October 17, 2012

Dream Journal: An Unwanted Encounter

I had a dream Tuesday night, but not like a Martin Luther King Jr. dream. You know, a dream, dream. It was also really weird and kind of upsetting, but I wouldn’t classify it as a nightmare. I didn’t wake up all flustered and messed up like I do so often from nightmares. I don’t know what to think about it.

I was myself, with my body, in this dream, which is odd in itself. Normally I’m just kind of a formless blob of me-conciousness, but I have no real concept of my form in the dream. Probably comes from years of feeling basically disassociated with my body, I guess. Anyway, I was on some sort of college campus, and there was some sort of big event going on. However, I had ducked out. I was in some side hallway a bit off of where things where going on. There were offices and meetings around, and bathrooms. Some people were working in the offices. Every so often someone from the show would pass on the way to the bathroom.

For whatever reason, someone I haven’t really seen since high school came up to me and started a conversation. (I recognized him. He wasn’t just like… generic guy that in dream-logic I knew from high school. I’m just not going to name him for reasons that will be obvious in a second here.) I seem to remember being worried that things were going to be awkward, what with all my changes, but no, he was being nice, and we were talking and having a good time. We started walking deeper back into the hallway. Once we got a little farther away from everything, though, he started gently but firmly pushing me to my knees. Not saying anything. Just did it. It was a command, but it wasn’t like… do this or I’ll hurt you? He seemed to just assume I would. I was confused as shit, but being the dumb submissive bitch I am, fell down to my knees. You can then maybe guess where this is going. In that same insistent, but not attacking manner, he forced me to give him a blowjob. I was worried as shit in the dream for a variety of reasons, a big one being getting caught, because people could still walk past, and also what CJ would think of this happening to me. But for whatever frustrating in retrospect reason, I wouldn’t put up anything more than token resistance. I was in full-on submission mode.

Then I woke up.

I really don’t know what to make of this. As far as the guy in the dream goes, we were on friendly terms, but never really close. He was closer to some other friends of mine, so we often were in the same place and were acquainted that way, you know? Last time I saw him, at our class reunion, he still used the wrong pronouns with me (not surprising, as he probably just found out like that day about everything) and we didn’t really talk much. I always thought he was a cool enough guy, but the way he treated women always bothered me. He kind of treated them like shit, with constant “jokey” sexist stuff pretty well constantly that I couldn’t help but take as serious since it was basically all he did. Yet everyone said he was a perfect gentleman and great to his girlfriends, so who knows. I do know it bothered the shit out of me that there was such a clear difference in how he treated guys and girls, and I was on the wrong side of that. I remember getting very upset about that and trying to hide it when I was around him and a girlfriend. Maybe there’s something there with all that?

It also just kind of disturbs me after the fact that what happened in the dream was rape-like in nature. I remember distinctly not WANTING to do that. I just didn’t feel like I could say no. And that experience resulted in me waking up calm and collected, whereas dreams about stupid shit like “I can’t get back to Cape in time to teach my class” have me freaking out and needing to just lie there and breathe for awhile to be able to function when I wake up, because I’m so nervous and overwhelmed. Why was my subconscious okay with that?

Is this some sort of fucked up thing where I want to be treated like garbage like that because then I’m “in” and have more of a claim to being myself? Because that is a shitty thing for my subconscious to think. But it’s not like I really get sexist treatment. At least, I haven’t really experienced much of it. Granted, I’m normally in the classroom in a position of power, being the teacher, and I’m normally putting off a pretty masculine aura, even when I don’t mean to. I mean, I don’t mind. I’m just being myself. But like… when I address guys, I address them on wavelength similar to two guys talking to each other, because I know how to do that. I know that quiet, unwritten kind of code, seeing as I had to decipher it to survive through my childhood. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, perse. But I do think that, likely, if I was going to get any of that kind of treatment, that shuts that down in people’s heads a lot quicker and it doesn’t happen. I get a lot more harassment on homosexual sort of grounds than sexist stuff. (Not that I get that a lot either, but, you know, plenty of people yelling at me out of cars as they drive by. Joy.) I don’t know. Does all that even make sense? I certainly have been reading a lot about people being complete fucking creepy assholes to women lately. I could believe all that was in my head.

