Strange Dreams

[Jorodryn]

Every time I dream I am flying it is always at ground level and I have to dodge buildings.

[CCC]

...and you played by climbing the jungle gyms and swinging from place to place like a chimpanzee.

The word is "brachiating".

When I dream of flying, I'm normally flying by making swimming motions in the air. It's about as fast as swimming, too, but it's quite relaxing to just glide along.

[Galaxy Hunter]

...and you played by climbing the jungle gyms and swinging from place to place like a chimpanzee.

The word is "brachiating".

When I dream of flying, I'm normally flying by making swimming motions in the air. It's about as fast as swimming, too, but it's quite relaxing to just glide along.

Recently, if I fly in dreams it's with the use of an aircraft or a dragon. Except that one where I was in a field of endless grassy hills, but that wasn't flying so much as gliding with really low gravity thrown in.

[AlternateTorg]

I've never flown in a dream that I can remember, except straight down accelerating at 9.8 m/s², which I'm guessing doesn't count. I'm kinda bummed about it.

[quantumcat42]

I've never flown in a dream that I can remember, except straight down accelerating at 9.8 m/s², which I'm guessing doesn't count. I'm kinda bummed about it.

As far as I know, I can only fly if I realize I'm dreaming and manage not to wake up. Even then, it takes a lot of concentration to pull off.

[Ruan]

Quick question for others on the boards:

What happens more often for you -

1) You are watching a dream (disembodied observer)
2) You are in the dream (bodied participant)

It is actually a pretty rare thing for me to be a part of my dreams. Usually my dreams are... probably the closest equivalent is something along the lines of watching a movie where I've read the book its' based on. I'm seeing everything that's going on, but I'm also picking up on additional subtext that there's no way I could get visually that I just simply know.

Interestingly, the first indication of a nightmare for me is generally if I get pulled into the dream, where I am actually experiencing what's going on. In this state I'm still picking up on subtext, which means sometimes the strangest things can terrify me, even though when looked at awake it's hard to remember why I found whatever it was quite so frightening.

[Galaxy Hunter]

Quick question for others on the boards:

What happens more often for you -

1) You are watching a dream (disembodied observer)
2) You are in the dream (bodied participant)

It is actually a pretty rare thing for me to be a part of my dreams. Usually my dreams are... probably the closest equivalent is something along the lines of watching a movie where I've read the book its' based on. I'm seeing everything that's going on, but I'm also picking up on additional subtext that there's no way I could get visually that I just simply know.

Interestingly, the first indication of a nightmare for me is generally if I get pulled into the dream, where I am actually experiencing what's going on. In this state I'm still picking up on subtext, which means sometimes the strangest things can terrify me, even though when looked at awake it's hard to remember why I found whatever it was quite so frightening.

It's the exact opposite for me, I tend to dream in first-person (and in color, more on that in a little bit.) I do however, seem to notice things in the dream that as a mere participant, I shouldn't. An example would be my knowing what the bad guy was after in my dream despite the fact that I had no business knowing it. Only very rarely do I ever 'detach' from the dream and watch it like a movie, and I really don't like it when that happens, cause it makes me feel like I'm out of control of the dream. What's worse is that the whole losing control of the dream thing usually only happens once I've realized I'm in a dream.

Oh, and I know for sure I dream in color because of one dream I had a while back. I distinctly remember two things: the bright blue bolts of energy emitting from the Covenant Plasma Rifle I had, and the fact that the PredAlien I was shooting bled red instead of bleeding glowing green like I expected it to...

[balthazar]

I had a real good one last night. Like GH, I tend to dream in color, and in the first person, but this one was particularly vivid, and coherent.

So I start out underwater scuba diving. The water is dark, but visibility is good. As it so happens I'm a cyborg, and I'm using a set of jet-ski impellers built into my lower legs to move around. Me and a bunch of other people are looking for some kind of new marine life, we don't know what exactly, but we'll know it when we see it. Things turn weird when we are attacked by schools of some strange small carnivorous fish, think barracuda but only 7 inches long. As a cyborg, they are a mere annoyance to me, but I can see the other divers being ripped to shreds. Gunning my jets, I race for the nearest and blast the fish away from her (yes her, cue female lead) with the prop wash from my legs. We check each other over for wounds before looking around. We are the only ones left, there is no one left in sight, and the small fish are gone. After a dramatically appropriate period of time spent fearfully looking around, something big looms out of the darkness in the distance. It approaches from behind us, but I notice it because apparently I have sonar. It's another fish, big and ugly. Cross a shark with a catfish, add more barbells, make it half as wide as it is long, paint it dun brown, and give it great snaggily teeth, and you have a pretty good picture of what was headed our way. I shove The Girl™ out of the way, and pop a set of spearguns out of my forearms. I fire all of my spears into the beast but it remains unfazed. I figured as much however which is why each spear has a cable attached to it. As the monster fish swims past, I begin reeling in my cables, and I'm dragged wildly along behind it until I'm along side it. At this point I grab onto a convenient spear, and the spearguns retract as a set of long blades extend from my wrist in their place. I proceed to rip the monster into sashimi. As the blood clears, and my blades retract, I notice that I'm getting low on air. I head for the surface and climb aboard a large ship that looks vaguely military. On the open deck I find the girl loudly questioning the Captain (played by Tommie Lee Jones. Seriously. Voice, face and everything. It was creepy.) She's wondering just what the heck is going on. Apparently she's a marine biologist, and recognized the species of fish that attacked us, although they were horribly mutated. The Captain ignores her questions and replies with "Good, we must be getting close." This does not go over well with the female lead, who brings belaboring to new heights. Fed up the Captain breaks down: "Fine, you want to know what we're looking for? We're looking for a myth, a legend, something that shouldn't exist. The mere sight of it is storied to drive men mad. Most people would call it Cthulhu, but really that's just a name we gave it to help deal with the fear of the unknown. It has no name, It doesn't need one, it simply is." He consults some charts. " What we're going to do is find it, capture it, and use it to bend the world to our will. Think of it, the power to drive anyone on the planet mad without warning. Legions of monsters and cultists subservient to our every whim. The whole planet sitting right in our pocket. It's gonna be glorious."

