#the potato dreams

[irusanw4]

Ok so bc of the hyperspecific poll I'm gonna explain my potato dreams. Currently I've only had 2 but I'm hoping that at some point I'll have a third, bc I really wanna see what my brain has to offer. Buckle in because this is a long post.

Dream One

(PT: Dream One)

There were Minecraft mechanics in terms of digging and building and sizing, but nothing else. I, and I think a few other people, were carving out 18 obstacle courses within the city-sized potato. Each one was themed around a different Pokemon type, and the one I cared the most about was the flying course. It required flying between close-together plants and was 2 blocks wide and less than 15 blocks long with a 90 degree turn to the left at the VERY end. Like, the first block in that new section was the finish line. I was super particular about where each plant went, and the real challenge was just how fast you'd fly through it!

That was what pretty much the entire dream fixated on, and it ended when I finally did it perfectly

Dream Two

(PT: Dream Two)

This one was much more lore-heavy! The potato had been split in half and there was a vaguely circular or ovular area set between the two halves with maybe 10, 20 meters of wiggle room max (I'm very bad with scale)

That round area never got filled in by my brain, but it was very clearly mentally labeled as Unsafe. Nothing was allowed to enter that empty area, to the point it wasn't even possible for me to consider walking into it. It was just. Not a space. However, laser cannons could fire through it! That's important for later!

The dream began with a guy, who I'll call uhhh. Boss. There weren't names in the dream but explaining this without names will get confusing. Boss found the essence of a weakened god. The essence visually was just a green fire, smaller than a campfire and floating a bit above the ground. We'll call the god Green because it's consistently associated with the color!

So Boss speaks to Green while his crowd of guys he had with him stand back! And Green tells Boss what boils down to "I'm weak now, but if you work to make me stronger then I will help you with that power!" and Boss agrees. It's unclear if this particular agreement was binding or if Green just kept its word, idk, my dream didn't explain itself

So Boss gets his many followers to carve out a shrine in the halves of the potato. Initially this shrine copied the obstacle courses from dream one, but over time it became huge rooms with defense systems in each one. I don't recall most of them, but the important one was laser cannons, which pointed inwards for some reason.

Eventually, some of Boss' followers betrayed him, shutting down most of the aforementioned defenses, so what was left would require manual direction rather than automatically activating. Boss still had younger, particularly loyal follower who we'll call Frank. Frank looked up to Boss a LOT and idolized him, so he was happy to risk his life using one of the remaining cannons to attack the half of the potato that had been taken over.

At the same time, Green was hit with a strong attack and was an essence again. And essences are very much able to be killed by laser cannons, the strongest of which was actively charging up to hit and kill both Frank and Green.

Boss decides in the moment to sacrifice himself. He makes Green promise to look after and protect Frank in exchange for taking over Boss's body, and Green agrees. It then teleports to Frank, grabs him, and teleports far away so it's just Green and Frank on a hill in the middle of nowhere.

The dream technically ended there, but there was a very clear impression left on me by the ending and some details I missed.

For one: that promise was binding. Like, Green HAD to protect Frank when it agreed to that. I'm unsure if Green knew that at the moment, but it definitely realized it at the end

Two: Green was also associated with rabbits, wind, and fast movement. Which. Haha. WindClan moment.

Three: Frank had VERY mixed feelings after he realized what happened and saw Green. Because Green was still using Boss's body! And Frank genuinely cared a lot about and truly looked up to him! And Boss cared about Green and also maybe about Frank? But Boss is DEAD now, there's no coming back from what Green did in that moment. And yet that's Boss's face.

Genuinely insane that my dream included this level of detail btw. Usually I'm lucky if it all has one plot line. Especially since I don't dream super frequently. I do like my potato dreams though! They're never scary or upsetting or uncomfortably close to a recent stressor, they're just. A story. I didn't add shit to that explanation. Hell, I cut some stuff out like the exact layout of the potato for brevity's sake. The only thing that's stopping me from making an actual story out of my potato dreams is that I want to see if I'll have more naturally. I hope so :)

[capsyst]

And here it is! My first fully completed Procreate Dreams animation. I used audio from one of Technoblade’s more famous rants during his Potato War series. I love Technoblade and miss him every day, so I hope that I was able to capture the magic of his energy in my animation.

I animated the roughs and drew the backgrounds in Procreate, but then I imported that into Dreams to do all the cleanup. It runs at 24 fps, but there’s a lot of variations to spice it up in there.

I wanted to really challenge myself so there’s a LOT going on in this short 9 second clip. There’s a camera move with multiple layers to achieve a subtle parallax scroll, there’s two lighting changes with one being a completely animated shadow layer, and there’s a warp effect on the curtains for when it opens and closes.

