I'm surprised to find that the cabinet directly above the sink is not actually a cabinet at all. When you open the door, you just see a space between the two neighboring cabinets, and a little triangle where the roof comes together at an angle. Not very well-insulated, to be sure, but it's attractive in a rustic kind of way.

I take a look at our computer network. The operating system is basically just a UNIX shell with a blocky monospace font. Somehow I find myself in the directory of my onetime girlfriend (who's one of my new roommates), and I notice that she has folders named "SAIL," "Manchester," etc. [These are videos made by "Nanalew" on YouTube. Obviously I've never met her, but somehow my mind conflated her with my old girlfriend.] It's cool, somehow, seeing those directory names. It somehow invokes the idea of working hard to make something really cool.

I feel like I should get to work on my homework assignments soon. I know I have them, and it's not an overwhelming amount of work, but I've been chilling out and doing peripheral things for so long that I might be in trouble if I don't get started soon. I'm feeling a bit stressed, which makes me sad, because, of course, my current life goal is not to feel stressed. I go back into the main room and tell my old girlfriend about it. She sympathizes, and she recommends that I take a "two-thousand word nap."

"A what?" I ask. She explains that it's some bad advice that she read somewhere about what to do when you're stressed about homework. I suppose a two-thousand word nap must be between five and ten minutes, and the reason it's bad advice is because when you're up at four a.m. to finish a paper, if you go to sleep at all, you might not wake up again before morning.

While she's looking the other way, I contemplate how lucky it is that she's sort of back in my life again. I wonder if she'll be at all interested in cuddling when we're doing homework together, or what have you. I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that cuddling is better than not cuddling, but maybe she would want to avoid it because it would make it seem like we're dating again.

I go into another room of the house, where there's swing music playing. Nobody's there except one woman, who shows me a new move called the "Haymitch" [or something like that]. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, but it seems to involve standing shoulder-to-shoulder and pointing with your outside hands. I decide that's enough of that and take my leave to go to another part of the room. On a whim, I dance a bit by doing a hopping move for four beats in a row. Afterwards, I feel it went surprisingly smoothly. Maybe I would actually be good at swing dancing.

Stormtrooper (7:51)

Somehow I've found a Stormtrooper uniform. I put it on to disguise myself as I walk through the enemy complex with the rest of my partners in stealth. It's uncomfortable to have the mask all the way on, so most of the time I have it lifted (it has a visor that slides up a bit like a space helmet, and a separate part that slides up to reveal just the mouth). Then I have to put it on again quickly when another Stormtrooper comes around a corner, so they don't see that I don't actually have the same face as Jango Fett.

Somehow we get caught. An alarm might have been involved. Now we're in a small room with about twice our number of enemies. Not many of them are armed--they're just officials of some kind--but there are two people with lightsabers. Almost by accident, I take out my own two-sided green lightsaber and start attacking them. I barely have a second to hope that the rest of my group takes that as the signal to start fighting our way out of here. The people with lightsabers go down easily, and I realize they were never Jedi-trained. Somehow they just found those sabers and tried to pretend they could use them to discourage us from fighting.

Once we kill everyone, we go back outside. There's a hole in the bottom of one of the overhanging upper stories, and I realize that must be the room where we fought. I remember randomly slicing a couple of stone columns in order to add to the confusion of our escape.

Homemade Board Game (7:51)

I'm not sure exactly what the avatar for the player character in this game is supposed to be. All of the art is a bit exaggerated and cartoonish, and some of the recognizable structures seem much larger than they are in real life. So my character is probably some kind of small animal, but I can't see well enough to tell what. I'm almost out of the building when I realize it's a worm. Curled up in a spiral and bouncing along on its tail. Ah.

Outside, a spider and a woman with a lightsaber are waiting to kill me. I hide in a tunnel while I try to figure out what to do. My primary weapon is some kind of projectile weapon that I charge by holding down a button, then fire by releasing it. I'm not completely sure how to aim it. I try charging it while behind a corner, then briefly darting out to fire before hiding again, but my accuracy is not very good and despite my cover, I come very close to dying. Then I wonder if maybe the spider and the lightsaber-woman aren't actually allies--maybe they'll start fighting each other if I can get them close enough to one another! I run out to find that they're already fighting. With one last swipe, the woman kills the spider. Without waiting for her to notice me, I hit her with my own lightsaber. Her health bar was low enough that the one hit kills her.

