Webcomic / YU+ME: dream

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All Spoilers from Part One, including the Wham Episode, are Spoilers Off. Read with caution. You Have Been Warned.

YU+ME: dream is a two-part surrealist webcomic by Ro Salarian^note formerly known as Megan Rose Gedris that ran from 2004-2010.

Things aren't going well for Fiona Thompson. She has a dead mom, a father who is always on business, a Wicked Stepmother, no friends at the Catholic high school she attends, and none of the nuns believe that she's being picked on by Alpha Bitches Sarah and Cass. She begins to not pay any attention to anything around her, instead living in her own head in vivid, lucid dreams. Just a typical Teen Drama. But then pretty girl Lia Riolo moves in next door, meets her while she's at yet another detention, and real life becomes more interesting with her around. Fiona gains another friend in Jake, a green haired boy she saves from a bunch of bullies who attack him for being gay. Fiona is drawn to him, intrigued by this thing known as "gay", and begins to look at Lia in a whole new light. Fiona starts to become more confident in herself and her sexuality, even going so far as to attend the prom with Lia as her date.

And then the first half ends with a Wham Episode and The Reveal that the entire first half was All Just a Dream and all of the people from before are part of that dream — including her friends and her love, Lia. Fiona is snatched away from her just before she wakes up from a coma. At this point, the comic does a Genre Shift, changing what appeared to be a Slice of Life and Coming-Out Story into a surrealist dive into Fiona's mind where the reader follows Fiona's return to Dreamland while dealing with the very real psychological effects learning it was a dream had on her, exploring the realities of the dream space she's "lived" in and the true nature of her relationships with everyone from before, including Lia.

Part One starts here and Part Two here online. The entire webcomic is also available as an omnibus published in 2015 in both physical and digital form, containing several chapters not originally published online.

Due to the nature of the end of part one reveal, all the spoilers from Part One including the Wham Episode are Spoilers Off.

