I have been trying to draw dream locations recently but it's difficult
But they are interesting to me because they feel very... I guess, they feel like they exist for very deliberate and specific purposes
click here for me talking about my dream and a location in it
In part of my dream there was a very tall spiral staircase but it had another path too, a different spiral staircase and you could sort of climb between the staircasesI was running up the stairs and someone else was climbing, and it was kind of like an impromptu race
It felt to me like climbing was faster but only if you were fit enough to climb (no thoughts at the time about how I was running up sooo many flights of stairs though haha) so I felt like I might lose, but I kept running
At the end of the stairs was a circular platform
But, the running path coiled around weirdly close to the top and center as opposed to the climbing path? So, you could climb on the running path at the very end and basically be at the platform but for the climbing path you actually had to run?
And it felt to me like "oh, this is on purpose, it looks like something is faster than the other route but then at the end the routes kind of switch?"
It's kind of hard to explain...
I ended up climbing and reaching the center faster which surprised the guy I was racing with
The stairs felt black and metallic save for the platform which was white with rings in the center
It was contained within a building
I guess it kind of feels like when platforming games have really deliberate structures that people kind of laugh about immersion wise
Like, I guess, sonic adventure 2 having city highway levels where it's like "how do normal people drive through this" etc
Its constructed with the player in mind, so thinking of it outside of that context makes it surreal
But I like it in dreams
I struggle with designing locations for stories sometimes because I end up feeling like... Everyone will know XYZ thing doesn't work ABC way and I won't notice and my settings will be nitpicked because I didn't think about what was needed for realistic life to exist vs thinking about what is needed in that scene for a feeling to be conveyed or had or whatever
I feel like I struggle with attention to smaller details in that regard because my irl life experiences are very narrow sometimes, and it makes me sad to feel like even in fantasy worlds I'm creating and trying to share, what ends up mattering is pointing out how little I seem to know or "mistakes" made
I know this in part comes from how I would nitpick at others work too though, as mentioned before when I was more actively hateful
I guess dream locations feel like they are not beholden to questions implying they wouldn't work because they "just" "are"
They exist as they exist
It can be a nice feeling sometimes
To just exist