My story (doesn't have a solid name yet) deals with a kid who is in a dream. The entire story is in the dream, and the character and the audience is aware of it. The theme of the story is believing in yourself, and fighting the enemy within (done very literally).

Going along with the theme and real dreams, the more Daniel (the main character) believes in himself, the more he can effect himself and his surroundings. I'd like ideas for powers he could have, or weapons he could make.

Here's a list of what I've already got:

• Materialization: Daniel can materialize weapons and items out of thin air. Commonly makes a variety of swords, most used weapon. At one point, makes a H-bomb to (try to) kill a enemy.
• Fire: he gains the ability to wield fire after his defeat of Anger. Eventually makes a fully realized sun in his hand. Can grow massive if he turns it into a red giant.
• Doppelgangers: Has the ability to split his soul into multiple pieces and make bodies for each.
• Flight: He flies. First thing he learns.
• Warping: Like Jumper, Daniel can teleport.
• A form of super speed and super strength.

I'd like some more ideas for powers that he could have (it's a dream, so almost anything could work) and more weapons he could materialize.

And could you give me some "bad character traits" for him to fight (fighting the enemy within, trying to destroy his bad qualities)? I've got Fear, Anger, Pain, Depression, and finally, Doubt.

edited 22nd May '12 7:27:42 AM by AmazingLagann

I've had only moderate experience with lucid dreaming in real life, and it was never more than semi-lucid (as in, it got to the point where I realized "I can use these powers", but never to the point where I realized that I was in a dream.) That said, I've been able to fly at will and to use strange sorts of pseudo-Ki Attacks. (My dreams tend to play out the plots of action movies on really good hallucinogens.)

If it's known from the start that it's in a dream, the focus definitely ought to be on the kid practicing and figuring out how to do more things. There's no need to actually fight people if you can just...make them go away. Of course, fighting abilities are still useful if you're under pressure.

I'd say Shapeshifting should go somewhere on there.

Considering how fluid dreams figures can be..

Jung. Jung Jung Jung Jung Jung. If you're making a story about a dream and all you can come up with is shonen anime cliches, you need to expand your horizons.

I take a personal offence to that. I consume a variety of media, and I feel that your comment was just directed as an insult, not constructive criticism. Not to mention the fact that it's inaccurate. If you do see some anime influences, the entire idea was inspired by Gurren Lagann, and it contains a lot of references to it (the katana for one) and one other anime (Yu Yu Hakusho soul gun). If the power ideas are not that original, that's not the point of the story. The story is the point of the story. Anyway, it's not like in a dream you'd find the time to think up original powers for yourself. You'd just do whatever came to your mind. It would obviously be influenced by the media.

1. Materialization. Kind of like Hammer Space, except you can see it materialize in front of your eyes. Commonly used in dream stories. Never seen it in an anime. 2. Fire. Okay, so shooting fireballs may be a anime, but it was used in X-men, and fire is a common super power. If you woke up in a dream, and could make or do anything, and your body was an infinite imaginary possibility, you'd probably use fire to burn everything anyway. Plus, I use it in a unique way. 3. Doppelgangers were used in naruto, but not like this. Anyway, just because it was used in one piece of media does not make it a cliche. 4. Flight. This is so universal it cannot become a cliche. And it's not an anime cliche. And again, if you could make your body do anything, you'd probably fly. 5. Show me 3 anime's with warping and i'll show you a super hardcore otaku (meaning there are very few if any). 6. Super Speed and Super Strength, like I said, probably the first thing you'd learn to do.

So, I cannot see how any of these are "anime cliche's". And try to help out on this forum, not just criticize.

edited 22nd May '12 7:15:31 AM by AmazingLagann

Shapeshifting is a good idea, and I would personally use it in my dreams, but it changes the character, and I need a strong identifiable character base because the story is completely about him, and himself.

True, but he cannot fully control his environment, but he can fully control himself. Have you ever had a lucid dream, but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make someone's head explode just by thinking about it? That's how I got around the problem of him just making people disappear.

The other problem with that is that he is fighting the enemy within. Anger, Pain, Desire, etc. And if he just made his problems "go away" he would never really conquer them. Thus he has to literally fight them, and use the right character traits to help him win. But thanks for the ideas.

How about the other elemental powers? While fire is my favorite, the others can be helpful too.

I feel that elemental powers is a bit cliche, and at that point, he could just use the force or something to move rocks/water/force(air). And the fire was brought out as an emotion due to his fight against Anger, and is used to symbolize this.

This isnt really a power but you could have your character never feel hunger or the need to eat even when encoutering really nice looking food.

I tend to have quite a few bizarre and colorful dreams that i usually record in my dream diary and one thing i have noticed is that sometimes in my dreams i will come accross really pretty or bizarre kinds of food like very artistically decorated easter eggs or a tiny choclate bar the size of a thumb nail, but even if i try to eat them something always happens to prevent me and then the dream moves on to other things.