I really just don’t know. Trying to interpret dreams is kind of hard. Thoughts?

March 18, 2012

Dream Journal: Fever Dreams

When I was completely sick and barely able to sleep, I kept having variants of the exact same dream over and over again. Fuck if I know why. But here’s what was going on.

I had discovered some sort of special sentence. Basically, I had said this sentence, and something insane had happened. Things were destroyed. It was the most dangerous of sentences. Sort of magic, sort of not. In any case, it was extremely powerful.

I had turned myself in so that my sentence-saying power could be harnessed and controlled safely. I had been tied up, bound somewhere, and I was being studied. The sentence itself seemed to keep changing, or I kept trying different sentences. I’m not sure. But I was being invasively researched, and I could not get up.

I seriously had this dream again and again. I’d wake up, and it would have been at the same point where I tried a sentence and it worked, before I saw what it did. Then I’d force myself back to sleep and have the same dream again, pretty well exactly. It was kind of strange. Certainly not something I can remember happening before.

Anyway, there’s a short blog post. I am mostly un-sick now, so I hope to be back at normal blogging strength tomorrow. Later.

March 4, 2012

Dream Journal: Retail, Ponies, And Licensed Fiction

Okay, here’s another dream I had.

I was working, sort of, at some sort of retail outlet. It was laid out like Kohl’s in a lot of ways, but it clearly was not Kohl’s. However, the location of the toys was in the same place in the building, back in the back corner. Still, it wasn’t Kohl’s. We didn’t sell the same stuff.

In any case, I was done with my shift, and before I left the store, I went shopping. I was with somebody, but I don’t know who. I want to say it was my mother, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I went back to the back corner to check the pony toys because I am mucho predictable. I take a look around, and I see something I want to come back for later. However, I leave it there then, and go back to meet with my mysterious shopping companion.

When we go to check out, though, I realize I never went back for whatever it was I was looking for, so I excuse myself from the checkout line and go back to the toys. When I get back there, a girl starts talking to me about ponies as I pick up what I was going to buy, since she saw I was interested. She showed me a line of Pony jewelry back there that she thought was totally cool (she liked Rainbow Dash, and they were like… Rainbow Dash necklaces) but apparently I already had a pony necklace of some sort on, so I showed that to her and she was impressed. We talked for a little while longer, and then she left.

But when she left, I noticed something. It was a book, sort of like one of those “my first chapter books” sort of size. Like, say, the size of a Goosebumps book. But it was a pony book. Friendship is Magic licensed fiction. It had Applejack looking over some sort of a cauldron on it. I couldn’t help myself. I picked it up and looked at the plot synopsis. It was something along the lines of Applejack having been given some sort of potion recipe that promised to make the apples at Sweet Apple Acres the best in the world. There was some upcoming Equestria-wide fair she was really worried about losing. But making the potion could create problems and force her to lie to her friends!

Anyway, I was shocked and pleased there was pony licensed fiction, so I bought the book too.

Then I woke up.

Goddamn, maybe I’m a bit too obsessed with ponies.

February 16, 2012

Dream Journal: Do Not Mail Your Dog.

Well, I certainly had a dream! Let me tell you about it.

I was in some big city. I don’t know which one. But there were skyscrapers kind of everywhere. So big. I was staying in this hotel/mall complex that was, I believe, 22 floors tall. Most of that was hotel. I was there on some sort of business. That was never clear. But I was there to work, and while I remember enjoying crazy-ass Vegas-style buffets and stuff, I was working. Surely.

Anyway, I had brought Q along with me, because why wouldn’t I? I was doing a bunch of work! He wanted to hang out with me. However, work called, and said I needed to go somewhere else, and I needed to go quickly. This was a situation where I couldn’t take Q along. So I was trying to come up with a solution on what to do with him. I wasn’t home, so I couldn’t just give him to my mother, and I couldn’t leave him in the hotel. I ended up calling a bunch of people, and I found a service that would let me send him back to my mother. It looked legit, so I called them and tried to set things up. They were really eager to work with me! But for whatever reason I couldn’t meet all their requirements on how to get Q sent home. They said, though, that I shouldn’t worry, and they’d work something out. I was confused, but I said, okay.

