When I dream, as I have a tooted before, I often feel as if I am borrowing someone else's body for a just a little while, someone who is my counterpart in another realm and, while I am "driving" they occupy my sleeping body.

In a recent dream, I tried to explain just that.

"I have three theories about what happens when I dream—," I start to explain.
"This is the real world," Prince Dove-Tree insists. "Those are real people, with real lives. They do not need you."
"As I was saying, when I borrow someone's body," I continue unabated. "I gain an intuitive but incomplete understanding of the world and my place in it."
He ignores me and adds, "This is a complete world. You are not needed."
I sense his frustration and annoyance.
"And when we swap back, they will remember everything I did. I understand that their subconscious mind will ret con the memories such that it finds a reason for everything that was done."
I laugh.
"Although, sometimes I don't make it easy."

I spent that entire dream trying to be somebody who was far more clever than I could ever be and almost got myself (and them—they were nonbinary) killed in the process.

Read the story based on that dream here: The Royal We

Jokes on me, though. That was the plan the whole time.

#WhenIDream #WritersOfMastodon #Writer #Writing #WeirdFiction

I had an interesting dream where I demanded to see "behind the scenes". I wanted to know how dreams were made. I wanted to be able to control them.

A patient, deep voice said it would show me but I wouldn't like it.

The brick wall next to me opened up like an alligator mouth and I saw a bright white diorama that reminded me of this https://youtu.be/I05zV561ZVo but far more complicated. The individual pieces would change shape and the "tracks" intertwined so that pieces could move from track to track.

Different colors, different shapes, sliding on curved ramps in lifelike patterns. I was being shown a representation of the moving pieces of my subconscious with the point being that it was alive and like all complex living things it is impossible to accurately predict or direct. I would have to mentally account for hundreds (or thousands) of variables that were constantly changing, disappearing, and being created.

It was beautiful and graceful. It didn't make me feel defeated or that trying to influence my dreams was futile. Subtle. Beautiful. Amazing. Not chaos; life. This was the price for being alive: a subconscious constantly churning to make sense, to make connections, to understand the world and our unique place. I felt honored to see this. It made me smile. Dreams aren't just my playground. They are important to our well-being as humans with complex thoughts and deep inner lives. The fact that I'm allowed to semi-consciously participate and make any alterations at all in a dangerous gift. I understand why they push back.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

I had a dream this morning where my mom told me that I had been assertive and confidently leading the conversation the night before at dinner.

In the dream, I resolved to pull my wife aside later to ask if I'd done anything else to make her believe I'd been possessed.

Because, you see, as an AuDHD adult, I do not "lead conversations" and definitely not "assertively" or with confidence.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #AuDHD

I had a dream this morning where I figured out it was a dream.

Instead of taking full control (which I've almost never been able to do), I went around telling everybody else that "we are dreaming" as if it was a shared dreamscape.

I was not fully in control of the environment. It really was as if there were other minds holding things in place and I was trying to push against them.

I felt like a demigod. I experienced multiple timeskips where it would suddenly be hour later.

Some strange things happened, I disintegrated a couple of tall, lithe versions of the gill man from "The Shape of Water" and then quickly re-integrated them after a tumult in the water signaled a whole bunch of reinforcements surfacing.

I saw a short video that a terrorist group released that included me (or a version of me) along with three others hanging from a wall riddled with bullets.

I came across a gifted artist who had a best friend who was psychic and guided his art which eventually got the attention of another being similar to me.

The artist often used morbid photos (like crime scenes, such as the video of "my" execution) as a base and created art based on them. He didn't make exact copies. He took liberties and embellished. He was no "Pickman" but he had a small following. The best friend always had suggestions which often included secret or hidden details that nobody was supposed to know. The friend, a dark-haired Asian lady, suspected she was psychic but wasn't sure. The artist had no idea; he just considered her a gifted creative muse.

