Beau Johnston asked Juho Pohjalainen:

Have you ever written anything based on your nightmares?

Juho Pohjalainen In a roundabout way... yes, I think so.

The majority of my recurring bad dreams involve video games. Specifically, Doom (the first one) and Diablo. I can play them fine, when I'm awake, but there's something about their atmosphere and gameplay that makes them ideal nightmare-fodder: I have many dreams where I play them but they're twisted into something horrifying. And seeing that I've written some things somewhat based on the latter of those games - the adventures of young Aurel in the dark sewers of an ancient city, or ruin-invested caves and tunnels - and in these things I try to emphasize the claustrophobic feel and the fear of the dark, you might say my dreams had something to do with them as well.

That said, now that I think about it there are a couple other one-time nightmares I've had that could make for books. There was this one where robots had infiltrated our society, in human form, but they were given away by the fact that they couldn't resist being humongous dicks that would break everything just to ensure no one has a good time. In this dream I first learned of their presence when one of them insisted on kicking my friend's computer into scrap, and we beat into him in revenge and found out that he was made out of metal and wires. Years later, a member of the Resistance movement carried a small puppy with him wherever he went, because he knew no robot could resist messing with it, giving them away. The dream ended when I was trying to escape the insane asylum (run by secret robots, of course) and I was given the syringe to put me to sleep or to just kill me... and just as I fell asleep, I woke up for real. I felt pretty weird about it for much of the next day.

Or how about the one where Donald Trump and some other less-defined president started out a nuclear war, and for some reason both of them ended up in my home and I had to look after them, and Trump just wouldn't stay down, and would insist on trying to run away or babbling politics no matter what I did, even when I swatted him with a broomstick, even when one of his eyeballs was hanging out and his face was tearing off... okay, maybe not this one.

Or the one where I was a god and playing ball with a planet, only to realize upon its shattering that it was Earth, so I just kind of sheepishly put it back together and walked away whistling and hoping no one saw me?

Or the one where I foiled a terror attack and then ran away, not because I feared the publicity, but because I wasn't wearing pants?

That's all I can remember. Feel free to, uh, write about some of them if they inspire you. I don't think I'll find the time.

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