SPOILERS for Over the Garden Wall ahead, not many really, but yeah, I would recommend watching it.

So, I was watching Over The Garden Wall and I kept hearing theories about “what is the unknown?”, “what is the point?”, and “who is this character or that supposed to represent?”

Watching theories on the internet, I keep hearing “purgatory”, “the afterlife”, “shared dream”, “different dimension”, and “Dante’s Inferno”, all of these were quite unappealing. I even rewatched it with each of these in mind, and am rewatching it again with my wifey.

So I take a long think about these and add them together and I realized that all of these had the same element in them, “the unknown”. Now don’t get me wrong, it has elements of each of these things. Dante’s Inferno’s argument is even pretty valid until you get to the beginning credits and end credits, where everyone that they left is happy and with the person that they love again. This made it not purgatory or an afterlife either, because things weren’t perfect after, they were just better. More like Greg and Wirt just came in and made everyone’s lives better and then left. These people live in The Unknown, they were not just passing through, this gives the idea that even though it is fall and then changes to winter. In the original script they actually were supposed to be gone from Halloween to Christmas, but decided to change this. So the idea of time not flowing in their world when they are gone should probably be replaced with “time flows differently”. This place isn’t a “known place that we have a million theories about”, but an “unknown place” a place that we have heard about a little in the past and it bears resemblance to things that we have heard, almost like the beginning mentions:
Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history,
Lies a place that few have seen.
A mysterious place, called The Unknown.
Where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.

This idea is that it will resemble things that we have heard, but only like it was passed through a crazy game of telephone. This made me happy, it isn’t explained, it doesn’t make sense, it just exists. This unknown is something that we see everywhere, and it reminded me of other TV shows that had all sorts of unknowns like “LOST” and “How I Met Your Mother”, and what do bothe of these shows have in common? One would be “the island”, “the others”, “the smoke monster” and has about a million other things that are explained. The other one has the elusive “mother”. What is the other big thing that they have in common, other than this “unknown”? The Finale sucked. I am sorry that everyone in America feels this way. I actually didn’t mind either of the Finales for these, but I was expecting a less than “amazing ending”, so I wasn’t surprised when they all fell short of excellency.
It wasn’t until this unknown became known that the TV show sucked. It is this unknown that we are seeking. By “we” I am not talking about everyone, I am talking about us, the ones that find LDing and think that it sounds like the best thing ever. Not because of all the things that we know about LDing, but because of all the things that we don’t know!

I am also someone that really likes horror movies and constantly reads creepy things on the internet, being able to put myself in someone’s shoes makes it easier for me to be scared by things, but that has changed with time and “lucid nightmares”. As much as I love scary things, it is hard for me to be scared by anything anymore, especially since I found about “the unknown”. Knowledge is the cure to fear, as long as an unknown exists, there is fear. I used to be quite scared of the ocean, not a fear like “I will never go into the ocean”, because I have been in the ocean quite a few times, but a fear like “I love hearing good scary stories about the ocean, because of the amount of things we don’t know about the ocean”. After doing research about the ocean and finding awesome things under the water like:



Really cool animals, this made me happy, but made me realize that the ocean probably isn’t as scary as I thought, it really just is similar to the rest of the world. All my fear gone… sad.

Back in the day, many stories and things were commonly accepted, about the ocean, about the woods, about the sky, about under their feet, and about anything far away. They always feared things that were unknown and things that they couldn’t know. Now we have something that takes all fear away

lol, but seriously, the internet has taken away our fears that are as primitive as forests, oceans, mountains, skies, etc, but it has given us new fears to try and take it over, “conspiracy theories”! Trying to get people to believe that things we thought were known are unknown. That there are big gaps in things that actually effect us that we don’t know. Contrails, flat earth, moon landing, narwhals, alien reptiles, etc. Lots and lots of theories all telling us things that we can’t really disprove (leastways not sitting on the internet, due to conflicting stories). People back in the day didn’t have what it took to disprove things that people told them, evil things that lived in the woods that turned you into a bird, why not? Of course, fairy tales, scary stories, and scary movies try to make the person that simply ignores things like this as stupid, because they are always some pretentious guy that doesn’t believe in ghost stories that gets killed first (or second depending on the diversity of the cast).

Now I look to childhood, where we are always afraid of the dark, under the bed, forests (I had one near my house growing up), scary stories are all scary, because we can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, we read books about cats, dogs, and monsters. lol. Why shouldn’t these exist? You kind of forget that kids believe everything that they are told. I remember the look on my daughter’s face when I said “Here, eat a hotdog”, and she looked at it with disgust and started asking where Zatana was at. I of course had to tell her that it wasn’t a real dog, show her Zatana to assure her that she wasn’t eating a dog. Of course we weren’t eating a dog, but we eat other animals, how would she know that we aren’t just throwing dogs in our oven?

So knowledge doesn’t seem to be the right answer for what takes away fear, but knowledge of the difference between reality and fiction. So two things seem to be awakened by the unknown, fear and excitement. Fear that something bad that you don’t know is there, and hope that something good that you don’t know is there. I started applying this everywhere like I do everytime that I find something interesting.
Lucid Dreaming. Fear and excitement.

When we first start lucid dreaming, we are taking something incredibly unknown, not just to ourselves, but to anyone. You aren’t going into A dream, you are going into YOUR dream. Fear is going to be there. I am not going to be the one to say “don’t fear a lucid dream”, but that you will eventually wake up, no matter what horror comes, there will be an end.

When we first start lucid dreaming, we are taking something incredibly unknown, not just to ourselves, but to anyone. You aren’t going into A dream, you are going into YOUR dream. Excitement is going to be there.

I don’t really know how to say this, but this unknown is the biggest driving factor and driving away factor for almost all things in this world. I don’t know how this applies to all of us, but it seems to clear things up for me. haha. Let me know what you guys think, let me know if you have any insights like this or near this.

I also don't know if this is the same across the board, but this is something that I always enjoy. I think that this is what it is like for most people that hear about LDing and want to join it are driven like this. This is why it is hard for us to understand naturals, because they seem to have a different motivation.