There’s still a lot that could be cleaned up. Some of the linework is a little more jittery than I would prefer, and the coloring process was awful. Every color was its own separate layer, which was exhausting to do. I really hope i can figure out a faster and easier way to do the coloring process because that took me over a week to complete! Yikes!

Overall I’m extremely proud of my work here. I’ve been working on this 9 second clip since Dreams released and I really wanted to showcase to everyone just how powerful Dreams is. I know a lot of people were complaining about it when it released and I wanted to do something to help reorient people’s expectations. I genuinely cannot believe that I did all of this on my iPad!

If anyone has any questions or would like to see a breakdown of this animation, please feel free to contact me!

And remember… Technoblade never dies!

[firexima]

Happy birthday king, you’re missed so so much.

I have so much to say but I don’t want to spam the drawing with text so I’ll reblog it and write my thoughts there.

He is so important to me and I wanted to be sure I didn’t miss making a drawing for his bday, so clearly I had to start working on this literally on my flight back home the second I finished my finals.

[kayshasiemens]

Rising from the dead to share this painting and then disappear again

I have spent over 90 hours of my life on this thing because I have had the brain rot for the last 2 years of my life (almost 20 if you count when I first read the comics) and it had to express itself somehow

Hope this dramatic bitch feels appreciated

(A Dream of Morpheus, handmade egg tempera on panel, 12x18 inches...if by any chance you'll be at SDCC or Gen Con, I'll be at booth 934/936 at the first one and Art Show #13 at the second one - come see the original, maybe get a print, or just yell/cry about Sandman with me?)

And here, have some more details - I had fun combining some favorite elements from both the comic and the show ♡

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was a potato, snuggled deep down in the soil.

I was very disappointed when I woke up.

[plusie]

[not-an-ai]

We know that Dream was fed raw potatoes in the prison, and nothing else. And in many fanfics, Dream doesn't eat them and they rot, I feel what most people are forgetting is that potatoes are the best vegetable possible. And what do potatoes also do? Grow in weird conditions, like sprouting in your kitchen when you haven't used them in awhile. They grow anywhere. I.e; this meme, thus, I think it is very important to talk about the cell Dream is covered and quite possibly taken over by potatoes. Because eventually the chest and the book thingy would decompress as they are made of wood, and potatoes could grow in/on them, and if you are doing an au where Dream dies in the prison and no one removes his body for whatever reason. When someone finally finds it, potatoes are growing out of it. Or if it is an immortal Dream au, there are potatoes growing in/out of Dream.

[ladeldee]

Things may or may not have happened in Pogtopia (x)

also:

[kenjo-arts]

By demand of my friends

[beamiedraws]

sandman comic about ex’s (comic spoilers)

[cuubism]

some canon-verse trans Hob for the lovely @five-and-dimes who recently got top surgery! 🥳🥰 congratulations, I'm truly so happy for you, my friend. please accept this humble offering

--

“So, it actually started on a dare,” Hob says, on the day he tells Dream the story of him. Or of this part of him, anyway.

Normally, Hob gets a bit guarded the first time he tells someone he’s trans. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty how people will react, especially ones he’s just become romantically involved with. He’s had it go poorly, to say the least, in the past.

He doesn’t feel that way with Dream. It’s not because there’s so much trust between them—they’re still new, after all. No, it’s something about Dream himself. For all his prickly and standoffish nature, being close to him feels like sinking into a warm lake, into a dark sleep where secrets and hidden wishes float up like glowing reeds to the surface. Deep, personal feelings feel safe with Dream; he cradles them in his hands and soothes them. Or that’s how it feels, when Hob is touching him.

Personification of dreams, indeed.

“A dare?” Dream echoes.

“Sort of," Hob says. "Got frustrated with people saying women should or shouldn’t do this or that or the other thing, so I decided if they felt so strongly about it I’d just be a man. Moved somewhere no one knew me, dressed differently, got stronger, practiced the sword—and that was that. No one seemed to care much, once you were at war. So long as you could swing a sword and not get yourself killed.”

“A choice, then,” Dream says. He’s listening very intently, hands folded on his knees, untouched tea on the coffee table before him.

“At first. Was only after I’d been living that way for a few decades—before and after we met—that I realized while there might be a handful of women out there living as men for the freedom of it, that they didn’t all like it. Given the choice they’d rather just be women in a more equal world. You know?”

Dream hums in understanding.

“But I didn’t want to go back,” Hob continues. “I felt like... who I'd become was the truth of me all along.”

“Identity, while not wholly immutable, is resilient against adversity and circumstance,” says Dream. “You found what your heart wanted you to be, if in a circuitous manner.”

“You seem very unbothered by it,” Hob observes, sipping his tea.

Dream frowns. “Why would I be bothered by it?”

