May 6 - "Drakengard" / James Bond

Well, it's been dead here for a while now, but I'm home for the summer and I'm hoping that the newfound ability to sleep in will help me remember my dreams. So here goes.

Dream #1: "Drakengard"

I am aware that Drakengard is a video game. However, such is the nature of dreams that this is not fixed. In my dream, Drakengard was a Shakespeare-like play, similar to Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet. I don't remember all the details, but apparently my dream consisted of a weird change to it. The play, in its "original form", consists of the following: a man has an affair. Then the son by this affair has an affair with the same woman (which manages to avoid the obvious fact that this is incest). I think the dad was a king or something that had usurped the throne. The son has a child by the woman and he shows it to his dad or something and that causes the usurper to get kicked off the throne. At some point, too, the woman is reassuring the son about something to do with the sex they were going to have. Anyway, that's the background. My dream involves all of this background, yes, except that it twists it. In the dream, the son has an affair with a male orc. He complains to his dad, who apparently set this whole thing up, because if the affair is with a male orc, then he can't possibly have the son he needs to continue the "Drakengard" reenactment. It doesn't come up at this point that the dad who set the whole thing up wouldn't find that particularly desirable, either.

Dream #2: James Bond

I don't remember all the details here, either. I'm James Bond and I've gotten some kind of ridiculous injury and am wearing this blood-stained misshapen jacket thing. I have to go to the bathroom to straighten out my outfit. Then at some point I'm not James Bond or something, and I'm this ENEMY of James Bond, and my assistant goes off to summon him. He leaves the room and gets killed by James Bond and dragged into a closet (I know this despite not having any line-of-sight here). He shoes up and takes this knife and does SOMETHING. Anyway, this dream is significant because it marks when I realized that my dreams usually involve some kind of blanket or something from real life. I sleep with a blanket almost all the time, and if it's over my head, I usually end up not seeing very good at some point in the dream, and if it's kindof twisty and messed up, well then I get a dream like this.

March 30 - Blur

Blur is right. I'm reaching the point where I remember a large chunk of dreams each night, but not really the larger context. If you follow along, you'll probably notice me talking about a dream but never really describing how it began, because beginnings are the worst for recall right now. The big problem I'm facing is remembering the context and timeframe. I'm not sure how linear time is in dreams anyway, but it was pretty hard for me to really remember how things fit together last night. I may end up having to swap out the idea of listing "dreams" and just start listing dream concepts some of the time.

Anyway.


Part 1: Flight

Don't remember a lot here. Good old "me flying". I was pretty high in the air. I was apparently flying instead of using these floating funny-shaped stepping stones (they look like your stereotypical ancient ruin). The flight mechanism this time was more of a passive floating type deal (almost like I'm in orbit) rather than the other mechanism I sometimes have where I rotate my arms in funny patterns. That kind is more controlled, whereas this is more like a bird: swooping and stuff.


Part 2: RPG

Remember those films and movies about wilderness survival? Where the protagonist is trapped without contact with anyone and has to live on their own wits in the wild?

Well imagine that. As a computer game (an RPG). Starring Indiana Jones.

Well, I say "Indiana Jones" in a rather loose sense. It was associated with him because the weapons in the game are a gun and a whip. Well, actually there's also a flaming club, not sure what that's about.

I seem to recall it being almost TBS-like. It's an RPG in the sense that you control one character and you make choices and stuff, but it's turn-based. There's resources like wood and food. I kindof think you start out with just your weapons, clothes and a cotton sheet. Trapped under a log that fell on your leg. But then you improve your clothes and sleeping gear and stuff, it's like an RPG in that sense. I kindof think that this wilderness survival thing is sortof the tack-on ending to a larger dream about a platforming game or something. More on that later. But in any case, you get to make a choice early on about whether or not you're going to last the full two weeks before getting rescued or if there's a random chance every day of people finding you.

I kindof think there's some other party members, trading and stuff because I remember this scene where apparently one of your (the protagonist's) friends is dying. This was toward the end. They're dying, and we perform some sort of black arts ritual that turns the protagonist into a mummy while saving the friend. Well, I say mummy becauses that's what it was in the dream. What it looked like was more like the Egyptian god Anubis wearing a really badass black cloak. Apparently the ritual involved a pillar of rock, a coffin, and some weird stuff. Anyway. Shortly afterwards, we get rescued (early). There's this reporter asking us if I'm aware that I'm a mummy (that's why I said mummy earlier).

More about the framing context: I kindof think this was a video game that was being played in a class in college. There was this class I had last semester that was really pathetic in the "why the heck are we doing this in a COLLEGE class? This is the sort of thing you do in middle school" sort of way. Apparently that class was a prerequisite for the Indiana Jones TBS/RPG wilderness survival video game class.

I should point out, of course, that while I'm supposedly playing a video game, there's no computers. Sometimes I'm the protagonist, sometimes I'm watching the protagonist. But I'm always doing it from inside the game world.

Also there's this whole spiel I had about repetitive gameplay, and a scene where we're apparently rafting down a river that's not supposed to exist while being chased by guys with guns. While on this raft we exhibit the old classic, complete lack of traction.

Somniloquy

Sometimes I talk in my sleep. Mostly I don't notice, because, you know, I'm asleep, but people who are around when I sleep tell me about it.

Sometimes I do remember, though, because I end up shouting in my sleep and waking myself up. It's interesting because I hear myself saying it, and I know that if only I could remember this, it would provide key insight into my dream. But inevitably, the instant I'm done speaking I forget. Instantly, completely.