Talk about your dreams

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rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Last night started with me checking my facebook, walking alone on a beach, and thinking about game design. At some point I became Joanna Dark, and I was protecting a female mad scientist's castle from two superpowered humans. One of them was a shapeshifter who fooled the security systems by turning into the mad scientist. We fought on a spiral staircase in one of the towers, and I managed to trip her and make her fall about a story onto her head. The mad scientist pointed out she could regenerate, so we had to throw her into a conveniently-placed open waste pit full of acid and mutagens before she regained consciousness, then make sure we returned every hour or so to kill her in case she was able to regenerate after that. She sort of was and became a bloated, faceless thing. That's when I woke up.

My other dreams last night (I went back to sleep twice) involved a kid stealing a secret password from my cousin, me briefly being Ranma Saotome and explaining my curse, playing Magic with my brother, and eating pancakes with slabs of wolf meat salami in them. I also went shopping with my SO and had a Dark Souls-style battle with an armoured knight in my back yard. I was even winning until flying demon heads that spawned more flying demon heads showed up.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

ishy wrote:What are dreams like? Is there anything different from how you perceive real life?

I personally never had a dream (or nightmare) in my entire life, so I'm curious what I'm missing out on.
Mine can be different from time to time. Part of them play out like real life, but some times there seem to be rapid cut scenes where I sort of "fast forward" through a bunch of short, real-time events with gaps between them. The catch is, I implicitly understand what is happening between each scene.

Sometimes things will radically change, and I'll notice this, but it won't bother me. I just roll with it. For example, I might walk through a doorway that leads outside, turn around, and the building will be gone. This doesn't bother me, for some reason.

Another issue is when I see people I've never seen before, but I "know" them somehow. I meet a woman and understand her to be my wife.

Basically, they're very weird and violate all kinds of rules about the real world, and I am only vaguely aware of it at the time.
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Post by Maj »

Yeah, I have the same suspension of disbelief that others have mentioned. Many of my dreams are also contiguous... They take place in the same setting, but with different characters. I suppose if I actually put more effort into it, I could probably put together a map with an outline of what/who lives where.

In the world of dreams, it hardly seems like there's anything that isn't constantly shifting. So when I have a contiguous dream that seems to make the setting even more solidified, it kind of amazes me.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Does anyone else get sequences of dreams that start the same? I had a few one night about a week ago. I would wake up in bed with my SO, and then other stuff would happen. The three I remember involved realizing we'd slept through a whole day, walking to stores in a different town, and saving my SO from an evil sorcerer.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

rampaging-poet wrote:Does anyone else get sequences of dreams that start the same? I had a few one night about a week ago. I would wake up in bed with my SO, and then other stuff would happen. The three I remember involved realizing we'd slept through a whole day, walking to stores in a different town, and saving my SO from an evil sorcerer.
Not often, for me. I used to get dreams that would end the same, but that was about 25 years ago. They'd be falling dreams, but they'd almost always be me jumping from the top of the stairs at my old house.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

It started raining around 12:30 or 1:00, and I fell asleep shortly afterwards. I was a little worried about some power tools I left outside, but I was fairly sure everything but the lawnmower and extension cords were under cover.

Soon after falling asleep, I dreamed of getting up, stumbling through the darkness barefoot, and then shoving the lawnmower to safety. Then everything faded into darkness. A moment later I realized that the experience hadn't been uncomfortable or complete enough. I was obviously dreaming, and had to get up for real.

This time, the dirt underfoot stuck to my feet and I was holding up an arm to keep the rain out of my eyes. But still, it didn't quite feel plausible. So the dream started over again, for a third time. It traced me getting up, staggering to collect a few things around the house, and then moving the lawnmower from start to finish and returning to the house. After opening the door back inside I dream-warped back into bed. But had I really done it? I remained skeptical about whether I had really woken up, and got an impression of indignant frustration from my subconscious.

I quoted something pretentious about the illusions of Mara (in fact, I think my conscious mind specifically presented it as the above, in brackets), and my dream dissolved into vague impressions that maybe I really ought to get up and move that lawnmower.

Inception? (I watched the first episode of Ghost in the Shell Arise that evening, which might have had more to do with it)
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Post by Ancient History »

Something from an old story idea came to me again. Griffith, the Invisible Man, left a tainted ecology behind him, his invisibility formula working its way through the ecosystem. Animals with bits of invisible flesh, grass and flowers with invisible leaves, only the veins visible, and a small town of freaks - a woman whose left eye seems to float along in an invisible skull, a woman with an invisible jaw and throat that works as the town whore, a man who wears a glove over his invisible hand, and a mask to cover the gaping hole that is his invisible nose, a little boy whose freckles are windows in the skin showing bone and muscle underneath. There was a local constable, investigating a murder - a little boy, run over by a carriage that claimed it didn't see him, but he lived for hours, crying and nobody went to look for him; invisible blood on the wheels...I lost most of it when I woke up.
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Post by Shrapnel »

