A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep.
- Walt Disney's Cinderella, 1950

Dreams are weird.

For the past year-and-change, I've been keeping a dream journal. I try to write in it every morning but usually only have the patience for it a few days out of the week. It's taken many forms. First, it was a tiny little spiral notebook I found on sale at Meijer with little pink and brown stripes. Then, it was the fraternal twin of journal #1, only this one was polka-dotted. Now, it's my used Gender Studies notebook. Don't worry - I ripped out the three pages I used for the class.

Through these journals, I've learned a lot of weird things about myself. Supposedly, the purpose of a dream journal is to "familiarize the person with their dreamscape" and help people become lucid dreamers.

(lucid dream: a dream where you know you're dreaming)

I can definitely attest to this theory. I don't have lucid dreams every night, mind you, but I have them a lot more often since starting the journals. Even then, I don't realise for a while. I'm working on that bit. But they allow a nice escapism. The rest of the time, I'm left at the mercy of normal dreams. Which is usually fine.

Usually.

I  don't have nightmares often, thankfully, but I have been having some lately. Normally, I would just disregard them. But since I don't usually have nightmares, I figured I would try to pinpoint the cause. After some thorough research (and by that I obviously mean clicking on the first link on Google) I found the answer.

Stress.

What a shocker.

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about a breakup. The two had been going out for a long time and he was pretty devastated. Obviously, I felt horrible for him and tried my best to comfort him. A few nights later, I had a dream about him retelling me the story and his ex stalking us around a building. The nightmare progressed into something out of a slasher fic. It was horrible.

I woke myself up, terrified, and wrote down everything I could remember. It was so vivid. So fresh. So freaking terrifying.

I went through the rest of the day in a sort of haze. I was tired and generally felt very down. The nightmare had seemingly sucked away all of my energy. I couldn't focus on anything. The haze built up until I was forced to pull an 8-hour homework binge because I had neglected to finish it earlier.

The point is, I went to bed stressed. I was stressed for my friend. Stressed about my own personal stuff. They were the last things I thought of before going to sleep.

Well, that was a mistake. And I have the journal entry to prove it.

It's my belief that dreams tell us more than we realize. They reveal how weird we are, how we think, and what's really hidden underneath all of those song lyrics. I've realized a lot about myself from rereading old dreams I wrote down. They were telling me things I needed to hear. They also revealed the times when I really needed to take some time for myself.

I believe my nightmares were telling me to calm down. To take it easy. I have a lot of stuff going on but that doesn't mean I have to stress out about it 24/7. I'm allowed to have some me-time. And that goes for everyone else as well.

I recommend that everyone try keeping a dream journal. If anything, they'll be therapeutic. They also might tell you things you hadn't realized just yet. And isn't that what we all want, really? To know what we want?

Everyone loves movies. Some people even love to hate them. But like it or not, they're a huge part of our lives. They are as diverse and emotional and controversial as life itself. And because of this diversity, different movies appeal to different people. Hell, that's pretty much the function of genre itself. Genre distinguishes the main themes of movies and books other art forms as a sort-of psychic paper. It allows people to see what they want to. (That one was for you, my fellow Whovians.)

Some people like Horror. Some people like Drama. Some people like a strange David O'Russell hybrid that can't even begin to be defined. Different people have different tastes in things. It's common sense. It's what makes people unique and interesting. I wrote about this in a post back in February dealing with how people get different things from books. The same goes for movies. And music. And pretty much everything ever. People are different. Get over it.

That being said, I'm going to tell a little tale for a second. It's about me and my brother. We're alike in many ways - we both love music, theatre, performing, and reading. We're also different in many ways. I won't list all those for your sake. The important thing we disagree on is movies (well, important for this post, at least). He's going to school for film, I'm going for writing. It's safe to say we get different things out of different movies. Don't get me wrong - we agree on a lot of things as well. But recently, that hasn't been the case.

Over our winter break away from college, we went to see American Hustle. He loved it. I didn't. I thought it was too long, too dry, and was trying too hard to be something it wasn't: An Oscar-winner. My brother, on the other hand, didn't agree. He thinks David O'Russell can do no wrong. That's all fine and good. I loved Silver Linings Playbook. Whatever. But when I broke the news to him that I didn't like Hustle, he became super defensive and started throwing questions at me like a baseball-shooting machine.

"What?! Why didn't you like it?! It was perfect! Oh my god. How could you - no. No it was amazing. Don't even."

