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Tag: dreams

Storytelling while asleep

About a billion years ago in college, I used experience every dream trope (false awakening, lucid dreaming, and just extremely vivid, movie-like dreams), along with sleep paralysis (which is kind of like dreaming, but you’re awake). Now I mostly have somewhat vivid dreams if I’m lucky, and the most I can lucid dream is detect that I’m in a dream or wake up on command, but can’t control it or stay asleep.

Dream Terminology

False awakening— A dream where you wake up…but you’re not actually awake. You’re still dreaming and you dreamed you woke up. Bonus if you’re stuck in a false awakening loop. 😑

Lucid dreaming— The ability to control your dreams and be aware that you’re dreaming. When I had this, I basically stopped having nightmares because I could control the outcome.

Sleep paralysis— Not really dream-related, but you feel like you’re dreaming. Sometimes you might wake up and realize you can’t move or open your eyes. And YMMV on this, but a lot of people sense an evil or malevolent entity nearby. IIRC, this really isn’t paranormal, but more psychological.

  • Me Multitasking Between Two Dreams

    I was watching Doug*. There was one scene where Doug’s sister (who didn’t look much like Judy, his actual sister) was driving down a road, with their mom in the front seat and their dad in the back (oddly enough, she was driving on the right side of the car), when both parents were hit with an epidemic that turns them into giant, vampiric spiders. That freaked me out, since I hate spiders, so I paused this scene for a little while, while trying to gather the courage to continue, since I was also really curious as to what would happen next.

    *8D; Some of those voice actors look familiar. Billy West?? (Futurama) Roxanne Beck?? (Revolutionary Girl Utena, 2nd Urusei Yatsura movie)

    Then I decided that now would be a good time to call Doug’s superhero alter-ego, umm…what was his name again? I could only think of the name “He-Man”, but I also kept thinking ‘hey wait, isn’t that the name of that cheesy superhero guy with the iron cross?’ (and multiple instances of He-Man’s line “I HAVE THE POWER” from the Funimation Channel’s commercial kept playing in my head, yargh). But “He-Man” was the only thing I could think of. As cheesy as it sounds, I remember reading from somewhere that it was a random, spur-of-the-moment name Doug thought of, and while it did sound cheesy at first, it eventually grew on the population of Bluffington, and it stuck.

    (Actually, his alter-ego is Quailman.)

    I took out my USB drive, uncapped it and flung out in front of me, yelling for Quailman’s help (looks like I got his name right after all). If you’re wondering why I would use a computer storage device to summon a superhero, my reasoning was, if you need a file with you most of the time, where would you keep it? In a USB drive. (No, that doesn’t make sense, but shhh, dream logic.) When he didn’t appear, I became confused and attempted to throw it again, when I realized ‘hey wait. This is how they summon Pokemon.’ Since Quailman’s not a Pokemon, I couldn’t call him out in the same way. 😛 I tried several more times, while just holding the drive out in front of me, but nothing happened. I became fed up and decided to call him like anyone would call for help from a superhero, and yelled “QUAILMAN!!!!!!”, knowing he would hear me, since he was just in the next room over.

    Switch to another dream

    I was at my late grandma’s house, with L (sister) when I spotted some anime books on the shelf, under the TV. They mainly had character bios for series like Ranma ½ and other series by Rumiko Takahashi. I was about to look at one, but L wouldn’t let me for some reason. When I started to look anyway, she asked my mom if we were allowed to read the books under the TV. When my mom asked what kind of books they were, she replied “anime”. Mom was unsure, since they might have been there long before we were born (i.e. they weren’t for us). I didn’t think so. The only way my grandma would have kids’ books in her house is if they were leftover from when she was still raising her kids (Mom and her sisters). And they couldn’t have been, since Ranma 1/2 came out in the 80s, after all the kids moved out. So, I was convinced she had gotten them for us to read (and I was sure L was going to physically break me in half ._.;). Then I realized I had another dream to attend to (Doug).

    Back to the Doug dream

    Once Quailman came over, the scene with the vampiric spiders was allowed to continue. But since they were Doug’s parents, we didn’t want to hurt them, so we decided to go after the head vampire. (We were all in the entry area of my house at these time.) Quailman was about grab him by the neck, when the vampire’s head easily fell off his neck.

