# Dream sequences and how they almost always seem wrong to me **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 16, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702 "2015-06-16T21:55:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/21 "2015-06-17T13:53:41Z")
And I’ve had dreams where I’m simultaneously reading about a character, watching that character, and being that character. Well, as “simultaneously” as the dream version of time sense will allow. Usually that happens when I fall asleep while reading a book, and want to see how it turns out. On the other hand, I’ve also had dreams that were indistinguishable from reality, even by the cold logic of waking. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/22 "2015-06-17T14:47:58Z")
In general, I don’t like dream sequences in movies or shows. I think they’re a lazy way to tell a story and they don’t feel like real dreams. I thought the Sopranos had some dream sequences that worked, but that show overused them. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/23 "2015-06-17T15:21:03Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Most dream sequences that I see in movies or TV programs have what seems to me to be a basic and therefore fatal flaw (fatal in that it immediately takes me out of the suspension of disbelief). They show the dreamer in the 3rd person, as if the dreamer could see himself from outside. My dreams are often like that. Not always, but often. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/24 "2015-06-17T15:32:35Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’d be less concerned about that than things like places suddenly shifting, people turning into other people, magically “knowing” things to be true which make no sense, etc. I agree with this. So many of my dreams are impossible to describe in words because descriptions like “I was in a car but somehow I was also a fish underwater, and my dad was an adult but was also my own baby I was carrying (because I was also standing up? in a car? as a fish?), and I somehow knew that if I turned right at the intersection, I’d see the place I was murdered (because I was also dead)” really don’t cut it. (There was so much more to the dream than that!) 99.999% my consciousness is the 1st person POV of my dreams. I may be someone else entirely and have a different face in the mirror, but the dream is “shot” from behind my eyes. The remaining 0.001% are the rare dreams in which my POV is in someone else’s body and yet my own self is another character in the dream. For example, I once had a dream in which I-as-POV was a man and walked into a room where I-as-Other-Character was lying unconscious on the floor. I-as-POV knew I’d have to kiss Me-as-Other in order to wake “her” up, but I didn’t want to because I thought I’d be violating some cosmic taboo if I learned what it felt like to kiss myself. I did it anyway because it was the only option (my lips are apparently very soft, just FYI), and then I-as-a-Real-Person woke up. But I never have dreams where the POV is 3rd-person-omniscient. I don’t mind dream sequences in film/tv if they’re done well. (One of the reasons I watch **Hannibal** is the entire show is immersed in dream logic done well.) In fiction writing, they are almost always clumsy attempts of the author to expose a character’s subconscious mind, and are almost always embarrassingly bad. The exceptions are the times when dreams factor prominently in the plot (like in fantasy), or when Margaret Atwood does them. She usually forgoes the lame “narrative dream description in an offset italicized paragraph” thing and will just use a sentence or two to summarize the dream, and she has a talent for making them feel genuine. ---
**Author:** ![Macca26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Macca26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Macca26)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/25 "2015-06-17T15:35:46Z")
I have plenty of third-person experience in my dreams. It will shift as necessary and sometimes I have consciousness of both the first and third person at the same time. Sometimes I get flyover panning shots of the environment I’m in and other “camera” based viewpoints. Yes, sometimes my dreams try to make me look cool like an action star. I’ll look like whatever my dream has decided I look like. Sometimes I’m some sort of Solid Snake sort of guy. Sometimes I’m just me. Sometimes I’m a reporter, sometimes I’m a ranger, sometimes I’m a knight, or whatever. My appearance usually isn’t too important unless the plot hinges on it. I generally won’t even be aware of “what” or “who” I am until someone points out something that I then have to observe about myself. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of mirrors or what I would look like in them, now that I think about it. And yes, sometimes I am simply an observer of a drama played out in front of me. I am none of the actors, I am simply watching. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/26 "2015-06-17T16:17:47Z")
I’m not that concerned about point of view, but rather that dream sequences in movies (and books, often) are way too logical. Mad Men was really bad at this. I know of only a few cases where it is handled well. “Death on the Nile” by Connie Willis (maybe not a dream, but pretty much the same thing) and Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (where the dreamer loses his clothes throughout the dream and doesn’t notice) are two. Dream sequences that throw random images up don’t work for me either. My dreams, anyhow, are a combination of straightforward narrative and illogical jumps. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/27 "2015-06-17T17:34:26Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > However, I see that other people do sometimes dream in 3rd person. This makes me curious, for example, **Dracoi** , what do you look like in your dreams? Is it a straightforward representation of yourself similar to what you see in the mirror? Whenever I catch sight of a reflection of myself accidentally, such as when passing a shop window on the street, it is always jarring to me. How does your dream self react to this 3rd person view? It varies. Really, my analogy of an actor in a movie is the best way to describe it. In some dreams it’s clearly me, just like how Arnold Schwarzenegger is always playing Arnold Schwarzenegger, whatever the script calls for. They don’t even change his hair color. In some dreams, it’s like me in disguise, such as Robin Williams playing Ms Doubtfire or an actor with old-age makeup. In other dreams, I’m not even human, but perhaps vaguely similar, like how the CGI was done for Gollum and the Avatar aliens. In the dream, it’s all totally normal. Again, I think it’s probably like an actor sitting down to watch a movie with themselves in it. They know which character was theirs, regardless of what the image looks like onscreen. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/28 "2015-06-17T19:45:11Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > The OP reminds me of people insisting until their faces turn blue that you can’t read in dreams. . . . I can…but only slowly. It takes time for the dream to “generate” text. If I try to read at an ordinary reading speed, I quickly outstrip the text generation, and it degrades to gibberish text, and then to meaningless squiggles. But if I take it very slowly, then the text sort of “fades in” right ahead of the reading point. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/29 "2015-06-17T20:10:19Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > The OP reminds me of people insisting until their faces turn blue that you can’t read in dreams. > > Aside from the fact that it’s insisting that dreams conform to real life, but it’s still insisting that dreams conform to rules that they provably don’t. One can read in dreams, but the neat thing is, if you read something, look away, and turn and read it again, and it’s changed, then you know you’re dreaming. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/30 "2015-06-17T21:10:35Z")
