Dream Weaver

Bubble Blower by Josephine Wall.

Oooh, Dream Weaver,
I believe you can get me through the night!
Oooh, Dream Weaver,
I believe we can reach the morning light!

— Gary Wright, "Dream Weaver"

Sometimes there's someone who can shape their dreams into whatever they want — or shape your dreams, for that matter. They can send you into a Nightmare Sequence. They can trap you in a Dream Within a Dream, or help you resolve something in a Vision Quest. They can even kill you in your dreams. They can be villains or heroes, but dreams are their domain. They are a Dream Weaver.

Sometimes they can give prophetic dreams. Sometimes a means of communication. Those who bring their dreams into the physical world are either Masters of Illusion or Reality Warpers, depending on whether they actually change things or just make it look like so. Sometimes, they can even trap more than one person in the same dream. If they normally live in Dream Land, they may be Weaker in the Real World if they leave it.

May only be able to affect sleeping subjects, unless they can also induce and maintain sleep in others. Compare Dream Walker, contrast Dream Stealer. Subtropes are Nightmare Weaver, for those who only bring ill tidings and ill will to you, and The Sandman, for the mythical character who sprinkles sand onto people's eyes to bring on sleep and dreams.

Not to be confused with the web development application by Adobe Systems.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Paprika revolves around the rogue use of Dream Weaver powers.
• In Slayers: Perfect, when Lina travels to an island she's greeted in her dream and later contacted this way again by one of its magic-using inhabitants who has a request for her.
• CLAMP seems to have quite the Author Appeal for these charas. Here is a list:
  • The Dream card from the anime of Cardcaptor Sakura, which is powerful enough to temporarily trap Sakura in a dream about the future (and Syaoran has to use a LOT of his magic to counter the spell with the Time Card) and later to give her the first hints of Eriol's actual role.
  • The dream seers of X/1999: Kakyou, Hinoto, Kanoe (only in the TV series, in the rest she's more of a Dream Walker), and Kotori
    • Also, it's revealed that the deceased Hokuto Sumeragi possessed a similar hability, though at a much lower degree; it's hinted that she can only pull this when she's asleep (the others can do it when awake too), and she can enter others's dreams but her influence on them is quite limited. This allows her and Kakyou to meet and fall in love, despite never seeing each other in the real world. It ends in tears.
  • Actually, Hokuto's twin brother Subaru already showed this skill in Tokyo Babylon. While his speciality was traveling to the subconscious of a catatonic person like he did to "wake up" Kamui after Fuuma's Face–Heel Turn and Kotori's horrifying murder, in the original TB series he pulled a dream weaver stunt to aid Midori, a girl who had been traumatised due to being raped and later harassed, thus she fell into a deep sleep to protect herself. And she was his Forgotten Childhood Friend.
  • The main character from Yumegari, Tatsumi Hojyou. It's actually her family tradition, inherited from her dead parents: her work is to watch over the dreams of other people, and intervene if they're dangerous to the dreamers themselves. Once her mom and dad kick it, Tatsumi sets out to seek for her "destined person" and partner, a man named Kyousuke Kaga who also fits in this trope and lives in Tokyo...
  • Several characters in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, most prominently Tomoyo.
• In Delicious in Dungeon, Laios's "Idea of a Cool Monster", shown when discussing the merits of chimera, returns nearly forty chapters later as a summoned monster within his dream to defend himself from a shin. Shortly after, he rips himself open to transform into a dog to dig his way into Marcille's dream.
• The dolls of Rozen Maiden are capable of entering people's dreams. Suiseiseki is particularly skilled at it, and plays a large part in helping Jun sort out his unconscious thoughts and emotions. Her artificial spirit is even called Sui Dream to reflect that.
• One of the few powers that the youkai Kagura properly retains in Demon Love Spell is this. He uses it to go into the dreams of Miko, his Kid with the Leash.
• In One Piece Film: Red, Uta appears at first to be a Reality Warper with the power of her Sing-Sing Fruit, but the true nature of her ability is revealed to be this trope. Her songs pull listeners into a shared dream world that she can sculpt with music.

