New to Daydream Misfit?  The projects below are representative of what we do.  We offer a blend of AI-assisted design and visual projects with absurd and surreal short stories and nonfiction written by real live humans.  From body horror and cosmic menace to relationship struggles, difficult-to-classify experiments, bald-faced rants, and text/graphic jams, this is where we express our ideas and lay them out for you to love or hate.   We are not a niche, and we will not be pigeonholed.  Dive in!  We hope you'll find something that engages and surprises you, or leaves you saying "this reminds me of a nightmare I liked." 

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Here are some of our favorites which we think will be good places to start...

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Surreal Visual Projects

 

Area 97 -- An alien invasion love story.  "Being separate from you has been a living nothingness in the darkness of absolute zero.  I worship you, the light at the end of this wormhole of eternal despair."

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Mania -- Scrawled trauma, absolute clarity, eyes popping out of their sockets.  "Candy cane and the entire kitchen glows pink peppermint red dead snow outside falls upward past the windows why children keep laughing from rooms that definitely do not contain children feet and tree ornaments twitch whenever nobody is smiling directly and flesh smells aggressively of sugar, burnt wires, cinnamon, and courtly disaster the striped candy hooks multiply in bowels and parakeets coat sleeves like festive parasitic organ donors preparing for a long afterlife"

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Zoo Trip -- Taking acid with the animals.  "I met the reptile brain and had a staring contest. Lost. I wrestled the liger.  Existed very hard, but never enough. Stripes become bars. Bars become barcodes.  Looked into the eyes of an uncle. It occurred that nature doesn't do 'masks.' Wondered if other mammals can be autistic, wondered why males have nipples. Caught myself touching my own chest on a sunny day in front of strangers."

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Fiction & Strange Stories 

 

Untouchable -- A condemned man holds a mirror up to himself, his captors, and the prisons inside and outside his cell.  "I will in fact be hanged in the morning.  Or worse.  They allude to it, they make bets on it in the halfway desk around the corner past the black alloy bars of the door and the thicker black bars of the gateway.  They’re purposely not quiet about what’s coming to you, but purposely vague: 'Permanent Conditioning.'"

 

Three Ape Fable -- Existential drama examining our primate nature.  "A council of the kings was convened atop a high hill near the flower field, and the Moon King, River King, and Fog King, as well as their caravans of wives and guards, made the long trek through forests and mountain passes to the meeting place.  Ceremonies of respect were performed, and after a day of feasting, the kings met together at a round table cut from the base of a fallen, prehistoric tree."

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Have a Good Day: A Journey -- A comedic, existential trip there and back again.  "The young man pocketed a trio of cooked potatoes, filled his gourd flask with water, and searched out the cat. He found it lying on its side, stretched out in the sun. 'You are a very lazy cat,' he said. 'But in truth, I envy you. I would like to spend my days lying in the sun, dreaming and writing poems.'"

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A Fentanyl Tree -- The grim goals of an American casualty.  "Across the busy highway, in an abandoned lot, there’s a tree growing. I never learned all the types of trees. I know oak and pine, but this isn’t one of those. It’s a squat thing, bet in the Summer it puts out some shade. There’s some cardboard pieces underneath it, scraps someone left, and empty bottles. And up high, there’s a sweatshirt tangled in the branches, flapping rhythmically. Makes a little jam with the traffic, something to rock to, back and forth. Perfectly good sweatshirt. When I get woke up, I’m going to go over and get it."

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The Static -- Psychic terror amid the ghosts of the dead internet.  "I’ve splashed into a shallow streambed, and it’s yellow, the water is yellowed and the mud is acrid, I’ve brought too much William with me, this is not why I’m traveling.  This is video of a memory he could have made once, he told me of his time trucking around a copper mine, a mile across, with a winding road spiraling down into an open mouth, a line of charcoal men trudging lower, stinging mist staining the skin of the land."

 

Dark, Gothic & Unsettling

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Sleep is No Escape -- Reality turns to madness as the old ones awake.  "Nightmares became more intense and vivid, until strong men would wake screaming after only a few minutes of rest.  Entire populations conspired to stay awake and keep each other awake, becoming more and more paranoid after days and weeks without sleep, animated, twitching, angry and paranoid, sustained by caffeine and amphetamines, attacking one another unpredictably.  Spray painted on the wall of a small town City Hall: 'Sleep Won't Save You'"

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Desideratum -- Early gothic AI edits by Katty Pulsar.  A collection of stark black-and-white surreal images blending gothic noir, dream logic, and psychological tension for viewers drawn to gothic aesthetics, noir, dreamlike scenes.

Personal Growths -- Inspiring and gross body horror/body humor motivational posters.  Body horror and body humor brought to you with a smile by Katty Pulsar and Raven Storm.

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The Pit

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Oddities, Serials & Experiments

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YHBSTPIAG -- You Have Been Selected to Participate in a Game.  A puzzle constructing itself over time.  "Sometime around 2003, a rift developed between Løvenskiold and her father, and she relocated to London, reinventing herself as an editor and cultural critic.  It was during this period that rumors began to swirl about her activities in high society, with some whispering that she was acting as a high-end prostitute whose clients included wealthy businessmen, diplomats, and political figures."

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Confessions and Lies -- Neil Oldman's periodic droppings, updated irregularly.  Part personal essay, part weird fiction, part unreliable confession.   For readers who enjoy surreal writing, weird fiction, dark humor, and unconventional personal essays.  "What good is wealth unless you use it to be awesome?"

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Zazm! -- An ongoing absurd serial adventure experiment coaxed from the mouth of the machine.  "The Wondering Eye stared at her. Catastrophe smiled very slightly. 'Categories are harmless when nobody cares about them. They become dangerous when something refuses to remain inside them.' King Pyramid considered this. 'Are you suggesting that identity is inherently unstable?' 'No,' she said. 'I'm suggesting that people become unstable when they discover it isn't.' Sir Globulin's cylinder gave another wet click."  

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Curiosity Cabinet -- An unusual Amazon shopping portal.  "My cat is loyal and proves it loves me by leaving me dead things. If you really loved me, you would bring me more remains."

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​Thank you for visiting our "Start Here/Best of" page!  Now snort an eel.  For more, see our Visitor's Guide.

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