Or you’re reading on a tablet, and accidentally bumped the “turn page” corner. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/31 "2015-06-18T02:19:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Or you’re reading on a tablet, and accidentally bumped the “turn page” corner. I’ve done that so much… I think this thread influenced my dreams last night…because they broke every single ‘rule’ I’ve ever heard about dreams. It bounced back and forth between first and third person. I read something at one point. It was in VIVID colour. (‘I’ looked a lot like Philip J Fry.) ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/32 "2015-06-18T13:18:56Z")
I once had a dream where I found a piece of paper that had, “Bobby, you will be loved” written on it in a child’s handwriting in pencil, and I could see marks around the words indicating they had written that sentence and erased it several times before. I wouldn’t have been able to notice all those details if you can’t read in dreams. On the other hand, I have had dreams in which I could see text with my peripheral vision, but the very center of my vision was too blurry to make out the letters of an individual word. So I guess for me, the rule is true sometimes? I often have dreams that feel so real that I will say to myself in the dream, “I can’t believe this isn’t a dream.” I have all my senses, including taste and touch, and the dream makes sense somewhat and has a plot with a clear beginning, middle, and end. These are not very common, though, and happen maybe 5-10 times a year. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/33 "2015-06-18T14:16:22Z")
I can often fly in my dreams. Sometimes, it’s just something I can take for granted. Sometimes, I realize I’m dreaming, and then say to myself “Well, then, if I’m dreaming, I might as well fly”. And sometimes, I say to myself, “Whoa, usually I can only fly in my dreams, but now I’m flying in real life! Cool!”. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/34 "2015-06-18T16:19:37Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > However, I see that other people do sometimes dream in 3rd person. This makes me curious, for example, **Dracoi** , what do you look like in your dreams? Is it a straightforward representation of yourself similar to what you see in the mirror? Whenever I catch sight of a reflection of myself accidentally, such as when passing a shop window on the street, it is always jarring to me. How does your dream self react to this 3rd person view? For me, if I’m dreaming in 3rd person, I’m usually dreaming of being someone/something else. For example, I have a set of recurring dreams in which I become armor. Early in the dream series, I saw myself from outside as a young boy (who only superficially resembled my real child-self). Later, I saw me-as-armor from the POV of the person who found and wore me, so I looked like a chain hauberk, or plate, or Kevlar body armor, or silvery liquid-metal stuff. However, there are a few dreams in which I see myself as myself. They tend to be dreams in which I’m in a mostly fixed location, while things happen around me, and my POV sometimes follows events that leave the area my dream-self would be able to see from first-person. For example, I have had a caper-film dream in which I was a desk clerk in a hotel who observed the shenanigans as several groups of bumbling kidnappers tried to make off with the bride from the honeymoon suite. Whenever the action passed through the lobby, there I was, behind the desk, looking like I do in real life, only dressed as a hotel clerk. I don’t recall ever finding it startling or disconcerting to see myself from the outside in a dream. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/35 "2015-06-18T21:50:49Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I can often fly in my dreams. Sometimes, it’s just something I can take for granted. Sometimes, I realize I’m dreaming, and then say to myself “Well, then, if I’m dreaming, I might as well fly”. And sometimes, I say to myself, “Whoa, usually I can only fly in my dreams, but now I’m flying in real life! Cool!”. Does anyone else have the sad experience of losing this capability, over time, perhaps as a consequence of age? I used to fly… Then I could “swim” but it took a lot of effort… Then I could “hang-glide”… Then I could sort of “skateboard” (like McFly in Back to the Future! Fun!) Now I’m earthbound. Doggone, I miss flying dreams! They were the greatest! ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/36 "2015-06-18T22:28:47Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Does anyone else have the sad experience of losing this capability, over time, perhaps as a consequence of age? > > I used to fly… Then I could “swim” but it took a lot of effort… Then I could “hang-glide”… Then I could sort of “skateboard” (like McFly in Back to the Future! Fun!) Now I’m earthbound. > > Doggone, I miss flying dreams! They were the greatest! My flying dreams suck unless I’m flying some kind of aircraft/spacecraft. When I just magically fly on my own, I never have any subtle control over flight, only exaggerated movements. I spend the whole dream veering away from one obstacle or another, always missing a collision by just inches. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/37 "2015-06-18T22:44:20Z")
I have to pedal to fly. It’s less than brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/38 "2015-06-19T01:22:26Z")
I’ve never been able to fly in my dreams. The best I get is, much like **Trinopus** describes, “skateboard”. It’s like frictionless roller skating a few inches off the ground. Though I used to have dreams where I glide down mountainsides, in a kind of leaping “7 league boots” style. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/39 "2015-06-19T02:44:33Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > . . . a kind of leaping “7 league boots” style. I’ve done that once in real life, with a counterweight and suspension harness. It was wicked fun! ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702/40 "2015-06-19T06:23:43Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > For example, I have a set of recurring dreams in which I become armor. Early in the dream series, I saw myself from outside as a young boy Alphonse? Is that you? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dream-sequences-and-how-they-almost-always-seem-wrong-to-me/722702.md?page=3)