Dream 26.01.2013 Skyrim, Argonian

Unfinished rendition of dream.

Full dream below. Short version
(Click on the links to see the inspiration source for some items.)

I find myself in a new age (myst). A large donut shaped island with a lot of snowy forest and some ruins. I can see an overview map in my head. As I slowly approach, more trees become visible and the dream looks less like the myst chanellwood age and more and more like skyrim. I see some balloons tied to bushes and many interesting colourful things. I wonder who's birthday they are for? I decide not to approach the empty forest birthday party and explore cautiously in the opposite direction. On the ground amongst the bushes I find a dead man with a sword. The sword is longer than my arm, not so heavy and silvery angular. It has a green symbol on it that I perceive as very beautiful. This indicates it has some kind of magical properties. At this point I have become my character from skyrim, an argonian. I approach a fortress, there are many people inside, they live there. They have fires and warm houses and food. There are guards patrolling the walls of the fortress. I am cautious, though these people are nice, I know they will turn hostile if they see my sword. I think I give the sword away, or people take the sword from me. I turn invisible and steal it back, they don't know it is me who have taken it, but as I leave they realize and they start chasing me. Though I can conjure demons and turn invisible, they manage to chase. I suspect this is because I leave footprints in the snow, so instead of running I spring from tree to tree at an unrealistically high speed. But as the trees drop snow when I hit them, the people are able to follow.

Dream avatar

This is a series of doodles where I attempt to narrow down the shape of a creature in my dream (I was the creature) in the dream, I called it "skyfish pod" as it doesn't resemble my skyfish in any way, but has it's properties and personality. The shapes of things in my dream is not set in stone. They differ from scene to scene, it took me a long time to discover this fact as ordinarily we think of dreams like a movie. Only when I started drawing "phsyical" dream locations on paper, did I realize that all the information was conflicting. I concluded that dreams do not consist of a 3D simulated space, but of ideas that we interpret into a setting, loosly. I have many different still images in my head that together make up this skypod. In one scene i had human legs and clothes, and in another I had a long body and one tail, for every "scene" the facts would change, but they were all trivial facts. The figure in the right hand corner can be considered a sort of average, or true form of what I feel the dream was trying to render, and were more often than not the shape "seen" in the dream. The figure had elements from creatures in videogames (panzer dragoon) dolphins, and past drawings I have done lately.

Dream: Chazm

Image from a dream. In the dream, I was trapped on stairs that went into the ocean. To escape them, I had to climb down them instead of up. When I realized that, I got massive vertigo. I represented this here by having the top ocean mirrored in the chazm as well.

Dream diary 8+9 march 2012 dream sketches

You might wonder "what even!" this is, and I admit these hasty scribbles might be hard to understand. What you see here is Generic fleshmonster (left) Burned gasmask dude (middle) and Dragon royal guard (right)

Full dreams below.

Dream 8th of march. Cause: Talking about silent hill, halo and hellsing (anime) before bed = nightmare.

I get the oppertunity to play the 'next installment of halo' and find myself with friends within a game world, fully immersed. Gradually as we play we find that this halo isn't a first person shooter at all! After all, we are in some sort of institution, insane asylum, school or maybe an office building, close quarters, having to avoid enemies and with no functional guns. The tone is paranoid and twitchy, having to time our runs in corridors to avoid being spotted or heard. As time pass on, my immersion overcomes me and I no longer remember it is a game, and the horror elements start to take over. Me and my friends huddle in a classroom like room, maybe 5 meters across, picking up any sharp objects we can find to defend ourselves against a horde of monsters we know have detected us. I find a long knife like object that looks a lot like the embalming tools from skyrim. It had a carved pencil like surface. I knew this was not really suitable for defending against melee type monsters who would batter or eat me, But what can you do? It was very tense. As the fleshmonsters approached, the lights started flickering and we find ourselves having to fight in darkness, and eventually a "boss" type character appeared. He looked nearly human, but much larger, with blue skin, wearing a suit. His eyes were large and red and could be expelled explosively from his head to act as poisonous splash damage bombs. He was very angry with us, and hated the fact that we were "similar" to him. By that I am unsure if he referred to us looking human, or having started to gain some paranormal like abilities (levitation, teleportation, telepathy) This being had mysterious powers as well, and started messing with our vision, turning everything flickering black or static. Since I could teleport, I managed to avoid the enemies for some time, but we were all herded into a smaller room with only a few meters of space to move, and we were about 7 people and 5 fleshmonsters at this time, so combat became necessary. I drove my embalming tool into the head of one fleshmonster's head, and my other sharp object into his shoulder. As our vision became more and more messed up, we were left to blindly wailing around us, stabbing anything fleshy we touched. How could I even know what I was killing anymore? A collective feeling hung over us that it was really a matter of all for their own, and so we were killing our friends as well as enemies. Quite dire and very sad. Once the hordes died down, there were only two of us still alive, me and another girl. Oddly we were not particularly emotionally impacted buy this and proceeded to escape out from the generic creepy facility. Long rusty hallways later, we were outside a enormous dam with rusty bridges going across it. Masses and masses of people were exiting, and it seemed we were not the only ones going through hell. Above the dam, a few human silhouettes could be seen flying. I met my brother on the thin bridge, and we walked towards safety trying to find a place to rest, but I never quite felt secure.
Then I woke up!