There's a cutscene: the camera pans across the street to a view of one of my allies on top of a flat-roofed building, then zooms in on an enemy climbing up an outside ladder. I have to kill that enemy before he gets to my ally, but I'm really far away. I took too long with the previous battles. My main enemy is not present, but his booming laughter accompanies the end of the cutscene, mocking me for my inability to help.

I run as fast as I can, charging the gun and trying to gauge how much I'll have to lead the guy on the ladder in order to hit him from this distance. My aim is not very good, though. . . .

Later, the enemy is dead, and a third ally has joined me and the other person (a woman). He reports that all of the enemies are gone, but now he will have to "let her blood." A double agent! Before he can speak another word, I punch him in the face, and he goes out cold. I get prepared for the woman to insist indignantly that she could have defended herself, but she doesn't.

Later, the woman is my sister. She's explaining that before the enemies attacked, she was working on a new board game that she designed with a friend of hers. She shows me a table of instructions. It's in German, but I manage to work out that there are four players, identified by the German words for "Northeast," "Northwest," etc. But then there's a fifth player that must be "Central." That worries me. There's no way the gameplay can be equivalent for all five players when one of them starts in the center. With four it would be fine. I debate trying to explain this to my sister. Later, I see the actual gameboard, which is apparently not symmetrical at all. It's divided into irregular territories on a continent. Lots of the territories have a picture of a building or other structure on them, which I assume are the structures that can be built on that territory. Some of the structures are portal rings, others are orc strongholds which I think are the places where each of the five players starts out. There are only two or three territories separating some of the strongholds, which seems too close to me, but I decide not to criticize that, either. Let her have her fun.

Horse and Lava (8:45)

I sit down to play a game I haven't played in a while. I don't mean to play for very long, but when I finish the first level, I'm intrigued enough to play the next one, as well. I don't remember exactly how it goes, and it seems like it will have distinctly different game mechanics than the previous one.

It involves riding a horse around a 3D landscape. If you fall too far, your horse lands on all four feet and just stands there, but the screen fades to black and you start again from the place you fell. I guess they didn't want to make a horse death animation, in case it traumatized the little kids that play the game. Anyway, I manage to climb down a cliff into a red, rocky canyon crisscrossed by streams of lava. I don't think I was supposed to come down this way, but I complete the objective and then find my way out of the canyon by the way I was supposed to enter. Jumping over the streams of lava takes precise timing, and you can feel the heat of it at your back. I keep expecting some difficult enemies to appear, but they never do.

At the mouth of the canyon, three ghostly ancestral figures rise out of the sandy ground. They declare that since I have succeeded in my objective, they will allow me to do one final task to gain their assistance. We start to travel together across the sands, then the scene fades to black and reappears again at the beginning of the next level. My character laughs and tells his horse that he can't come, this time, because of the nature of the task. So it looks like I'll be doing this level on foot. Well, that's different enough that maybe I should try this level, too. I try out the controls for walking around on foot, because I'm not really used to them.

Unethical (8:45)

This game has a top-down view similar to Heroes III. I'm currently being told how the two nations I'm looking at have been unfairly put upon because of their small size. In fact, on the map, each "nation" has a grand total of two buildings. It's an example of that tendency in video games to compress the world. Right now, one of those buildings is being robbed of all its valuables, because the nation doesn't have enough guards to patrol it. My parents send me over to grab some of the loot.

The interior of the building is covered in rolls of coins. When you click on a coin, it disappears, revealing some of the floor underneath. One of the first structures I reveal is one of those ones that enhances your stats when you visit it. That makes me feel a bit better, since it seems I was intended to visit this place. I hear some of the high officials of this nation discussing the robbery. I'm not sure where they are, and I'm not sure why they're not coming in to find me if they know it's going on. I feel bad for them, though. I take my loot and go back home.