Comic Books

• Dream/Morpheus from The Sandman (1989), of course. The Norse gods even call him by this particular title, and he used to be the page image.
• John Dee, a.k.a. Doctor Destiny, an enemy of the Justice League of America. The device that allowed him to manipulate dreams, the Materioptikon, was later shown to have been based on Dream's ruby. He was also the first major Arc Villain in The Sandman (1989), serving as the Evil Counterpart to the title character.
• Nightmask from The New Universe and his counterparts from newuniversal. In the former, he's a psychotherapist who uses his power to assist people; in the latter, they can manipulate the "Superflow," the space everyone goes to while dreaming.
• Nightmare from Marvel Comics. Morpheus was even partially based on him, visually. The one being he fears above all others, even Doctor Strange, is Gulgol, a monster that never sleeps.
• Hack/Slash has an arc about a Creepy Child who kills people in his dreams.
• Zombo:
  • Necronauts: When Harry Houdini and H.P. Lovecraft journey into the dream dimension, Lovecraft finds that Houdini is already a very experienced dreamer who doesn't need his advice on how to shape the dream.
  • Anderson: Psi-Division: Anderson has learned how to employ lucid dreaming to shape her dreams to her own liking, even using it to kick Judge Death out of her mind for good.
• In the Jingaroo comic series in Beckett Pokemon Collector, the villain Croco-Vile had power over dreams and nightmares and was known as the Nightmare King.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Dr Psycho is a powerful telepath who uses his abilities to trap Vanessa Kapatelis in nightmares from his prison as retribution against Diana for capturing him.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm, Dream/Morpheus of the Endless is mentioned every now and then, before appearing in the sequel, Ghosts of the Past. Maddie also visits Harry in his dreams once, which he consciously shapes to suit a conversation.
• In The Echo Ranger the Echo Morpher and the AI copy of Tommy Oliver within it, are able to shape Izuku's dreams. Tommy does this to teach Izuku martial arts and have Izuku fight Putties, Cogs, and various other mooks.
• The Equestrian Wind Mage: Luna maintains this ability from canon. Unfortunately, Dethl can also do this, and, aside from what he does with it, he can also apparently counter Luna's own usage, as well as her ability to foresee events in dreams.
• Getting Back on Your Hooves: Trixie knows how to perform Lucid Dreaming, and teaches Twilight to help her overcome Discord-related nightmares. The Big Bad Checker Monarch also knows how due to being Trixie's older sister and thanks to her dream infiltration spell can get into and mess with the dreams of others, which she uses for Mind Rape. If two ponies who both know it are in the same dream, the one who's currently is in the best mental state will have the most control. The entire Final Battle is set in the dream world and involves both sides using this trope against the other.
• Negaverse Chronicles: The Friendly Four have an encounter with the Sandman, who sends them into their worst fears.
• Oversaturated World: Oversaturation: "Light": The Crusaders have a "Shared Dream" made by Sunset, and Sunset can use "dreamshaping" in the dream.
• Tantabus Mark II: Luna and Moondog can reshape dreams as part of their goals to turn nightmares into good dreams.

Film — Animated

• Mune: Guardian of the Moon: Mune can calm sleepers and help push nightmares away. He considers it a bit of a booby prize power-wise, but as it turns out, when he enters the Land of Dreams, it effectively makes him all-powerful.
• Rise of the Guardians: The Sandman creates dreams that allow children to keep believing in magic, which has the effect of making magic real for them. It also has a malevolent example in Pitch Black, the Boogeyman, who corrupts all of Sandy's dreams into nightmares in order to get kids to stop believing in the Guardians and start believing in himself.
• Twice Upon a Time revolves around a plot by the head of the Murkworks (the land of bad dreams) to trick two citizens from Frivoli (the land of pleasant dreams) to helping him bring about endless nightmares for the folks in the Land of Din (our world).
• Dreambuilders is about a girl in a newly blended family discovering that dreams are run on soundstages in a place people's minds go when they sleep. She resolves to exploit this discovery to manipulate the dreams of her obnoxious new step-sister who's selfishly taking over her life.

Film — Live-Action

• In Darby O'Gill and the Little People, King Brian comes to Katie and Michael in their dreams. The viewer doesn't see what they see, only King Brian talking to the couple while they're asleep and their eyes are closed.
• The movie Dreamscape, which involves a villain that can kill people with their own nightmares and the hero, who eventually does the same thing to the villain.
• The Golden Child. Sardo Numspa and his minions enter Chandler Jarrell's dream and Numspa controls it to give Jarrell a scary time, including burning his arm so he'll remember the experience.
• In Hellraiser: Bloodline, demoness Angelique visits John Merchant's dreams as a mysterious dame to tempt him, going so far as to make out with him at one point.
• This is the daily trade of the Extractors in Inception. They create a custom dream for their target which hopefully gets them to spill some closely guarded secret. When the dreamer wakes up, the whole dream will fade, but the extractors remember everything they saw and learned.
  • Particularly Ariadne, whose job was to build intricate mazes and settings into the dream in order to confuse Fischer's subconscious.
• Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, who was inspired by the Gary Wright song "Dream Weaver." The dreams Freddy creates are nightmares that can kill you, with any damage done in the dream crossing over into the real world. The only way to escape the nightmare is to wake up.
• In John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, an unknown agency from the future sends a creepy warning message to the research team using tachyon beams. The message comes to them in their dreams, since the agency can only reach them via their subconscious.
• In The City of Lost Children, it's ironically enough Miette who becomes this using the very machine Krank uses, and she gives him a rather karmatic nightmare after tricking him into letting her take Denrée's place as the source of the dream.