They called me back later, and said they found someone in the hotel to take care of sending him back, and I was supposed to go to room 2020. I thanked them, picked up Q, and went to the elevator. My room was on the ground floor, so I went in the elevator and hit floor 20, because, you know, 2020, that means floor 20, right?

The elevator was huge. Like, it was a small room. It also moved super fast. It knocked me off my feet as it raced up, as well as to the side (apparently it had to shift left and right around the building to keep going up). I was pinned against the glass of the thing, holding on to Q, and being very worried. Elevators should not go this fast! Still, I made it to the floor, and got out. I looked all around, but there was no room 2020 up there.

I pulled out my cell phone and called the front desk, and asked them where room 2020 was. They said it was on the first floor. I complained about how stupid that was. They just kinda said “well, that’s where it is,” and hung up. Needless to say, I rode the elevator back down.

When I found room 2020, it was basically like a utility closet. It was this big room, with a concrete floor, and there seemed to be a guy living there with a bulldog. He’s like “Oh, there you are! Been waiting for you! Got everything ready.” He showed me a large plastic bag with a blanket it in, and started putting Q in there. I noticed it had a US Mail shipping label on it. I asked him if he was going to mail my dog. He said Q would be fine. I tend started going on and on about how terrible an idea it was, and the many ways Q could be hurt. He could suffocate in the bag. He could tear his way out of the bag in a shipping center and escape. The people loading him could put him on the bottom of a stack and crush him. Basically, I made it clear there was no fucking way he was mailing my dog.

Then I woke up.

I’m not mailing Q anywhere, do you hear me? NEVER.

November 16, 2011

Dream Journal: Dying Is Apparently Traumatic.

For a dream that spawned such vivid emotion, it sure did start out stupid. Anyway, here, let me tell you about it, I suppose!

I was with Essner in a mall, but it was not a normal mall. Every single “store” in the mall was actually a fancy restaurant/comedy club. There was basically every kind of food you could want. I remember a Mexican one, an Americana kind of restaurant, and a really futuristic-looking mostly bar kind of place. However, every single one had a stage, and every single one had a different comedy act performing for some reason. It was a pretty busy mall restaurant place.
I had apparently just finished up doing a performance at one of these restaurants. (Apparently I was a professional comedian. Who knew?) I had then met up with Essner for some reason I was not aware of. We were talking and walking through the mall, looking at the restaurants. Maybe we were searching for somewhere to eat?

Then, out of the shadows, someone or something jumped me. I got stabbed.

Essner and someone from a nearby restaurant pulled me off of the floor and into some sort of apartment. (Apparently there were also apartments above this mall of restaurants. The person who helped Essner carry me had some level of medical training or something, and basically just flat-out told me that this was fatal, and I wasn’t going to be alive for much longer.

This news felt incredibly real. I immediately pulled out my cell phone, and proceeded calling people and telling them I loved them. I made my mother promise to bury me in a dress and take care of Brer. I called my brother, my father, friends. I didn’t call Essner, because he was there, but I talked to him. I didn’t call Brer in the dream, because I was saving him for last and was just going to keep him on the phone until I was gone, and the dream didn’t get that far Most of these conversations had me crying.

Then I woke up, and I kept crying. I cried in bed for a long time. I texted my family to tell them I loved them, and I just let it all out. The feeling of needing to say goodbye, of not abandoning people like that… it was just overwhelming. It was really less the me dying part. That’s, you know, a thing, but I’ve been suicidal before, so it’s not very, like, odd feeling to me. I just found myself terrified that I couldn’t say goodbye to everyone, and that my dying would cause problems for everyone that I couldn’t fix. Frankly, that’s what always stopped me from trying, way back in the past.

In any case, it really shook me up. I’m fine now. I’m not going anywhere. But just… goodness. Dreams do not normally hit me like that. Or at all, really. Mm.

October 26, 2011

Dream Journal: Slavery! At the Mall!

