Thread: Task of the Month for October 2014

Hmm, most of the tasks actually seem unique, which surprised me. I guess I'll do the first of the Basic & Advanced tasks.

Off-topic: Earlier today, I passed out after returning home from class and had a vivid lucid dream. Even though I knew it was too late, I decided to do one of last month's tasks, because I simply found it too good to pass up. I intended for mine Patronous to be a hawk, but instead it turned out to be an Australian pelican. Odd.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

Get ready:

(media)

Hmm, interesting videos.

BUT...

Not as hilarious as THIS video:

Maybe it's my parental side thinking this but in that scary girl video the people being scared are so close to the street. Watch someone panic and run to the street without looking only to get run over by a car.

Hi everyone

So, this is my first post at dream views. I've been lucid dreaming for quite a few years but I've been having a rotten dry spell so I decided to up my game. I've been listening to the podcasts and reading a lot more about lucid dreaming. Boy did I break that dry spell last night.

So I discovered the monthly/yearly tasks yesterday (truly awesome concept) and I thought I'd give it a try. Here's how it went:

I was in a regular dream talking to a friend about lucid dreaming. I told my other friend beside us that she'd probably end up having a lucid dream just by hanging out with us. Anyway, in that moment I did a standing in dream WILD into a lucid dream in my bedroom. Finally, was my first thought. Then I remembered the monthly task and I walked over to my kitchen where a sheet was on the ground. I thought "I'll just check out my pumpkin under the sheet" when I pulled back the sheet a big old pumpkin was there. I pulled off the top which appeared to be already cut and found the usual pumpkin entrails inside as well as my car keys. So I figured I'd go for a drive. I grabbed my keys and went to my car and reversed down my drive way, trying to remember the other tasks as the dream seemed pretty stable.
I passed my shed and stopped the car, remembering the blood challenge. I went inside and found a tin tool box and thought "this is where I keep my blood" so I opened it and found a yellow plastic cup filled with blood. I picked it up and drank it. It tasted like blood always does in my dreams, it was thick and warm and the only way to describe it is "sickly". I'm not a huge fan haha. Anyway, I drank it and decided to turn into a werewolf. I chucked the cup away, felt the moon on my skin and watched my hands as my fingernails grew into claws. I attempted a howl and then went swinging through the trees with my new found strength. The dream was still really stable which was awesome. So I went into my neighbours house and found their closet. I then thought about a halloween costume being in there and opened the doors. Inside were Hermione's robes. I put them on and looked in the mirror and saw that my hair had grown all Hermione like as well. Then I heard people in the other room so I went in and decided they were Hermione's mother and cousin. I cast a Leviosa spell and said to my mother "look how clever I am" then I cast the killing spell and killed her and my cousin. Hahaha sort of an adventure I guess!
After that my awareness moved back to my own house, to a room that doesn't exist. I remembered the worst fear challenge and a large wardrobe appeared. Very much like in the Harry Potter movie. The doors opened and a sort swirling entity emerged representing a boggart. I asked my worst fear to appeared and it transformed into this strange wooden gnome. I was truly frightened of it and had some false dream memories of this thing haunting me. So I grabbed it and broke it into little pieces, my sister came in and asked why I was so afraid and I said "it builds itself again! it can't be broken!" I think the fear was to do with a sort of uncontrollable and creepy break from reality that sets my nerves on edge. Hahaha, anyway I asked for another fear and it turned into a type writer which said "lazy" on it. I'm a writer so that is quite terrifying.
After that I decided to wake up and write it all down.




I'm super stoked about this dream! I've never really used expectation that much but it seems to be highly effective. I would've like to spend a bit more time with each challenge but clearly I was feeling a bit over eager haha.
I'm so happy to be a part of this community, I can't wait to get to know you all!


(Sorry I'm not sure how to create those read more sections of a post)

Congratulations! That's one awesome lucid dream you had there! Thanks for sharing it and glad you broke your dry spell! I hate those too.