Literature

• The essence of Warden's clairvoyant gift in The Bone Season. As an oneiromancer, he can make a person dream vividly of their past by manipulating the memories in their dreamscape.
• Worldholders in Cold Obsidian are not gods, they are actually dreamers, so their control on the world they created is very limited.
• The high spirits, both light and dark, are all dream weavers in Astral Dawn. They used their immense psychic power to create the worlds they inhabit. The fact the astral plane is a higher dimension of energy and thought is what made these acts fairly easy.
  • A spirit's personal pocket dimension is called a dream realm in Averya.
  • The same thing is called a nightmare realm in Nazyra.
• The Dromes of Discworld are like spiders in that they spin dreams instead of webs. If you eat the food in the dream you are trapped until your death, when you will be eaten. They have to wait some time since they have no teeth.
• A number of people in The Wheel of Time do this; in fact, there's an entire Dream Land known as Tel'aran'rhiod where dreamers interact with each other. Notably, although it's possible to dreamwalk into someone else's dreams, the dreamer has a great deal of control over the intruder, so any dream weaving has to be done with extreme caution.
• The title of a class of people in The Age of the Five trilogy is "Dreamweaver." Interestingly, while they have the power to influence dreams, their primary function is healing.
• In Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Legends of Ethshar series, some wizards can, for a fee, organize dream messages.
• Charles Render in Roger Zelazny's "He Who Shapes"/The Dream Master is a psychotherapist whose therapy consists of influencing his patients' dreams.
• In Anne Bishop's Ephemera Duology, it's implied that Succubi and Incubi can manipulate the dreams of others, mainly the Erotic Dreams, but anything with a strong emotional impact will do.
• Taen of Janny Wurts' The Cycle of Fire trilogy is actually called a "dreamweaver", but she has a myriad of psychic powers that extend beyond dreams.
• In Ryan Graff's The Fires of Affliction, the cult leader known as the Crowning Star has the ability to influence others' thoughts and dreams. At the end of the first book in the trilogy, the Star uses this ability to trap the hero in a dream of perfect happiness, from which he has no will to escape.
• In The Shamer Chronicles by Danish author Lene Kaaberbøl, this ability is called "the Serpent's gift".
• Widespread in Labyrinths of Echo. One sequel tells about "Masters of the Perfect Dreams" for a modest price making limited-use pillows with the specific dream wanted by the client. It was legal in Echo even during the strictest limitations on magic and there's a whole guild. The protagonist was visited by a few mages this way. Starting with acquaintance while still living in his (and presumably ours) world and then hiring by his chief. Who as a Professional Killer personally slain about a half of King's enemies during the civil war and later reminisced royal habit of giving such secret decrees, er, friendly requests in dream visits:
  Though the old King always paid for the work in waking life. One have to give him credit.
• Telepaths in The Whole Man, by John Brunner, can set up shared dreams in a small group. They're called catapathic groupings (a Portmanteau of "cataleptic" and "telepathy"), because nobody involved, including the telepath, is aware of what's going on in the real world, and it can't be broken from the insidenobody wants to leave. Treatment involves another telepath forcing his way into the grouping and mucking it up so badly that the telepath has no choice but to wake everyone up.
• Wicked Lovely:
  • Rae can do this; she's referred to as a dreamwalker but it's essentially the same thing. She has been guiding Ani through dreams since childhood, almost destroys faerie by giving Sorcha a dream in which she can see her son, Seth, which causes her to make Rae ensure she never wakes, and it is through her visiting Devlin's dream that him and Ani are able to save Sorcha and thus faerie, and form the 'shadow court' to balance Sorcha's high court.
  • Devlin and/or Ani also has this ability to a far lesser extent, as they make out in a dreamscape so that she doesn't drain his energy the way she would in reality.
