What if your dreams wanted to be reality?note
- Mrs. Hills: You think this timeline is someone else's dream.Benjamin: Yeah.
Lucids is a series of videos made by Nicholas Podany, beginning on TikTok with copies brought to YouTube, though the series eventually became YouTube exclusive.
While the six part Lucids series is considered a full series in its own right, the story as a whole encompasses three different series:
- Jasper is a series of TikToks revolving around Jasper Jasperson, a delivery worker who, as a baby, performed in a Pampers commercial. He delivers food to a random house, only to discover that the people inside not only know who he is (including intimate details about his family life) but also are part of a literal cult dedicated to him, with all but two of the members having taken Jasper's name as their own.
- The Adventures of Benjamin & Oliver is based around Benjamin and Oliver, two men who meet in a Whole Foods, only to suddenly wake up back in second grade, discovering that the life they've lived for the past several years has all been a dream... sort of.
Both of these series were eventually compiled into LUCIDS: THE PREQUELS on Podany's YouTube channel. The main series, despite only being six episodes, is significantly longer than its predecessors, with the shortest episode being almost five minutes, and the longest being almost twenty-five. The series is a direct continuation of TAOBAO what? , picking up immediately from that series' cliffhanger. The series happens semi-concurrently with "Jasper", as the ending of TAOBAO revealed "Jasper" was a part of the dreamscape from TAOBAO. Again, sort of.
Tropes
- Accents Aren't Hereditary:
- Jasper is revealed in Episode Three to be the son of James Jasperson, who speaks with a very clear British Accent. Jasper, meanwhile, speaks with a standard American accent. Possibly justified, since it's stated his parents got divorced around middle school, and he stayed with his mother.
- Despite Mrs. Hills being canonically British, her son, Quinn, has no accent whatsoever. Particularly odd, considering he comes directly from her mind.
- All Just a Dream: The first episode of TAOBAO, although this is made more confusing as time goes on.
- Ambiguous Time Period: What year the story takes place in is understandably confusing, considering it mostly takes place between two different levels of reality. Various real-world events which occurred are occasionally referenced as happening, especially within the "dreamscape", but the exact year is never given, and the reality where Benjamin and Oliver are at least a decade younger is even more unclear.
- Arc Symbol: The apple. It's a symbol of being in a dreamscape, and whoever has it is the person dreaming.
- Bedtime Brainwashing: According to James Jasperson, there is a reliable way of influencing another person's dreamscape: break into their house while they're sleeping, and whisper into their ear what changes you would like there to be in their dreamscape.
- Dream People: Notable for being one of the main components of the show: the people inside of dreams are fully sentient, and capable of having dreams of their own. And then those dreams can have people in them, who have their own dreams, and so on.
- Dream Reality Check: Oliver does this to Benjamin at the start of TAOBAO, and it's stated he's done it to several people already and is planning on doing it to more. At least if they didn't both wake up during that conversation.
- Dream Walker: Basically, what a Lucid is; the main characters can pretty much all go between other people's dreams and either observe or influence the dreams. They can even leave the dream that originally created them.
- Dream Within a Dream: Beyond the obvious usage within the core premise, it's actually ambiguous if people having dreams can have further dreams, though it's heavily implied they can't.
- Elderly Future Fantasy: An early episode of TAOBAO includes Benjamin and Oliver going to sleep, and ending up in a retirement home together.
- Limited Wardrobe: Every character has one outfit they wear, all the time. Understandable, since otherwise
there would be no good way of identifying characters. - Living Dream: Since pretty much everyone within a dream is a fully conscious person, they can also become Lucids, and leave their original dream. This also means they can enter the reality of whoever dreamt them up, since that is almost certainly also a dream.
- Mental World: The dreamscapes.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Early on, Benjamin questions whether or not the "dream" he and Oliver woke up from was just an alternate reality. He's maybe right.
- Recursive Reality: Well, everyone can have dreams, and any people within those dreams can have dreams, and so on all the way down. And there also may not be a top layer of "real" reality.
- Red Skies Crossover: While "The Adventures Of Benjamin & Oliver" and "Jasper" are the main components of the crossover, TAOBAO Chapter Seven includes several of Podany's previous TikToks, all of which featured a connection to the series in the form of an apple.
- Shared Dream: Oliver and Benjamin apparently share a dreamscape, which they wake up from and return to many times. Subverted; the "dreamscape" is actually Oliver's reality, and Benjamin's reality is Oliver's dreamscape.
- Wham Episode:
- Lucids: Part Four. Oliver finally reenters the "dreamscape", the four main characters all finally meet up, Quinn is revealed to be a Lucid, he left his mother's dreamscape due to her telling him to leave, and Benjamin cheated on Isabelle some time between "waking up" from Whole Foods and joining the Jasper Cult.
- In terms of the TikTok series, "JASPER: FINALE" and "The Adventures of Benjamin & Oliver: Chapter Seven" both set up the major crossover aspects of the series, with the former revealing Benjamin following Quinn and Jasper for some reason, and the latter establishing Benjamin's role in the earlier series.
- Wham Line: "It was Isabelle, man!"
- Wham Shot: The end of Lucids: Part Two; after Mrs. Hills talks to Oliver about why she didn't tell her husband about going into the dreamscapes, she notes "some [secrets are] so small they can fit in your pocket". After she leaves to make her and Oliver tea, he reaches into his jacket and pulls out an apple, revealing that the "reality" he and Benjamin woke up to is actually his dreamscape.
