Talk about your dreams

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rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet »

radthemad4 wrote:My dream happened before I heard of Ranma or any other genderbending media, so I guess I freaked out as it was kind of unexpected.
That's understandable. It's a pretty big change in identity, especially if you hadn't been exposed to entertainment involving it before. On a somewhat related note, my first exposure to gender-bending in media was the episode of Power Rangers where the villains sabotaged the Blue Ranger's mind-reading device and he swapped bodies with one of the female rangers.
@thread
I usually have action-packed dreams, but I have had some that are more down-to-earth. Boring but non-threatening dreams included getting takeout with my mom, talking and cuddling with my SO, practising for a play with my brother, and stopping at a few garage sales on my way home. I often have dreams that start normal before going completely off the rails though.

I've also had a few of the standard nightmares. I had a public nudity dream where my swimsuit disappeared after I left the changeroom at a pool, but everyone else was naked too. I had one dream about failing a class back in October and was very upset about it in the dream. I've also "woken up" and had one or more teeth fall out, but when that happened I quickly recognized I was dreaming and woke up for real. For reference, when I deliberately wake myself I try to force my eyes open even though they are already open in the dream. It usually works after one or two attempts, and it feels like having a second set of eyelids.

Someone shared this article with me back in January. It's about a study suggesting people that play a lot of video games are less likely to have nightmares and better able to control their dreams. Some of that is because gamers didn't tend to feel threatened by violent encounters in their dreams, so a skeleton attack that would wake a non-gamer in a cold sweat is just another fun battle with the undead to the gamer. I'll have to read the original study at some point too.
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Post by RobbyPants »

I actually ended up outside (IRL) naked once due to having a dream about being attacked by robots. I "woke up" enough to realize where I was, but not enough to realize I was dreaming. I ran outside (and locked the fucking door!) before I woke up the rest of the way.

Good times.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Had a dream where I rescued a damsel from a dungeon, then on my way out she turned into a snake monster and stabbed me through the back. It seems inspired by the AD&D undermountain module where a maiden in torn black dress is really a transformed [monster].

That sure happens a lot in D&D.



I've found I can reliably achieve lucid dreaming if I take a nap in daylight, especially if I've been up all night.
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Post by radthemad4 »

OgreBattle wrote:I've found I can reliably achieve lucid dreaming if I take a nap in daylight, especially if I've been up all night.
I'm going to have to try that.
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Post by Kaelik »

I had a dream in which, as background, the dream switched point of view several times, and it was on my point of view while I was trying to sleep in a dark public place that was currently empty.

So what happened was that every time I thought of the "shining" something tickled my balls. Each time this happened, I was not at all frightened, and I thought it was my brother for some reason messing with me. However, it kept waking me up (in the dream) until I was sort of half awake in reality to, and I stopped trying to sleep in the dream and started trying to sleep in real life or in my bed in the dream. Then it happened again, and I woke up completely in real life, despite still thinking it was someone messing with me in my dream.

Fully awake, I realized I live alone, and that the triggering event was in my head not aloud. So apparently I dreamed a supernatural force was fucking with me, but I kept not believing it was a supernatural force. I'm a filthy skeptic even in my dreams.
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Post by PoliteNewb »

I don't know how people can remember dreams so clearly (even quoting things that were said during the dream); I awaken with only vague impressions of what occurred during the dream. Even if I try to narrate/write them down immediately upon waking, it sounds like a drunk retarded person trying to describe it. Within 20 minutes I have usually forgotten the entire dream.

For instance, here is one that I tried to tell my wife about the other day (which is probably the only reason I remember any of it).

"There was a guy and a girl, who are aliens but look like people, and the guy had some kind of disease or handicap or something, so he and the girl couldn't be fully happy, so they started some kind of foundation or something, which I think was about sending a random kid to another planet, and it seems like one of those feel-good stories, but it turns out the guy is super-bitter and an asshole and gets mad that this kid is going to have a great experience that he'll never have, and he yells at his girl or something, but then the guy somehow goes to another planet and he's a superhero and not handicapped anymore, but he's still a douche"

And that's a relatively coherent one.
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Post by Kaelik »

Well I literally wrote my shining dream up like a minute after having woken, and if I hadn't written it down I would probably not remember any of it.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

I've been able to remember my dreams much easier since I started my dream journal. Most of my early entries are things like "Dark Souls Shenanigans" and "Wrote an essay at Hogwarts with [friend]." Before that I remembered at most one dream a week, and usually only for a few minutes after waking up. There are still times where I don't remember much, but often that's because I was too tired to record my dream immediately and the memory faded in the five minutes between waking up and actually writing anything.
I had a dream that was mostly in first person despite a few changes of character. Over the course of the dream, I was myself, Goku, a non-existent Dragon Ball character, and myself playing a video game as that character. I "woke up" as myself, and after a few minutes I realized one of my cousins was in bed with me. I turned into Goku, got mad, and flew off. The view switched to third person to show Goku flying off and my new character who looked like teen Yamcha but had a name starting with Z. The view remained in third person as a start-of-level cutscene for a video game I was playing as this character played, then switched to first person and I was Z-dude. After carrying an unconscious, naked woman out of a building, my cousin showed up and I started identifying as myself playing as this character again. She criticized me for not carrying the woman correctly, but I told her I was playing a character that can lift two or three tonnes and she was properly supported.

