Cobb: We create the world of the dream, we bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their secrets.
Ariadne: Then we break in and steal it?
Ariadne: Then we break in and steal it?
The opposite of a Dream Weaver, this is a character that steals, destroys, or eats the dreams of others, usually because they gain something from doing so. Perhaps they themselves are normally unable to dream and want to experience it, perhaps dreams are the food source of their species, or perhaps they're just doing it for fun. Usually, this takes the form of dreams being drained and consumed entirely, but a Dream Stealer may be able to selectively remove parts of a dream; in these cases, they are likely to own a great deal of interesting curios that were Taken from a Dream.
The effects of having one's dreams stolen vary greatly. Victims of dream theft may become unable to sleep properly, lose their creativity, or even go completely insane. In some cases, there may not be any side effects at all, particularly if the dream is merely being shared or copied rather than completely removed. If the dream being stolen is a nightmare, the effect on the dream-theft subject may even be beneficial, though it might end up being harmful to the dream-thief.
Dream Stealers are usually villains, although heroic and neutral examples do occur. If they are harmful, this is a job for a heroic Dream Walker to stop them. If they normally reside in Dream Land, they may experience being Weaker in the Real World if they're pulled out of it or forced to exit it.
Can lead to Cannot Dream. Not to be confused with Nightmare Weaver. Compare Anatomy of the Soul and Imagination Destroyer. Contrast Dream Weaver.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Digimon has Tapirmon, who is based on the dream-eating Baku and is said to have the same abilities. There's also Pillomon, a sheep Digimon who also eats dreams and has the ability to inflict pleasant slumber or horrific nightmares on others.
- Muma (Dream Demons) in Dream Eater Merry can do this, though they usually just place themselves in the dreams their host have
- Hell Teacher Nube: A baku is one of the creatures encountered in the course of the plot, and this one is the kind who eats all dreams and eventually steals the disillusioned souls of its victims to add to its growing bulk.
- Hello Kitty and Friends had an episode where a monster was eating the dreams of Kitty and her friends. The monster was part of a race of monsters whose job was to eat nightmares, but this monster was a mischievous child who was eating pleasant dreams because they tasted better...until they gave him a stomachache.
- Campari from King of Bandit Jing has the ability to steal dreams from other people and encapsulate them in a ball. He usually sells them to other people so they can dream about some specific thing, though he can also turn them into reality in emergency situations.
- A recurring thing in the Black/White arc of Pokémon Adventures. Black's mind is preoccupied with his dream of winning the Pokemon league, so his Munna lands on his head and eats his dreams during a battle or when he needs to focus. (See the video game section as well.)
- In a prior series depicting the Red and Blue era a giant Haunter is the villain of an arc that gym leader Sabrina has a history with. It's capable of using the Dream Eater move with enough strength that it devours victims' souls.
- In Sailor Moon SuperS, the Amazon Quartet summon Lemures who can swallow the dreams of their victims after confirming that Pegasus was not found there. The dreams themselves appeared as floating pink mirrors making it easier to consume. And in the season finale, it's explained that Queen Nehellenia ate the dream mirrors of her royal court to keep herself young and beautiful while turning them into living corpses.
- A baku appears in the second Urusei Yatsura movie to help bring the (extra) weirdness to a close.
Comic Strips
- Suske en Wiske: The entire concept of the album "De Dromendiefstal" ("The Dreams Theft") is built around this idea.
Film — Animated
- In Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie, The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak takes over the Land of Dreams and plans to keep all the dreams for himself because he never got any dreams as a child.
Film — Live-Action
- The City of Lost Children is about a mad scientist who cannot dream and kidnaps children to try to steal their dreams.
- A variation is used in Inception. Cobb does not steal the dreams themselves but rather uses the dreams to steal thoughts and ideas from people's minds.
- Synonamess Botch's vulture minions from Twice Upon a Time will sometimes find Figmen, who provide good dreams to people, and kill them, destroying the good dreams with them (the vultures deliver nightmares).
Literature
- In the Dreamblood Duology, Sharers and Gatherers both harvest the dreams of others and are good-aligned examples. Sharers use the dreamichor harvested from dreams to perform their healing and Gatherers gather dreamblood from those whose time it is to die and shape pleasing final dreams for the departing.
- The title character in Truman Capote's short story "Master Misery" buys dreams at $5 a pop, but the idea is very similar in terms of the detrimental effect the selling of the dreams has on the heroine and her clown friend.
- German author Michael Ende wrote the book Das Traumfresserchen (The little dream eater) where for once the Dream Eater isn't evil or mean and in fact helpful: It eats the nightmares of a princess.
Live-Action TV
- The baku (listed below) makes an appearance in Lost Girl as a heroic creature who helps people by eating their bad dreams.
Music
- A rare protagonistic example: Dream Eater On The Sand
. It's a song sung by Megurine Luka that tells the story of a distressed boy with terrible memories and nightmares meeting a strange girl who can take them away by eating them.
- And a villainous example appears in Nem's "Dream-Eating Monochrome Baku," where the titular character (played and sung by Kagamine Len) eats the nightmares of a young girl but later returns to take away all her aspirations as payment. This is a rather unusual depiction of the baku, which is generally portrayed as a benevolent spirit. The sequel song "Sleeping Beauty" reveals that he is a benevolent spirit... to all of one person, who was his lover and died of an unspecified cause. He steals the dreams of other people and takes away their aspirations in order to give her the energy to stay alive and eventually resurrect, but for the majority of the song she's in a vegetative state.