  • Rae also 'wove' Niall and Irial's dream selves together, which given Irial's eventual death from Bananach's stabbing him means that he might get this ability as well, in a way cheating death.
• The title character in Roald Dahl's The BFG essentially cooks dreams, stores them in jars, then uses a sort of trumpet to blow them into children's ears at night. As opposed to other giants, who simply eat the children.
• The mages in Mirror Dreams can create worlds that respond to their mind - dreams or nightmares. However it takes a lot of resources, time and paperwork.
• The Silmarillion describes the Vala Irmo (also often called Lórien, after the gardens where he lives) is said to be the master of dreams and visions. The fact that he is the brother of Mandos (the Vala who is almost perfectly able to see the future) is probably the source of prophetic dreams in Arda.
• Robert D. San Souci's story Circus Dreams, is a cruel Deconstruction of this power. A bullied and lonely boy finds a box containing the mummified body of a demon. Said demon forms a psychic link with the kid, and soon he has the ability to kill people with his dreams. These powers, however, only make his life worse, he's wracked with guilt, and the story ends with him turning the power on himself.
• In Jasper Fforde's Well of Lost Plots, Aornis.
• Wild Cards. The Ace named Revenant could send dreams to a sleeping person or even enter their dreams.
• Wyrm of The Book of the Dun Cow can use dreams to communicate with the animals aboveground, tempting or harassing them.
• In the Majipoor Series, both the Lady of the Isle of Dreams and the King of Dreams have the power to send dreams to any of Majipoor's inhabitants.
• In Paradox, the telepathic psychotherapists Jahir and Vasiht'h specialize in (and practically invented) dream therapy.
• In Rebecca Lickiss's Eccentric Circles, Figwort uses dust on Piper to trap her in an obviously symbolic dream. He appears too, but she can scare him off with the dust that still is in the dream room of her house.
• In Vampire Academy, Adrian Ivashkov, Robert Doru, and Sonya Karp all demonstrate the ability to enter the dreams of other people and shape them.
• Janet The Bunny Queen from Rosemary Wells's "Voyage To The Bunny Planet" series. Has the ability to enter through any sleeping chil....bunnies dreams (Mostly if they have a bad day) and always bring them to her home planet "Bunny Planet" where the bunny she brought with them. Heads into the door where she tells them "This is the day that should have been" where depending on the bunny would visit their dream which is very peaceful and happy compared to what happened to them previously. She also has the ability to fly instead of walking.
• While he doesn't seem to create them, Vilhelm from Myth-ing Persons has the job title "Dispatcher of Nightmares", and spends much of his time monitoring the bad dreams of people from other dimensions.
• In the Dreamblood Duology, Sharers and Gatherers both weave dreams in order to perform their duties. Sharers use dreamichor to shape the dreams of their patients and use those dreams as a way to heal, while Gatherers shape pleasing final dreams for those departing into Ina-Karekh for good.
• The dreamrovers in Dream Rovers can visit and manipulate others' dreams. It becomes unpopular to say the least when other people realize how the power could be abused.
• All of the Sleepwalkers in Side-By-Side Dreamers are able to use lucid dreaming to fight the Suiju. Kaede in particular has a talent at this, often transforming herself into different, more powerful forms while dreaming.
• A minor character in the October Daye series is an 'Oneiromancer', a rare magic that allows her to travel through other people's dreams, deliver messages, and sometimes help them uncover old memories.
• In Stephen Golden's And Not Make Dreams Your Master, dream-sharing technology has become a branch of the entertainment industry, with professional Dreamers transmitting scripted experiences to subscribing sleepers in real time.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: A person can change their dreams in the Shadowlands with will and practice, including healing injuries their dream bodies receive. Some can also trap other people inside of dreams they conjure up.