Get out your dream interpretation manuals, because I had another vivid dream last night. This dream was weird in a lot of ways. For one, there was a lot of backstory in it. I felt I knew a lot about my “character,” who was me, but also was not me. I was still myself, and for part of it, I had the same friends, but my past was pretty different. It was also a dream where I distinctly remember me being female, which is always a good thing in my eyes. The events don’t really work too well if I wasn’t born female. It’s just nice that my subconscious is finally making that switch, instead of making me a genderless blob of a being like I always used to be. Finally, it’s just odd that, in this dream, imagry that I’m generally pretty okay with and tend to find fairly sexy, like puppy play and whatnot, was incredibly terrifying to me. I felt that fear. Odd. Anyway, here we go.

The first thing I remember was meeting at a big mansion type house with a bunch of people. I don’t really know who these people were: they were just friends of the owner. I apparently was too. He had a huge house, that had a huge grounds that were connected to many other buildings, lakes, buildings under the lakes, and so on, but we mostly stayed in the main house. I was spending a few weeks there as the owner’s guest. Apparently this was not the first time I had done this: we had all been there before. The owner was a rich dude, but he was also kind of a sleazebag. It was obvious that most of us, including myself, were simply using him to spend a vacation in some really obscene wealth. We were mostly free to do whatever we wanted, and we did. Most guests explored the huge grounds. I mostly stayed up in the little room I had claimed for myself, relaxed, slept, ate good food, and so on. I didn’t want to explore, for reasons that wasn’t clear to me at the time, but became clear later.

While staying here, the police arrived. It turned out the owner came into his obscene wealth by unscrupulous means, and they were doing a raid. All the guests scattered. Though I’d done nothing wrong, I got caught up in the rush and ran as well. I was being chased, and I headed out into the grounds. Each building I saw there filled me with fear. They were all fancy, in different styles. There was one which was under a man-made lake. However, they weren’t buildings: they were brothels. The grounds used to be, before the current owner bought it, a sex theme park of sorts, that had many, many sex slaves. The building I had been staying in was part of the area for guests, so it hadn’t inspired any fear in me. I hadn’t seen it. But apparently I had been a slave here, when it was open, and seeing the grounds I was used to caused me to have horrible flashbacks. I ended up having to hide in a building and run through an automated course for pet training that I had been through years ago. I was in tears. This was a bad situation for me. Traumatizing. I made it out, collapsing in the entrance to the building, and was eventually arrested by police officers. I told them what I knew, trying not to cry. I was eventually released for being co-operative and not being directly involved.

There was then a time jump. I was working at a store in a mall. This store was in a mall that catered to sex pet owners. This was apparently common in the world of my dream. People would come in with their pets on leashes, and it would make me shiver and shake uncontrollably. Nobody knew I had escaped that world. However, while I was trying to work, I was also attempting to organize some sort of mall-wide dinner event. It was going to be a big party, and I was trying to get everything set up. However, all the various store managers could not agree on what the main course would be, and it was all going to fall apart. Essner, Droid, Spaeth, and I were running around attempting to come to some sort of agreement with everyone so that the party could go on. We weren’t making much progress, but there was one person I knew could make a difference. However, ran a shop specifically for pet owners. I needed to go in to talk to him, but I couldn’t. I stood outside, frozen. I wished that one of my friends would show up and do it for me, but I was alone.

Then I woke up.

Yep, I have a strange, strange subconscious.

September 8, 2011

Dream Journal: Failures in Lucid Dreaming

Gather round, get out your dream interpretation manuals, it’s time to talk about my dreams again. Oh joy! Here we go.

I dreamed I was at a family get-together of some sort. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Jonathan were there, as well as all the dogs. I don’t know where Shauna was, but I don’t remember seeing her. I was trying to be sociable, until I met Jonathan.
“You’re supposed to be on your Honeymoon!” I said.
Jonathan shrugged. “I came back.”
“Why would you come back? You just got there!” I said. It was then I realized there was no way this could be real.

So I woke up. Only I was in a strange room. It wasn’t a bedroom I recognized from anywhere. It had stuff that very easily could have been mine, but I didn’t recognize any of it. I grabbed my glasses and got out of bed. It was morning. Mom was walking around. But again, it wasn’t my house. I didn’t recognize it at all. “This is all wrong,” I said to myself. “I must be dreaming.”

