weird, sort of synesthesia dream

[ratcreature]

I tend to dream about the stuff I do or read right before falling asleep quite a lot. Yesterday I spent time reading SPN fanfic/fanart combinations from the Big Bang comm and thinking about quilts and their design, which led me to dreaming about collaborative SPN fanworks that actually *were* quilts. I don't know, it made sense in the dream, but I can't really explain it awake.

I dreamed about a group making a quilt as a gift or based on a prompt, but the parts of the quilt were an SPN story and art at the same time. One with action scenes and time travel I think. At least besides Dean and Sam there was definitely also time travel in this dream, or rather some kind of time distortion bubble that had formed around a building(?) that resembled my former high school's gym, but was also a flying(?), steampunk-like train at the same time. There were also people in hazmat gear (to protect them from the time distortion effects) outside. Or maybe they wore it for a different reason. Lots of running around and being chased too, which is a common theme in my dreams.

Understandably I have a really hard time to recall the images from the dream, because nothing makes sense, less so than usual even, what with being both an action plot and a patchwork quilt, i.e. while all the action unfolded as is normal in a dream the same things were also that quilt. It worked in the dream somehow. Then again, maybe it isn't that odd in light of this this traditional image of fate being a spun yarn that represents life somehow controlled by a group of women, Moirae I think? At least patchwork quilts are two-dimensional patterns, that were the fanfic plot here...

So I guess in a way I dreamed fanfic (the SPN steampunk-flavored timetravel action plot, which I unfortunately don't recall in detail) and fanfic meta (the group of women making a patchwork quilt somehow representing the former) at the same time. Still -- WTF, subconcious?

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

A lot of my dreams have a meta-level to them -- I often have dreams that are a story taking place within a book or TV show (usually not real ones, but entirely invented) while I'm also aware of myself reading or writing or watching it. Back when I was actively involved in small-press comics, I used to have dreams that interwove the two plots -- story level and meta level, with the meta level being myself or various people I knew depicting the events in the form of a comic -- just the way you describe. And yes, it is virtually impossible for my waking brain to get a grip on the narrative of the whole thing. There is usually a point with that sort of dream, as I'm waking up, when it all makes perfect sense and I feel like I *have* to wake up and write this down, because it'll make a fantastic book or comic. Then I wake up and realize, no, it's impossible to render something like that for a reader unless the reader is completely insane. *g*

[ratcreature]

Huh. I don't usually have meta-dreams. Mostly books and tv characters and plots just happen as regular dream events to me. Sometimes I become aware that I'm dreaming, usually when there's one of my recurring nightmare tropes happening, say teeth falling out, and I recognize that, though it doesn't really help all that much, since my lucid dreaming attempts never got me to change content consciously (for a while I actively kept a dream diary and tried for lucid dreaming to deal with said nightmares).

Sometimes I have dreams within dreams, where I "wake up" but am still in a dream, only the next part. The worst of those are nightmares that just don't end. I once had a nightmare with lots of horrible stuff and something threatening me, "woke up" being relieved for a mere moment, only to when I tried to get up then find myself in the dark, in my bedroom, but completely paralyzed with the thing still lurking, and I couldn't scream or move or do anything but have a worsening panic attack, until my dream-self eventually concluded based on the fact that I couldn't move and having read that that happens during REM sleep to prevent you hurting yourself and sleepwalking that I must still be dreaming. That didn't make me wake up immediately or be able to change the dream though (because I just can't control dreams even if I'm aware it's not real), and this must have been the suckiest lucid dream *ever*, being paralyzed in the dark with something threatening. I hope that never happens again. When I woke up eventually, I was still completely panicked, and it took me hours to calm down.

[girlwithoutfear.livejournal.com]

I bet you think no one ever did a quilt like that? Well, I have, and people still go WTF?

http://flickr.com/photos/darediva/sets/72157600387845615/

I have some really odd dreams like that too, that are so convoluted as to not be decipherable later. Active imagination?

[ratcreature]

Oh, that's some cool textile art!

Mostly my dreams are just odd in the regular dream way with just one narrative. And some have surprisingly coherent plots. I still wish that the Terminator/Harry Potter crossover I dreamed once was a real fanfic, because it's premise was so cool. (In it the Voldemort war got out of hand and the muggles buili SkyNet and terminators initially to protect themselves from wizards, only that spectacularly backfired and eventually John and Sarah Conner and Harry hooked up and they fight both Death Eaters and evil robots, and of course there was time travel involved too... it was a really cool action adventure dream, mixed with teen angst from kids burdened with messiah expectations as Harry and John commiserated.)