9th. This dream was really long, and I don't remember much of it, but whatever.
Someone showed me what "game of thrones" was, it turned out to be some sort of story (game,video) about conflicting nations, except the nations were all very very different and not at all human. The first nation I went visiting were an underwater sort of atlantis people, mostly humanoids but some dragon-turian things (depicted right in picture) The second place I went to were humanoids with magical powers and witches. There were also a cyborg tribe and a jungle tribe. I had to go back and forth and relay information between the peoples. The magic humanoids had killed their royal dragon without the queens permission (corrupt advisor ordered it while she was away or asleep or something) and I went to warn the atlantis people and not have them kill their dragon. The dragon that was killed was turned into a feast meal, I got to try some. It was like chicken skin filled with white rice and beans and tasted pretty good. Yum dragon. The deus ex cyborg guy had lizard cyborg feet and had a one night stand with an evil witch. He woke up in her bed not remembering anything and talked to his miniature lady conscience/AI thing (woman with golden feathers) He really could not figure what happened, probably got cursed.
Then I woke up!

The man who wouldn't stop popping like a balloon.

Dream cover: Balloon man by ~Ludjia on deviantART

The man who wouldn't stop popping like a balloon!
In an effort to work more with dream content, rather than try to capture "screenshots" from the dreams, I am now trying to summarize the dream with a front cover like on games, books and film.

This dream was about me and my friend walking around in a supermarket, and continuously would be startled by a man who popped like a balloon. He would allways come back. We asked him to stop with his pranks, but he would not. We tried to run away, but the halls were infinite! I realized this so we ran in the opposite direction, back where we came. The stairway there was like a caleidoscope that was turning, but we managed to cross it and go outside. End.

The man looked ordinary, the poster here is a conceptual interpretation.

I'm contemplating to add text to this to make it look more like a cover. I struggle with the best title though.
Balloon man
The man who wouldn't stop exploding
The man who wouldn't stop popping like a balloon.
Popping man.

One can ask whether this character was a representative of a general prankster, an angry person, or a pervert. or all three. There is also the association to balloons being "inflated" as in he had an inflated sense of power or self worth. He also reminded me of drifloon a lot.

Dream Punk

Dream punk by ~Ludjia on deviantART

This creature design is based on something from a recent chase dream I had. I did this piece to try out new stuff, not so much for drawing out my dream. The mood of the dream was very different and depressive.

Dream postcards

Early uni project. It was quite a mess and required a lot of research into my own dreams, and that is more difficult than it sounds.

The task was to make a series of postcards.
I chose a theme of reoccuring dreams.

3 negative and 3 positive, whom negate one another in pairs.
This was not a design choise, but a consequence of my dream pattern. I discovered that my reccuring dreams all fell into categories and had opposites.

From left to right:

Blind "incapability" dream: These dreams all have in common that I cannot see properly or at all. I rely on other people to aid me and am frustrated. The post card depicts me in blinding light holding over my eyes with the symbol of blindness on the back of my palm.
This dream highlights my occational sense of uselessness, hopelessness, inability to act, failing goals and the overwhelminess of existance.
Contrast to dragon "Capability"

Tornado "Chaos" dream:
These dreams all have in common that a tornado or powerful storm suddenly appears, the dream goes from very clear to very abstract quickly, as gravity shifts and all things tear and fly in the storm. This theme represents my own confusion in difficult situations, the jumbling of memories. It is about failing to handle too big and uncontrollable tasks and a lack of control.
contrast to lucidity "control"

Dragon "capability" dream:
These dream all have in common me transforming into a dragon. She is often godlike, and can do whatever she please. I added the scales to represent capability through descision making, and she has power over the whole world. She reflects what I strive for; impossible goals, but happy to be forever reaching.

