YMMV / YU+ME: dream

• Broken Base:
  • The word "skleebs" was intended as a joke reference to the forum. Unfortunately, Megan was too busy with the comic to note that some forum-ites had objections to the word being used as a euphemism for boobs. They were objecting to silly threads that they felt had overtaken serious discussion, and were looked on as the "Stop Having Fun" Guys. The mere inclusion of the word ended up causing Megan more trouble than it was worth.
  • The Genre Shift and The Reveal that the first half was All Just a Dream either was an exciting twist that changes the story from a typical Slice of Life Coming-Out Story or ruined the comic and made the entire first half meaningless.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Fiona's Conscience was initially disliked for speaking almost entirely in ebonics, making her a stereotype of black people. Luckily, she's being given some much-needed character development in Part 2, so she may be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Fan Nickname: Fans often call Clandestine "Clandy" for short. It eventually made it in-comic long after fans have been calling her by that name.
• Funny Moments:
  • Lia obsessing over tacos. (It's funnier in context, since Lia hates Sadako and is eating so many tacos either to get her mind off her or to not let Sadako pay much attention to her.)
  • When Fiona is naked when re-entering the dream world, she didn't realize it until some guy pointed it out much to her embarrassment. Then her conscience told her she didn't have to be naked, to her chagrin.
    Fiona: "Geez! I'm naked?! Stupid symbolic nudity!"
  • Being a Cloudcuckoolander, Clandestine can have some funny moments, such as thinking Lia's journal was literally planted from a journal-growing plant when Don says that Sadako might have planted it in the house they found it in.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Fiona driving distractedly due to being distressed, with Jake frantically yelling at her that "Suicide is not the answer!" becomes one when it's revealed that Fiona was in a coma because she attempted vehicular suicide.
  • Also in Part One, Jake sarcastically tells Lia, "I’m just pretending to be gay for all of the social benefits it brings," the joke being that so far in the comic, he’s caught nothing but flak for his homosexuality. In Part Two, it’s revealed that "Jake" is actually a "straight douche" who won a Dream Emmy Award for his role. The commentary on suggests that he primarily won the award because of the (mis)perception that it’s a huge challenge for a straight actor to play a gay character.
• Iron Woobie: Clandestine of all people fulfills this role at times. She was once Sadako's conscience, but after Sadako banished her, she grew progressively crazier trying to keep things in order in Nod until her mind completely broke, which puts her Cloudcuckoolander personality in a much darker light.
• Jerkass Woobie: Sadako; while she has done many horrible things, her backstory and true plans make it hard not to feel at least a little sorry for her. She died in a freak accident after she was thrown into a window and glass punctured her right eye and stomach. And even though she was a stalker and abuser towards Ellie, she just wanted to be with her. After becoming queen of Nod and spending years ruling it, she was Driven to Suicide for being alive so long — but couldn't die since Nod wouldn't exist without a ruler, so she sought for the person with the strongest heart to kill her and become the new ruler, which turned out to be Fiona. This means that almost the entire story was a way for Sadako to get someone to kill her.
• Memetic Mutation: "Someone should turn [douche you hate] into a Gyro!" ^ExplanationComes from a scene where Fiona wishes "Jake" was turned into a gyro after learning about his true nature. It became a minor in-joke among the fandom to wish that someone a person dislikes would be turned into a gyro. However it only appears to be relegated to the now-defunct forums, as shown here.
• Moral Event Horizon: Just take your pick with Sadako.
  • She rapes Ellie in her dreams and causes the latter to commit suicide.
  • She masquerades as Lia's dead lover George and claims that they are in the afterlife, which causes Lia to brick up the door to the real world and be trapped in Nod forever.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • No Face is a pretty menacing figure, being a humanoid with a completely blank face who haunted Fiona in her dreams when she was little. It's especially terrifying when he smiles with razor sharp teeth shortly before threatening to rip Fiona's heart out. His scenes are made even creepier with this reading, which gives him a fittingly unnerving voice.
  • Sadako's "punishment" for trying to kiss Ellie. While she is being a creepy stalker, and one can't exactly expect mid 1800's England to be very accepting, having your head smashed into a window? Brr. If you look closely, one shard of glass has pierced into her stomach, and another in her eye.
  • The punishment that Sadako deals out to Ellie, for killing her — being raped in her dreams by Sadako every time she tries to sleep.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Fiona. When she was young, her mother was Driven to Suicide and attempted to take Fiona's life with her. Fiona survived, but was heavily traumatized by the incident. After keeping the memory repressed for so long, she found her mother's suicide note, and, in an attempt to finish what her mother started, she tried to commit suicide by driving into a tree. She fell into a coma, where she dreamt about falling in love with a girl named Lia. She was mostly happy up until everything was ripped away from her when she came to in the real world. Thankfully, she dreams again and gets back with Lia. They finally got together in reality by way of Reincarnation Romance.
  • Lia was once an Italian girl living in the middle of World War II. Her lover, George, died in battle, and she couldn't stand living without him. One night in her dreams, Sadako, disguised as George, found her and unwittingly made her commit suicide by making her brick up the door to reality in hopes of reuniting with her lover. When Sadako revealed herself, Lia flew into a murderous rage that lasted many years. Even after she became herself again, she still had bad memories of what she had done. When she was cast as an extra in a dream, she fell in love with Fiona, but the two were separated due to Fiona waking up in the real world since it clashed with Sadako's intentions. This didn't last, though; the two reunited and eventually met each other in the real world.
  • For a rather minor character, Ellie has it very bad. After she and another man (presumably her father) accidentally kill Sadako, the latter punishes her by raping her every night in her dreams and saying it's her punishment for killing her. It gets to the point where she commits suicide because of it.

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