In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

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Büge
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Büge » Tue Aug 07, 2018 8:01 pm

And that would be an objectively superior offering to any of them.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:02 pm

I dreamed there was a Batman movie starring Ted Danson, only he wasn't even trying to act "Batman", he was just being Ted Danson in a batman suit. The plot was something to do with stopping a nuclear train.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Blossom » Wed Aug 08, 2018 9:50 pm

I'd watch Ted Danson in a Batman Beyond type take on Superfriends Batman. Wouldn't you?
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:11 pm

TA wrote:I'd watch Ted Danson in a Batman Beyond type take on Superfriends Batman. Wouldn't you?

Hell yeah!
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby fanboymaster » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:16 pm

Long dream where I was keenly aware that I couldn't see shit because my eyes were closed. I was clearly supposed to be doing something but I couldn't do it because my eyes were closed. Very frustrating.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:21 am

These dream have been getting weirder.

As best I can describe it, last night featured some sort of eternal inscrutable wizard adrift among mostly young (like teenagers and tweens) Polish partisans fighting the post WWII occupation, only the whole thing was done almost as a very stylized stage play. For example the Soviet occupiers didn't look anything like Soviets, but instead like evil princes straight out of folktales from the Time of Troubles. The wizard is captured but has fortunately sent the partisans to go hide among the ordinary workers so they are saved, and defeats (escapes ?) the occupiers by singing an incredibly powerful operetta as he turns into a pillar of flame.

And that's just me trying to put a shape on it. The actual dream was less clear than that. Also it was interspersed with me hanging out with random people I used to know and finding out what they're up to (all of which was pleasantly positive... like I run into an old call centre supervisor as he's about to receive a medical degree).
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby atog » Wed Sep 12, 2018 2:16 pm

Minor backstory:
Scurvy, Mongrel's friend from the land of Oz, is looking for new games we can all play together, that won't suffer too much due to lag or bad ping. He is a much better player of RTS than we are so our forays into zambies, Overshlock, etc. have been short-lived. We tried setting up a minecraft server but without hosting, we're floundering with port forwarding.

Last night I dreamed we had decided to go ahead and play Age of Empires II: Age of Kings as a big 8-man free-for-all, since it's something we can all play, port forwarding is a snap, and the graphics are undemanding.

Ah, but why should we care? you ask. Well, I rarely ever incorporate brontos into dreamland, since I don't know many of you. For some reason, though, we filled the extra slots in our epic battal with good friends from the Land Before Shitposting.

Mongrel picked the English, as he is wont to do, hoping the medieval Britons are better than the comically gimped Napoleonic-era British of the successor game, Age of Empires III. The yeoman archers of late medieval England are a great end-game unit in "Kings" but a lousy Royal Guard-quality unit in the age of muskets and cannon.

Scurvy went straight for raw power and mobility, opting for the Mongols.

Enter the Dinosaurs.

First on the scene was Smiler, who didn't pick a civilization, but instead went for adding in apocalyptic weather and natural disasters. A battle would be raging on a blood-soaked field and suddenly a hailstorm would appear, knocking down parts of towers and turning the tide of a siege. An earthquake swallowed up a khanate on the move through a narrow pass.

Joxam chose the valiant French, eschewing the ordinary "ka-nig-its" so that he could minmax the Paladin tech tree. He went one step further, unlocking a secret tech that allowed his heavily-armoured cuirassiers to assemble into equestrian dreadnoughts. Now, the usual counter to this in the original game was to spam crossbows, because they had no natural counters. Ah, but Bordeaux-bots assemblez! and they became impervious to piercing damage.

Mongrel's response was to build manor houses filled with rubble across the landscape, a sort of line of anti-tank hedgehogs against the French leviathan. The leviathans got bigger and more obnoxious, to force the issue.

For my own civilization, I settled on the Norse, thinking I could take control of the seas and enforce a trade empire. Much to my chagrin, the only water on the map was a shallow ford across the opposite end of the map, already heavily built up and infested with Jox's buildings and snail-consuming swine...what's more, whenever I would have a flotilla of doom ready to raid the coast, a nor'easter would come along and sink a third of my longships and drive the rest into the shallows where they fell prey to guard towers, packs of idle archers, and even some angry fishermen.

