Originally Posted 07/31/19
I’ve been playing too much Merge Dragons.
What is Merge Dragons? It’s a mobile game where you can merge three eggs and make a cute dragon. Then merge three dragons to make a bigger dragon, and so on and so on. You can actually merge three of anything in the game to make something better or bigger or whatever. The point is, it’s cute, it’s addictive, and it unfortunately makes me want to spend real money.
It also gives me nightmares, apparently.
Last night I dreamed my mother (not my real mother, just a faceless mother in a dream) was dying in a big hospital and I was having difficulty managing my time doing regular life things and spending time with her. The reason I was having difficulty, was because I was apparently an Arrow/Robin Hood type of superhero. My mom would want to talk about things and make sure I was paying all my bills and stuff, but then something terrible would happen and I would have to leave and go be a super hero. It was depressing and sad and a little stressful.
The reason why I think Merge Dragons had a hand in this nightmare, was because the last week or so I’ve been obsessed with merging enough mushrooms to get one of the ultimate level 8 mushrooms – the Alien Shrooms.
If you’ve ever played a mobile game that you really liked, you understand how it sucks you in. You’ll play for hours just doing random silly shit like farming grass or picking corn or catching fairies for nothing more than a reward of 10 jewels so you can get the Blue Cow! Or the Special Butterfly! Or the goddamn Apple Tree! And after too many hours and too many days wasted trying so hard to create or buy this stupid thing, you start to look at the money system in the game and wonder if maybe you should just drop $35 and buy 1000 jewels. Fuck!
So that’s where I was last night right before I went to bed. I want that goddamn, stupid, mushroom. I don’t know why, maybe my dragons will be able to harvest something cool from it like fungus balls I can sell for money. Surly it can’t be just because I want one in my garden, right?
Okay, back to the dream.
I hear something out the window of my mom’s hospital room, and there’s a flash of light and screaming so, of course, super hero time. I kiss my mom, run out, and then I’m outside in my super hero outfit because dream logic.
And there it is. It’s a fucking gigantic alien mushroom monster. It sort of looks like the one in the game, but it’s got another level to it, like it’s taller, and all those little things at the bottom are skulls. Granted, the thing is still kind of cute, but then it manifests a hammer on it’s head and starts smashing buildings. I do my Arrow/Robin Hood thing and fight off all the people that are–I guess–mind controlled by this thing, and then swing into the air like Spiderman for some reason and do cool heart-attack inducing aerial battle for like five seconds, but then it manages to knock me away and smashes the hospital where my mom is staying…
I woke up.
I haven’t played Merge Dragons yet today. I’m not sure I want to. Do I still want the mushroom? I don’t know.
Sam Stark 