An perfect example of this is a dream that i had a couple of nights ago part of which i was chasing after my ranger zord which had gotten lost and fallen in with the evil ranger zords but then i came accross my fellow rangers, that i had never met before then, eating dinner with teh evil rangers. I wanted to join them but they had all already finished the meal so i went to get ice cream from a nearby peanut stand only to find that it didnt open for another hour even though the notice said it opened an hour ago. When i went back to the table my fellow good rangers had left but when i went to follow them i wandered into an old fashioned ice cream shop that was open though all of the ice cream looked like coin sized slices of colorful stuff. When i tried to buy one i discovered it cost $5000 so had to run away before the guy insisted on selling it to me but the door had disappeared. Luckily i woke up then because i was hungry.

Anyhow I dont know if it applies to everyone else but in my dreams food is usually coloful and bizarre and often looks nothing like how it does in real life but i never have any real need to eat any and if i try natural/bizarre seeming obstacles pop up that prevent me from doing so until i either wander into dreaming about something else or wake up. Even in the rare dream where i succeed in acquiring the food it just disappears once in my possession kinda like it teleported staright into my tummy and the dream moves on. It could be an interesting angle to incorporate into your characters dream world.

As for negative aspects for your character to overcome how about greed, fear/cowardice, apathy.

edited 27th May '12 3:56:43 PM by Merlanthe

One thing that strikes me about your story is that it's not very dream-like, which is OK I guess but a shame because dreams are really cool. You could make it more dream-like by adding surreal aspects and making things a bit less straightforward.

I think dream powers are awesome. I don't 'lucid' dream in the sense that I rarely if ever have full control over a dream, but I always know I'm dreaming and I've built up an array of 'powers', which started with the ability to hover just above the ground and 'slide' down hills. That progressed to limited levitation, which was exhausting and required a certain pose. In both cases losing concentration resulted in power failure and a painful fall. I think that was when I was about 14?

I think the next one after that was super 'strength', in the sense that I still punched like a spaz but since the punch was imbued with the power of self-belief, I could basically kick the ass of anything save eldrich-abomination levels of threat. That was pretty much when I stopped having nightmares, because it turns out that when you turn around and punch the monster chasing you in the face, it stops being a nightmare and becomes totally awesome. Fighting hand-to-hand is tiring as hell though.

Then super-speed. Pretty straightforward, just run until you're basically just zooming forwards. That's almost as fun as flying. Which brings me to: Flying! Which, yes, is every bit as fun and awesome as you'd expect. People have different methods of flying, I know people who swim and hover. I used to hover as I said but now I just swoop, and there doesn't seem to be a concentration or energy limitation any more, though I still fall down sometimes.

Manifestation was one that I tried, but with limited success. Anything I made tended to be fuzzy or broken, and dissipated soon after, and it caused a lot of glitching. Same for teleportation.

Which reminds me: Glitching, for want of a better term. My subconscious seems to resent my conscious interference with the dream, and if I try to go against the 'theme' of a dream, either by using an unlicensed power or ignoring the plot and doing my own thing, it creates dissonance which weakens the dream and confuses me. If glitching gets too extreme, the dream dissipates and I wake up, although moderate glitches can also derail the dream to Reality Warper effect. How acceptable powers are deemed depends on the dream. If I'm in a good mood my dreams tend to be 'sandboxy' and I can do what I like, I guess that's what lucid dreaming is. That's pretty rare for me. In 'nightmares' or dramatic, thriller-type dreams I'm a lot more limited, I usually get to use simple powers like strength to get out of life or death situations but it still glitches and flight is right out. However, if I can score a victory using what I have to hand, that puts me in a good mood and the dream becomes sandboxier. Usually I'm somewhere in-between.

So I guess there's four main limits on what I can do. Firstly, imagination: I have to have an idea for what I can do. Secondly, confidence: I have to have a clear picture of what the power is and how I want it to work, and I have to believe in my ability to pull it off. Thirdly, energy: Some activities such as fighting are 'tiring' and drain my focus and emotional vitality. Low energy makes it harder to be imaginative or confident, and can also lead to glitching and dissipation. Finally, appropriateness. Even if I'm 100% confident in myself, the 'dream' still gets to veto the power as inappropriate, which causes glitching.

So yeah. Not really suggestions as such but I thought it might be relevant, to be honest I think doing research will help you enrich your story a lot as at the moment it seems kind of bland.