It forced me to settle somewhere. Eww! Settlement! I found lots of sheep. A lot of sheep. Somehow this made me realize Friday was also playing. I suspected some of the sheep were spies. This slowed down my economic development, but since Mongrel was the only near neighbour, and his defences were basically garbage houses, i was left alone. I slowly traded with the computer market to get out of the 'hole' and built a flimsy economy out of sheep cheese, wool, and lumber. I used stray sheep to spy on my neighbours. Sadly the Mongols came and cleaned me out good. But not before I saw that Jox had run out of mines, and the prices of everything had skyrocketed, and the Little Ice Age was on the way.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Wed Sep 12, 2018 2:20 pm

My bibble. Always going for the tidy bowl in any RTS situation.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Fri Sep 14, 2018 1:06 pm

So in dream-world, Lyndon Johnson had a son as well as a tamed pet alligator named Les. Johnson and his son (yes, I know Johnson didn't have a son) would play with Les, most notably pushing him on an oversized swing which he seemed to enjoy greatly. After the early death of Johnson's son, and Johnson's own death, the fate of the gator remained surprisingly obscure (but mundane... he was shuffled off to a wildlife preserve or something).

As a result, a comedic movie was made later whereby there's a crisis during Nixon's first term when Les can't be found and it's embarrassing for the government (in the dream-history, Johnson died only a year or so after leaving office). (Nixon never actually appears in the movie, only government stuffed shirts).

Numerous special agents fail to find Les, and are only able to narrow it down a vast swamp region in Florida. Les is large by gator standards and has very distinctive patterns on his back, but given the thousands of other gators, and the vast area of swampland, the agents are coming up empty and some even go missing (presumed eaten). After the FBI fails the job, the CIA take over but still fails in the same way.

The government can't afford to do an all-out search because it would attract even more attention, so instead a desperate and ambitious CIA boss starts "offering" life-sentence or death row convicts the "mission". Several have already died by the time our "heroes" a pair of Laurel-and-Hardy-esque (except the skinny one is also short) Cajun bayou rednecks from Louisiana in for life for a string of idiotically botched bank robberies, are offered the job. I can't recall their names, so I'll just refer to them as Fatty and Shrimp.

One notable scene which sort of gives you a sense of the overall tone of the movie takes place when the The CIA boss gives them the job in his minuscule office, a tiny, awkwardly trapezoid-shaped room which barely fits the boss, a small desk, and space for the two rednecks to stand in. One of the rednecks asks why there's a toilet roll holder in one wall and the CIA boss gets touchy and tells them it's "special equipment".

Just then a janitor/workman appears to respond to some issue with the office. The boss tries to shoo him away given that he's busy, but Shrimp accidentally blurts out that the boss hates his tiny office and gee doesn't it look like it used to be a bathroom? The janitor gently asks the boss if he knows about "the lever". "What lever?" asks the boss, at which the janitor pulls a side of the toilet roll holder, which causes the entire back of the office to smoothly swing back opening into a huge and impressive office, luxuriously appointed, with even a bedroom in the back. The boss is agog, and the janitor blurts out "Me and the boys always wondered why you had us completely remodel the toilet."

Fatty and Shrimp, not knowing that other convicts had been offered a substantial sum of money as well as their freedom "fast-talk" their way into staying in the office (instead of going back to jail that night) in exchange for accepting the mission. The boss, figuring he can pocket the money if they succeed, accepts.

Due to their "hotel room" also being a CIA chief's office, Shrimp discovers exactly what the mission is and what had happened before. Realizing that they've been shafted and that their mission is probably a death sentence, they immediately start planning their escape.

Of course the CIA has anticipated this and as a preventative measure has plastered the area surrounding the swamp with dead-or-alive wanted posters featuring Fatty and Shrimp describing them "armed and dangerous escaped ex-Nazis" who'd been in jail since WWII for "spying against the US", warning the pair they'll be shot by anyone who sees them if they try to escape before the job's done. Meanwhile, Russian KGB agents trying to work against Détente are ALSO trying to disrupt the search, hoping to embarrass Nixon further, so as to completely discredit him.

Of course the pair find Les, befriend him, and with his help keep away various agents sent to catch them, as well as a murderous previous convict who'd escaped but had remained hidden in the swamp. Eventually the Russians, government agents, and the deadly convict neutralize each other in one way or another (the death row con goes last of course) and Les eats all of them afterwards to hide the evidence. Not sure how Fatty and Shrimp escape, but I think they ended up claiming an offshore spy yacht belonging to the Russians and head off for the Caribbean, while Les remains happily in the swamp.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:59 pm

Weird Al and I decided to go through 6th grade again together for shits and giggles.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby MarsDragon » Tue Oct 02, 2018 9:20 pm

I dreamed it was sometime around the early 80s, and a visitor came from the future. She had evidence warning us that terrible things would happen if this certain family was left to their own devices, but while she knew who the family was she had no idea what they needed to do or not to to avoid her dark future. We were left staring at these scribbled, hand-drawn pictures of what looked like a perfectly ordinary couple with two kids and trying to figure out how they related to all the bad shit the future visitor was talking about.