Live-Action TV

• In Babylon 5, Lyta Alexander threatens to implant a nightmare so deep in Londo's subconscious that he would spend every night screaming if he turns her in to the Psi Corps.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "Nightmares", a little kid in a coma can bring nightmares to life.
  • In "Restless", the First Slayer manages to trap most of the Scoobies in their nightmares.
• One mortal man in Charmed (1998), is a scientist that somehow developed a non-magical method to enter dreams and kill people in them, Your Mind Makes It Real making this actually lethal. He was an Evil Cripple that used it to take petty vengeance on any women he believed spurned his advances.
• A major arc of the 1966-1971 Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows was The Dream Curse. The witch Angelique, in an effort to return the curse of vampirism to her recently cured lover-turned-nemesis Barnabas Collins, cast a spell which caused various people in Collinsport to have a nightmare. The first person to have the dream would be compelled to tell the next person in the chain about said nightmare. The person told would then have the same dream with an added twist, so on and so on, until the curse reached Barnabas and caused him to once more become a vampire.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Amy's Choice": The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are trapped in a dream. The man keeping them there introduces himself thus: "If you're the Time Lord, then you can call me the... Dream Lord." Both the dream and the "real world" are All Just a Dream, and the Dream Lord is a manifestation of the Doctor's darker side created by psychic pollen.
  • "Last Christmas": The Dream Crabs trap their victims in dreams as a Lotus-Eater Machine so they can eat their brains.
• Eerie, Indiana: In "The Dead Letter", Tripp McConnell enters Marshall's dream in order to convince him to deliver his letter to Mary B. Carter.
• Game of Thrones: The Three-eyed Raven turns out to be a real person who is communicating with Bran and Jojen this way.
• The title character of Garth Marenghis Darkplace describes himself as this in the opening sequence.
• In Ghosts (US), this is Sas' ghost power.
• Heroes featured Sanjog, a mysterious boy who could travel through Mohinder's dreams and gave him cryptic messages.
  • Technically, the boy's power was that people in distress would astrally project themselves via their dreams to him and ask him for advice. What kind of a lame power is that?!
    • Imagine if he was a therapist though. The ability to be on the scene and in a person's head when they're in distress? That power's not lame, it's just limited. That boy could easily grow up to be a one hell of a Manipulative Bastard by taking advantage of people with his power.
  • Matt's father Maury (and, it is implied, Matt, if he learns to harness it) can induce waking dreams, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them, and Molly accordingly dubs him The Nightmare Man.
    • Matt HAS harnasssed this power by Volume 4. He creates a hallucination of he and Daphne being killed to fool a random Mook, as well as trap Sylar in a dream and force him to believe he is Nathan Petrelli.
• An episode of the TV series version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids had the daughter use her father's dream portal to enter a dream dimension and help her get over school anxieties that were manifesting as her nightmares. Morpheus gets pissy about mortals messing with dreams and attempts to trap the entire family in an endless nightmare. The daughter responds by dreaming up a giant magic alarm clock, taking it back into the real world, and waking up everyone on earth all at once, grievously wounding Morpheus and freeing her family.
• Kamen Rider Double gives us the Nightmare Dopant, one of the show's Monsters of the Week.
• The dark fae Mares from Lost Girl have the power to inflict nightmares on people in order to feed off their fear.
• The Supernatural episode "Dream a Little Dream of Me" has a substance that allows one to do this.
• The Wheel of Time (2021): Lanfear, one of the Forsaken, is well known for her skill with manipulating Tel'aran'rhiod, the world of dreams. She can make herself appear as other people there or even create whole dream environments. Moiraine thus tries to keep herself and Rand awake for as long as possible while Lanfear is chasing them so she can't attack them in Tel'aran'rhiod as they dream. However, then Moiraine realizes using Rand as bait to find out Ishamael's plans from Lanfear may work, and so sends him into a dream.

Mythology and Folklore

• Besides the actual Sandman, there are various gods of dreams, including the Oneiroi, which included Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos.