There was something else before that about my aunt owning the house I'm renting a room in and the neighbours setting up plastic deer heads on posts in their yard. Earlier in the night I also had a dream where I fought an orb of sand that could send out giant hands to attack. The second time I split into a bunch of copies, most of which burned out trying to cast a spell. The third time Gandalf tasered it and asked me to use magic to continuously charge the taser. I also considered a strategy for an archer and paladin to beat it.

Gandalf is definitely the named wizard that most often appears in my dreams.
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Post by radthemad4 »

I don't remember the vast majority of my dreams clearly. I think I'll start a dream journal though. I think it helps to remember a dream if you wake up while it's still happening and/or there isn't something else you immediately have to start thinking about the moment you wake up, e.g. need to get up and go to work, or whatever.

I tried Ogrebattle's method recently. I nodded off for a bit in University in the computer lab shortly after reading this thread (I coincidentally actually hadn't slept the night before because midterms, so I set a twenty minute alarm, put my head down and closed my eyes). I wasn't aware that I was dreaming at any instance, but I could actually remember it which doesn't happen too often. The moment I started dreaming I was still in front of the same computer (I think, I didn't study it too closely), but the lab was bigger. There was a circular column that wasn't there before with some posters on it. I found that I could make the text of the posters go up or down by messing with the scroll wheel on the computer in front of me, though I don't remember what was written. I got up and walked to a different part of the lab which didn't exist IRL. I saw a blonde woman (can't remember her face) who my mind told me was Koumei sitting down. I think she was reading a book. I suspect this was Shrapnel's doing (see his post in the first page of this thread). The alarm went off right then, which let me immediately contrast the dimensions of the lab in the dream and irl, which probably helped me remember it.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Here's a question for everyone: when you're in the middle of a dream, are you aware you're in a dream? When I'm dreaming, everything has a spectator vibe to it. Even if it's a first-person dream, I feel dissociated from my dream self and more like I'm watching something that is only conceptually me (albeit from cameras installed in my own eyeballs). I'm still not in control of the dream. Or usually even my own thoughts. I guess my brain is too shut down to muster up more than a "you know this isn't real, right?"
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Post by rampaging-poet »

I don't usually realize I'm dreaming until I wake up. My dreams don't have background sounds, and I almost never have senses of taste, touch, or smell. I don't miss any of those things while I'm dreaming, but when I wake up it's obvious that they weren't there. I don't feel like an outside observer in dreams that follow "me" even when I dream in third person, although I do sometimes have dreams where I am watching someone else. Those dreams always have an explanation for where I am, which is usually that I am watching some form of media. I do feel like and outside observer in some of my video game dreams, but only insofar as I know the character the dream follows is my game character and not me.

I usually wake up right away when I realize I'm dreaming, either because it's not I dream I want to continue or because I broke the dream by trying to fly. Next time that happens I'll have to remember to try and exert some other form of control.
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Post by radthemad4 »

There have been quite a few times when I realized I was dreaming while I was dreaming. I was able to exert some control sometimes, i.e. move away somewhere else, look for something, etc. but I was seldom able to actually warp dream reality. I can only remember two instances of that. One time I was in a desert and I managed to give myself sand gliding powers like the Sand Benders in Avatar TLA. I was thinking, "Crap, about to wake up. Quick, do something crazy" when I gave myself sand bending powers. Another time I was able to spawn and make out with an old crush (though I switched to third person for some reason during the act, which I don't remember doing deliberately). Another possibility is that I wasn't actually changing the dream itself, but that I was merely dreaming that I was doing that. If that's the case, it only works on specific dreams, if the dream lets me do that.
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Post by Maj »

If I realize I'm dreaming, I either can't change anything, or I wake up.

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I've had dreams in foreign languages before - Chinese and French. I hadn't studied either at the time, and when I started studying French, The teacher skipped me ahead a year because she said I already knew the material.
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Post by RobbyPants »

My dreams usually aren't lucid. Sadly, the few times they are, I'm more likely to make things worse than better. I can only think of two or three times I improved a dream on purpose.

