Collective Dream Journal

[Catullus64]

I very seldom have dreams that are weird in a way which makes them interesting to recite. Having had such a one this very night, I thought it might be intriguing to start a conversation thread for the recounting and (deeply unserious) interpretation of dreams. Let us plunge together into the realms of the unconscious.

The dream had an ordinary premise, as many do: I was getting married (presumably to my real-life partner, though she never featured directly in the dream). Our various relations were gathered in a hotel located right between the street where I live IRL and a beach (upon which I pointedly do not live IRL). The first episode of the dream was upon the beach, where a drinks cooler, animated I know not how, had come to life and was eating people, and then growing in size Little Shop of Horrors-style. For some reason, I was very intent on concealing this fact from other members of my party, but eventually I told them about it, and they assumed I was drunk; but eventually the man-eating drinks cooler grew to skyscraper size, and the national guard had to be called in.

At this point, we began debating whether, for the purposes of the wedding ceremony, dinosaurs could be made to operate 17th-century firearms. (No, this was not an attempted solution to the cooler-kaiju, that entire dilemma simply vanished from the dream and was never referenced again). That we had dinosaurs at the wedding went unremarked upon, and the value of teaching them to shoot muskets was assumed by all present. This is the sort of thing that, if another told it to me as a dream, I would assume he was inventing it to make it seem more wacky; I mostly attribute it to having stayed up late playing Total War: Warhammer II that evening.

This, too, went unanswered, as it was now morning, and I was meeting with my family for breakfast at a bar, a real bar a few blocks from my house. We discussed the game night that my sisters and the bridesmaids had had the previous night, in which my older sister complained about how she doesn't like playing D&D (this is sadly straight from reality). I think we started arguing about optional Ranger class features. Here there was something truly strange: a reference to a different dream that I had over a year ago, in which (also at a wedding) my uncle fell from a tall balcony but survived by grabbing a chandelier. Does anyone else have continuity in dreams like that? It's never happened to me before. That was the end of what I can recall before awakening.

[NovenFromTheSun]

I very seldom have dreams that are weird in a way which makes them interesting to recite. Having had such a one this very night, I thought it might be intriguing to start a conversation thread for the recounting and (deeply unserious) interpretation of dreams. Let us plunge together into the realms of the unconscious.

The dream had an ordinary premise, as many do: I was getting married (presumably to my real-life partner, though she never featured directly in the dream). Our various relations were gathered in a hotel located right between the street where I live IRL and a beach (upon which I pointedly do not live IRL). The first episode of the dream was upon the beach, where a drinks cooler, animated I know not how, had come to life and was eating people, and then growing in size Little Shop of Horrors-style. For some reason, I was very intent on concealing this fact from other members of my party, but eventually I told them about it, and they assumed I was drunk; but eventually the man-eating drinks cooler grew to skyscraper size, and the national guard had to be called in.

At this point, we began debating whether, for the purposes of the wedding ceremony, dinosaurs could be made to operate 17th-century firearms. (No, this was not an attempted solution to the cooler-kaiju, that entire dilemma simply vanished from the dream and was never referenced again). That we had dinosaurs at the wedding went unremarked upon, and the value of teaching them to shoot muskets was assumed by all present. This is the sort of thing that, if another told it to me as a dream, I would assume he was inventing it to make it seem more wacky; I mostly attribute it to having stayed up late playing Total War: Warhammer II that evening.

This, too, went unanswered, as it was now morning, and I was meeting with my family for breakfast at a bar, a real bar a few blocks from my house. We discussed the game night that my sisters and the bridesmaids had had the previous night, in which my older sister complained about how she doesn't like playing D&D (this is sadly straight from reality). I think we started arguing about optional Ranger class features. Here there was something truly strange: a reference to a different dream that I had over a year ago, in which (also at a wedding) my uncle fell from a tall balcony but survived by grabbing a chandelier. Does anyone else have continuity in dreams like that? It's never happened to me before. That was the end of what I can recall before awakening.

*Afixes monocle.*

Clearly this dream is based on the fear that you don’t truly know your partner, as can be seen from how she never appears despite her relevance. The rogue ice cooler represents your hypothetical children and concerns on if they’ll be good or bad people when they grow up. The question about the dinosaurs is based on the realization in marriage there might come dilemmas you never conceived of previously. The last part is a return to your normally mundane style of dreaming, representing an acceptance of the “new normal” that will eventually come.

Okay my turn:

It took place at my college, except that A) two of the classrooms were haunted, and B) because of Covid we switched from in-personal classes to a brain-uploading simulation. For some reason the classes were still haunted in the simulation. The ghosts were scary too, taking monstrous forms rather than translucent people (the best I remember is one looking like a giant flower with an eye in the enter and vines covering the walls).

Anyway, I managed to banish the ghost of one of the classrooms, but then the simulation crashed and restored to a previous state so I had to do it again.

[tomandtish]

You know about Lucid Dreamers. Those who realize they are dreaming and can take control of their dreams. Well...

That ain't me. No matter how bizarre a dream is I never* realize I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming.'

*Although I have had a dream inside a dream where I realized I was dreaming, so what does that mean?!?

Case in point. My Mother-in-Law asks for help removing some flying pests her attic. I go up to remove them. After a lot of shouting and noise I come back down.

Me: "You have murder hornets!"

Her: "How do you know they're murder hornets?"