Tabletop Games

• In Changeling: The Lost, all changelings have the ability to willingly enter their own dreams or the dreams of others they have a pact with, perceive the dream with perfect clarity, and even alter its contents. The True Fae also have this quality, and... well, it's not pretty.
• The Dreamcaller in The Chronicles of Aeres is a magical class who possesses a deep spiritual connection to the realm of dreams, allowing them to wield a small number of illusion, enchantment and conjuration spells, afflict victims with nightmarish visions, and summon archetypal figures from the dreamworld, referred to as "Espers".
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The arcane spell Dream and its variant Nightmare — the first allows you to send a message the recipient will remember upon waking, second causes restless sleep and some damage.
  • The psionic power Dream Travel, the epic spell Lord of Nightmares (no relation), and similar abilities.
  • Ravenloft has the Nightmare Court, a group of unique beings who like to enter people's dreams and feast on their fears
  • In Planescape, the Wall of Color between the Deep Ethereal and Border Ethereal is also known (less widely) as the Veil of Sleep: those who instead of passing through the Veil find a way to enter into it visit the dreamscapes of whatever plane it envelops. Not that a lot of people care to bodily wander in strangers' dreams. That's where effects like Dream Travel or Nightmare work. It lies between the Prime or other specific plane and the protomatter-laden mist of Ethereal plane, that is "what may become". The kicker is that it works both ways — sometimes dreamscapes rupture, spilling the contents on the Ethereal side where anything the dreamer imagined works like magical illusions. Including a chance to become real, no matter how crazy its properties are.
  • The quori, nightmare spirits from the Eberron setting's Dream Land, can do this. Along with their broader repertoire of Psychic Powers, it's one of their most powerful tools for manipulating mortals.
• Eon has an entire Whatevermancy dedicated to Dream Weaving: Oneirotropy... Well, kind of. The aspect is theoretically sound but as-of 4th edition it remains scientifically unproven. Due to the way the Spiritual Forces school of magic in the setting works, Oneirotropic filaments can only be generated while the caster is asleep themselves, which poses a bit of a problem, though in-universe documents imply that some shamans have had greater success with this than secular mages have. Some magecraft theorists have also suggested that it'd be possible to naturally generate Oneirotropic filaments in the Shadowlands, which may exist between the real world and the world of dreams, but as planeshifting there would necessarily require Oneirotropic filaments this theory runs into a bit of a Catch-22 Dilemma. At any rate, players and DMs are encouraged to explore the possibilities of this magical aspect.
• Exalted: Dream flies, a type of minor god, are strictly speaking only charged with observing and recording mortal dreams. Most eventually grow tired of their passive roles, and use their experience with dreams to brew their own, which they keep in glass bottles and give to sleeping minds. Their dispositions and preferred dreams affect to whom they give their creations — dream flies associated with romantic or erotic dreams favor passionate lovers, ones tied to dreams of glory and action give visions of victory and battle to the passionate, and ones who weave nightmares spread their works at random or to anyone they find distasteful.
• In Nomine. When humans dream they create dreamscapes in the Marches on the Ethereal Plane. Angels and demons can enter these dreamscapes and affect them (and the human inside them).
• Both Wraith: The Oblivion and Orpheus have Phantasm, a set of abilities which, among other skills, makes it possible for ghosts to interact with, reshape, or travel through dreams.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: The Dreamer, one of the Villains from the "Shattered Timelines" expansion, is actually a younger version of one of the hero characters (Visionary) whose psychic powers started going haywire, causing her nightmares to come to life.
• Pathfinder: Dream allows you to send someone a message in their sleep, Nightmare sends horrific dreams that prevent restful sleep, Dream Council creates a limited Shared Dream in which to talk and Dream Travel to enter preexisting dreams. Certain creatures, such as alebrijes and dream and nightmare dragons, can innately caste a number of these spells.

Toys

• UglyDolls has Dream Bat, who has the ability to shape good dreams into becoming realities...except for donuts, because those can be bought for cheap with little hassle.
• Monster High has one in the form of Twyla, daughter of the Boogeyman, but the full-time dream weavers are the Fright-Mares, centaur creatures formed from dreams who take control of the dreams of their monster background.