My family starts doing stuff with the loot, and suddenly I become utterly convinced that this was unethical. We didn't need this stuff. At the very least we could have left it for some other, needier people to steal. I try to explain this to my parents, but they don't agree. I try to take inventory of some of the loot to prove it to them. Most of what I took was coins, so probably 99.9% of the value of the loot came from that. But we also took a lot of food, so I try to sort it in order to get some kind of handle on how much excess value we took. It takes some time to get everything together. The whole time, I'm just feeling a sort of righteous anger at my family. I get through to them, a little bit, but I still need to gather up all of the candy we took. My family all start eating Starburst and--to my incredulity--dropping the wrappers on the driveway. Littering, on top of theft? I yell at them a bit and then start peeling the wrappers off of the ground (they're wet). There are way too many wrappers here for them all to have been dropped in the last few minutes. They must have made a habit of this over months.

Soon after, some cars pull up at the bottom of the driveway. Law enforcement, probably. I'm happy they're here, even if it means I might get in trouble for being involved.

Oops (8:45)

Birgitte walks onto a bus and announces herself. She has brownish skin. There's a big man standing on the bus with his arm around a girl with blackish skin. It is understood that this man is Gaidal Cain, so he must've mis-identified this other woman as the one he was destined to be with. Oops. He look sheepish. Stepping away from the other girl, he attempts a suave introduction of himself to Birgitte.

Frags:

• a youtuber who makes videos about sexuality

[I've decided to start including some timestamps: when I got in bed, when I got up, and when I recorded each dream.]

In bed from 11:18 to 9:05

Beware Lava 3:29

The eldest competitor first learned to channel a long time ago. An image of burning matchsticks appears. Then the matchsticks burn almost all the way to the point where the person holding the matchstick would get hurt, and the fire gets blown out. That's what happened to his ability. But he's still part of this competition. He's competing against two of his own students, both female. They start in separate, nearby rooms in a Minecraft world, underground. I'm playing as the teacher. He walks around the halls and sees that the doorways of the rooms of his students are blocked by collapsed ice. He's competing with them, yes, but he still feels like he should be nice to them. Back in his original room, he finds a back passageway that he can open using his ability to conjure fire. It leads into the room of one of the students. Then he shoots more fire, but he quickly realizes that it's getting out of control. The student in the room doesn't yet even know he's there, so he'd better warn her.

"Run!" he shouts. Without waiting to check that she does, he drops the wide bucket of water that he was holding. That water is an important resource, and he can't allow it to warm up. Heat is dangerous, here. I start trying to conjure some ice by first pressing 1 to select fire, then Enter to conjure a ball of fire in my hand, then 2 to switch to ice, then blowing on the ball of fire to freeze it, then throwing the ball of ice into a pile on the floor. All of these different buttons are tripping me up, and it's not going very quickly. Suddenly he notices that he forgot to freeze one fireball before throwing it on the floor. It's probably warming up all of the ice balls, making them completely useless. The air in the room feels very warm, and when he picks up the bucket of water, it's warm, too. The floor is especially warm, which probably means that there's lava rising below, melting the ice out from under his feet. It's time to get out of here. There's not even enough time to gather up what few supplies he has. He just runs--back into his original room and over to the far corner, then out with the pickaxe and start digging furiously. To where, he doesn't know. He has no supplies, so he's basically starting over.

An announcer starts speaking over the top of the video, something along the lines of, "Will he survive, alone, without resources, in the dangerous world into which he heads? Find out next time on 'Impossible Minecraft Campaigns!'" Meanwhile, the man is thinking that this was only the first of three episodes, and he's worse off than he was at the beginning--so it's unlikely he'll even survive the next one.

[This dream seems to be partially inspired by the dream incubation (?) I did before going to bed. I imagined myself in a forest, chopping down a tree, when I realize I'm dreaming and then start throwing fireballs everywhere, starting a forest fire. The heat was an important part of the scene, although it was supposed to be awesome, not terrifying, like it was in this dream. There was even a time where I imagined holding a fireball and then blowing on it to turn it into a ball of ice. So it seems like the dream incubation did something, although it was very indirect, and it didn't trigger lucidity.]