If I was Mongrel this would then turn into a brilliant, fully-plotted movie, but since it was me dreaming we just ended up hanging out in the park where we started and discussing what to do for the rest of the dream.

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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:15 pm

Man, that last interesting dream I had managed to incorporate noir, time travel/sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

Something about a guy who kept getting sent back in time to 1930's Milan, working as an illustrator and animator (and eventually owning his own studio in longer stays), but secretly trying to uncover why he keeps getting sent back in time over and over to the same place, only for everything to be consumed by some sort of all-enveloping Lovecraftian darkness. It may have been Musso's Italy, but it was still drenched in the appropriate shadows and cigarette smoke. Fedoras, trenchcoats, dames, and all the rest.

As he gets closer each time, he "survives" (i.e. stays) longer and longer each time, and more and bizarre attempts to stop him (like a bunch of zombie hands grabbing at him from below as he rushes down a steel staircase), and even though they become more open and partially visible, with glimpses of tentacles or horrible faces or whatever, you never see anything so completely as to see what these monsters (of which there are seemingly a wide variety). There was a less sinister fantasy aspect in that there were some helpful spirits or something to that effect, but they weren't as big a part of the story. On top of all that he also had to avoid running afoul of the Blackshirts.

Never did get to the end, but even though he was "surviving" longer each time, each stay was paradoxically more dangerous, with more attacks, which slowly grew sooner. Occasionally, he would fail (one time he ends up in a prison cell, but something... came for him before any firing squad came into play), but never never died, instead the black veil just fell over everything once more. I did get the sense that he would find the answer if he could go through enough cycles to survive until the start of WWII, but I'm not sure why that might have been.

Samuele Vanga e l'infinita oscurità, for lack of a better title.

I really enjoyed it... it's one of the select few I feel like playing with as a story outside of just dreaming it.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Silversong » Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:14 am

I was having a pretty bad dream last night, the only part I can remember clearly is that I really needed to escape, but in front of the car kept appearing old ladies in wheelchairs and kids on bikes. Which is a pretty mean trick.

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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby atog » Sat Oct 13, 2018 2:34 pm

Yeah Mongrel has these incredibly detailed and thematically complete dreams, whereas I'll be over here falling asleep after dinner, dreaming I was still chopping celery and putting it into various sizes of pots and pans we don't own.

Last night I guess was one of those "I'm in school and today's the final exam and I didn't study" shocker nightmares, except with a few aliens and a few predators in the lecture hall silently eyeballing daggers at one another. I get a text that the Royal Family are touring our city and passing dangerously close to my house. So I try to find a convenient time to skip lecture and go home and clean up my mess.

I get home (to my old apartment in Minnesota) but i'm locked out. I climb the building next door and rappel down onto my balcony and open the door. There's cat pee on the floor, and the cat responsible has tried to cover it up with my bedspread. The sink is full of dirty dishes and empty beer cans. Magic cards piled everywhere. Underwear and socks hung up to dry on every piece of furniture. My computer is streaming the news and a golf tournament as I'm squeegeeing pee off the floor.

Just then CNN decides to announce that the royal motorcade is passing through my neighbourhood on the way to see a log rolling contest or a wacipi or some such. I look up and Prince Andrew is leering in my window at the mess, or my butt, or both. As I am about to drop the bag and give him a two-fingered salute, there's a knock at the door and in comes the super's wife and she's royalty crazy. Well, at least she's helping clean up all the crap.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Sun Oct 14, 2018 6:54 pm

I only had the beginning of a longer story last night, but it was somewhat interesting.

In the near future the world is in a sorry state. Climate change has taken it's toll, so while things look superficially similar to today, everything is dilapidated and various measure are taken to avoid extreme heat or other weather parts of buildings and cities are abandoned. Upkeep of infrastructure is failing or using half measures, as material costs rise, taxes collapse, and transportation networks collapse. So for example, instead of asphalt tarmac roads, the roads are some sort of super compacted combination of gravel and trash, which sometimes people try to pick bits out of.

Anyway, that was just background. Stuff I could see or "knew" in the first minute or so of the dream.

An reputable Indian doctor, one of the few members of a nearly-vanished middle class, is in South Africa to take a rocket or spaceplane offworld (intra-system travel is now apparently practical, at least in the nearer planets or moon - wasn't clear how far), which of course is very expensive and only an option for the rich (it wasn't clear but the implication was that he was going to spend some time doing medical work on some rich gated offworld microcolony, perhaps on Mars).