Video Games

• Diabolos, Terrestrial Avatar and Ruler of Dreams in Final Fantasy XI, who created an entire dreamland to escape The End of the World as We Know It. It's name? Dynamis. Didn't exactly turn out well.
  • Did not turn out well indeed. The people trapped in this world eventually lost their sanity and will attack anyone who approaches them on sight. The only people who managed to stay sane were absorbed into their empathic weapons. On top of all of that, the drop rates are terrible even after being upped, meaning that even normal players can go insane if they do enough Dynamis. (Square apparently takes their tropes seriously.)
• Len, the mage-familiar/dream demon of Tsukihime, who is the one who creates the Erotic Dream (any of them) Shiki receives as thanks from Arcueid. In addition, in the sequel Kagetsu Tohya, Len is the one responsible for the endlessly repeating dream Shiki is trapped in.
• The Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion Mask of the Betrayer features Gann of Dreams, who can walk in and influence the dreams of others. The player can gain this power themselves later in the game.
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, one of the Secret Projects you can build is the Dream Twister, which makes psychic attacks made by your faction much stronger.
• Spyro the Dragon (1998): One of the hub worlds is the homeland of the Dream Weaver branch of dragons. According to the manual (it's never directly addressed in the game), these dragons fly through dreams and help people with their nightmares. The world in question is bizarre enough to make one wonder if Spyro simply fell asleep towards the end of the game.
• Twisted Wonderland: Malleus's unique magic induces Forced Sleep in a large scale Area of Effect and allows him to control the dreams of whomever affected. The only one immune to the dream inducement is Ortho by virtue of being a Ridiculously Human Robot.
• Dragon Age: There are mages who can enter the Fade without lyrium or blood magic and exercise a certain degree of control over it aptly called Dreamers or in Tevene somniari. Their control over the Fade is strong into the point that they can cause nightmares and outright kill people in their dreams. However, the general risk of demonic possession that most mages face will be doubled for a Dreamer. Examples including Feynriel from Dragon Age II and Solas from Dragon Age: Inquisition.
• Dragon Quest VI: The premise is that you correct problems in the real world and the dream world.
• Dreamkiller sees you as a private investigator who can enter and exit dreams at will, with your job being curing clients of their phobia by entering their dreams and purging whatever nightmares they have. It ends with you confronting the Dream Devourer, a demon who resides only in nightmares who can control a person's life from within the dream world, so the finale is a massive dreamweaver vs. dreamweaver duel.
• Dreamweaving is a skillset available to mages in Lusternia. In the histories, Emperor Ladantine was an accomplished Dream Weaver, and used the skill for purposes of espionage and reconnaissance following his Face–Heel Turn.
• Hypnos and Daydreamer from Ghost Master are ghosts who possess sleeping people. Both have a signature ability: Hypnos specializes in creating nightmares, scaring their carriers while they're asleep, while Daydreamer can reveal fears of his carrier (his signature power, however, is not related to dreams: he can make everyone around feel Dissonant Serenity.)
• In Fire Emblem Fates, Odin uses this power to cheer up his childhood friend (and potential girlfriend) Selena by making her dream of their friends back home in Ylisse.
• In Fire Emblem Heroes, the álfr count since they represent each facet of dreams, with Peony playing this trope the straightest.
• Rayman has Polokus, the Bubble Dreamer, who created the world in his sleep. His dreams and nightmares often become reality.
• In Dreams the Player is this, as all the levels made in the Level Editor are, well, dreams.
• A limited example forms the premise of DARQ. Protagonist Lloyd is asleep and becomes fully aware that the nightmare scenarios he's trapped in are dreams, which he is able to take advantage of by giving himself the ability to walk up walls and across ceilings. However his power is limited and he's still at the mercy of the various monsters roaming around with malice on their minds.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Aeyr starts the game in a dream crafted by ??? that he used to get pulled into once a month, but that dropped off recently.

Webcomics

• City of Somnus being set in Majestan, where Dream Weaving is the core of culture, naturally features many weavers at various levels of talent and skill.
• In Gifts of Wandering Ice people take lucid dreaming very seriously and those who carry more than one personality in their minds, rely on imaginary worlds to interact with their inner enemies/friends.
• El Goonish Shive had one sorceress who made Ellen and another participant replay lives of their Alternate Universe counterparts in dreams to make them "live through" years of personal experience quickly, and slapped a message of her own on the end.
• Homestuck has the Horrorterrors. Feferi gets them to establish the dreambubbles, large spheres in space that "catch" anyone who has died in either the A or B universe. This means that not only there are thousands of versions of the trolls, including her, but also their genetic descendants and previous players of the session.
• 9th Elsewhere: Several characters; only natural as the setting for the series is a Mental World.
• Wayward Sons: Morfeaz's power. He can also erase and plant memories in people's minds, but only while they're asleep.
• Many of The Fair Folk in Roommates and its 'verse. Most proficient seem to be Jareth the Monster Roommate, and his father the Erlkönig (this guy locked the whole cast in a Lotus-Eater Machine once). The really scary part is that dream manipulation is their lesser (or perhaps Required Secondary) power Jareth is firstly and foremostly Time and Space Master in the widest sense (even people's personal time/space perception), while the Erlkönig is a manipulator of Darkness, literally and metaphorically.
• In Alice and the Nightmare, all oneironauts can use their various powers to modify different aspects of dreams. In fact, having the power is a requirement for the job.
• Paranatural: Boss Leader, boss and leader of the Paranatural Activity Consortium, has this power, thanks to being the medium for the spirit Sandman. She can watch other people's dreams, communicate with them and create entire worlds for herself and other people — the Consortium's "headquarters" is a shared dream she's set up, which its members get into by sleeping. However, her power comes at the price of herself being trapped in deep, endless slumber.
• In Champions of Far'aus, Hypnoron, an Arcane god, is usually seen spending his time in peoples dreams, and turning them into nightmares for his own amusement.