Group Hug 6:38

[I don't remember the main plot of this dream, just a side plot that I probably remembered due to its uncomfortable nature. My middle sister has always been trouble.]

Spoiler for Group Hug:

I'm watching TV in a room with a bunch of people. My middle sister is lying on a couch that's directly under the TV, facing away from it. I hear a moan from that direction, but it takes a couple of seconds to register that that was not a usual sound at all. I stare at my sister, wondering if she's dying from some wasting disease. I wonder if I should ask her if she's okay, even though that would disrupt the movie. Then I realize that the moan sounded almost sexual. I'm not sure. She's covered in a blanket, so she could be. . . . I avoid looking at her directly, but from where she's putting her hands and the disgusted sounds the rest of my family is making, it seems like she's probably masturbating.

Later, the main plot has taken the family driving in a car to another place. We get out and I start talking to one of several men standing outside in a group. It's an important conversation, and our discussion basically resolves the main plot. Towards the end, one of the other guys in the group starts muttering audibly to himself. I can't understand what he's saying, but it's distracting, and I realize, delightedly, that that's the point. It's a joke that when you mutter to yourself, you never know what kinds of conversation you might be interrupting. Or that no matter how important your conversation is, you might still get interrupted by a random muttering dude. Either way, it's funny. We all start laughing, and then, to my incredulous surprise, we go in for a group hug. We pretend like we're going to exclude the muttering guy, but then we let him in. All in good fun.

Later, all that's left is to wrap up a few loose ends. My middle sister came with us because she wanted Dad to buy something that removes semen from a uterus. Turns out there was a secret passage that comes up underneath that couch. One can reach it by going through the false back of a cabinet under the TV. So she had actually been having sex with some guy who came through that passage. We never saw him, but when the truth came out, we also found out that she's worried she's going to spill some semen out from the way it came in if she doesn't get some kind of tool to remove it in a controlled fashion. So now that the main plot is resolved, Dad got her some kind of wooden thingy that looks a bit like a spool that should apparently do the job. That ties things up nicely, so it's time to wake up.

I open my eyes into my dorm room and check the time, to see if I woke up in time for class. The clock says the time is 18:90. Converting from military time, I'm shocked to find that it's already evening. Wait a second, that kind of ridiculous lateness usually happens in dreams. And there aren't ninety minutes in an hour. Hah! Nice try. I manage to wake myself up successfully.

Candied Brazil Nuts 9:03

Dad and I park in the driveway and go into the house. A serial killer has been living in here, so we expect there will be a lot of bodies. And yes, there are. A lot of movie stars. There's a living movie star with us now, a young (black) one, and it's tragic to watch his face as he sees all of the bodies. He knew these people. It occurs to me that I'm paying attention to the fact that he's black, when really it shouldn't matter. So I stop thinking about it.

After tidying up a bit, Dad and I get back in the car to head to the picnic. Taylor Swift is on the radio: "We are never ever ever getting back together." Except it's not actually her song--it's a rap song that uses the same chorus. Man, that's what frustrates me about rap. They borrow melodies from classical music and from good pop songs and they just reuse them without adding anything.

We get to the picnic and find Mom. She came earlier than us. She tells us that she meant to clean up the killer's house herself, but she had other things to do first. She didn't mean to leave us with the job. I'm not cross with her about it, but she seems like she's in a bad mood. Then Dad gets mad at me because I forgot to bring the hot dogs. I meant to bring the hot dogs, and I even planned out exactly which hot dogs to bring, but I forgot. One of my sisters tries to defend me by explaining this, but Dad says it doesn't change the fact that I forgot. I suppose he's right. My alarm wakes me up.

Renegade

A recent event has caused a member of the party to turn around and run back in the direction whence he came. The other five or six party members (all of whom are friends in real life) joke about how he's on a renegade quest for revenge--he's so angry about what happened that he's willing to go back an face a werewolf alone, rather than wait to ask for backup. Actually, he hadn't been planning on going back for that reason . . . but a few minutes later, as he comes in range of the werewolf, he decides to kill it. He activates the werewolf transition animation for himself, then (as a werewolf) raises a long, thin sword above his head and charges. He worries about missing, since it's difficult to get the timing right, but he manages to hit the werewolf. With the damage bonus from a charging attack, it turns out to be a one-hit kill!

