i'm here for a few reasons. i think my dreams are neat, first of all. i also want to practice writing anything longer-form than a text. this is already sort of teetering on the edge of being a worldbuilding project, so why not commit?
you're here because you're curious, and i appreciate that. i hope this is an enjoyable read.
i've been through some Bad Stuff which led to many years of not dreaming at all, followed by several years of recurring nightmares. as my mental health got better i expected that they might eventually stop, but instead i kept dreaming in the same recurring setting, just with less scary shit happening. this setting ended up developing a kind of weird continuity, which i thought was neat, so i started paying closer attention which i'm sure just strengthened the feedback loop. i don't think it's a bad thing - my brain does a lot of weird stuff i don't like, but this isn't one of them.
i don't have the original recurring nightmare anymore, though i still have the normal human amount(?) of bad dreams, some of which take place in the recurring setting. a lot of them don't though. i just think it's interesting.
the greater dreamspace exists in a weird little confluence of biomes, but we'll get to the ecology later. most of my dreams take place in the relative civilization of Dreamtown, which is split into two main areas:
Old Dreamtown is a funhouse approximation of the house where my trauma was built, and naturally is kind of the nexus from which everything else grew. it's dusty and bleak despite the nearby ocean. a long lonely highway runs through the middle, leading to New Dreamtown in one direction and into rocky wilderness in the other. (Old and New Dreamtown are not far from each other, and yet the highway is long. so it goes.) there are rambling, tourist-trappy souvenir plazas along the highway and the beach, and these grade their way into some of the deeper residential areas of New Dreamtown.
the accompanying funhouse approximation of my current home. its main feature is the campus - grassy, full of curved brickwork, studded with huge, multi-entrance buildings. the dreamself spends a lot of time in the library: several floors of stacks and academic spaces connected by a labyrinth of stairways, to say nothing of the dense webwork of crawlspaces under floors and inside walls, which are varyingly haunted.
the top floor of the library is very distinctly a bookstore, and has the most incredible selection - including massively oversized, illustrated volumes, along with hundreds of other improbably gorgeous selections. on a meta level, this is where the continuity started. the dreamself would vaguely remember books they'd been excited to read in a previous dream, or worry about books borrowed a dream ago from the library and not yet returned.
the bookstore is also connected somehow to the nearby City, and is the most common way the dreamself ends up there.
beware, below be drafts:
between these places, and along that long highway, is a shit ton of wilderness in a few different flavors. outside New Dreamtown is hiking country - winding paths through massive boulders trailing down towards swampy cypress forest - while Old Dreamtown backs up against an ocean. some of its beaches are sandy tourist-trap affairs, but others are pebbly and volcanic and require swimming and climbing to explore. it's drier down there though, not tropical. there are more browns than greens. the ocean itself is huge and cold and demands respect. there are spirelike islands in the distance.
the wildlife is one of my favorite details. a recurring theme is being inside during storms and watching through the window as animals (sometimes real, often bizarre) gather - for shelter? maybe. usually i am more scared during those storms than they seem to be. sometimes there are scary things out in the wilderness, but nothing bad has ever actually happened out there. more so that my dreamself recognizes that it's intruding and respectfully gets the absolute fuck away from the scary thing. which i suppose is comforting. the ocean dreams are rarer but usually have the wildest fauna going on.
there are a few points of interest in New Dreamtown, the main one being the campus. it's an Escher-style layering of brickwork plazas and seating areas. there are many buildings, but my dreamself is not privy to most of them. their main stop on campus is the aforementioned library. two words to describe the library are 'labyrinth' and 'stairs.' there are many floors and many counterintuitive ways to move between them. some of them are secret. some are definitely cursed. but the books! this is what first tipped me off to the continuity - my dreamself would worry about half-remembered books they'd borrowed last time and had forgotten to return. the top floor of the library is very distinctly a bookstore, which is odd, but they have the most beautiful, massively oversized, illustrated books. and the bookstore is usually how dream transitions to the city, like there's a parallel exit miles away in the middle of the metropolis.
common themes in the dreamscape:
i can't exactly fly in Dreamtown, but sometimes i can float - it's like i take a little leap and the ground keeps receding away from me just enough that i can glide just above the surface. (the shorter but more cringe description is 'invisible Heelies.') it's extremely fun.
Old Dreamtown is... different. there's a house that's a manifestation of the house where my trauma was built. sometimes it's similar to the real place, but sometimes it's a strange, airy, whitewashed building higher up the side of the hill. i love the hillside variant. it's sunny and peaceful in contrast to bullshit that's usually going on in the 'real' house, but unfortunately it's rare that the dreamself actually ends up there. usually it's the more realistic (and anxiety-inducing) variant.
there is a town in Old Dreamtown - it rambles along the beach and connects up to the New Dreamtown bar district.