A Dream Haiku: Dreaming of Monsters

Hanging out with a friendly monster

Hanging out with a friendly monster©Cayla Catz, 2020

A Dream Haiku

Dreaming of monsters
Hanging out, writing poems
Mismatched but the same

©M. LaFreniere, 2022

Image above is by Cayla Catz from Second Life.

At MindLoveMisery, Paula’s prompt today is about interpretations of monster dreams as a subcategory of nightmares. She gives some interesting interpretations and then asks you to write on your own monster dreams.

My dreams of monsters were different maybe due to moving around as a kid a lot, or because I’m half Okinawan and half working-class Massachusetts white, and growing up as a kid I used to feel I didn’t fit anywhere until I grew into fitting into my own skin. My dreams of monsters weren’t scary or bad but more like Puff in the Saturday morning cartoons, big, kind of cute/ugly, creative and kind-hearted. In my dreams we would run and play together, make art, and sing songs. We were different but happy with it.  Maybe that’s why I’ve always understood why that kid made friends with Godzilla.

Artbreeder Haiku

Dropping the haiku into Artbreeder, and with the empty graphics box, I got an image with nonsense text on it.  This sometimes happens in Artbreeder and usually I just reroll because I don’t like it but this time I felt it worked.

Artbreeder imaging using my monster haiku

Reroll, same haiku, new result:

Artbreeder imaging using my monster haiku rerolled

Dream app Haiku

Debbie at Imaginarium Fantastical introduced me to Dream app by Wombo which is another AI art web/phone based app. So I am trying the same haiku in it. This haiku seems particularly apt as it’s a dream haiku. In the Dream app, you type up to 200 characters in the text box and then choose the art style. So for the first one I will choose “Retro Futurism”. It’s optional to add an image.  I didn’t.  If you don’t like it, you can go back to create and start over and the image will be different.

For this one I choose “cartoonist”. I rerolled 3x before I got this one.

monster picture from dream ai by wombo using my monster haiku

Then I tried it in “Bad Trip” art genre.  I couldn’t resist the blacklight neon colors.

monster picture by Dream app in Bad Trip art style by wombo using my monster haiku

I do find the Dream app a little harder to use on a laptop than Artbreeder as Dream seems like it’s made for the phone. The side scrollbar doesn’t show up and I can’t just swipe up to go lower so I could see more of the art options. However, I found if I clicked in a black space between the art choices, then I could use my page down button to view the options lower on the page. Artbreeder has a phone version too but I’ve never used it so I can’t tell you which is easier to use on a phone. I do art stuff on my laptop, sometimes with a big monitor attached, because I like to see art bigger — my phone has a small screen. But I may try both of these on my phone in the future because it might be fun to make art while drinking a latte at a cafe.

Who is your favorite Monster?

It can be from a book, a movie, a cartoon or even one you made up yourself.