I had a wondrous dream the other night: In it, I was in a burning Victorian high-rise, being attacked by flaming cats and Pokemon, so nothing unusual there. While frantically searching for a way out, I noticed that the window had graciously decided to blow out, either due to the heat from the fire or from the various pieces of baroque furniture screaming out obscenities I happened to be throwing at it. Regardless, I jumped out of the window, and then realized that I was some several thousand feet in the air, and that my chances of survival where about those of a whelk in a supernova. But! At that time, I realized that I could fly if I could just manage to miss the ground. Before I could find out if I had this knack, however, I woke up to discover that I was in fact falling out of my bed and gave myself a rather large bruise on the head because I failed to be distracted by something and thus avoid hitting the floor. It should also be mentioned that everything in the dream had very large and supple breasts.

And yes, I did happen to read Life, The Universe, and Everything in It before falling asleep, thanks for asking.
Last edited by Shrapnel on Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Ancient History »

I was talking with St. Peter about whether or not there was internet in heaven, and it turned into an argument over free will and I gave god the finger.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Thread necro time! I've finally got everything from my first five notebooks entered into an OpenOffice database. I recorded dreams for 525 nights between September 1st, 2015 and February 19th, 2015. Because it's sometimes hard to separate one dream from another within the same night, the database records statistics per-night instead of per-dream. Some nights have a lot of tags because I had long dreams that touched a lot of elements, others because I woke up two or three times then went back to sleep. Still, the tags should provide a reasonable estimate of how often I have dreams with a given element.

The following tables summarize tag counts for the most common tags and a few of the less-common ones.
TagDescriptionCount%
Video GamesMega-category for characters and game elements32662.10
AdventureSignificant action or exploration21540.95
Home TownDreams set in my home town town20338.67
Gender-BenderDreams featuring gender-bending of myself or others9016.95
My BrotherDreams including my brother8916.95
My SODreams including my significant other8616.38
CampingCamping, summer camps, etc.5811.05
AnimeAnime characters or ideas appear5610.67
Dream RecordingRecording my dreams in my dreams183.43
The Gaming DenImaginary versions posters from The Den152.86

Some Specific Video Games:
TagCount% of Total
League of Legends8716.57
Legend of Zelda7213.71
Pokémon254.76
Dark Souls193.62
Mario Kart132.48
Pikmin91.71
Metroid81.52

I can also get counts for the times specific tags occur together. For example, over half of my Adventure dreams involve Video Games but less than half of my Video Game dreams are Adventures. Of the fifteen times my dreams included The Gaming Den, ten were Adventures. The two games I dreamt of the most (The Legend of Zelda and League of Legends) appeared in the same night exactly as many times as my least common game (Metroid).

Gaming Den posters that have appeared by name in my dreams in no particular order: Koumei (five times!), Maxus, virgil, JoshKablack, FrankTrollman, Lago, and DSMatticus.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

Does anyone else have dreams that are in text?
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

You know, ever since that episode of the 90's Batman cartoon where they said you can't read in dreams I have specifically tried reading things in dreams. Turns out that I can read things in dreams, but there's no guarantee that it will say the same thing the next time I read it in that same dream.

Seeking meaning in my dreams is not productive as typically I am aware that I'm dreaming and have some amount of control over what happens. Typically, they involve me either drowning in bitches or being on some sort of D&D themed adventure, which may or may not involve drowning in bitches.
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Post by maglag »

Sometimes I dream that I still need to do an important task I've actually already done in reality, and now there's some absurd obstacle like the necessary pieces becoming animate and running away.
RobbyPants wrote: Basically, they're very weird and violate all kinds of rules about the real world, and I am only vaguely aware of it at the time.
Late trivia, it's been scientifically proved that when you dream, the part of your brain's that supposed to keep track of "Does this makes any sense?" stops giving any fucks and goes in complete vacation, allowing your mind to go completely crazy mode.
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Post by Maxus »

rampaging-poet wrote: Gaming Den posters that have appeared by name in my dreams in no particular order: Koumei (five times!), Maxus, virgil, JoshKablack, FrankTrollman, Lago, and DSMatticus.
Okay, I gotta ask. You can PM the answer.

How did I turn up in your dream, and what did I look like?

On my end: I don't remember most of my dreams. That said, the ones I do remember, I tend to remember clearly.

My dreams are also influenced if I binge on sometime. So after watching a ton of Marble Hornets, I had a dream with the Slender Man in it. I understand this means I am now marked for death and insanity.

