Dream stuff (Its kinda fun!)

Well, by your own words, "it sounds really weird, but it works" - so, why, if you know just what weird stuff works for your dream-city, do you need us to populate it?

At least in my dreams, a fair bit of the weirdness would make no sense outside my own dream-perceptions - the way concepts meld and shift, yet I intuitively stitch them together. It's not so much grassy-coated dogs and flying boats as it is a tabby cat that used to be a black Maine Coon that I somehow understand to be a former schoolmate; if it's a particularly "deep" dream, I may understand that they became a cat to hide from their husband, who looks normal but is an alien, but as often as not my dream-self doesn't really question it... save towards the end, as I'm waking up. Trying to explain to readers what's "dreamlike" about an ordinary cat probably would be more trouble than it's worth.

You might try coming up with your own bizarreness, though. Either Google "random generators", or pull down a dictionary (or a thesaurus, or even a handful of newspaper ads or magazines - anything with lots of words or pictures.) Flip at random, eyes closed, then jab down your finger and write down what you read or see. Do this two or three times, then combine the results. Or look around your room and combine two or more things. Like, right now, I see a wooden dresser and a stuffed blue wizard cat. So, a magical cat made of wood. Or a dresser to organize your housepets. (This is dream-logic, after all...)

Good luck!

Oooh, I have a lot of fussy, obsessive dreams about categorizing, storing, and sorting things, pets, plants in a garden, you name it. I never succeed, of course, and they're nearly always things where categorizing, storing them, and sorting them makes no sense anyway.

I also have a number of dreams where I'm preparing to do something that's important to me, or that I really want to do for fun, and I keep getting endlessly sidetracked, until the original task or activity I'm trying to do has changed beyond all recognition. And if I do get the dream back on track and am finally poised, ready to begin said activity, I will wake up.

I have bizarro dreams with good, weird visuals. The trick will be remembering one off the top of my head though....

Ah, okay here's one. I dreamt I was at work. I had just arrived. I'm standing up at the front of our store, before it opens, and a bunch of fish gather around. Just...fish who swim in the air instead of water. All the human employees were still there, but...there were just...all these fish too? And I guess the fish were employees also? Anyway, MY job at this gathering was to read out the names of all the fish. Their names, as in, their species name doubled as the personal first name of that fish. Why didn't I also have to name the human employees? Who knows.

So there's my first contribution. Air-swimming fish who work in a book store.

When I think of more, I'll be back!

I once had a dream where my step-sister sat on a roof and barked with dogs à la 101 Dalmatians and my dad wrestled a polar bear. He survived.

There was also the once where the fish in the classroom aquarium suddenly grew legs (just rear legs) and started hopping around, the catfish got me to pet it and bit my hand.

The three ghosts sitting on a cursed bench in the park, luring random passer-bys to sit on it, followed very quickly by the crocodile riding princess. I love that image.

I'm a lucid dreamer. This has led to some of the strangest and most awesome dreams when I've stepped in and amended nightmares.

The first time I did it, I was being chased through school by gorillas. I ducked into a supply cupboard knowing that I was dead if I didn't work something out, then realised this was a dream, I could change it, so *ping!* pencils can now make you fly. Or the time I found myself riding through the sewers of the next big village with a talking teddy in the front basket of my (now motor)bike. Or the time I visited Atlantis (located at the bottom of the garden). Or the time the crowd turned into vampires so I turned into Buffy. Or - the last time I did it, before I started getting psychological nightmares instead - I got the standard 'falling from a skyscraper', so I sprouted wings and flew off into the dawn.

These days it's more likely that I'll find out the SO is a murderer, or that someone's died. Stuff I can't dream-logic into awesomeness.

Oh, I've got some names for you!

Last night I dreamed I was standing in line behind a pair of twin girls who were maybe six or seven years old. They introduced themselves as Anakin Lily and (I'm not joking) Bananakin Rose.

A lot of my dreams are fairly mundane, imagery-wise (a single spider killed everyone in my town, then chased me up a hundred-foot tower) but one of my favourite nightmares was one where stereo-typical 1930's gangsters executed me via fire-breathing scorpions, in an old abandoned nursery.

I also say it's the intuitive, associative problem-solving of dreams that makes them so dream-like, even though the imagery can be incredible.

When I was a teenager, I had a dream I was at a friend's house and I owned this awesome muscle car. Then I remembered I didn't have a driver's license yet (this was true in reality), so I attached a leash to the front grill of my car and walked it home.

It's not so much the image that is neat (although it is), it's the logic. How do I get my car home when I can't drive it? Well, I'll just walk it. Enmeshed in a dream, your brain doesn't even question that being possible.

Ninjas. I had recurring dreams where I was battling hordes of ninja assassins. In every one I'd be lopping off arms and hands and heads and then *gong* we'd all stop for tea. We'd sit and talk and drink tea for a while then *gong* back to the battle.