Awkward

I'm sitting in a room with my parents and my youngest sister. Apparently she heard something at school today, because she asks, "What are tist-estic-cles?" She stumbles over the word as though it's unfamiliar. Oh, dear. As a male, I feel like I should be the one to explain this, but I can't decide where to begin. But then my parents jump in ahead of me and start explaining. I feel like they're not doing a great job of it.

[IRL, that sister is in ninth grade, so she definitely already knows what testicles are, but I guess my unconscious is a bit behind the times.]

Car Solves Relationship Problems

A man on a game show has just explained to the host that he's having some relationship problems with a woman. As far as he can see, he has two options, but both of them have disadvantages. The show host then jumps in to say that all is not lost, because he there's a third option by which he can get the best of both other options! Then the show jumps into a thirty-second explanation of the new option, which is something about buying a new car, because this thirty-second "explanation" turns out to be, basically, an advertisement for a shiny red sports car. The man is a bit nonplussed, and he wonders quietly (so that only I can hear) how many lights they needed to use to get those highlights on the car. By "highlights," I assume he means the horizontal white lines of reflected light along the side of the car that make it look extra-shiny.

Grappling Hook

I'm playing a James Bond video game on multiplayer. On my end it's two-person splitscreen, but there are four players in the game altogether. The person on the lower screen suddenly stops, and I freeze as well because I was screen-looking. But we're nowhere near each other, so I start moving again, hoping that he didn't notice. He's currently in a skirmish with the other two players.

I enter a warehouse. There's a metal cabinet in the back corner that looks worth investigating. I walk up to it, and eureka! Among other useful items, there are a couple of bazookas. I take them, then screen-look again. Accidentally, I swear! But this time the lower screen corresponds to one of the other two players, and both of them are running up behind me. I try to turn around and get them with the bazooka, but my character is moving really slowly. "What am I, encumbered, or something?!" I say in frustration. I've never heard of encumbrance in James Bond games. But that must be what it is--there was too much big stuff in that cabinet. I get off one rocket, and then the others start firing rockets as well. Damn. I get to the bottom of the metal ramp leading to the cabinet; the other two people are standing there, too. The range is really too close to be using rocket launchers, but I shoot again, anyway. And I die. Grr.

I respawn on a lower level of the map, near a raised highway. I decide to try out my grappling hook. There's a target for it (a small beige circle with a sort of raised knob in the middle) on each of the lampposts near the highway. Using the grapple here is a shortcut from the lower level to the upper level, so I see why it would be useful. I shoot the hook at the target and the wire pulls me up, but that just leaves me hanging a few yards off to the side of the highway, swinging slightly back and forth. I try to pump my legs to get a large enough swing that I can jump onto the highway, but I can't get it large enough to be comfortable with the leap. I let myself back down. I try again, this time standing farther back from the light. I'm not going to give myself any time to swing back and forth and lose momentum--the moment I get high enough, I'm going to release the hook. Since the wire will be pulling me forward, I should have enough sideways momentum to reach the highway. It works!

Now I just need to figure out how to go _down_ using the hook. I go out on the balcony of the third floor of a building. It's dark out. There's a security guard in the parking lot below, locking up for the night. The grapple hook target is right on the railing for the balcony, so I attach the hook. I expect some kind of automatic animation showing me sliding down the line, but nothing happens. Well, I guess it's more realistic this way. Manually, I toss down the line. Some how the line attaches to something at a diagonal slope, so when I send my gear down, it slides out into the night like it's on a zipline. The security guard sees the gear going past and starts beating it up with a baseball bat. Shit, that gear's expensive! Hurriedly, I pull the gear and the zipline back up to the balcony. It only takes a couple of tugs. The guard peers in my direction, then suddenly points at me and starts shouting--and running towards my building. I'm not sure how he plans to get up here, until suddenly he shoots his own grappling hook at a target on the edge of the sloping terra-cotta roof that leads straight to my balcony. Uh oh. My only chance is to run past him while he's busy getting up here. I jump over the railing and onto the roof. It's hard to keep my footing as I run to the roof's edge, and I end up slipping over the side and landing on the ground with a painful thud. Okay, realistically, there's no way for me to escape from this. So I wake up.

