I wonder

[OhMyMagenta]

I was thinking about the people we MDDers have in our daydreams. For me, in my DD world I am just an improvenet of the current model; thinner, more fit, talented, funny, & intelligent. As your ideal self, do you find your preferences in men/woman change? Maybe you feel more apt to approach someone 'out of your league'?

[Source]

I think Matthew hit the nail on the head with that last line. After all perception is everything when it comes to how we experience anything at all. While I don't think that we actually lower our real-life standards, there's the matter of how those standards are confronted by the environment.

In the real world we are constantly forced to compromise and pull back our standards because we don't have the power to make them fit perfectly with the world around us, but with daydreaming there's no such restriction. In our daydreams we can - quite literally - change the world to suit those standards if we feel that we need to. Want to help someone who's having a hard time but you have no idea how? Forge an identical situation in a daydream, snap your mental fingers and there you go, everything is fixed like there was never any problem.

As for preferences, if they do change it isn't due to the daydreaming. Our daydreams are controlled by our preferences, not the other way around.

[MatthewR]

Oh, this is slightly off topic, but I wanted to comment on what Source said. "There's no such thing as 'out of your league' unless you deliberately allow it to exist." I admit i have had daydreams where i did imagine someone or something was beyond my reach. I suppose in retrospect these were "masochistic" daydreams, because the point of the dream was to make myself feel bad.

As far as preferences go, I'd say they stay the same. I like a certain kind of person, but i also feel that i could never sustain a relationship anyway. I don't think i'm interesting enough, attractive enough, etc. I generally underrate myself.

It does raise a question tho. Do you think you lower your standards in real life, and that in fantasy, you feel free to pursue who you really want, instead of simply settling for someone? I wonder if it's our assessment of ourselves versus what we can attain that keeps tripping us up. 

[darmody]

I don't daydream about myself very often. There is one long-running storyline about me and my friends from Junior High/High School, but I'm only a small part of it. 

I've often wondered to what extent the characters I create are versions of me. Very often I'll take their perspective, literally looking through their eyes. But I've come to the conclusion that I merely identify with them. They're not me any more than characters in books or movies with whom I identify are me. 

[Fallen Messenger]

To add onto Source, our fantasy worlds are our idealized world. Mine includes technology that is beyond science. Because we are able to morph and change this fantasy, we typically make ourselves the  "top dogs" as in the top of the social pyramid. Because of this constant and completely human desire to be popular, we make ourselves the most popular person in our daydreams, so then I agree with Source in saying that in our daydreams there is no "out of your league" unless you allow there to be. And for the preference being changed at all, for me personally who is straight, no, my alter ego (who is a girl) has a preference for men.

[Source]

I'm not sure whether that question makes any sense. The dream world is a whole universe at our beck and call down to the finest detail. There's no such thing as "out of your league" unless you deliberately allow it to exist. It goes without saying that you also get to pick your league and change it however and whenever you want.