Likewise, I did have an After Sundown-esque dream after doing a binge-read of the sourcebook before bedtime. And a Dungeon Crusade dream when I was trying my hand at a PDF of the original stuff.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

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Post by RobbyPants »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:You know, ever since that episode of the 90's Batman cartoon where they said you can't read in dreams I have specifically tried reading things in dreams. Turns out that I can read things in dreams, but there's no guarantee that it will say the same thing the next time I read it in that same dream.
Yeah, I noticed that after I saw that episode, too. My dreams have shown me that yes, you can read in dreams, and no, if you die in a dream, you don't die in real life.

maglag wrote:
RobbyPants wrote: Basically, they're very weird and violate all kinds of rules about the real world, and I am only vaguely aware of it at the time.
Late trivia, it's been scientifically proved that when you dream, the part of your brain's that supposed to keep track of "Does this makes any sense?" stops giving any fucks and goes in complete vacation, allowing your mind to go completely crazy mode.
I've noticed when I wake up from dreams, that part of my brain seems to be a little late in waking up with the rest of my brain, sometimes. I'll think whatever I was dreaming was real, and start reacting accordingly when I wake up. If I try to put any conscious thought into understanding why I think these things are happening, the details immediately become foggy, I become very confused, and within seconds realize that I was just dreaming.

It's very weird.

Edit: it actually reminds me of a scene from Inception. Cobb asks Adriane if she remembers how they got where they are. At first, she scoffs at such a trivial question, then it dawns on her that she in fact has no details of the past of the dream. That's how I feel, waking up in those situations. Going forward with the plot isn't that difficult. It's when I try to go back and recount the details that I realize it was all just a dream.
Last edited by RobbyPants on Fri Jun 05, 2015 12:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Maxus wrote:
rampaging-poet wrote: Gaming Den posters that have appeared by name in my dreams in no particular order: Koumei (five times!), Maxus, virgil, JoshKablack, FrankTrollman, Lago, and DSMatticus.
Okay, I gotta ask. You can PM the answer.

How did I turn up in your dream, and what did I look like?
That was back when I was playing a lot of Dark Souls. I never actually saw you personally, but we played a Dark Souls style game together over the internet. It included lots of ruined roads through a forest, a cave with "Lloth," and a wild-west town.

I can't really remember what most of the Denners that appeared by name in my dream looked like, or only their names appeared. There were also a few times that generic people showed up and I instinctively knew they were people from The Gaming Den without knowing any of their names, like the time three or four of us were trapped in some kind of fantasy game and had to reach an objective at the bottom of a cliff.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Well, I suppose if you gotta have a group of people to be trapped in a fantasy game with...
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

rampaging-poet wrote:
Maxus wrote:
rampaging-poet wrote: Gaming Den posters that have appeared by name in my dreams in no particular order: Koumei (five times!), Maxus, virgil, JoshKablack, FrankTrollman, Lago, and DSMatticus.
Okay, I gotta ask. You can PM the answer.

How did I turn up in your dream, and what did I look like?
That was back when I was playing a lot of Dark Souls. I never actually saw you personally, but we played a Dark Souls style game together over the internet. It included lots of ruined roads through a forest, a cave with "Lloth," and a wild-west town.

I can't really remember what most of the Denners that appeared by name in my dream looked like, or only their names appeared. There were also a few times that generic people showed up and I instinctively knew they were people from The Gaming Den without knowing any of their names, like the time three or four of us were trapped in some kind of fantasy game and had to reach an objective at the bottom of a cliff.
Kinda disappointed that I didn't show up in your Dark Souls dream. Why you wouldn't fight the Archdemon of Rage in your TGD/Dark Souls crossover dream is beyond me :)
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Jun 05, 2015 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

I'm just happy I wasn't the "and co" this time.
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Post by radthemad4 »

All den related dreams that I can remember involve me actually browsing the website, blue theme and all, (the same way most of my video game related dreams are me playing a video game rather than being a video game character, though they sometimes differ in many ways). I think I may have read some of the posts (I did read in dreams before, but not sure about these) and intuitively understood others the same way you sometimes intuitively understand stuff in a dream.

I don't remember the details of most of them except for that time I saw that Avoraciopoctules was starting a sequel to the (concluded) Wrath of the Rainmaker pbp game here, except he said he was going to do it in GURPS (a system I know next to nothing about). Last thing I remember about that is seeing a huge, detailed fantasy world map in color and with lots of icons.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Sat Jun 06, 2015 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MisterDee »

radthemad4 wrote:I think I may have read some of the posts (I did read in dreams before, but not sure about these) and intuitively understood others the same way you sometimes intuitively understand stuff in a dream.
Now that's probably a sure-fire way of knowing you're in a dream. If you understand a shadzar post, whether intuitively or otherwise, you're absolutely dreaming. :)
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Post by OgreBattle »

After playing a lot of Splatoon I had a dream where the oceans dried up and Sponge Bob's bikini bottom was one of the few places that could be inhabitable so it was overrun by sentient toys (remnants of extinct human civilization), the ocean people were drive to the deepest parts of the remaining ocean.
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