Me: "Because they tried to kill me! One of them shot me!"

Her: "...You mean stung you?"

Me: "No, shot me! Little bastard had a gun!"

And again, while the dream was occurring this all made perfect sense.

[Dire Moose]

Clearly, your home will be invaded at some point in the future by a guy with a gun. Only he isn’t actually a guy as it’s just a swarm of bees in a trench coat.

My dream diary is composed of stream-of-consciousness statements rather than complete sentences. Nevertheless, here’s one:

On cliff looking into bay
In the bay were ruins made from black rock with orange glow, like the shrines in BOTW
DetectiveVoid (youtuber, posts stuff about SCP Foundation) and
a female hacker investigated, trying to solve puzzles to get inside
Someone shot at us from top of cliff
Leader no longer DetectiveVoid, now a blond guy with sunglasses
Some kind of RPG where some people had dinosaur companions or were dinosaurs
He had a small theropod (raptor?)
Others had a Brontosaurus and a Stegosaurus
RPG picked up again years later
Leader guy changed himself into a girl quickly
Brontosaurus girl had put on weight and mentioned that now she understood what being a Brontosaurus was like
One girl had lost her Stegosaurus, we went looking in airport, had to explain to security that Stegosaurus was extinct
Was waiting for flight to take me home for Christmas
Was handed a large notepad by security to serve as boarding pass
While waiting at gate, played with strange toy that could be repeatedly turned inside out into a lot of things
Got on plane, plane drove along roads instead of taking off due to insufficient distance and overhead wires
Found a field by a church that was big enough to take off in
Nicolas Cage wasn’t on board and had to run alongside plane and climb in via bus door

[truemane]

Last night I dreamed I was on a beach and band I enjoy (but haven't thought about in quite some time) was about to perform a song. The lead singer started and stopped a couple of times, muttered some curses, and then gave up and walked off stage claiming he'd forgotten the lyrics.

But then the guitarist said that the subject matter of the song ("People in Winnipeg knowing things about the government.") was too touchy given the current social climate and that's why they couldn't do the song.

And then right after the band I were walking across the beach (I don't know why I was there too) and they were pulling out of the crowd to sing their song on stage instead of them. The crowd LOVED this and was really excited. As they were picking people, I remember wondering "Can any of these people even sing? Is this all staged? Are these people ringers?"

And just the lead singer stopped in front of a group of people sitting and said, "I'm looking for Monica Song." And then she stood up and went to the stage. At which point I knew this was all a publicity stunt.

But I still REALLY wanted to know what song was going to be sung. But the band kept stopping for small talk with people and delaying and I got more and more anxious to know what song it was but they kept stopping.

Then I woke up. And was mildly annoyed I'd never get to know what song it was.

I'm usually quite aware of what anxiety or worry or preoccupation is fueling any dream I remember.

But this one feels out of left field. I don't know what my brain was up to.

[Eldan]

I had a semi-lucid dream yesterday.

It was structured like it should have been a pretty brutal nightmare. Straight out of some horror game, too. I was in my childhood home, except there was absolute darkness coming in through the windows, slowly filling up one room after another. Very slowly, over days. Just some rooms would go dark and you couldn't go in there anymore. It ended with myself sitting on the last bright spot in the house, a chair at my desk with the desk lamp on, in absolute darkness. Sitting there for weeks, or months. Also, the darkness was talking to me, but I can't remember what it said. I think it grew limbs at some points.

Strange thing was, I wasn't frightened. Or rather, the me in the dream was terrified, but I was sort of looking at it from the outside, almost running a commentary in my head and making fun of how cheesy some of it was. It was interesting enough that when my alarm went off, I rolled back over for another 15 minutes to see how it ended. (I don't remember how it ended.)

[Batcathat]

Last year I had a dream that was memorable mostly for being a timely twist on a classic dream. I was on a crowded bus in the city I grew up in and suddenly realized I was naked and moments later I realized I wasn't wearing a mask. I was mostly concerned about the latter and so was everyone else on the bus, who ended up evicting me from it for not wearing a mask. The fact that I was completely naked throughout the entire confrontation was never commented on.

[Bohandas]

Last year I had a dream that was memorable mostly for being a timely twist on a classic dream.

Speaking of twists on classic dreams, I have a recurring dream where, rather than being unprepared for a test, I'll realize towards the end of a college semester that I've rostered a class but never went to it.

Here there was something truly strange: a reference to a different dream that I had over a year ago, in which (also at a wedding) my uncle fell from a tall balcony but survived by grabbing a chandelier. Does anyone else have continuity in dreams like that? It's never happened to me before. That was the end of what I can recall before awakening.

I've had dreams where I've returned to locations from other dreams.

In particular:

a shopping center with a steeply sloping parking lot that's supposed to have a 5-Below store but doesn't

A place where two or three roads that are parallel in real life seem to converge to a single intersection next to a high-end convenience store that also sells milkshakes

A short tangle of streets that connects the roads behind my house to the roads near the public transportation terminal on the opposite side of town

And an area with a Taco Bell and a video arcade that's shaped kind of like this:

O-O
|

Where that bottom line is an access road from the street, the left circle is a sort of dirt/sand/gravel circle that the stores are located at the left and top edges of, and the right circle is a dirt or sand parking lot connected to the first area by a very short dirt road

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: The dreams are dead.