Ziplines and Triangles (LUCID)

I'm hiding in the woods from the delegation of thirteen Aes Sedai who have come to take me away. Crouching beneath the bushes I listen to them walk nearer, I hope they will not find my hiding place. Wait, no, there are fifteen, not thirteen. That doesn't make sense; thirteen is the magic number. Oh, right--just five Aes Sedai, with ten wood nymphs to guide them through the trees. I look up from the book for a moment, thinking rather lecherously that at least I'll be able to imagine that the wood nymphs are topless green women, like in Shaiya.

My hiding place has become my bedroom on the ground floor of my family's house. I hear a knock on the door, and I know it's because the wizards have found me. They mean to take me away with them to train my magical powers in a distant school, but I don't want to go. They'll be polite about it, at least at first, so I open the door to find my youngest sister with one of her friends. They hand me a letter, which I'm sure comes from the people waiting outside. I take it, but then I flip off the girls (they don't react) and shut the door.

Later, I decide to go outside and look at the cars in which these people arrived. There's no one in sight as I walk down the driveway, but there are six or seven unfamiliar vehicles parked along the sides and along the road. Some look like they came from the early 20th century, and they're painted rather garishly with the names of the institutions to which they belong. I'm not sure how many of them belong to the wizards, and how many to other groups that happen to be in the same area.

When I return to the top of the driveway, I decide to drive in the Pathfinder. It's parked in such a way that it faces down the driveway, so I just hop in and drive it with my bare feet. I don't even have my driver license with me, which kind of bothers me, but this is rather fun. As I go down the driveway, I realize that it will be hard to turn around, so I brake and try to turn the car so that it goes between two of the big pines along our driveway. I slide sideways for a bit, but eventually I make it through and onto the lawn. I realize that I've never gone off-roading in the Pathfinder before, even though it's an SUV with a very off-road-y kind of name. It's fun, bumping along in the grass, but I have a bit of trouble getting the car back onto the driveway where it started. So I get out and walk the car, instead.

As I'm about to go back into the house, I see my mom in the garage. We talk about bikes for a moment. It looks like she's about to take something to the bottom of the driveway. It looks heavy. I ask if she wants help, but she declines. It must be about five in the morning; I wonder if she got any sleep at all. She works too hard. But without asking her a second time, I just go back into the house.

When I reach my bedroom on the top floor, suddenly I wonder if this was all a dream. I do a nose RC. It works! My bedroom is very dark. I decide to try verbal commands. "LIGHT!" I shout. "MORE LIGHT!" The lighting changes a bit, but it's not really any better. There are probably people sleeping nearby, but since it's a dream, that doesn't matter. "WAKE UP, EVERYBODY! THIS IS A LUCID DREAM!" My vision's gone wonky, like there's another image overlaying my bedroom. It looks like a curvy triangle, and I suspect it's the shape my covers are making in front of my face. Not good. Desperately, I try the light switch. Of course, it does nothing. I decide to abandon the bedroom and try my luck outside. I dash down the hall and into my parents' bedroom. As I run to their balcony, I shout some bullshit statistic, like, "Did you know that 80% of socks are hung on the sixth and seventh clotheslines?" Then I grab one of the socks that's hanging over a thick cable slanting down from the outside of the house, and I slide down the cable like it's a zipline, knocking the other pairs of socks willy-nilly to the ground.

I land in a large city plaza full of trees. Miraculously, the curvy triangle has vanished. It's a beautiful day, and there are a few people walking around. I decide to try speed-running down the sidewalk. I turn to my right, and I manage to get some speed, going perhaps twice as fast as I'd be able to sprint while awake. As I approach a heavyset guy my age going the other direction, I notice that he's looking straight at me. I slow down for a closer look. He's smiling, and he's got one hand held out like he's pointing a pistol at me. Well, that's weird, but maybe that's just how DCs say "hi" to people. I laugh and smile back, jokingly asking what he would have done if it turned out he actually shot me by accident. Then I realize that it wasn't a very funny joke. Oops. I elect just to walk away from that one.