“Dunno.” Apparently he can’t fully shake that this’ll put a wedge in us feeling. “People sometimes are. Feel deceived, or something like that. So they say.”

“If they are deceived, it is by their own assumptions,” Dream says, with disdain. “You should be as you dream yourself, Hob. No more nor less. Put aside these petty physical trappings.”

“I do actually have to live in these ‘physical trappings’ even if you don’t, you silly thing.” He can’t help laughing. “Besides, I rather like being some kind of living creature in the world, rather than what? A ghost? Best I can do is make this body as close to how it should be as possible.”

Hob’s come to like his body, for the most part, in the form that he’s made it. He didn’t always. But he needs a body of some kind to be alive, and he likes being alive. So what he couldn’t change, he made peace with.

Besides, they have hormone treatments nowadays. Brilliant stuff. Makes it so much better.

“Anyway, now you know. I wanted you to. Since we’re together.” It’s still a marvel. Together.

“Thank you,” says Dream, with evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to be gifted your secrets.”

“Not really a secret, but I get what you mean.” He takes Dream’s hand, just to touch him, and admits, “Telling it to you is like… I don’t know. Feels like when I was younger and first admitted out loud, ‘I’m a man. I want to stay like this.’”

It hasn’t been a proper secret in a very long time. But giving it to Dream is like the freedom of releasing a held breath, even so.

“I am the harbor and cradle of dreams,” Dream says in reply. He traces his fingers over Hob’s. Does Dream’s strange form just spring from the ether? Hob wonders. Or does he have to choose it? The way Hob chose his? “Dreams of being and becoming… these are most precious for they grow from tough soil. I can only protect them, I cannot create them. You must do that. And I expect that were I to find you in the Dreaming, there would be a fantastic garden there, indeed.”

Dream himself is the most fantastical thing. “Well, darling, just know your work is appreciated.”

Dream’s lips tip up in a tiny smile. When he meets Hob’s gaze again, his eyes have gone dark and starry. He folds Hob into a hug, and—

oh, it’s like being hugged by the universe itself.

Hob feels the light breeze of a warm dark night, when he’d lain by the dying fire in a war camp in the French countryside, and looked up at a million stars and first whispered to himself what if this is really who I am? Dream is that breeze and those stars. The dying embers that had lit him as he’d run his hands over his body and felt it differently than he ever had before, and been terrified because what would it mean?—but also thrilled and alive. Dream is the night wrapping around him in that moment, the night that was listening to his dreams no matter how quietly he admitted them, Dream is that and more and the voice in his heart telling him it would be okay.

A younger, more uncertain Hob would have needed this. Hob now is older, and he already knows who he is and what he wants, but he falls into Dream’s embrace all the same. A tear slips from his eye, and Dream kisses his cheek, wiping the tear away with his tongue before leaning their heads together.

“I could craft you any body you wanted in the Dreaming,” he says lowly. “However I think the one you have made with your own hands is more remarkable.”

Oh, God, he’s going to tear up again. “Dream, you are the most beautiful, wonderful thing.”

Dream hums in pleasure at the words, and lets Hob hold him close, lets him cradle his head to his chest, a dream kept close to his heart. One that he knew as soon as he saw it walk into the White Horse. Sooner even than he truly knew himself.

Then Dream looks up at him with a hopeful expression. “With these truths revealed, are we able to be intimate?”

Hob laughs so hard he has to tip his head back against the couch. “Wow. One track mind with you, isn’t it? I spill my heart and that’s what I get?”

Dream grumbles, tucking his face in against Hob’s neck to press his lips to Hob’s throat. “I find myself impatient of late.”

“Knew all along you were only with me for my body.” He’s grinning, though. Can’t stop.

“Well. Considering it is such a lovely one.” He plucks at Hob’s shirt buttons. Lecherous little nightmare.

It feels fucking good, though, to be desired.

“C’mere, then,” he says, and drags Dream into his lap.

Dream settles there with a purr, starts playing with Hob’s hair, but says, “I would not truly derail this moment, nor distract from your feelings if you do not wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it. You’ve no idea how much I want you right now. You’re like a prize.” He cradles Dream’s beloved face between his hands. “Stick around for long enough and you’ll get the most incredible Dream at the end of it.”

“Or at the beginning,” Dream says, and Hob’s heart swells so much to hear him voice that that he has to kiss him.

When he does, Dream makes a low, pleased sound, settling deeper in his lap. Yes, this moment, this life, is certainly the prize for all of those years hanging onto those dreams:

the dream of his lover

and the one of himself.

[applebugg]

Potato kini

[black-berryies]

So I watched the great potato war for the first time

[softgirlll-withanziety]

When I’m home alone doing silly girly things and someone knocks on the door

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Mr. Potato Head came out as pan and demisexual. Mrs. Potato Head was also pan.