Haha ^^ I know right? I think someone even honked at one guy who darted across the street. I always worry about sudden heart attacks as well.

However.... that cat in the middle of the scary girl video, I laughed so hard at that.

Pranks are fun but I never considered just how risky. lol And in the dog/spider video...the guy running up and down the stairs in a panic getting caught in the spiderweb could have fallen down the stairs. If I had to choose falling down the stairs and getting bruised up as opposed to being eaten by a gigantic spider I'd choose the latter. lol

Originally Posted by starletdreamer

Pranks are fun but I never considered just how risky. lol And in the dog/spider video...the guy running up and down the stairs in a panic getting caught in the spiderweb could have fallen down the stairs. If I had to choose falling down the stairs and getting bruised up as opposed to being eaten by a gigantic spider I'd choose the latter. lol

Well I'll get labelled as a fogey but I do NOT think pranks are fun, I think they're irresponsible and stupid. People who do them are morons. Anybody who sets up fake stressful or dangerous situations either to shock, or for "research" to gauge reaction (who would help the person in distress?) deserves to get their blocks knocked off . My favorite videos are ones where the tables are turned:

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Well I'll get labelled as a fogey but I do NOT think pranks are fun, I think they're irresponsible and stupid. People who do them are morons. Anybody who sets up fake stressful or dangerous situations either to shock, or for "research" to gauge reaction (who would help the person in distress?) deserves to get their blocks knocked off . My favorite videos are ones where the tables are turned:

Those are some quick reflexes!!! Hahaha!

I Try again

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/wobl...alloween-61126

At least it uploads to my DJ..

Guys, I really see this more from a lucid dreaming perspective, how it'll look when we attempt the task.

Sorry those pranks caused so much distress for everyone.

I have no issues with pranking DCs of course, in fact I'm all for it. It's the waking life pranks that suck

Concerning the costume task, what happens if we put on the costume but nothing happens? Can we try to change the scenery to match, or do we auto-fail?

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

Concerning the costume task, what happens if we put on the costume but nothing happens? Can we try to change the scenery to match, or do we auto-fail?

I would say going on an adventure based on the costume's theme would count, but we'll see what the panel says!

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

Concerning the costume task, what happens if we put on the costume but nothing happens? Can we try to change the scenery to match, or do we auto-fail?

It's all about expectation. If you expect it to change then it will.

Suggestions:

Find a mirror and see yourself wearing the costume. Then walk through the mirror and expect on the other end to find yourself in the environment related to the costume.

Ps. You don't have to physically go through the motions of putting the costume on by the way; this might be too much work. You can just pick it out by saying "I choose this one" and then see yourself wearing it.

Pss. The panel would have to decide if this is okay ofcourse

I think managing the costume part of the task could earn basic wings, but it has to be the whole sandwich to get the advanced wings.

Haha.. it's the second day of the month yet, and I feel like time runs to fast for me! Getting too much stress lately. It's time to release the beast... The vampire one (I mean bloody one ) could be a good option to bite some necks Long time ago I haunted a place in the shape of a vampire, the monks ran like hell Perhaps I could add some pepper with a goal of mine...

Originally Posted by Box77

Perhaps I could add some pepper with a goal of mine...

You mean like pepper in the blood? It'll be like drinking a V8!

Or add vodka and a celery stalk and we got us a Bloody Mary.

And a dash of tobasco if you're feeling frisky

Had a short lucid during a nap today, almost had the pumpkin one.

Spoiler for Pumpkin Attempt:

I WILDed into my bed in my dorm room (so, technically an OBE, maybe?). I sat up, rubbed my hands together, and then struggled a little bit getting my sleep mask to stay off my face... After I finally got one eye open, I decided I would try the pumpkin TOTM. I told myself that there would be a pumpkin on my desk under my lofted bed, and then jumped down. There was nothing there. Oh yeah, I'm doing expectation all wrong. "That's right, I put it under my desk to save room." I looked under my desk and saw a orange object. I reached for it, expecting a pumpkin, but instead, I pulled out this basketball-shaped pillow that I used to have as a kid.