A local friend is supposed to pick the doctor up, but due to complications, he misses his flight. There's another launch in three days, so instead they have to hang around locally and the doctor is naturally warned not to venture out the neighbourhood.

Invariably, the doctor is kidnapped anyway, only a short distance from the neighbour's home. "Luckily", it's only members of the local south asian community, who sort of half-beg half force him to go with them. They stuff him in the back seat of one of two cars and speed off to a large local house. The upper floors are ruined and abandoned, and the basement is only used for storage, but an extensive sub-basement has been excavated underneath, reasonably comfortable and well-furnished, and most importantly cool given the potentially lethal temperatures of summer heat and the high expense of electricity.

Anyway, the kidnappers simply want medical care for their community and are happy to release the doctor in time for his next spaceflight out, so long as he spends the time in between caring for the resident clan of the house and neighbouring houses (connected via tunnels). They even throw something of a banquet in honour of their prisoner.

Eventually, they let the doc go, exhausted, a few hours before his flight. They even try to pay him a few dollars, but he turns it down.

That's where it ended. No idea where it would have gone after that.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby WingSounds » Tue Oct 16, 2018 3:25 am

A lot of my dreams recently have involved ice water. I don't really have recurring dreams, but my mind usually settles on a theme, it stays there for a bit. And I think I'm okay it figuring the why of it, but it's fun to speculate. I don't do lucid dreaming anymore, because then it just becomes me shaping my dreams, which isn't really interesting or fun. Even if the dream is scary, I'd rather be surprised, right?..

So, anyway.

Everything was white as far as the eye could see.
Underneath that canopy of white, there were hints of other colours. Bits of grey, and brown, and green algae, desperate to survive.
I feel like it might have taken place in a similar world to Mongrel's recent dream, though maybe after a really long time? Haha. Like, after people had maybe tried to fight climate change and rising tides with any of the various 'cooling' technologies proposed, although the execution was more fantastical.

I think everybody else had died, so it was kind of peaceful. I didn't really feel scared. And I don't think I was me, either.
The person I think I was was starving, but had kind of given up hope of finding anything to eat.
But there was this hole in the ice, spreading very slowly, and she knew if she reached it she'd find a land of abundance.

There was this walrus and she killed it by biting it's neck hard, but it bled weird dark ichor.
Even though I can't taste or sense things in dreams, I really want to say the ichor tasted like strawberries. She drank it, of course.

And that was enough to keep her going until the hole in the ice had spread and she'd covered enough of the frozen sea to almost have it in sight.

Then there was horrific sound, like razorblades screaming, or someone playing really unfortunate games with powertools, and this lump of white flesh flew up from the hole in the ice and sped towards her, whirling limbs. (It didn't have wings; it just kind of hurtled upwards at a really grotesque velocity.)
Whether she died or not, I don't know, but I did wake up.

Back to others' dreams...

Mongrel, yours sounds cool as hell. Also fascinating.
Tunnels and deep earth passageways have figured a lot in my dreams, so I'm always kinda pleased to see them crop up in other people's. And I liked it had a good resolution, not that the resolution was permanent? That's nice.
Continuing it as a speculative sci-fi story (how does he reconcile working on high-tech areas in space, or maybe poor 'belter' settlements) could be cool.

atog - all dreams are cool. Dreams are neat. I'd go on a tangent, but no point. Besides, any dream that has either A: two-finger salutes or the thought thereof or B: celery is a good dream in my book.

Silversong, yeah. Never trust old ladies in a pinch. Especially ones that appear out of nowhere. Especially when they're surrounded by supposedly pitiable packs of children, and especially so in dreams.

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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Büge » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:27 pm

Last night I dreamed of a Highlander remake starring Tom Hardy as Connor Macleod and Adam Driver as the Kurgan.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby WingSounds » Wed Oct 17, 2018 9:33 pm


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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:41 pm

Among other various things, I dreamed last night the new Doctor Who turned out to be a decoy, and that the real new Dr. Who was somehow a collective of multiple minority women.

I don't understand why I dream about Dr. Who when I don't even watch the damn thing.
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Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams

Postby atog » Tue Oct 23, 2018 4:40 am

Mongrel and I have updated to Windows 10 (haha dream on!) and are playing Age of Empires III the remastered series with better everything.

There's a multiplayer cooperative campaign "The Fall of Montezuma" where you can play either Spanish or Aztecs. I pick the Aztecs because in the windows 7 version they are spamalicious.

The storyline begins "We have run out of chocolate, my liege. The gods hunger. What shall we do?" "Lead the people into the volcano."

(You need to know how much cocoa and chocolate I consume before this becomes even remotely funny.)
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