The sidewalk ends at a highway where there are a lot of people standing around. Another guy my age tries to get me to play catch with a remote-control helicopter. Agreeably, I climb up onto a horizontal metal pole and get set to grab it. But at the last minute I chicken out. Those blades look dangerous. A few moments later, I [falsely] wake up.

I keep my eyes tightly shut. I might as well try to chain into another LD. I lie still, trying to picture the scene I just left. Then I wonder whether my theory was correct, the one about the blankets making that curvy triangle, and I decide it's worth it to open my eyes and check. Yep, there's that triangle. But wait, before I draw any conclusions, I should make sure I'm actually awake. I sit up and do a nose RC. Oh.

I decide to try using the makeshift zipline again, so I run through my parents' room and slide down. It's not as spontaneous, though, and everything outside seems to be darker and more indistinct. Moments later, I [falsely] wake up again. I lie underneath the covers with my eyes open, not sure what to do. Suddenly I notice the window. It's raining, and it looks like there's a sinister figure standing just outside, staring at me. I sit up in terror. Turns out it was just a tree and a strange trick of the light. I do an RC to find out that I'm STILL dreaming. I get out of bed and decide to try snapping flames again. Just one snap, and it doesn't work. I start trying to picture candle flames in my head, but suddenly I get very frustrated with the whole situation and I deliberately wake myself up.

[I forgot to check whether my covers in waking life were actually making a curvy triangle. I suspect they were not. Also, during the original LD in my bedroom, I said something clever involving the phrase "What the frack." Soon after, I tried to review the moment in my head so that I'd remember it when I woke up. But apparently it didn't work.]

Alex Day's Penis

Spoiler for Alex Day's Penis:

I've been watching Alex Day's newest video. It's almost over. As a grand finale, he apparently takes off his pants (though you can't see for sure, because only the top half of his body is in the shot). I feel like rolling my eyes. But then suddenly he starts messing with the camera, and there are a few frames in the resulting jumble of camera angles where I think you might actually be able to see his penis. It looks like he has an erection. This is over the top, even for him; I'm astonished that he got permission from YouTube to do something like this. There's one shot where he has an empty can of energy drink with the bottom cut out; he's holding it over the top of his penis, I guess to imply that it's longer than it is. I notice that although his penis is quite long, it's rather spindly as well. Heh. The whole time, of course, he's grinning like a maniac. I feel like I should finish what I started and watch this video to the end, but I don't like it. I keep looking at the play bar to see how much time is left.

Study Abroad

I'm visiting an old high school acquaintance while she's studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Feeling brave, I decide to try talking to her in Spanish. She responds in kind, but she talks so fast that I can't really understand her. I do understand that she asks me how much Spanish I've done while in college. Slowly, I manage to formulate a response, telling her that I've studied a bit on my own but she's clearly better than I am, now.

Shootout

[This isn't really a legitimate dream, because it happened this morning when I was half awake and feeling too comfortable to get out of bed. But I definitely wasn't fully awake, and I think it's interesting, anyway.]

Not wanting to get out of bed, I'm entertaining myself by imagining various soccer plays that involve me scoring a goal. The first one is too slow, because I shot with the side of my foot. Ruefully, I remind myself that in order to get any speed, you have to have your knee over the ball and kick with the laces. Then I have more success. I bet the coach is glad about putting me in as forward. Our offense was hurting, before. I'm still frustrated with some of my fellow forwards. Then, one time at the moment when I take the shot, my actual, waking-life right leg jerks as though it's doing the kicking. Surprised, I wake up fully.

Ceiling Parade (LUCID)

With a cheer, the students start walking. It's time for the "Walk the World" parade, which is what it sounds like, except most of the time you're walking on the ceiling. First, the group starts walking up a side wall in order to get to the ceiling. I'm worried about this, since I'm not sure my dream control is strong enough to defy gravity in this way. I get to the ceiling, but I'm at the very back of the parade, and I keep falling behind as we start to walk through the halls of the building. Even though I'm trying to speed walk, I'm still not fast enough. But then, somehow I change my mental approach to the situation. I'd been concentrating too much on how hard it is to walk on the ceiling, when I should really try to take it for granted and enjoy the experience. So I do, and suddenly I'm easily able to keep pace with everyone else. I even jog for a bit and pass a few of them. I hope this isn't a really formal parade where I'm supposed to keep my place in line; if it is, they'll probably be mad at me.