The leading lady accuses him of madness, the Captain agrees. "Well of course I'm insane. When the very sight of your prey is enough to drive you insane, the best defense there is, is to be crazy to begin with." He walks away and waves to some underlings. " Now the best way to catch this thing is to hunt it down underwater, but it's been adequately demonstrated that divers alone aren't going to cut it. So, here's what we're going to do: if we flood all non-vital compartments, and seal off the rest, we should be heavy enough to sink. The engines are nuclear, so we don't have to worry about supplying them with air, and the emergency pumps, along with the compressed air tanks, should be enough to float us back up to the surface. Now, if we pump water and air between these compartments here we can control our pitch and roll...."

Underlings run everywhere to carry out the Captain's orders. I use the chaos to plant explosives around the ship as the leading lady attacks the Captain in an attempt to end this madness, but she is quickly pulled off and restrained by nearby goons. The Captain, all pretense of patience and sanity now gone, shouts: "Get her out of here, and throw her in the Brig. Then flood it, We've got a schedule to keep!" He goes back to his charts as the goons begin to drag her away. And then I step in again. Time slows down as I sprint towards the goons, my wrist blades sliding out of my forearms as I move. The guards are cut down before they can even turn around. As my blades retract, I gather up the girl in my arms and the jet-ski impellers spin up, not impellers but rather jet turbines that do double duty as impellers. As the Captain orders more goons toward us, enraged and intent on our capture, we blast off the deck in a long hop to the back of the ship, where I kick an inflatable life raft off the deck before leaping skyward once more. As we get out of range of whatever weapons the ship may have, I fly back down towards the now inflated life raft and land. As we watch the ship begins to sink as the water around it begins to boil. With a grim smile I trigger the explosives and as we watch great clouds of black smoke begin to billow up from the ship accompanied by distant cries and shouts from the crew. The ship starts to sink faster now, listing slightly to one side. Finally the water closes over it, and becomes calm once more, but I know in my gut that I haven't seen the last of that ship, or her Captain.

And then I wake up.

Weird huh?

[OrzBrain]

So THAT'S what Adam Jensen did after Deus Ex 3...

Seriously, the main character and even the shape of the plot is strongly reminiscent of Deus Ex 3.

[Steave]

My dreams swap from outside perspective to first person at a rapid pace. People with also swap from strangers to people I know and back again quite quickly.

The flying dreams I have are difficult to explain. If you close your eyes and hold your fingers against the with a small amount of pressure, after a few seconds you may see something equivelant to tv static. Imagine a landscap of that with no up or down and no reference point. Imagine the landscape is fluid but forcefully like ocean currents. Sometimes you can flow with it. Sometimes you are hurled against your will and sometimes there is a down and you start to fall.

[Kajin]

@Steave
Sounds like something thatgamecompany (responsible for the PS3 exclusive Journey, which is about bed sheet people in the desert) needs to get started on. I would play the hell out of that.

@balthazar
I have a tough time imagining Tommy Lee Jones in the role you cast him as. He isn't good villain material.

[balthazar]

Kajin, watch Under Siege http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105690/. You'd be amazed.

[Jorodryn]

Back to the flying thing. Sometimes in my dreams I don't necessarily fly, but actually do the Douglas Adams routine of just missing the earth while heading toward it. Ok it's more like I jump and then sort of not hit the ground. Somehow I am somewhat self propelled and end up doing the whole hoverboard thing from Back to the Future II without the board.

Quick question for others on the boards:

What happens more often for you -

1) You are watching a dream (disembodied observer)
2) You are in the dream (bodied participant)

The really weird ones are where I am both. Where I can see myself in the dream yet I am also a first person participant in the dream. Those ones are odd because it seems normal and obviously isn't.

[Silly Green Monkey]

How I fly in dreams has changed over time, from a jump that quickly ends, to jumps with glides, to now effortless flight kinda like DBZ. I'm also able to phase through substances fairly quickly, still working on teleporting (but at least I'm in both places now instead of remaining at the starting point).

I'm both bodied and disembodied, but the important thing is the person in the dream is not me. S/he is a person with a different past, different memories, and makes different choices. Bugs me when someone in the dream calls the dream self by my name, it's NOT ME.

I tend to recognize other people not by faces, but by title---'sister', 'sister's evil warlord husband', 'husband', 'brother', 'the Doctor' and so on. I generally can't see faces at all.

[OrzBrain]

I tend to have dreams where I'm in two places at once -- that is, I'm acting in the dream and also reading (or narrating) what's happening or watching it like a movie. Commonly there is also a running commentary (either from myself or an audience) about the quality of the writing and plausibility of the plot.