Typically, I see something and think "boy, it'd suck if that happened.", and then it happens. Or I'll do something stupid like start crawling when I need to outrun something.
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Post by Shrapnel »

I had a dream the other day where I was a Dalek and I killed everyone I knew. It was one of the best dreams I've ever had, short of the one where I was Raquel Welch. Just glorious.
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Post by Dean »

I'm really interested in what percentage of our dreams are awesome and action packed. Lots of people seem to have really epic dreams I don't usually hear from people. I wonder if it's because we play adventure games and do this sort of sword and sorcery shit all the time.
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Post by Meikle641 »

Up until about 8 months ago, mine were filled with monsters and violence. Adventurous? Definitely. Epic... rarely. Probably 60-70%. The rest was just weird shit.
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Post by erik »

I typically dream about stuff related to whatever I've been doing. If I played a lot of a computer game I'd dream about that game. If I've been focused on work I dream about work. If I've gotten to stay at home and play with kids I'll dream about that. And so forth. Back in highschool occasionally I would have dreams in French because for a while I was fluent, but lack of use made me fall out of practice.

There's strange twists, like I had a dream where a doctor started acting bizarre and I had to get help because I thought he was having a stroke. Or more recently for some reason I was in clinic but not wearing a shirt and without incident, I guess it was a casual day or something.

Most oddly whenever I am in a building it is usually a mashup of multiple different familiar buildings. I might know that it is my house, but the layout is more like my wife's parent's house mixed with my parent's house.

I've been a lucid dreamer since before high school. I can't remember the last time I was dreaming and wasn't aware that I was dreaming or was fooled into thinking it was real. I can change things in my dream if I feel like it, but mostly I just go with it.
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Post by RobbyPants »

deanruel87 wrote:I'm really interested in what percentage of our dreams are awesome and action packed. Lots of people seem to have really epic dreams I don't usually hear from people. I wonder if it's because we play adventure games and do this sort of sword and sorcery shit all the time.
I don't, usually, but I've had a handful of awesome ones. Sadly, even the awesome dreams often blur the line between awesome retribution and extremely disturbing murder.
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Post by ishy »

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.
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Post by Maj »

My dreams tend to be very stylized, either copying something specific (one dream I had was in the animation style of Count Duckula), or exaggerating what's already there (like it's filmed in HDR). They're full sensory experiences - all five senses are there, plus feelings like equilibrium (so if I fall, I feel like I'm falling).

As far as I can remember, most of my dreams are a coherent story. Sometimes, there will be a story that will transition into another story because of a shared common element (so if I have a dream about something being stolen, it might transition into a Law & Order style dream when the cops arrive on scene).

I often have dreams that help me solve problems... Something that I get stuck on gets unraveled in my sleep. I've had dreams that predicted real life events (friend's gonna get pregnant and have a girl, some sort of disaster - personal, natural, etc). So that's kinda useful.

I have difficulty transitioning out of dreams to real life because my dreams are so immersive. Because of that, I strongly avoid things that I know will give me nightmares.
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Post by Ancient History »

I guess the defining quality of my dreams are that I never question the dream-logic while I'm in them. Geography and situations tend to be remarkably fluid, but I never even blink when I'm in a mall or bookstore one minute and I go into the next room and it's the house I'm renting and my grandmother's there or whatever.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

deanruel87 wrote:I'm really interested in what percentage of our dreams are awesome and action packed. Lots of people seem to have really epic dreams I don't usually hear from people. I wonder if it's because we play adventure games and do this sort of sword and sorcery shit all the time.
I just counted the set of dreams I've already typed up. Between September 1st 2013 and February 10 2014, I remembered dreams on 155 nights. There were 99 nights where I had at least one dream involving fighting, exploring unusual environments, or furthering some grand purpose. There were 81 nights where video elements featured prominently in my dreams, most but not all of which were part of the previous 99 dreams. For example, I had a dream where Link and I played wind instruments together.

I could probably get more accurate results by counting each distinct dream separately, but sometimes the line between dreams isn't clear. At some point I might write a basic dream journal application with support for arbitrary tags, so I'll hold off further statistical analysis until then.
Ancient History wrote:I guess the defining quality of my dreams are that I never question the dream-logic while I'm in them. Geography and situations tend to be remarkably fluid, but I never even blink when I'm in a mall or bookstore one minute and I go into the next room and it's the house I'm renting and my grandmother's there or whatever.
I've noticed this as well. I don't question changes of position or even changes in the fundamental premise of a dream until I wake up. For example, I had one that switched back and forth between my family having a bunch of people over for dinner and a shapeshifting kid infiltrating a museum run by giants. My abrupt change in character and location never caused any confusion, and they dreams eventually merged when I "woke up" in my bed as the shapeshifter and tried to find a quiet place to record my dreams with a house full of friends and Batman villains.
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Post by DSMatticus »

ishy wrote:I personally never had a dream (or nightmare) in my entire life, so I'm curious what I'm missing out on.
You definitely do dream, but you have already forgotten them by the time you wake up. Once I hit ~10 years old, I stopped being able to remember my dreams almost entirely (some rare exceptions, particularly with dreams about emotionally sensitive topics). I didn't start remembering them with any regularity again until I was in my early 20's.
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Post by Shrapnel »

I've always been able to remember my dreams.

For example, the other night, I was having a great dream about something or another, and some stuff happened. And there was that guy there that did this one thing and I think there were bikini-wearing explosions.

And then I got woken up by a bat and terrified shitless. Typical, really.
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