I ask because it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t but I regularly have dreams where I continue books I’m reading irl (they usually devolve into naritive nonsense over time and then sometimes to blank pages, but the actual text is definitely deciferable), text messages, computer screens, and road signs, in both lucid and regular dreams. Am I the odd man out or is it actually just something people say?
I’ve never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it’ll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you’re in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.
Yep that’s it for me
It’s also hard to tell if I can “read” something, or if I look at an object and just know what it says. Same with mirrors, supposedly you can’t see your reflection in a dream but I might look at one and ‘know’ that I see myself
It’s commonly used as a plot device in stories, and in my experience people will tell you about it as a way to “wake up” in the dream if you complain about nightmares and people I’ve spoken to IRL about it take it as accepted truth
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That makes a lot of sense to me given my personal experiences. Reading this thread is interesting. I’ve never heard the idea that you can’t read in dreams. The last couple of months I’ve been having dreams where I’m doomscrolling headlines on an app, and I’m actively reading the headlines to myself. But since I’m doomscrolling , I notice them and move on. I’m aware of when I’m dreaming, so sometimes I’ll laugh to myself and my partner about the stuff my sleep- psyche comes up with. I don’t know if this is a recent development, but I can’t remember ever trying to read something in a dream and being frustrated that I can’t.
I have a number of problems that result in unusual and unhealthy sleep patterns, so that probably contributes to odd dream experiences.