Mythology & Folklore
- The Baku of Japanese Mythology is a creature that devours bad dreams and is the base for many references in anime and manga series. According to some legends it can be called upon to do this but doing it too many times runs the risk of it devouring your regular dreams along with them, leaving you without ambition or aspiration forever. The other wiki describes it here.
- Dreamcatchers are objects originally used by the Ojibwa First Nation peoples, but are now much more widespread. They're said to be able to filter out their users' bad dreams and ensure that the users only have good ones.
Tabletop Games
- Changeling: The Dreaming: While most changelings prefer to obtain glamour by inspiring creativity, some are willing to "ravage" a human and simply take the glamour that they want.
- Changeling: The Lost: The True Fae can infect and parasitize the dreams of humans, plundering them for Glamour, using them to read Fate, or seeding them with poisoned nightmares that the Fae can harvest. Changelings can also harvest Glamour from mortal dreams, but it's not detrimental to the dreamer when they do.
- Exalted: Dream hawks feed on the dreams of sleeping mortals, leaving them exhausted on waking up and taking the stolen energy for themselves.
- Forgotten Realms: Dendar the Night Serpent feeds on nightmares, which is the one good thing she does for existence — if she didn't, all living beings would be forced to remember all of their nightmares forever, with perfect clarity.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- The fairies of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor enjoy stealing the dreams of the other races. Most, but not all, have the common courtesy of waiting for their targets to fall asleep first.
- The card Dreamstealer forces your opponent to discard cards from their library. In the game, your library stands for the set of spell you have memorized, and this represents the theft of magic from your mind.
- The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG: The Dream Eater spell lets the caster consume the dreams of a sleeping target, giving the target horrible nightmares of their greatest fear that prevent it from benefiting from its rest but fully restoring the caster's Heart and Soul.
Toys
Video Games
- Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers is said to be of a particular kind of succubus that, in addition to the usual features, can also feed on the dreams of mortals.
- Nightmare in Dragon Age: Inquisition is an ancient fear demon that existed since the First Blight and possibly before it. Nightmare feeds on the fears of mortals, including literal nightmares. It is the reason people do not remember bad dreams in full detail after waking up. While this may have been a blessing once, Nightmare is now actively working with The Elder One to create more fear to feed on by sending the False Calling to the Grey Wardens. It also consumes memories of fearful events such as the Inquisitor's memories of the Conclave.
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is ALL about this (the title is a hint). The most obvious example would be the Starkian Big Bad Alvin Peats who literally leeches off people's dreams. We also have an Eldritch Abomination called Undreaming, which is implied to be this.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a power of Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmares. It is also theorized that she uses the dreams of mortals as some sort of source of power. Her most (in)famous artifact is the Skull of Corruption, a Magic Staff that steals the dreams of sleeping mortals to become more powerful.
- Dream Eaters in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] do exactly as their name suggests. While the hostile Nightmares consume good dreams, the benevolent Spirits feed on bad ones. The former are the main enemies of the game; the latter serve as Mons.
- Pokémon:
- The move "Dream Eater" is a powerful HP-draining attack, but works only when the opponent is asleep.
- The Pokémon species Drowzee and Hypno are particularly famous for this in the games' canon, where they have been known to kidnap children to feed off their dreams. It's not all bad, though: the Sun and Ultra Moon Pokédex entries for Hypno state that they can help people sleep and sleep well, while Moon's Drowzee entry say they share the best dreams they ate with their friends.
- Munna and Musharna are also famous for this in the canon, but unlike Drowzee, all they do is just go to people's houses at night.
- Antasma of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team was once an ordinary bat, until he gained power by feeding on the dream of a Pi'illo.
- The Slumbering Coven in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer steal and trade dreams and knowledge.
- In Sam & Max: Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, after unleashing his full psychic potential, going insane and becoming an Elder God, Max subsists on making people fall asleep and eating their dreams. One of his aspects can be asked what nightmares taste like, to which he has eight different responses, one of which is "Pepsi".
- Doremy Sweet, the stage 3 boss from the Touhou Project game Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, is a baku with the ability to eat, create, and replace dreams. Fighting her in the dream world is a rather scary prospect.
- A gang of these features in The Trader of Stories Chapter II, except they're not significantly eviler than any bunch of homeless, hungry Street Urchins. Watch out for The Fagin, though.
Web Animation
- Invoked in an episode of Bonus Stage
Elly: "This show ruins everyone's dreams."
Joel: "It also eats them and grows stronger."
Webcomics
- Deconstructed in Alice and the Nightmare: Stealing dreams is frequently lethal to the dream harvesters and some unfortunate dreamers, but they have to do it or their technologies will run out of power and their world will collapse on itself.
- In Builder, people can "room steal" in order to expand their territory.
- The 'Cubi race from Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures are mind-reading Emotion Eaters, who can enter and manipulate dreams and have an inaccurate reputation for stealing them, but are advised against entering people's dreams because bigger fishes like to do it, too.
Western Animation
- One episode of Bonkers had a Toon Sheep stealing Bonkers' dreams so she could have her own.
- Nocturne, the ghost of sleep and dreams from Danny Phantom can draw power from dreams.
- Daria uses this in a throwaway line by Artie, a minor character who claims to have been abducted by aliens:
"That's why they come at night. It makes it easier to steal your dreams. They got this big, big suction device that..."
