This is an idea I’ve had for a while now. I forget whether I ever posted about it, but the idea has morphed quite a bit since then regardless.
The basic idea is this: Multiple people keep dream journals, and attempt to build a shared “canon” between their dreams. This is done through lucid dreaming and/or dream incubation.
The process would go like this: Person A posts a dream journal entry detailing a particularly interesting dream. Person B, after reading the dream, attempts to dream about one or more aspects to the original dream and explore them further, taking all or most of the original journal entry as “canon”. Aspects that can be explored might be locations or characters, or even more abstract stuff, like fictional organizations or larger plots. Person C (or person A or B again) then takes both these journals as canon, and attempts to have a new dream building off of those. The next person then builds off of these, etc.
This could, potentially, be a really interesting world-building exercise, or better, could have participants be part of an ongoing story in the dreamworld. Participants might not actually meet one-another in their dreams, but they could witness the effects of one-another’s past presence.
In the case of contradictory experiences, participants can discuss these IWL to resolve contradictions.
The process could also be supplemented by artwork, music, or other such things made by different participants.
This could work as both an open thread (in which anybody can join or leave at any time) or in more limited-sized groups with signups.
Wonder if anyone would be interested in trying this.
This sounds like a really interesting idea. I’ve heard of people developing shared settings for their dreams, but your idea of using the dreams themselves as the source for the setting (characters, events, etc.) is the interesting part. I think it’d make a really neat experiment.
Now, I’m not sure that I’d have much success with the incubation, but I’d at least give it a try if you went ahead with this. I hope someone who’s more confident with incubation or lucid dreaming might be interested, as well.
I heard about a similar idea somewhere before so maybe you did post it
What is your idea for how frequent people enter this dreamworld? If everyone is trying to do it every night then keeping things canon is going to be quite difficult, especially if they are sleeping at the same time. If all explorers of that dream only enter the shared dream every now and then though and after each trip there is enough time to synchronize everyone, then it should work easily.
I also suggest you to coin a term for this concept that is slightly different from “shared dreaming“ because that term sort of has a meaning in this community also.
I hope more people will show interest and want to join. I’d enjoy reading a dream journal to be shared by many members who explore it further and further. And if I happen to manage to enter, then I’d also provide an entry.
Probably not every night, or on any regular schedule. If a participant were so inclined, though, they could try for it every night.
I figured ‘Collaborative Dreaming’ was different enough, but I suppose it could be a bit further removed. Nothing satisfactory’s coming to mind at the moment.
I searched around and found out you had. But this is my first time seeing it, so I’m glad you brought it up again.
That depends on how easy it is for someone to incubate a specific dream, or reach a specific location in a lucid dream. I figured that it might be somewhat difficult for a lot of people, and that would naturally limit how often one person can visit.
However, I think it would make sense that, once someone adds to the journal, that they give someone else an opportunity before entering again?
Collaborative is a good word that describes the idea. Only it reminds me a lot of work because we are always told we have to collaborate with everyone
Another idea just came to my mind. There’s this purely single player game called Dwarf Fortress where people invented a social multi player mode where they would pass on the savegame from player to player and also usually write a continuous story about the fortress. I think the concept is very very similar to what you want to set up. Those are called succession forts. An analogy would then be succession dreams. And each dream scenario could have its own name based on the setting dictated by the first dream, much like each succession fort has a name based on the first round when it is founded.
I’m interested in practicing incubation also, so maybe I would give it a try, too.
So, umm, I’ve come to the realization that I might be getting ahead of myself with this idea. Before we attempt this, it might be wise to try to popularize the practice of solo canon-building in dreams: have individuals try to return to places, characters, or otherwise that have appeared in previous dreams, and expand on them, only needing to draw from their own past dreams and not others’.
I think a fair few members have already done this, but I don’t think it was part of any larger effort; just something that happened independently for certain individuals. I think making such a practice more commonplace could be a good foundation upon which we could build a group version.
If there has been an attempt in the past to popularize this, please point me towards it.
On a different note, I think the title ‘succession’ feels a bit permanent, like it implies it will never return to a previous participant. My intent here is not to have it be like a relay stick that only one person holds at a time, but something that anyone (or anyone whose signed up in the case of signups) can contribute a dream to at any time, drawing from the pool of already contributed dreams as canon.
i agree with you eMander, building our own personal canon should probably come first. regardless i’m still fascinated by this concept and hope to be able to contribute it {once i taper off the abilify and can dream properly again}
