Summoning specific dream characters -- advice, ideas?

[Renyao]

Working on my dream control, and I'd appreciate a bit of advice. One of my primary dream goals is to meet a number of specific people, most of them fictional characters. For some reason this proves extremely difficult I've already gotten to the point where I can change the scenery by flying around "searching" for the right place, and usually this works -- I imagine it's easier to run into Batman, for instance, on a rooftop rather than in a grocery store. But even though I'm finding promising-looking settings, the characters don't appear. I'll look into closets and behind doors, telling myself "I'm going to find him right...there!" and even visualizing that they'll be inside, and they still won't appear. What's worse is when I try to visualize them into reality and wind up with what I call a "shade" -- really the dream equivalent of an imaginary person, a sort of clone of my target DC which flickers in and out of visibility and doesn't really move or interact much. This is a result of trying too hard to "wish" the character into existence, and no fun at all. I know what a fully solid DC is like, and they're completely different from shades. I've had less than 50% success with every method I've tried. Scanning crowds of people searching for the person, the equivalent of flying overhead looking for the right "scene", wouldn't work so well as my dream settings are often deserted. I've repeatedly visualized my targets, so it's not as if I'm unclear on how they should look. I can't think that visualizing myself finding them would help, as (A) I am already doing that while in the dream, to no avail, and (B) the scenery tends to be different each time -- I could daydream about finding them in a library, but when I get into the dream I might not locate any libraries, and have to settle on a shopping mall. I sort of feel annoyed that I spend a good part of most lucid dreams running around looking for people and places, but being that I'm more or less the demigod of my own dreamworld it feels kind of lame to settle for just wandering around dream-parks or talking to unpleasant dream-strangers Is it really as simple as asking other DCs to bring me this person, or lead me to them? I will try (and try to have faith it'll work!) but my DCs are often hostile. Anyone else have any idea?