Life is but a dream…

For the last two entries I’ve posted, I’ve talked about certain projects related to this web site. The first was The Former Legacy, a Star Wars: The Old Republic fan fiction story which I have set aside indefinitely due to my lack of interest in Star Wars these days. The second was an entry that reaffirmed my commitment in the creation of a Metroidvania style video game which will take quite some time to develop.

This entry is going to be all about a new project I have already started working on within the last couple of weeks… something that I’m really happy with and would like to share. However, before I introduce you to this idea, I’d like to go over what inspired the creation of this new project.

My first memory

Childhood amnesia is an interesting thing that no one ever really talks about in normal conversation despite it affecting every human to some degree. As a result, we all have that “first memory” of our childhood, the earliest recorded moment of our life.

My first memory is pretty interesting because it’s been with me for a very long time and is still vividly pictured in my mind every time I think about it.

My first memory was a dream.

I was 4 years old, still living in Fiji. I remember it was the middle of the day and I felt pretty tired after playing, so I sat down on the floor against the wall and began to dose off. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep without realising. In my dream, I had opened my eyes and was still sitting in the same spot with everything looking exactly the same as it was when I was awake.

As I looked around, I noticed the geisha doll standing atop a bookshelf in the room. My mother had bought the doll when she went to Japan before I was born. It was strikingly red with a pale, white face and long, straight black hair. This doll always caught my eye whenever I was in the room due to its strange features. I had only ever seen people with brown skin around and didn’t quite understand this pale faced woman.

My eyes were locked onto the geisha doll until it suddenly took a couple of steps forward from its base and fell off the edge of the bookshelf. I heard a thud on the floor below, but when I looked down to see where it landed, it wasn’t there.

Confused, I started to look around the room for the doll, still sitting there against the wall. The geisha doll was nowhere to be found but I knew it had to be somewhere.

Suddenly, I feel a pressure around the big toe of my left foot and I look down at it wondering what was going on. The geisha doll was there, peeking over my foot with its hands around my big toe. Just as I was about to start panicking, I woke up.

My head was angled back and I was staring at the ceiling so I quickly looked down at my left foot and… the geisha doll wasn’t there. I looked back up to the bookshelf and there it was, still on its stand where it should be.

I didn’t know what to think, I remember trying to figure out what just happened. Back then I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling, but over time I realise I was trying to figure out why my perception of reality didn’t match with what I had just experienced and it confused the hell out of me.

I think that’s why that memory stayed with me, it was a minor mystery that I just had to figure out and never could until I was older and understood the concept of a dream.

Zooming forward in time, a few years ago, when my house had been built and I had just moved in, I told my mother this story and she gave me the geisha doll. Yes… the very same one from my memory. I have it to this day… and it’s standing atop a bookshelf.

Did I ever stop dreaming?

Ever since that moment, I’ve always felt in the back of mind that I never really woke up and that I’m still dreaming. It’s not something I talk about often because it makes me sound a little (very) crazy, but I’m always confirming to myself whether what I’m experiencing is reality or a dream.

I’ve been doing this since who knows how long and it’s created a strange side-effect with my dreams. It’s not something I can do on command, but I lucid dream quite a lot and I can remember most of my dreams vividly.

You would think that this would be a problem, but my strange perception of reality has done two things for me.

1. My constant habit of making sure that what I’m experiencing is real has gotten me to make a habit out of re-evaluating the events of the day which allows me to keep track of important things that are happening or that I need to do without the use of a diary.
2. Every single creative idea I’ve ever had has come from a dream. From the design for this web site to the idea of The Former Legacy, the Metroidvania game I’m developing, countless other ideas that I’ve written down but never shown anyone else… and a new story idea that I’ve come up with recently.

Turning dreams to reality

So, what is this big idea I have and why have I been talking about dreams for this entire time?

This idea came to me because of that 120 anime marathon I undertook during the Corona-chan lockdown. I had watched so much anime with another 10+ after the lockdown ended that one night I went to sleep and I had a dream.

This dream was much like the first memory I ever experienced, it was a completely normal recollection of reality where I was sitting at my PC continuing my anime marathon… except there was one thing that was off.

The anime I was watching did not exist.

When I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking about this dream and the first chance I got, I took to my discord server (you should join if you haven’t already) and started posting all about this strange dream.

The folks there thought I was high or had turned full weeb because of my obsessive anime marathon, but the more I wrote about it, the more I realised I had something special on my hands.

So, what was the anime in my dream about? Naturally, with the billions of isekai I’ve been watching… it was an isekai. Though, one with a different spin on the concept than what I’ve seen so far. I’m reluctant to say any more than that because I want the work to speak for itself.

What I will say is that I’ve decided that the way I’m going to present this isekai story is the way most isekai anime series get started, as a web novel.

This is part of the reason why I’ve mothballed The Former Legacy and why I’ve reaffirmed my commitment to my Metroidvania game. I’ve been working so hard over the last couple of weeks on the planning for this new web novel series and the ideas haven’t stopped flooding into my head.

I have had dream after dream about it and I get ideas popping into my head during the day too. It’s flowing so effortlessly that I have to make this, no matter what.

I’m sure, once I post the first chapters of the web novel, you’ll start to see why I’ve been talking about dreams and the perception of reality throughout the entry.