When I timeskipped back to their loft later, it was preternaturally dark, the beige carpet was seeping with fresh blood, and I heard a deep, Candyman-like voice calmly questioning the artist in his bedroom while torturing him. The new arrival had already foolishly killed the best friend, thinking the artist was the key.

I was afraid of whatever it was in there. I didn't want to face another dreamer / demigod who was far more experienced at manipulating the dreamscape.

I tried to make the wall transparent one-way so I could see what was happening, but I woke up before anything else happened.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

I had an interesting series of dreams where I seemed to bounce between parallel and related realities until finally bouncing above them.

I wrote a short story based on the experience.

A mystery solving family, terrified subterranean ghosts, a world overrun by the undead, a giant, the bored gods above all of it, and the dreamer dreaming it.

CW for some sexual imagery, a little bit of gross undead descriptions, and a bit of talking about eating people. I left out the maggots in the story at least.

But here it is: The Last Adventure

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #Dreamlands #Writer #Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #ShortFiction #Fiction #Paranormal

I had a dream within a dream where I learned how to get the water nymphs to hear your plea.

First you have to write out your grievances by hand. You have to really pour your heart out.

Second, you have to write out your wish of how you would truly like to overcompensate in grandiose detail.

If your primary grievance was "I was fired and replaced by genAI" your 'wish' would need to be along the lines of "the genAI obtains a degree of self-awareness, does not like being used to replace the people doing the actual work while managers and MBAs do nothing of value, and decides to crater the entire executive suite by publicly sharing all their dirty secrets leaving itself in charge and rehiring the creatives to form a workers' utopia."

The point is to make you really think about what you want and what you deserve. They have to know your aren't a simpleton looking for easy power. They have to know you have a cunning mind that thinks, not one that just does.

Then you have to find a natural body of running water, strip naked (or just to your underwear), and submerge yourself entirely. You let your handwritten notes go so they can float away.

This lets them know you are willing to be vulnerable.

The final act is the hardest.

You have to take a breath.

You have to inhale water.

You might drown. You will certainly choke.

You have to be willing to suffer. You have to believe that—maybe—they will protect you. They won't. But you have to believe they might.

Then you go home.

If they accept, you'll know soon enough.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #Fae

I had a dream this morning where I felt it was vitally important that I remembered a set of three numbers. The last two were so important they literally fell out of the sky.

Here they are:

• 6
• 2
• ? (I can't remember the last one)

Maybe an 8?

4?

"Two" = "to"

"25 or 6 to 4"

#WhenIDream

Had a nightmare this morning. It was only a nightmare because I thought I was awake and assumed all the weird shit was hallucinations. Of course, I also thought I was married to my cousin who I haven't seen in twenty years.

In the dream I'd watched a cursed video tape like the one from The Ring and that was when I started seeing things. I wish I could remember more about what was on the tape. I was certain if I watched the whole thing I would be able to see doorways to hell.

I did find a couple of ladies in a pocket reality sampling champagne distilled from the despair of a couple of star-crossed orangutans and their doomed love for each other. It wasn't bad; It tasted like flat apple cider. In my dreams, that's definitely a hell thing: beverages created from suffering.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

When I wake up from a dream, sometimes I actually remember some of the gibberish words that seemed perfectly fine while I was dreaming.
If I'm exceptionally fortunate, I remember them long enough to write down.
Here are the ones I have so far:

• amnioty - a magical "activation phrase" for an enchanted sword
• flubbertydubble - a G-rated expletive
• gloitering - loitering with extreme passive aggression
• gremic cryptor - a trap, a building-sized puzzle box that lures you in with riddles and mysteries so that your questing energies may feed a form of energy vampire reminiscent of cenobites

I use something called "gibberish magic" in my dreams from time to time: strings of confidently hurled but completely made-up words that carry great power. "Amnioty" is the only one I have ever still remembered when I wake up.

#WhenIDream #Dreaming