Like this, but my name's not Gabriella.

"Okay, well it has to be around here somewhere." I looked around the room until something else orange caught my eye on my shelf. I reached for it, but it was some kind of old cassette player.


Like this, but bright orange.

"Seriously?" I continued searching, and saw another orange object behind my roommate's TV. I let it come into focus, and I eventually saw the stem and grooves of the pumpkin. "Finally." I reach behind the TV, which was a little bit of a struggle, but I finally grabbed it. I looked at it in my hand. It was an orange. FFS.


A mother-flippin' orange. I probably didn't need this picture, but meh, oranges.

I quickly gave up on the random search technique. "Oh yeah, they just planted that convenient pumpkin patch outside the dorm. I'll fly down to it and check it o-"

Boom. Awake. I don't know what happened. Only a half hour passed, so I tried to go back to sleep, to no avail. Frick.

So that's how it's gonna be this month, I guess...

Lol your subC has a little mean streak

Good try though! I think your last approach will work the next time.

2 parts blood orange juice, 1 part Glengreens blue. (of course there is another way to mix it with Nessies, but where would I find those?)

Gonna get some blood! Watching through an anime and thinking about this I already had a vampire in my dream! Didn't get lucid or blood would have been easy. Will prolly get it soon.

If anyone needs help looking for a Boggart, you should look in the dark, unused corners of houses. Unused dressers and wardrobes are good places. Of course if you dress like a wizard and go to hogwarts, then there is one in the dark arts professor's office.

Spoiler for Non lucid vampire:

I am wandering around at night. I wonder what it is I am supposed to be doing. Call my wife.
"You are looking for her! You need to find places that she would go."
I start thinking about places that "she" would go. Skating rinks pop into my head. I head up the main road in my city and everything is closed because it is the middle of the night. I see a light on and realize that it is a skating rink! Perfect! This is one that I haven't been to, for some reason I really love that I haven't been in it. I am not really sure why, I think that I knew too much that I was dreaming, because I love going to places I can check out in waking after the dream. So i enter and don't really bother going into the rink, but I check out the snack area and video games. The late 80s, early 90s vibe is super strong here, prolly because I connect it like that in my head. She is sitting at the seats on the rink wall (the seats where the table and "booth" come out of the short wall and you can see over into the rink). She is drinking something red out of a coke bottle.
"I hope that isn't someone I know." I say as I sit next to her. I didn't notice then, but it was Sarah Jessica Parker as a vampire.
She laughs and gets up "just left overs from last time. Let's go find me someone for tonight."
"No one here?" I say as we head out.
"I gotta make sure to spread them out so it isn't obvious."

We drive in my car to a gathering of friends of mine (I don't know how I got the car). We were at a park and there was a huge mattress. I know that a picture comes to mind when I say huge, but let me tell you that that is too small. The mattress was there so that we could play football on it, so it was the size of a football field. I jumped on it and walked next to my bro-in-law. We walk past his bro-in-law and I find out that we were being timed and I lost. :/ I get mad and want a redo. I get put on the wrong team because of this. I get the football and run around about 7 people. I am using "normal speed", but I am able to use my trampoline powers and agility extremely well almost like I had practiced this specific thing all the time.

I got out of the game soon and we were thinking about watching a movie. I then realized that she still needs to eat. We walk out into a neighborhood and some guy runs past her and bumps into her. The guy laughs a lot and then jumps in his car and drives off. She walks up to a friend of his and she is fuming mad.
"Do you know who I am?" She asks.
"Yes, I am sorry for my friend, he thinks that he is safe from you and not on the list." The person responds.
"He isn't on the list, but he will be on it soon. You wouldn't think that they would allow it since he is a 'productive member of society', but he doesn't seem to want to do more than he already does, and he only has one friend. If that connection was gone, he would be gone." she says, threateningly.
"But he isn't on the list yet." I say "We are wasting our time here, lets go find someone on the list."
I wake up.