I listed off my reasons, not trying to change his opinion or anything, just stating what I thought. He stuck out his hand in a very preteen manner, giving me a look, and just couldn't deal. How dare I? Rotten Tomatoes gave it a great rating. That means it's amazing.

Okay, let me press the pause button here.

Rotten Tomatoes is a fairly famous critical site that rates movies on a percent-scale by combining reviews collected by several "reputable" critics (I only put quotes around reputable because Rotten Tomatoes lists them as "top critics." I have no idea how this is determined). Now, I've never been one for critical sites. At all. Ever. I like to watch a movie and form my own opinions without bias before reading what other biased people have to say. My brother practically worships the site. Before he watches any movie, he has to check the rating on Rotten Tomato. It's apparently like the law or something.

It gave Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a 78%. That's pretty much my main argument there. But, like I said, I'm completely biased. But so is everyone else.

Take, for instance, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. As a fan of the books and being within its age demographic, I feel like my opinion is rather valid on the quality of the film. I'm also quite critical of any book-to-movie adaptation so, if possible, I might be at least somewhat qualified to write a review about the film (which I did, btdubs). I liked the movie. I thought it did rather well for a first go at the very complex and detailed world that Cassandra Clare wrote. It was a bit rocky, not sure of itself. But overall, I think it was good and deserved a second go with a sequel.

This is the score that Rotten Tomato gave it:

(1) The only thing similar to Twilight is the romance. And even then, it's completely different. No emotional abuse here. Well, not really. Most YA fantasy series have romance. It's part of the formula to appeal to the female demographic. Chicks dig romance, man. It's a thing.

(2) This review isn't even about the movie. Keep your opinions of the book to yourself or post them on a book review site. Books and movies are not the same thing. Unfortunatly. (If you want a four-hour Harry Potter movie clap your hands!)

(3) For those of you who don't know, Cassandra Clare is a former fan fiction writer. Harry Potter, more specifically. She then wrote her own fantasy series. Which bares no resemblance to Harry Potter except that it's fantasy. I mean, there are witches and warlocks but the magic is completely different than J.K. Rowling's version. By far. I have no idea why this "Flick Filosopher" called the film out as being a "bad name" to fan fiction when it isn't fan fiction at all. I should know. At least I hope so.

Now, as a counterpoint to these negative reviews, let's take a look at the thing I would recommend paying attention to if you were to check Rotten Tomatoes for a film rec. The audience score.

This is Evelyn. She's seventeen. Loves the rain, asking questions, and eating bread right out of the bag.

She's also a character I started writing last summer.

I've been playing Sims 2 since I was in middle school. I loved decorating the houses, making the cute little babies - but most of all I loved creating the Sims themselves. Seriously, I would sometimes spend two hours in the Create-A-Family mode, move them into a house, and then never play them again. I would also import characters from books that I read and have them marry the characters they should have ended up with. With no regrets.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I started using Sims for a different purpose.

I had my first idea for a book when I was in high school. The project has since been filed away for future use but at my planning stage I was having trouble grounding the images of my characters. I had named them, given them careers, and outlined the basic plot of their story. I just couldn't picture any of it.

One day I was playing Sims, getting bored of the family whose lives I was ruining, when my eye caught the piece of paper where my characters' names were written down (my desk is like a war zone most times so "re-finding" things is a pretty common occurrence). Then, I got what I deem to be one of the best ideas I've ever had: Creating my characters as Sims.

Within a few hours, I had grounded the likeness of all four of my characters into the game, moved them into a house, and started building their backstory. Well, granted, the backstory bit went a bit wonky. As any frequent Sims-player can attest to, sometimes the Sims themselves get a little hard to control and end up running off and doing their own thing. Which is kind of like writing characters - sometimes they dictate their own story. But at the time I didn't know that so it freaked me out and I stopped.

My game has crashed since then and I don't have those characters imported anymore. But I have the Addams family (pun not intended... not really) all created and moved in, which includes Evelyn and her parents. I also plan on importing all of my other original characters into a city I built called Bookville. Not creative at all, I know, but I started the neighborhood not to play necessarily but more to worldbuild.

If you are a writer and have any version of Sims, I highly recommend using it. Especially if you're just getting into writing and having trouble with any aspect of worldbuilding/character building. I used to constantly berate myself for not having any artistic talent but thankfully I found something to remedy that. Hopefully, with this insight I can bestow that relief onto someone else.