So I woke up. Only I was in the same room again. I picked up my glasses and it as basically the same as before. Strange house, nobody else thinks it’s weird. I remembered shit I’d read about Lucid Dreaming a long time ago, and figured that if I was going to be in a dream, I might as well have fun with it. I tried hovering, and flying around outside. It worked like a charm. I looked down at myself, and I was as I am now. (This is always a thing for me. Normally people are kind of just featureless entities in my dreams, and I don’t remember anything about how they or I look, but for some reason, I was just myself this time.) I’m like “Okay then, if this is my dream, I can be born female.” So I tried concentrating on it. I got the breasts down: they became real, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get the other bits working. This really frustrated me. I could fucking fly, so why wouldn’t my mind let me be myself for five fucking minutes? I tried and I tried to no avail. I was stomping around, angry. Dream Mom was concerned.

Then I woke up for real.

Your guess as to meaning is as good as mine, readers. And I dunno, if you want to see how often I dream, look back at when the last time I wrote about this stuff was. I haven’t had a dream since then. Heh.

August 8, 2011

What May Be The Stupidest Dream I Ever Had

You know what’s super interesting? OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS!
Yeah, sorry, but this dream was kind of vivid and fucked up, so I will share it. Get out your dream interpretation textbooks and tell me how weird I am.

The first moment I can remember was that there was this tournament. It was something multidimensional. It was taking place on earth, but creatures from all over were involved. The night before, the tournament had happened, and something crazy had happened, but I had woken up the next day with complete amnesia about the events. All I remembered was that we’d done something great, I was on a team consisting of me, my mother, Harrison Ford for some reason, and a ton of My Little Ponies. (Yes, for whatever reason I think it stranger that I was teamed up with my mom and Harrison Ford than My Little Ponies.) Also, since we had won, or something of the sort, we had access to some sort of guild hall. So I went there.
The place was gigantic. A mansion really. People had already picked out rooms and such, and I wandered through, looking it over. My mom was swimming in a gigantic pool in the middle of the gigantic living room area, apparently. I asked her what had happened last night, and she filled me in. Apparently there was some sort of bomb threat. Some sort of interdimentional explosive compound had shown up, and our team, me especially, had been key in diffusing it.
It was then that Rainbow Dash rushed into the room. Apparently we hadn’t gotten it all, and she was calling the whole team together again to try to finish the job. The dangerous compound was some sort of red blob. Rainbow Dash explained, (In my dream, she was a chemist, and I didn’t really question this.) mostly for my benefit, that the way to diffuse it was to cover it with this green blob compound, and run it through a filter. That filter was a human brain. This was dangerous, of course. Apparently last night, I had been the filter, which is why I couldn’t remember it, but the amount she found today was so much more. More than just memory loss could occur. I volunteered, but everyone said no, I would be at much more risk than a new person because I did it last night. That’s when Harrison Ford stepped up and volunteered.
I combined the two blobs, and then pushed it into one side of his head, pulling it out the other. Each time I did this, his expression got more and more vacant, but the red was disappearing from the blob. Soon, most of the red was gone, but not all, but Harrison Ford was looking pretty bad. I didn’t want to keep going. I turned to ask Rainbow Dash if this was enough, but she wasn’t there.
I ran outside, into some sort of Mall area, looking for her. She was nowhere to be found. I was getting fucking desperate, and I remember feeling that way. Intense, real emotion of being lost and alone without her guidance. Eventually, I found her, though.

There was then a series of flash-forwards. I learned how to make portals to connect dimensions and places, so I could keep in touch with my teammates, who were going back to Ponyville after the tournament, of course. It was a much different method than pony magic, and I remember Twilight Sparkle being very interested in my technique. I also started to use them just to jump around the world. I went back to Brer’s house, and surprised him. I made Jonathan and Shauna take pictures of empty bathroom stalls at Disney World during their Honeymoon so I could focus on them and open gates there any time. (I figured bathroom stalls gave me the least chance of drawing attention to the portals at a place as busy as Disney World.)