Web Original

• The Tong of the Black Madonna in the Whateley Universe used this trope to attack the Handmaid of the Tao, since they figured she was too dangerous to attack directly.
• The final episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared features a lamp who tries to educate the main characters about dreams, before quickly sending them into violent nightmares.
• Sylvie from Epithet Erased can put people to sleep with his Epithet "Drowsy" and manipulate their dreams, doing things like bringing their nightmares to life.
• The Dreamweaver Class in U Realms Live. Their power comes from their mastery of Dreaming, and they can see events of the past and the future in them.
• The Noedolekcin Archives When a fan asked Seismo if Kirk was able to manipulate a person's dreams, he replied that he can. A similar thing occurs with Hypsypops, except he can manipulate the dreams of various Nickelodeon characters, not real-life people.

Western Animation

• Freddy Krueger was parodied in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Terror" episode with a dead Groundskeeper Willy.
• Doctor Destiny appeared in the Justice League episode "Only A Dream". He's just as powerful as his comic counterpart, affecting anyone he wants wherever in the world they might be if they're asleep (and he can get you even if you're awake if he's close enough). The first (and last) things he does when he gets his power are trap his ex-wife and the Justice League in their worst possible nightmares, which kill them through shock if they go on long enough.
• In Futurama, technological advances make it possible for advertising companies to insert product placement into dreams.
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Power-noia," HIM manipulates the girls dreams.
• Nerissa in W.I.T.C.H. uses this power to try and kill the girls in the dream world, as they could die for real if they died in their dream.
• Moon Dreamers is about the people responsible for giving good dreams.
• Danny Phantom had a few characters with these kind of powers. The Fright Knight was, as his name suggested, a medieval warrior who had the power to transport one into a dream-like realm based on their worst fears. There was also Nocturne, the Ghost Of Sleep, who fed on the energy of sleepers. With enough power, he had the ability to control what happened in any dream, including allowing Danny to escape his own. Finally, there was Nightmerica, a female movie monster version of Freddy Krugar that was made real by ghost magic. Though she only played a cameo, if she's indeed like the villain she's based off of (and her name gives any indication to her powers), then Danny and his friends are probably lucky to have only fought her once.
• In The Dreamstone, the title Dreamstone protects the Land of Dreams from the nightmares sent by Big Bad Zordrak, while the Dreammaker uses it to send out pleasant dreams to the Noops.
• In The Transformers episode "Nightmare Planet", the Quintessons hook a sleeping Daniel up to a machine that brings the characters and settings from his nightmares into the real world, then set them against the Autobots. The monsters were immune to real-world weapons, but Daniel manages to lucid dream and assist his friends.
• Princess Luna of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has the power to enter the dreams of her subjects, and also control them. She does this in part to protect them from their nightmares, and also to show them what their unconscious mind is trying to deal with. In "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils", Princess Luna guides Sweetie Belle's dream to show her the possible consequences of her actions of the previous day.
  • The episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" sees Luna chasing a nightmare-causing monster called the Tantabus through the dreams of the Mane Six. Then when the Tantabus infects the dreams of all of Ponyville, Luna is able to pull all of the town's residents into one massive dream, where they all help fight the monster.
• Rick and Morty featured an obvious parody of Freddy Krueger named Scary Terry. Rick even acknowledges that he's a ripoff of an 80's horror movie villain.
• During one Robot Chicken sketch, The Nerd starts dreaming of being in The Wizard of Oz. He realizes this is his dream and decides to make it 'super cool', changing the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion into The Crow, Optimus Prime, and Lion-O. After defeating the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch (by peeing on her, no less), The Nerd changes his dream one more time so they're all on a topless beach in France.
• Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls is sometimes referred to as a "dream demon" and has Reality Warper powers within the dreamscape. He cannot physically affect the real world until the finale, where he is let loose upon the physical plane, but can roam through minds at will and may even inflict Demonic Possession on those who allow him in, usually unwittingly.
• In The Wizard of Oz, one episode had the cast entering the Lion's dreams and wake him up before he fell asleep forever thanks to magic. He could change the nature and details of the dream, but had to deal with the Wicked Witch trying to turn his dream into a nightmare.
• Dr. Dreamscape, a one-shot villain from Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, is able to manipulate the dreams of others. He uses this to trap people in a world where all their dreams come true, then control their bodies in the real world to commit crimes.
• The Secret Show: In "Secret Sleep", Doctor Doctor uses an ancient dream crystal to power a dream machine in order to manipulate people into dancing in their dreams to the point where they're too tired to go about their daily lives. This is also how she's able to interact with Victor, Anita, and Snuggle Bunny as Agent Zed.
• Bat Pat: The Animated Adaptation has the Duke of Dreams, a supernatural being that controls every ones dreams. In one episode the protagonists had to help him with his job because the dreams of everybody in Fogville got mixed up.

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...Ooh, dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the night...

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