    Quailman was surprised. He didn’t think it would be so easy. And I was surprised, until I realized that the vampire could probably move without his head (making him more like a zombie).

    And it pretty much ended there.

  • Dream: Twilight Zone Movies 3 & 4

    (I actually don’t know if there are any Twilight Zone movies, let alone, know how many there are. But whatever the answer, there’s a 99.999999% chance this dream is nothing like them. :P)

    Movie #3

    Movie #3 was at some kind of touristy location like Balboa Park in San Diego. The camera was moving along the sidewalk, with people passing by. One particular guy (who had his 5/6 year old son with him) walked by, and as soon as he was out of hearing range, people crowded together, staring after him, commenting on how he had an evil aura.

    And…I’m not sure what happened after this. Maybe I forgot about it, since I didn’t write this dream down immediately after I woke up, or I just happen to not dream it. But eventually it was discovered that the guy with the evil aura had an evil entity taking up residence inside him, corrupting him. While his son didn’t notice (he never showed his evil side to him), his friends knew what was going on. In the end, because no one could think of a way to rid him of the entity, they reluctantly decided to get rid of the being housing the entity. The climax took place at a rocky hillside near the park with a large abyss. For some time, they’ve been trying to get him to fall into the abyss, but he always fought back. Eventually, he “wakes up” and realizes what he’s done. But he knew it was only temporary, since as long as the entity remained in his body, he would always remain the way he was. He threw himself into the abyss, but not before asking everyone to deliver a message to his son, explaining why he couldn’t be with him anymore.

    🙁

    Movie #4

    And I have even less info on Movie #4. I just know it involves a secret message that a hidden organization received. For some time, they’ve been trying to figure out who the sender was and where it came from. Eventually, we (yes, somehow I, a viewer, became involved :P) figured out that the sender is someone named Nicole, and an old abandoned shack out in the woods might give us some clues. I went out to the shack and saw that one of the other members of the organization were there too. That was it. Just the two of us. After a while, I told the other member some other info I found (in a very matter-of-fact way). What I said led her to think that I was Nicole, and she lunged forward to strangle me, because did “I” know how much trouble I caused for the organization with my message??

    I was able to tell her that, no I’m not Nicole, I’m actually Noelle (for those who don’t know, Noelle is my old online alias from about…a couple weeks ago). This intrigued her and she took out a device that allowed her to have access to the organization’s database of all its members. She couldn’t find my name, but oh wait, she spelt it as “Noella” and I told her “Maybe try it with an ‘e’ at the end instead?” She did that, and got all sorts of info on me, including my height, weight, ethnicity, background info, my job in the organization as a runner and so on (whatever I chose to include on me). At the very end, I have a collage of me at age four wearing whatever glasses I wore at that age, and around me, were images of glasses I wore in between that age and now. She squeeed and tried hugging me, since she found me so ADORABLY CUTE. I ran away from her, and there was something about a shopping mall or a department store in San Diego. The end.

  • Dream: Giantpaper Will Not Be Panning For Gold

    Sometimes I have dreams where I’m in some hidden room of Jeidai’s house, filled with old, unused objects (kinda like in someone’s attic or garage). There’s a hole in the floor that allows me to warp to my grandparents’ old house, when I squeeze myself into it.

    And sometimes, I have dreams where I’m in a huge hotel at Disneyland, where I get lost in easily. And after wandering around, I wind up in an old elevator that takes me to some outside location in a 50s version of Tomorrowland.

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  • End of the Semester Dreams

    Dream #1 involved me staying at Jeidai‘s house, even though the year wasn’t over yet. In fact, it was during finals. Getting over to school was easy. I had my car over at her house, and when it was time for me to go to school, I would jump in it and drive over.

    But one day, when it was time to go over for my Web Design final critique, it took me about an hour to gather everything up. And when I got outside, I couldn’t find said car. ;o; I searched up and down the street, and luckily saw my mom, heading down the driveway after a visit to Jeidai’s family and decided to ask her for a ride. But then I saw the car parked in front of the next house and was relieved.

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