YU+ME: dream contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Of the Wicked Stepmother variety — or so Fiona thinks. Her stepmom wasn't evil. She may have been frustrated but deep down she loved Fiona, and Word of God says she was the first to run into the room crying the first time Fiona regained consciousness.
• Abhorrent Admirer: James. Fiona doesn't want to date him because she's a lesbian, but James doesn't realize that, incessantly pursuing her until she tells him off, and he becomes ruder and vengeful once he's rejected.
• Absurd Phobia: Don's fear of being in The O.C. is apparently legitimate, at least in the dream.
• Accidental Murder: How Sadako died. A man who saw her trying to kiss Ellie tried to get Sadako away from her when she became too close, but she crashed backwards into a window, embedding glass in her right eye and stomach, killing her.
• Adventures in Comaland: Part 1 turns out to be a very realistic and lengthy dream Fiona had after settling into a car crash-induced coma.
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Young Fiona was traumatized by her mother's suicide which also aimed to kill her, and as such grew up isolated from others. She didn't befriend people until she met Jake, Donovan, and Lia in her dreams because once she rediscovered the truth behind her mother, she attempted to commit suicide too, but instead fell into a coma, where she's been building the dream up.
• All Just a Dream: This is The Reveal and Wham Episode of the series, halfway through. Fiona learns that everything up to that point — school, her classmates, Lia, even several aspects of her home life — has been nothing more than Fiona's coma dream, and everyone in it are part of the dream world — which Sadako banishes her from before she wakes up. It's also done for true impact; instead of the usual dream revelation being at the end and nothing in the real world having changed, the end of the dream and Part One is when the second "real" story begins changing what appeared to be a Coming-Out Story into a surrealist dive into Fiona's mind where the reader now follows Fiona back into dreams while dealing with the very real psychological effects learning this had on her. Fiona gets back to the Dream World Sadako has banned her from to pursue the only happiness she knew, even while being aware that what she will find will be different from the fantasy dream she lived. The comic was conceived after its author experienced this trope for real: they met a girl and fell in love, only to wake up after what felt like months of being with her. Interestingly, the people in the dream are real, and what we think is the dream world is actually another dimension called Nod, which means it's not just a dream.
• Alpha Bitch: Sarah and Cass, the popular girls who constantly tease and pick on Fiona, especially Sarah since she constantly blames things on Fiona.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Any human that's been fully separated from their conscience and no longer has the morality to tell them to not do the horrible things they think about. This happens automatically the moment you enter the Dream World for the first time, turning the newcomer into a Literal Split Personality. People can retain their original personality by maintaining physical proximity to their conscience, but since everyone in Nod has Reality Warper powers, accidents can happen. And almost every person on Earth goes to Nod for in their dreams.
• Always Save the Girl: Fiona's decision to attempt to go back into the Dream Land to find Lia after she's snatched away from the dream.
• Animesque: For the most part of the early chapters. By the end, Ro has all but completely removed any anime or manga influences, except the real-world portions of Sadako's story.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The "big questions of life", according to Don: "Is there a God? What happens when we die? How on Earth did George W. Bush become President?"
  • Fiona states Lia is not worth pursuing anymore because she is a murderer, 900 years old, has just stabbed her (but since she's now Nod's ruler she won't die) — and had other lovers who were men.
• Art Shift: The first part of the comic was generally Animesque and Deliberately Monochrome, but after The Reveal, the art shifts became much more frequent:
  • The first true signs of Art Shift were when Fiona wakes up, changing the style to a Photo Comic for her real-world portions (with the author portraying Fiona).
  • After Fiona begins dreaming again, the art styles constantly change, including a Disney-esque artstyle, an artstyle with a lack of borders, and even claymation.
  • Lia's backstory has an art style that harkens to back to the 40s and 50s.
  • Sadako's real-world backstory is evocative of manga, being fully Animesque and black and white, at a time when the comic had then shifted to full color.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Subverted with Lia - at first she gets revealed as nothing more than an extra in Fiona's long dream. but later confesses that she does love Fiona and has a large part in part Two. Don is also one of these, going from merely Fiona's friend to the one telling her entire dream story and later becoming the king of Nod.
  • Clandy. Originally, she was just someone that Ro drew in the background and that was it. Clandy was not planned to have a role, much less a role as big as she has had — as Sadako's conscience she was forcibly separated from when Sadako told her to leave.
• Attack on the Heart: No-Face's initial appearance has him threaten to devour Fiona's heart.
• Awkwardly Gay Dream:
  • Fiona has one in Part 1: Issue 3, causing her to fear that she might be gay, as well as worrying how Lia will feel about the dream.
  • Ellie not so much has them as she has Sadako inflict them on her against her will.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Jake overdramatically reacts in surprise to the revelation that Fiona (AKA "his girlfriend" is a lesbian, a "revelation" he had known for months. Lampshaded by Fiona:
  "Hey, boy, Jake. I thought gay guys were supposed to be good at acting!"
• Bait-and-Switch: Fiona's stepmother shows her a "surprise" outside. The surprise is not the new car that Fiona immediately sees, but instead the old one that her mom is lending to her.
• Baku: Bakus are described as a "giant elephant-ram-boar-bear thing with purple hair" that lives in the dream world, and one attempts to eat Fiona's party. One is also seen when Sadako after dying is in the dream world with the King of Nod.
• The Beard: Fiona, Lia, Jake and Don all serve as beards for each other in Fiona's dream. Exactly who is whose beard, and who is in the closet at all, gets too complicated for Jake to keep track of. It's later revealed that "Jake" wasn't gay at all and was played in the dream by a straight actor.