Eventually, I went to my ex-girlfriend, Natalie’s, house. I don’t really know why. I was definitely visiting, though. I had many suitcases and bags. Her house was absolutely nothing like her house used to be when I was visiting. It was pretty huge, seemed to have Brer’s living room attached to it for some reason, and was stuffed to the brim with comic books and manga, which was something she liked, but never to this extent. I mostly just remember trying to leave, and having trouble because, apparently, I had brought a ton of comic books and stuffed animals to her house, and I was having difficulty sorting mine from hers. I woke up from the dream going through her many shelves to try to figure out where my stuff was. I couldn’t even find all the luggage I brought.

And that was my dream! I woke up then, and played Tiny Tower in bed. I’m awesome. Seriously, though. I never remember my dreams. Why did I remember something as nonsensical as this? My brain must just be amazing. I’m also just surprised about all the Pony influence. The Harrison Ford thing I get, as I had written that Cowboys and Aliens ramble right before going to bed, but I haven’t experienced something pony-related in quite awhile. Eh, who knows.

May 29, 2011

Game Design Via Random Dream

I rarely remember my dreams, but often, when I wake up slightly, my brain takes some part of a story from a dream and keeps telling it, onward and onward, and I have a hint of what I was dreaming about from that.

Apparently last night I was having a pretty interesting dream, because I woke up remembering a pretty badass premise for an adventure game, which I will share with you now.

I was in a hospital of some sort. It seemed to be a hospital for treating people with various “special” abilities. I didn’t have any of these abilities except one: anything I saw written on an official form became real. The hospital got hit with some sort of supernatural attack, and I was trying to escape because I was trapped in the hospital. However, I kept stealing forms. I’d fill my name in as a doctor on a form, and suddenly everyone would think I was one of the doctors. I’d fill in a form that diagnosed me with other supernatural powers (the one in the dream was seeing the future) and then I had them.

As I woke up, I started to flesh out this concept outside of dream logic. I’d have seen several forms that, basically, I needed to reverse or destroy because someone was using me. I would have seen a form that caused the hospital to be under attack by things like ghosts. I would have seen a death certificate of close friends and family that I would need to reverse. Finally, I’d have to, of course, figure out how to reverse the forms that got me committed to this place in the first place.

I think I vaguely mentioned this yesterday, but low power, high restriction magic is really cool. There’s something awesome about having to take a seemingly narrow-focused ability and use it to solve a variety of problems. I think this whole “form” mechanic really fits that, and my subconscious dream-brain really picked a perfect setting for having a lot of forms lying about to try to play around with. Of course, to be really cool, the game would have to have a lot of forms that did a lot of things that weren’t really important to solving any puzzles or progressing, which would be a potential problem. There could be a ton of different gamestates at any time, and narrowing it too much so there’s not as many gamestate possibilities kind of hurts the fun of the entire thing.

Thankfully, I don’t really have to make this game. But I thought it a neat idea my dream-brain had, so I thought I’d share.

August 6, 2010

Daring Escape, and Dream within a Dream Dreaming.

I don’t have anything interesting to say, so you get to hear about a dream instead.

I was some sort of wizard or witch, and I was being held captive in a castle and forced to work. I couldn’t remember anything about where I came from or what I was doing there. It was some sort of memory wipe, I had decided. However, I could still remember how to use magic, and due to incredible incompetence on the part of my captors, I still had my wand. So I bided my time, working away as a slave, preparing to break free.

Eventually, I got brought before my captor, and in a daring feat of wand-play, started fucking up the joint and blasting my way out of there Harry Potter Style. I soon escaped.

And then I woke up.

Now, when I say me, I mean my character in the dream. Because my character woke up, and was looking down on a miniature DnD dungeon version of the castle. It turned out that this was some sort of MGS Virtual Reality training for magic users. This capture scenario was a common one used in training.

I thought that was cool.

Dream time then flashed forward and I was then training people using this same board, only this time I was the dungeon master, moving pieces to manipulate their training and such.

Then I actually woke up.

Yeah, so… wizard VR training via Dungeons and Dragons. Sounds like a good plan. Let’s get that implemented.