Soon, we're no longer a single trail of people. There are students running every which way all over the building. I notice there are stairs all over the place, which I realize doesn't make sense. No architect would design a building with stairs on the ceiling. But there's not much I can do about it, since I'd have a hard time imagining what a ceiling does look like from the perspective of someone standing on it. There are limits to imagination. Anyway, I see a grinning student cross an intersection in front of me, and I notice he's walking backwards. That looks like fun! So I get in front of/behind him and do the same thing for a while.

Sometimes I'll take a turn and end up in a hallway with no other students. I wonder if I should be worried about this, but I decide not to be. On one of these occasions, I find myself in a concrete stairwell, and I decide it's time to abandon this parade. I'll challenge myself by trying to find my way back to my dorm room. I feel a bit uncomfortable about not doing any of my declared dream goals, such as setting my fingers on fire by snapping, but I think getting back to my room is more important. So, let's see, where am I? The sign next to the door up there says "6", but that's upside down, so I must be near the ninth floor. And my room's on the fifth floor, so I have to go down four flights--which will actually seem like going up four flights, since I'm upside down. Okay. Let's get going.

I go around twice without incident (though I feel a bit disoriented), but the next landing is unusually dark. This is the perfect place to try that finger flame thing! I stand still and snap my fingers. Nothing happens except the lights flicker a bit at the edge of my vision. I try it a few more times, reminding myself that this is a dream and I can do anything I want to do. Still, nothing happens. I wonder if it would be helpful to have a small flame from another source to use as inspiration. Where could I get a flame like that? I try shaking my hand to joggle a couple flames loose, but it doesn't work. I try striking my right index finger on my left arm like it's a match (I'm proud of thinking of that), but it doesn't work either. By this time, there are a couple other students on the landing with me. My vision's also gone funny, like there's a second image overlayed atop the first. I try not to pay attention to it, because I think it means I'm waking up. I snap my fingers a few more times to show the other students what I've been trying to do. This time, I can feel a sort of heat and crackling in the air, but there's still no visible flame. Still, I'm a bit excited, and I notice my vision's cleared up again. I guess that small success pulled me back into the dream. But I don't have much time. Suddenly I realize it might be a good strategy to visualize success--try to imagine what it would look like to snap and have flame appear at your fingertips. Imagine how it would flicker, what effect the light would have on the surrounding environment. I have a good feeling about this strategy, but before I can test it, I wake up.

[I've no idea when or how I became lucid in that dream. Also, I've never lived on the fifth floor.]

Diet

My mom served me way too much food. I'm on a diet, but I guess she doesn't know that, so it's not her fault. Still, I eat only a bit of one casserole, then I get up and leave without explanation. Later, I realize I should have stored my leftovers in the fridge instead of making more work for Mom, but it's probably too late by now.

Platformer

I'm playing a platform game with four player characters. One of them is Mario. I had hoped that the other three characters would have some A.I. to use while I'm playing the fourth, but apparently not. I have to switch between the characters myself, and bring them all individually through each level. You can really sense the evil of the enemies at the end of the level. I get Mario through, but I die when I try to use the next character, because I don't know its attacks very well. I try various button combinations similar to the ones in Smash Bros. and the character does a lot of different animations, but I have no idea what these attacks actually do. I try the level again, and I die again. The people watching laugh and ask me why I'm playing such a weak character. Later, I notice that I've been reset to the beginning of the level, and all four characters are back at the start. Apparently this game has a very low tolerance for dying.

Later, I'm watching Hank and company play the game on hankgames. It's a "highlights" video with a strange title. As the video plays, I come to understand that the unusual word from the title means "dying and then having your dead body killed again a few times." It's funny because it's like adding insult to injury. It happens a lot in this game.

Frags:

• inside with a few friends, asking if any of them has a lighter I can borrow