I have a friend whose main power is telekinesis, and he's always so excited to discover he possesses it, and so disappointed when he wakes up to discover he doesn't. Everyone dreams differently and every little difference says something important about them, so it's worth thinking about beyond 'dreams=superpowers' even if you don't intend to go full-psychological on it. Out of curiosity Lagann, do you ever lucid dream?

edited 29th May '12 3:06:35 PM by Kesteven

I only rarely have Super Powers in dream, and only in dire emergencies. I remember a recent dream in which I "flew" up a flight of stairs and "stopped" a bullet. In dream, it seems difficult to manifest powers because I wouldn't be able to do it in Real Life. I'm one of those people who is so gullible that I believe almost every dream is real, no matter how bizarre it is. That limits what I can do. So, I pretty much agree with .

Wow you guys make me feel bad. i nearly never dream, maybe 3-4 a year. and their never vivid enough to make out a theme or any kind of plot. needless to say i don't have the experience in dreaming to even try to control it.

Sorry off topic

Challenge accepted. >=)

Dragon Ball (Goku), Bleach (Butterflaizen) Hellsing (Alucard) and Fate/Stay Night (Saber, when summoned by Shirou to avoid a fatal fall).

Go on, show me a super hardcore otaku. xD

But let's get serious; I'm suggesting you to remove the "Come on, it's too absurd" stuff from your mind. If you have something like that, that's it.

Try to transform something relatively common in a superpower, or come up with a brand new something-kinesis, such as lactokinesis. If you stimulate your fantasy enough, it won't be difficult. Even groping and carrots can be fenomenal, as I can certify.

edited 12th Jun '12 2:14:57 AM by Kuroguma

Manipulation of (perception of) time is a good one. In dreams, one doesn't have a solid perception of the passage of time anyway, making this fairly easy to do, even to bullet-time levels.

Additionally, the more lucid (and thus, powerful) one is, the more one risks waking up. Depending on your story, this may be anything from Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence to Heroic RROD.

How about the ability to still control your limbs when detached? I mean I bet that the character is going to be wounded in the dream world, but instead of being able to grow limbs back right away (which is an option) what if he could still control them when they were detached? Could maybe think of some clever strategies with that.

Intangibility! The ability to walk through walls and other solid objects. This one has cropped up a few times in my own sporadic history of lucid dreams. :)

First of all, if he's willingly entering the dream, then it kinda establishes that he's the boss there, right ? Not very interesting, from my POV. I think you should make it that he's forced to dream ( drugs?) and is trying to wake up. He's lost in a surreal world and must try to make it coherent and navigable. But, the point is he's lost within his own mind and is not much stronger than anyone, anything else. About power... Illusions? Invisibility, camouflage, things like that.

edited 3rd Jan '13 7:56:44 AM by sunember123

Hmm... I remember that as a kid, on the rare occasions I lucid dreamed, I never *fought* any monsters because I just ran away from them or had dreams about really dull things.

Like the time I dreamed about finally getting a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and playing it. Yes, I'm not kidding, that's all that happened. I wasn't even in the game or anything, I was just sat in front of the TV pushing buttons on the controller to play the game.

On-topic, however, the idea of levitation or leaping great distances, based on some comments by other people and my own experiences, seems to be a common one. That, and controlling the flow of time - due to the timeless nature of dreams - or summoning random objects into your hand. Alternatively, altering the nature of other people. I cannot count the number of times that dreams I had involved people, objects or places 'changing' in some way when I turned away or remembered something. Perhaps the ability to willingly transform stuff or people or places?

In my own story I've kind of justified more 'mundane' powers by the protagonists be travellers to *other peoples dreams*, and the fact that they technically have greater power over things than the people having the dream (and in turn allowing them to observe things much more objectively and with a better sense of time).

edited 3rd Jan '13 3:33:32 PM by Eventua

Heh, this discussion reminds me of some of the wacky dreams I had (which happen to be the only ones that I remember; I forget about 99.999% of them)

For some reason, I was this hunter-warrior guy at a ruin-like place, at what seems to be a desert or some other dry land. Then a frickin' wyvern-thingie comes swooping down at me and my fellows (whose faces I couldn't see because they all had hoods). I climbed something up to gain higher ground, maybe to reach the monster...
Then the wyvern shoots lightning from its mouth. And I woke up.

After that one, whenever I think of dream-related powers I tend to think of living the life of someone else, who might as well be my past life or myself from an alternate world.

One thing to consider is that in a dream, many things are symbols. You've already got the idea with him fighting Anger, Doubt, etc. to overcome those feelings within himself, but consider that his powers might symbols as well. For example, you could make fire representative of anger, with it randomly causing destruction in the dreamscape until he defeats/controls his own anger.

Another idea would be for him use things that are symbols of strength or protection to help him. Instead of him just materializing swords, have him make a sword based on a toy he has, or a fictional hero (real or in-universe) he idolizes. Alternately, he could manifest things from his everyday life that protect or help him. A childhood teddy bear or blanket could attempt to defend him, or the image of pets of loved ones. The more standard super powers could come in later as he comes to rely on himself more.