Do you think that all DC’s are all people from real life just maybe we’ve never consciously noticed them before or do you think the subconscious creates new people? I wonder because last night I had a FA where I was on my iPad and apparently had pictures from a previous dream. (It was pretty mind blowing exciting- even thought about posting the images on LD4all 
). But anyways I had a picture of a group of people and I zoomed in on the group and each one appeared unique and in the dream I even thought to myself, “I’ve never seen any of these people in real life before…” So what do you guys think? Maybe a little bit of both?
People say this is true, but it’s more of a supposition. I meet people in my dreams that I am sure I have never seen in real life. Mostly from personal fiction. I was actually saved once in a normal dream by one of my fictional characters who was supposed to be some kind of god.
I have had a strange dream once where I was at some party in a large room, but the only members of the party were all younger teen girls with blonde hair. I was looking around, trying to find anyone that I had actually seen in real life, but I couldnt. They were all different. Different sizes, different builds, different clothes and eyes. They were all talkingn in groups, walking around, or just being solo, and laughing about things, getting food from the tables… It was even in a place I’ve never seen before.
However… I have been told that due to the way my life is, I lack the resources that normal people do, so my mind creates “placeholders”. It has to have something there, so it creates them. Though I may just be a rare case, but it is possible.
[color=olive]Ive been wondering the same thing. I think it *may be a little bit of both. [/color]
The claim is that your mind is incapable of creating its own faces, so it uses what it’s seen. However this is false.
If the mind couldn’t make up faces, then people with hullucinations of people whom don’t exist, would not be possible. For example, “A beautiful Mind”. If you havn’t seen it. It isn’t about dreaming, but it is a good example.
I have seen people in my dreams that I have never encountered in my waking life, but I don’t think our minds can create things entirely from scratch. One of the possible answers to this question is that your mind does only use what it has seen in real life; however, it may combine different traits and characteristics from different people to create new characters.
I think your mind makes new, different people, however, it bases the people off of what it thinks people should look like. For instance, if someone has only ever seen really tall white males, and no one else for their entire life (yes, impossible, I know), then their DCs would all be really tall white males. Then say, for instance, they read some book; their mind can then create characters and things from that book based on what it thinks they should look like; if a character’s height or skin color is never specified, then the person would make the DC based off of that character tall and white. With normal people, however, we’ve seen (or read) a lot more; we have people of all sizes, colors, hair colors, eye colors, facial shapes, and other stuff that we’ve seen, so we can create a lot more diverse DC’s…Does this make any sense? Am I just rambling now? Oh well, make of the post what you may, I think that’s how the mind works in this regard.
Doubt, I agree. I think that we have a set of human proportions “saved” in out mind, and that DCs are created after that pattern. People usually have two eyes above the nose, arms and legs of a certain size, etc. I have noticed that if I read, for example, a lot of science fiction stories about aliens with a certain trait, the trait is likely to show up in DCs too. I have never met a person with a tail or glowing eyes IRL, but I have seen many DCs with them. So I think that the DCs are made from a “bank” of traits and proportions from not only the people we have seen or met, but also the people we have imagined.
Most of my DCs are actually real people I saw, but the weird part is that it happened twice for me to dream DCs that I’ve never saw before in WL, but afterwards I’ve met them in WL. So the actual question should be “Are all DCs real people?”. So if dreams allow shapeshifting, it is possible that DCs can actually change their form to differ from their true looks and deceive you that they are not real people. So maybe it is possible for DCs that look purely imaginary to actually be real people but with changed looks just to fit in your dream. But still, that doesn’t prove the fact that there are DCs that look and act purely on their own, not connected to any real person… so what are they? Are they a real entity or just another aspect of your subconscious?
First think of it this way: You’ve seen tens of thousands of people in life. Maybe you didn’t study each one, but you saw them. There’s no way you could remember all of them. Second, I think your subconscious can merge people together and change them, so technically you can see people in your dreams that you’ve never seen in real life.