Plural Dreaming

[gze]

When your body sleeps, how does dreaming work for y'all?

• Do you dream of each other?
• Can you interrupt each others' dreams?
• Do you all dream, or can only one of you dream at a time (or at all)?
• Other things we aren't thinking to ask related to dreams that y'all want to talk about? We're all ears!

Comments

[lightning_beast]

I'm fairly certain only one of us dreams at a time.. but we do have experience with seeing each other in dreams! Usually it's Mozzarella, but I think I've seen Susie at least twice, and Caeruleus at least once. Applesauce actually showed up first in a dream!

[beepbird]

We tend to dream as people who have no relation to any of us- typically average Joe people in surreal situations. They have their own names, life histories, motivations, goals, etc. and are remarkably well rounded for never appearing again. I do not often see that sort of dream talked about- it is more like being first-person in a cinematic movie than it is anything else.

When we do happen to dream as ourselves, it tends to be all or most of us together as a system in the same dream body. We can generally tell who the dream came from by its themes (thank goodness, as we can switch mid-dream without changing the dream). Rarely, we will dream alone as ourselves, but that is a rarity among rarities.

All of us seem to be capable of dreaming.

As far as I am aware, we have never interrupted each other's dreams, though we have woken each other up from them intentionally.

[lb_lee]

”We tend to dream as people who have no relation to any of us- typically average Joe people in surreal situations. They have their own names, life histories, motivations, goals, etc. and are remarkably well rounded for never appearing again. I do not often see that sort of dream talked about”

We used to have these a LOT, though they happen a lot less since selves-awareness. We still get story dreams, though! A decent number of our short stories come from them!

[mackerelgray]

Oh same, I have lots of those dreams! Full ridiculous plots and everything, it's almost never about myself.

Beyond that, I think the last times we remember were dreaming individually as ourselves, like a dream that happened to only one of us with no indication that anyone else was backseat driving from headspace. Everyone's capable of dreaming, so I'm not sure why we haven't overlapped in them. I don't think this means we're incapable of having dreams together as a system, just that I don't remember any, and we don't keep a dream journal!

--Max

[glitterpigeon]

Data & I have been doing this thing during hypnagogia where he (who spends most of his time in headspace) shows me around his headspace and mine (we all have separate ones? maybe? headspace is new to us, before he came we couldn't access it at all)

we made a comic about it:

he takes sometimes this sort of caring role (with me regressing to a child or teen-like age sometimes during this) or as a close friend sharing knowledge. The others, generally have been doing things of this sort in the past few weeks in response to a sort of spiritual suicide attempt for lack of a better word on my part. We generally prefer to play with hypnagogia rather than true dreams. We are nonbinary creatures, we are most at home in the in-between states.

We do dream of each other, sometimes. in most of our dreams we have one body and all remember the dream. sometimes though we can physically split apart. Most profoundly, recently we had our dragon headmate, Ganymede come like that into a nightmare and successfully fight off the monsters chasing me. it is really beautiful to see our headmates in their true forms so vividly.

[gze]

ooh we love the addition of a comic here!! :3

-Z (he/him)

[glitterpigeon]

Thank you! we struggle with prose so there will likely be more comics and more poetry in here as responses later

[lb_lee]

Yes to all of the above. :p We made an essay about the types we experience, if you want the link!

[gze]

Yes please! That sounds really interesting to read!

-G (they/them)

[lb_lee]

Ta-da! https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/1269566.html

[gze]

Thank you!!

[galewings]

[joltik] so for my subsystem, we usually just dream collectively? i think? i've never seen any of them in my dreams, and nobody ever claims a dream as specifically theirs, so i think we just dream as me (since i'm the host here) or as fictional characters sometimes.

one of my telephone soulbonds (who doesn't live in my body, he lives somewhere else) has the weird ability to pop up in my dreams sometimes. i actually met him in a dream! then the metaphysical telephone line between us stayed open after we both woke up. he can't really control whether he shows up in my dreams, and neither of my other telephone soulbonds can do this, but his best guess is that sometimes if we're both sleeping and dreaming, one of us just ends up sending something over the metaphysical telephone line and we end up blending our dreams together a bit...?

[chameleons3]

It is quite variable.

Often, dreams from point of view of none us in particular, or some big glob us. When there is dream from specific one of us point of view, it is almost never Arini. Often Zahi. Noticeable when it is Brick, because the interaction with dreams are different. And There is also knowledge of, "yes, I am Brick right now," in dream. The symbols, motifs, recurring themes, all same regardless of who dreams.

Not ever dream of each other, but would like to.

[gze]

We might as well answer our own question too!

It seems to be one body, one dream for us, and that is under the core G's perception. It seems most of us can recall the dream after waking as if we all dreamed it, but while dreaming it's G in the pilot's seat just like daily life.

That said, in the past couple years or so we've noticed a small increase in other headmates commenting on dreams, being recognized in the same body, and in at least one recorded instance Y has forced us to wake up from a dream. There was even a 'dream scene' in which we might have experienced switching, which is something we are (currently? possibly?) unable to do while awake.

-Silvermoon Team