Oh my god! You and me and Alexa all had nonlucid vampire dreams last night O_O

Originally Posted by OpheliaBlue

Oh my god! You and me and Alexa all had nonlucid vampire dreams last night O_O

That is awesome! I had a zombie dream as well, but not as vivid or have any blood.

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

You mean like pepper in the blood? It'll be like drinking a V8!

The V is actually for vampire, despite common belief.

I read the TOTMs before going to bed last night, and was really motivated by the basic tasks. I think I succeeded at the pumpkin one, since the task simply asks what you find inside the pumpkin rather than specifying that it has to be something unusual. I tried the blood task as well, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results, so I'll want to try that one again. (I actually really like being a vampire in dreams, whatever that might say about me! And this isn't the first time...)

My attempt at the blood task raised the need for a clarification, though. The word "cup" in the task instructions is unclear. Does "acquire a cup of blood and drink it" mean that one should acquire the blood in a cup-shaped vessel, or that one should acquire at least eight ounces of blood? I didn't succeed in either case, but I want to know what I'm aiming for.

The full dream log (long!!) is in my Dream Journal.

Here are the excerpts related to the tasks:

Basic Task I:

Spoiler for Opening a Pumpkin:

There was a barn to the left, with an open door, and I decided to turn aside and explore it. This meant there would be no way of catching up with the others, but I didn't feel much urgency to do that anymore. The barn was full of old objects, and seemed to be used as storage of some kind. I remembered the TOTM and reasoned that in a rustic place like this it should be easy to find a pumpkin, so I started looking around for one. I climbed a ladder to a ledge which was serving as a shelf for additional objects, and was pleased to find that one of them was a large pumpkin. Everything else was covered with dust, which made me wonder how long the pumpkin had been sitting here. It was probably this concern that made me notice that the pumpkin was looking a bit sagging and rotten, but I recalled that the TOTM instructions didn't specify anything about the condition of the pumpkin, so I figured that it would still work!

Before I could reach for it, I noticed that it wasn't the only pumpkin: now I saw that there were three more on the shelf within arm's reach, all of them of slightly different hues and shapes. I was glad there was an alternative to reaching into the rotten pumpkin, so I grabbed the one whose appearance I found the most interesting: it was small, squat, and had a faintly bluish tinge. I figured I would start with this one, and if I didn't like the results, I had three more to work with.

Part of me wanted to just punch my fist into the pumpkin, which would have been faster but less elegant, so I forced myself to take my time and cut it open properly. I produced a knife from somewhere, without really thinking about it, and began sawing a circle around the stem, just as if I were going to begin carving a jack-o-lantern. When I completed the circle I lifted up the top section, revealing the interior of the pumpkin, and reached inside. The pumpkin was small enough that my hand barely fit, and I was groping around in the stringy goop and slimy seeds trying to find something else in there, hoping to encounter something interesting and unanticipated. All I felt were the pumpkin's ordinary innards, though.

Initially I had left my anticipations open-ended, but now that the dream was coming up empty-handed I tried to seed them with some expectations. Although it was a small pumpkin, there would be plenty of room for a ring. Might there be a ring inside? I squished all the pumpkin innards around in my hand to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but there was nothing there, nothing that wouldn't ordinarily be found in a pumpkin. The only distinguishing feature was that the stringy goop and slimy seeds, despite their very naturalistic texture, had the same bluish tinge as the pumpkin's skin.

