There was this old theory by this EVP specialist and psychologist. It was the Spiritual Domain Theory. Everything in spirit takes place in your dreams as you perceive them, such as a SG or even a DG. It was that people you know would be running around in your dreams, but really they were spirits. Spirits taking a human/non-human dream form, like DC. Do I believe this theory? Maybe, maybe not. I am looking into this as a possibility.
I hadn’t even thought about shared dreaming. I am not abeliever, but i think that, If it were possible and two dreamers fight in a dream, and one is killed in the dream, they would survive IRL, right? So, even if they other person in the dream IS real, in whatever way, dreaming is still a safe environment. And there is no danger. Not only not to us but also not to the inhabitants that exist only therein, sentient or not. However if they are like us, there could be more problems with their psyche than anything else.
Somthing in the film waking life really got me thinking. The dreamer is talking to a DC about an idea for a sortof arty soap opera she had. The dreamer asks her what it is like to be a DC. The dreamer says that her soap opera idea is a really good one, but he diddnt think of it. Suggesting that all minds are connected to each other.
But as for DC being real, you dont often have dreames that you act like a DC in.
As for hurting them, we all have a dark side, and I think LD are a good place to do things bad things that you would never do in real life beacause it would hurt people. But since you an do anything you want in a LD you wouldent want to do that most of the time. Maby after a bad day perhaps.
Lol! 
It seems it’s a recurrent question. It reminds me of the “Rights of Dream Characters” and “Do DC’s have rights” topic (they are in the archive now). I think I’ll create the Dream Characters Liberation Front (DCLF) which will be the most active DC animal rights movement (in the Playground of course 
).
did i mention the testing the realness of DC’s experiment already? 
the experiment is a bit in dormant stage right now, but it will be resurrected.
What we discovered is that there are indeed several kinds of DC’s. 
So it’s not only made up by yourself or only real people. And then with ‘real’ i mean not made up by you but an independent being.
It’s one of my favourite things to explore.
You mean to say that they have a consciousness? I myself have made loads of DC’s that i have never meet in waking state, but i dont believe they are any more real.
I don’t think that dreams och DCs are anything other than illusions from my own brain. Sure, dreams can be entertaining or show me things from my SC.
Therefore, I don’t treat my DCs with the same respect as real persons. I’ve tried to kill one once, or confuse them.
But if a character is nice and helpful, there would be no point in hurting it.
I like some DCs, and would like to meet them again. But they are nothing else than parts of my SC.
I Would Think that most DC are creations of your SC and react as you would expect or how people have reacted to you in RL. However some may be you SG or other LDers.
It Depends What you believe in.
I think that DC’s only seem to have a personality becuase you WANT them to have a personality- your mind is more used to people not acting like emotionless robots and thus create the illusion of emotions.
That there is my oppinion, aye. I have to say I dissagree with the rest of the things you said though.
From what I can read here some believe, and some don’t.
But keep in mind:
There are theories of people with the power to enter one other’s dreams.
The Dream world is just something you visit when you ‘‘sleep’’, there’s nothing that can actually be investigated, thus anything can be true, and anything can be false.
Deception, Mind reading. ANYTHING could be the case, because as far as we know, one that is lucid can basically be the ‘‘master’’ of his own domain.
In any case, whether my DC’s are real people or not, I treat the whole surroundings as if it were reality (with added superpowers), I’m not going to smash apart and do weird stuff for no reason, that’s what I have taught myself to do.
Think your actions.
Live your actions,
And heed your impulses, for they might interfere.
But then again, i’ve set a special goal for myself in Lucid Dreams which is most likely to be different from other people.
I do not consider Lucid Dreams a simple playground to fly around and be happy.
Neither do I, some of them I do, but not most.
That’s exactly the same way I treat my LD’s and DC’s. Though I do occasionally blow things up, I create wooden targets or something of the like for that, I would never go out and hurt a DC for no reason.
I don’t know what your goal is, but I’ve set one too, I think we have alot in common when it comes to LD’s.
