Do you do research and stuff?

[Kay M]

When you do your daydreams, do you research stuff to make it more realistic?

 

When my daydream characters were adopting a child, I read up on the adoption process and read blogs by people who had adopted. When they got a new pet, I looked up on the internet how to care for the pet they were getting, so my daydreams about caring for this pet were realistic.

 

My character has 16 kids, so I worked out how much it would cost to buy food for a family that large, and how much space they would need, how much extra things we would have to buy to have such a big family, and read a lot of big family blogs and TV shows to give me a sense of what it would be like to have loads of kids.

 

When someone was getting married, I thought of venues, planned out how many guests there would be based on the size of her family, and pretty much worked out every detail other than actually making it happen in real life.

 

When I got to the stage where I was thinking of her house's floor plan, I even got a catalog from a furniture store to look through and decide what I wanted, and now she is moving house I am going to go and look at wallpaper samples to see what she might have in the new house.

 

I drew a family Christmas photo of her kids last Christmas, and I even picked out their outfits by browsing at a clothes shop. Wasn't completely weird, as I have real kids and bought them what I would have put them in for the photo for them to wear when visiting relatives on Christmas day. I also looked for Christmas present ideas for my daydream kids.

[True Blue Dreamer]

Yes I do this a lot. In my daydreams, I live a different life. I am currently a rockstar who performs at rock concerts like Warpped Tour, but in order to make it realistic, I have to research the tour, the audience, the music, and the bands who perform there. Or if I have a celebrity crush, I research on his hobbies, family, and past so I can daydream our life together.It's like being a writer, but for yourself lol.

[Thierry]

I never research for my daydreams because it feels ridiculous to me, and embarrassing - here I would be, looking at stuff from the real world, on a browser that contains more information about more real things, in an attempt to strengthen the imaginary world...? Just doesn't make sense to me.

Closest I ever got was as a child when I made a Poke-ball out of a shitty rubber ball, and badges out of cardboard.

[The1andonlyAbber]

Sometimes I do. But sometimes I'm just too lazy, LOL.

[Richard Quest]

I don't just research for my daydreaming. I have written several books full of information on all thousands of my characters, several hundred drawings and finished artworks for hundreds of events that are in my dreams. It's really extensive. Sometimes I would go on to Google maps and totally redraw cities to fit my daydreaming needs. A question for you guys: what do you normally daydream about? Is it new scenarios with you as the character, or is it an entirely new world?

[Kay M]

My daydream is about me, but not the real me, sort of an alternate universe me, where at some point in the past, the timeline split off and went its own way, when I ended up kissing my crush (instead of not because she is into men) and then we adopted some kids and eventually got married when gay marriage was legalised in my country. The world is like this one-the world works as it does in this one, everything that happens in the real world also happens, except for things that would have not happened if the timeline changed in a way that would prevent it from happening. I added a whole new bunch of long lost aunts, uncles and cousins to the family tree, to add to the drama, as well as added myself two more older siblings because I always wanted an older brother or sister and was fed up being the oldest. The area they live in is the same, except for the street they live on and the surrounding area, but they visit real places in the area the street they live on is supposed to be in. The scenarios are just normal daily life of my daydream wife and kids.

 

I don't have a book full of information, yet. I have a folder of drawings (I like to recreate their family photos by drawing them), as well as floor plans and maps. I also have more folders on my computer of information about the characters (complete with pictures, I found something that lets you design stick figure families like you see on cars, so made one for each family, and I add to it as babies are born and as the children age), their family tree, keeping track of the children's ages and how far along pregnancies are (they have more kids than the average family, and I generally have at least four pregnancies on the go at each time, which progress in real time, then the kids age in real time. Currently there is five, one of them is with twins.)

[Richard Quest]

I think this is so cool! Before, I thought I was the only one doing this! Can you share those drawings with us? (What I like to do sometimes, is put my characters into a Sims game and physically act out their lives.) Which I wonder if the Sims were made for people with MD. xD

In my case, my daydreams aren't compatible to sims games, so I stick to drawing.

[Kay M]

Mine aren't compatible with Sims games as you can only have eight people per household, currently only one of my soon to be 17 daydream kids has moved out. My daydream is based on a family where everyone has a ton of kids. Out of the main family groups, not many of them could fit into a normal house size, and I expect most of them to have at least 6-8 kids eventually.

 

Out of my main characters:

 

Katy is expecting #17 in about 7 months, the oldest is 20 and moved out, and the youngest is 17 months old.

Jane is expecting #6 in 5 months, so her family would fit...until she has another, which she likely will. She has 2 and a half year old quintuplets

Anna has 5, so she would fit in a Sims house. (15 year old twin boys, then kids aged 13, 5 next week and 2)

Jason will have 7 kids by next year. Five of them will be under six, and they also live with Jason's two sisters.

Elizabeth has 9, the oldest is 10.

Dylan will fit, so far they just have one, and another due any day now.

 

Yeah, I will dig through them and put some on :)

[Richard Quest]

Wow, btw how you give your characters their names? For me it's always struggle to have a forming character in my mind without a proper name.

Cool! Turning MD into art is a nice way to make it actually soothing!

[Kay M]

Sometimes they name themselves, sometimes I look up baby names and see what fits.

This is the website of baby names that I normally use http://www.babynames.co.uk/

 

My daydream kids that were born before I started the daydream pretty much named themselves-Caroline, Jenna, Georgie, Kaitlyn, Josh, Rae, Damien, Jacob, Holly, Chris, Danielle, Chelsea, Mikayla, Daisy and Olivia. The next two, Matthew and Nathan who will be born in a few months, were ones that I looked at baby names for.

 

I named the relatives on the family tree who werent the main characters when I first started by just handing out random names appropriate to their age, but when people have babies, I will look through the baby name books and name them according to what I think their parents would choose based on the names they have given their other kids.

 

The kids that I have added to the family since I started my daydream 2 1/2 years ago are Andrew, Aidan, Amelia, Alexander and Ashley (quintuplets) and soon Richard, their baby brother named after their new stepdad, Isa, Brody, Nevaeh, Joy (her other sisters are Faith, Hope, Chastity and Grace, their parents are quite religious), William, Timothy (always called Timmy, other siblings are called Susie, Mary, Kelly and Mikey) and then his little sister Tilly, Matthew, Abigail, Logan, Hayden, Sophia, Bailey, Corben and Samuel. Also to be born in the next few months are Alexa, twins Harvey and Lily, and Nathan.

 

[Richard Quest]

That's a lot of kids! Thanks for the website btw I'll definitely need to use it for my characters. My characters aren't "born" per se, but I kind of meet them in the middle of their lives. So when I name them, the name needs to fit. Like the Queen in my daydream was just named the "queen" for so long, until I found a perfectly Regal name of Victoria Corona. Or Crown Victory in Spanish, and it sounds anglicized enough to have in the mid western United States.