Basic Task II:

Spoiler for Monster Blood:

This time I found myself in a place I recognized: it was the house of my maternal grandmother that I often visited as a young kid. [...] I wondered what task I could try next. I had been interested in the other basic task, drinking blood, but I didn't want to have to go all vampire on anyone who I might happen to encounter in this house, given that this was a place where my own relatives lived. "Perhaps if I look in the refrigerator, there'll be a cup of blood in there," I figured. It seemed a reasonable speculation, but after opening the fridge (which at the time I didn't notice was on the opposite side of the room than it is in RL), I didn't see any likely candidates. What would a cup of blood even look like? And would it still count for the task if it came from the fridge? The instructions didn't specify a source. But the idea of drinking a cup of refrigerated blood was not appealing to me, so I thought I should save this task for a more suitable occasion. I much preferred the idea of drinking it vampire-style, especially if I could get the bonus by drinking it from a supernatural creature.

Closing the fridge, I wondered what other tasks might be suitable for this environment. I remembered my lucid dare, and that struck me as a perfect idea: when I was little I always used to walk and play in the forest behind this house, so it was the perfect "enchanted" forest in which to go looking for elves. I continued walking through the house and went out the back door.

The world that greeted me once I stepped outside was startling in its freshness. The colors were deep and rich and luminous, more so than I usually see in dreams, and I was struck by the beauty of my surroundings. There were some distinct differences from RL: in the far distance I could residential areas covered in mist, as though I were looking at a town from the summit of a tall hill. The forest I hoped to find was present, but quite a bit further away than I would have expected. And walking across the grass of the wide lawn that lay before the forest was... a minotaur? I looked again. No, not quite a minotaur... it had the same general lineaments, but the head was that of a horse rather than a bull. Nevertheless, the creature was clearly supernatural, and it reminded me of the blood task again. I didn't want to miss this opportunity, since it was walking right toward me, so I approached the creature.

I didn't want to just grab the monster and start biting him, since he would surely conclude that I was attacking him and fight back, which could be counter-productive. So I went up to him and asked politely, "Sir, would you mind if I drank some of your blood? I only need a cup." He was at least seven feet tall and surely had plenty of blood to spare, so I didn't see any reason he should refuse. To my consternation, he seemed unsettled by my request and tried to demur. But I didn't want to pass up this opportunity, and figured that I had already met the demands of good sportsmanship by clarifying my intentions, so I grabbed his left arm (I was facing him, so it was the arm to my right), extended my fangs, bit him right in the crook of his elbow, and began to drink. Although he was tense and rigid, he didn't fight back, and I concluded that he must be experiencing that peculiar pleasure that the prey of vampires are often said to feel while being fed upon.

I paused to look up, gauging the creature's reaction, and was surprised to see that his appearance had changed. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, but it was the head of an ordinary man now, no longer that of a horse. The task was to drink from a supernatural creature and see how it changed me, but it turned out he was the one that was transforming! I returned to drinking his blood before he could recover his wits and fight me off. However, the blood wasn't coming very quickly. Either I had picked a bad spot where the blood couldn't flow freely or he was still resisting me in some way, perhaps stifling its flow through the tension in his arm, which was still very stiff. I woke up before I had finished drinking, and promptly concluded that I didn't think I hadn't drunk a whole cup's worth, if we're measuring technically by eight ounces. However, it turns out that it is hard to estimate the quantity of blood you're drinking when you're getting it right from someone's arm!

Edit: Oh! I almost forgot to mention. After I woke up, I was trying to figure out how much of the blood I actually drank. I had some carrot juice in the fridge, and decided that might be about the right consistency, so I put eight ounces of it in a glass and drank it. I concluded from this experiment that in the dream I had consumed about four ounces of blood. Also, it occurred to me that if you warm up carrot juice to body temperature, it might make a great blood substitute in that Halloween game where you blindfold people and try to convince them that they're interacting with icky objects (like skinned grapes for eyeballs).

Loved it Verre :-) Thanks for sharing. I love the part you figured the creature must be enjoying it. lol ---> Although he was tense and rigid, he didn't fight back, and I concluded that he must be experiencing that peculiar pleasure that the prey of vampires are often said to feel while being fed upon.