Anywho, my personal oppinion is that DC’s are not “real” people but they should be treated as such because they are you, killing a DC isn’t like killing a pedestrian in a video game, it’s more than that, it’s not exactly “killing yourself” either, even though they are a part of you. It shows that you want a more realistic form of killing people than killing them in a video game, because LD’s are almost as realistic as real life. Also DC’s are like your own creations, and creating something just to kill it is stupid, with my little “wooden targets” it doesn’t apply because those don’t represent living things.
I love DC’s! They really make me think about real life people, and how life would be if the people I knew were really like that.
It’s kind of funny, because when I tell my friends (only the close ones) what they did in the dreams they often look at me funny, and tell me they would never do that. Of course, when one friend told me I was drinking alcohol in her dream I was kind of shocked.
In my LD I tend to treat the few DC I come across as if they are real. I look at things as far beyond my understanding, there is so much more then I know. I have had conversations with them and done many various things. I have never had the urge to harm or kill one of them, but thats just me I’m generally very happy and calm in my LD. Its IRL that I’m angry. For those who do treat their DC like they dont exist, what if your LD is anothers nightmare? I have no evidence and I’m not saying this is how it is, but I have always felt that some of the characters are others who are dreaming. Not particularly LD, but still in the unconcious state of mind. Keep your minds eye open, anything is possible.
Sometimes a DC is a familie member. When i wake up I asked them about my dreams. They didn’t dream the same things I did. So the DC wasn’t a real person. So I believe i can treat them just like I want to. I have created them myself.
This is quite an interesting topic. I have not yet gone so far as to ask whether DCs are real conciousnesses (or even real people who somehow ended up in my dream). I simply see no good reason to believe this at the moment, because I have not yet experienced anything that could not be explained by tricks of the subconcious.
However, I have been asking myself if I can actually learn something new in my dreams, for example, by talking to a dream character.
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I can create a character at any time consciously. I can even make it say and do whatever I like. Everyone who has ever written a story with characters in them or played roleplaying games has done this, too, and knows that the character does not necessarily have to have anything in common with yourself (as percieved by yourself). So, the fact that characters in dreams act like “real people” does not prove anything. You can ask them whatever you like, and still it would prove nothing, since you can make up a character and let them say whatever you like.
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Now, while I certainly cannot be surprised by things a character which I have created consciously does, it appears that I can still be surprised by something that is revealed by my subconscious. Even that happens all the time - either in a ND, or while awake, in a moment of inspiration. Still, it has never happened to me that something was revealed for which there was no way of me knowing it through some previous experience in RL. It is always more like the subconcious puts together facts on its own and creates a kind of “new view” on things. Often, this new view is represented by a DC.
The bottom line is, you cannot prove anything by just talking to DCs to see whether their answers would be those of a real person (or some other kind of DC, which is not supposed to be a product of your imagination, for that matter). This is because your conscious mind, as well as your subconscious, are able to put together believable characters on their own.
Now, exchanging a sort of secret, something that you could not know otherwise, would prove something. It would have some very interesting implications for a link between dream and waking reality. But I cannot see any hint that such things actually happen at this time, so I am quite skeptical. 
I don’t think that they are people. I agree with all who say that they are just parts of your dream, and nothing more. On a personal level, I dislike dream characters. They always seem to treat me less-than-civil, even when I had done nothing to them.
Read this post:
That should pretty much cover it.
Most of you guys think of being a person as a physical thing.
I’m talking about something less physical and more mental. For instance you can agnoledge someone’s existance as a person, but not as a “Person”. if you know what I mean.
Its a question of whether you can believe that thought forms can exist; which would entail the existance of form apart from quantifiable matter for one thing, apart from the constrictions of what science consideres to be ‘Natural’ rather than ‘Supernatural’ at the moment
The character are pigments of your imagination (unless you believe in astral projection). You can do whatever you want to them, though we should have respect for the actual person, just like how you wouldn’t poke fun at a dead guy since hes dead.