Train "restriction" dream:
The train dreams all have in common I find myself on train tracks or inbetween electric wires. They serve as physical obstacles I want to get around or away from. The trains come in lines of 5 to 20 tracks and all try to run me over, though I allways dodge them swiftly. If I remember I can fly, the electrical wires in the sky seem to become infinite and are allways there. It reflects the obstacles of life really...
contrast: flying "freedom"

Lucidity "control" dream:
In the lucid dreams I am aware I am dreaming and try to do something amazing or impressive. In this dream I paint mountains onto the sky. This dream is the ultimate in awareness and control.
contrasted Tornado "chaos"

Flying "freedom" dream:
Flying freely is my best expression of freedom in dream. There is nothing I have ever done that feels more liberating than flying.
contrasts traintracks "restriction"
Dream postcards by ~Ludjia on deviantART

Gods and Games

This is a whole dream + analysis.
TL;DR? Skip to the "what does it mean" section.

I sat down to play goldensun. I am now inside the game as though it is my reality. I am in a team of unspecified characters. we battle a jinn creature by summoning gods. Once the gods defeat the creature, most of them leave but one. A party member voices his concern that the gods might die in battle. The god starts talking about how their existance is different, and how they won't die.

"Gods don't die."

A wooden figurine appears. It looks like an eye. My group is inside a gymnastics hall, and looking for an exit. The wooden eye tells us that if we play a game with it, we can escape.

On all the walls there were now square hatches with tiny doors. large enough to crawl through. The eye devided the hall into squares. We had to find, open and escape through the right hatch without being seen. We would move on the squares like in a board game. The eye could see in a straight line. If it saw us, a yellow beam would shoot out and we could not escape the hall. I saved the game before we began.

My group members all escape out the hatch easily, and it is only me left. I am looking for something but cannot remember what. The others are shouting from outside the hatch. "There is no time!" I look through a heap of fabrics, blankets and scarves. What am I looking for?
I decide to get out, and climb through the hatch. a bright and comfortable cityscape is on the other side. But when I stand up, all of it blurs and blends and become the inside of the gym hall again. we were inside it all along. They Wooden Eye had decided I was late, and would not let us escape.

I took the wooden eye and put it in my front jacket pocket. It was scared of the dark, so I let it see out of my pocket. We walked back out of the Gym hall from the door we entered, into a city where it was night and a lot of traffic. My group walked across the street, but I had to wait for traffic to pass. Doing so, showed the Eye that I was a nice person.

After crossing the road, I made my way through crowds. A man was shouting that zombies were amongst us, and this applied particulary to me. I took offense at this accusation, and promtly showed him the wooden eye.

"Zombies are amongst us!" *flee*

The man started running, and I ran after him. He stopped in a park, under a streetlight. He had a table there were he sat down working with wooden figurines. They were tiny swans, with a hole on the back to fit Wooden eyes like the one I carried. I was surprised he had wooden eyes too.

I remarked to him how curious it was, that he had chosen swans for his eye containers, apparantly so had I, (despite not having had any time to carve my own swan, I now had a swan container and the memory of making one)

An old woman took interest. The Man said to her "they are all created to be perfect. The funny thing is, how do I know wich one of them I should listen to?"

What he meant by that, is despite the eyes being perfect beings they all were different, and would give different advice. (the eyes represented concience/morals, giving advice on what to do)

But what does it mean?
This final sentence is a metaphor for human beings and how we differ. There is no one perfect human, we all try to achieve perfection in different manners. Often we have fundamental differences in morals, but neither is right or wrong. Yet we percieve our own set of morals to be the "right" one. I am amused how this dream managed to put such a complex thought set into just one sentence, and it make perfect sense to me. I woke up in a state of epiphany and it influenced my attitude to how I treat others.

1. Humans understanding of their own morals are perfect.
2. Conflict stems from there being different takes on what is moral, or ones solution to life.
3. Try not to change people, but choose how to go about them to achieve ideal situations for all involved.

"zombies are amongst us": a person without a concience would be a zombie. The man was implying humans are putting away our conciences to function in society. making immoral choises to make our day slide by.

Daily Diary Dreams

I went flying on a jetmotor with wings and teeth. It was fun but chaotic and a bit scary.

Falling to the sea

I fell alongside the treetrunk and ended by the ocean.

Daily Diary Dreams

He takes me places.

Daily Diary Dreams

I was just sleeping in my bed and suddenly there were these PRESENCES disturbing me and I was not happy, because I wanted to sleep.