• Bears Are Bad News: Sadako's castle has bear guards and Nod has bear police, who are in charge of throwing people in jail cells.
• Beary Friendly: One of the members of the DWLF is a bear who's just as nice as the rest of her crew.
• Big Bad: Sadako, who turns out to be the queen of dreams. Originally, it seemed that she was not happy at Lia for ruining her endeavor. The end of Part 2 reveals that Sadako used Lia as a trap to lure Fiona into the Dream Land for quite some time, because Fiona was strong enough to replace her.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Fiona and Lia share a kiss at the end of Part 1: Issue 6 that signals their Relationship Upgrade, and the section of the panel where it happens is tinted pink.
• Big "NO!": An overwrought Fiona lets out a "Nooo!" after she wakes up and discovers the past "6 months" were actually 12 days and part of her coma dream.
• Big "OMG!": Fiona's "Oh. My. GOD!" when she finds out that her and Sarah's kiss had been broadcast to the entirety of Nod on television.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • "Yume" is Japanese for "dream" — which makes sense since most of the comic takes place in dreams.
  • The name young Sadako calls her conscience (AKA Clandestine) is "Himitsu", Japanese for secret. Clandestine also means "kept secret".
• Blackmail: After Sarah finds out that Fiona is a lesbian, she forces her to clean the school bathrooms in her place or else she'll tell everyone of her and Lia's secret relationship.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Fiona uses Wahoo! Mail, a clear stand-in for Yahoo! Mail, to email her godfather.
  • Don works at IHOW, a riff on pancake chain IHOP.
• The Blank: Slighty subverted with No Face. At first, it appears he has no facial features at all, only to reveal that he has a mouth — with a set of razor sharp teeth in it.
• Bloody Handprint: Used as a Gory Discretion Shot. Lucy runs back to where the Dream World Liberation Front is headquartered after betraying them to Sadako, and all that's seen in the comic is a single bloody hand print. But the rest is so graphic that Lucy throws up.
• Break Them by Talking: Elizabeth's insistence that Angel's husband David, whom she had been cheating with, loves her more than his wife, and that he'd still love her if Fiona hadn't been born is the final straw that convinces Angel to end her and Fiona's lives.
• Burp of Finality: After finishing a gyro (which is made of a capybara's remains), Clandy lets out a big burp.
  Clandestine: that burp tasted like steve.
• Bury Your Gays: Several gay characters are killed or commit suicide, including Fiona, the main character. She gets better, though.
• Captain Obvious: When Clandestine spots one of Sadako's bear guards on the train, she exclaims "It's a bear!".
• Carnivore Confusion: Fiona expresses confusion upon finding that the gyro shop in West Dreamland, which is run by a capybara, sells a capybara gyro. This is subverted when the shopkeeper reveals that capybara used for the gyro was a sentient being — he was ground up into a gyro for being "kind of a douchebag".
• Cast Full of Gay:
  • A lot of characters in the comic aren't straight, with the main protagonists Fiona and Lia being lesbians.
  • Sarah is implied to be not straight as well, since she kisses Fiona towards the end of act 1. In act 2, the actor that played "Sarah" in Fiona's dream, Lucy, had an early script even said that "Sarah" harbored a secret crush on Fiona in the script. Cass also appears to be involved or have a crush on Sarah, as she has a total flip out towards Fiona after she catches them kissing.
  • Jake, Don and Richard — Fiona's stepfather — are all gay as well.
  • Sadako is some variety of queer since she had crushes on two girls back when she was alive and Lia after she was queen.
• Catapult Nightmare: Fiona jolts upright after one of her dreams within dreams ends with Lia being torn in half.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Clandestine Jones nearly always has a strange way of acting, such as looking at a dangerous creature in awe or thinking that a journal was literally "planted" from a plant. This is later revealed to be because she used to be Sadako's conscience, but Sadako banished her for basically not letting her have her "fun" with Ellie, and Clandy has gone crazy because of their separation but still has some hold on who she is.
• Coming-Out Story: The first half of the comic is this, combined with a Slice of Life comic about a angsty teen girl who discovers that she is a lesbian when she gains feelings for Lia. It's then revealed that the first half was All Just a Dream.
• Crashing Dreams: Fiona has many dreams within her own whose endings correspond to events occurring around her. The earliest example is during Fi's princess dream, when her laughter turns into a dog's bark, which turns out to be her actual dog that woke her up.
• Damsel in Distress: Fiona dreams that Lia is trapped in a tower, so she comes to save her, but her offer of rescue is refused by Lia because Fiona thinks Lia is straight at this point in the story.
• Deadly Game of Chance: Sadako proposes a game to Fiona; find a single sword among the items in the west wing of the castle in an hour. If she wins, Sadako will let her and Lia go; if not or Fiona refuses to play, she'll have her killed by Lia, who's been reverted to the terrible Mara. It was a ploy; Sadako says Fiona returned four minutes late, but actually has the aim of goading Fiona into killing her to free her from position as Queen of Nod.
• Death Seeker: Sadako. Having spent so much time in Nod, she just wants to move on into the next life. Justified because Nod won't let her die without a suitable replacement.
• Deliberately Monochrome:
  • The entire first half is a black and white comic, save for a few splashes of color. When the comic transitions to full color during the prom, Fiona literally undergoes Color Failure when she faints for the second time, and when she comes to, she's still monochrome while the rest of the comic is colored in, symbolizing that she's the only one in the room who isn't from the dream world.
  • The real world parts of part two are both this and a Photo Comic, with Fiona's scenes being shown with a sepia overlay.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Subverted. Sadako believes she is justified in what she does to Ellie, but the consequences for both Ellie and Sadako are fairly unforgiving; Ellie is Driven to Suicide while Sadako walls herself up in her castle for centuries afterwards.
• The Dragon: No-Face, the blank-faced man who tormented Fiona's dreams, serves as Sadako's right-hand man. He is sent by her to bring the dreamer with the strongest heart to kill her.
• Drama Bomb:
  • Many of these are in Part 1: Issues 1 - 8, but Part 1: Issue 9 definitely takes the cake on this, including Fiona's gay godfather Richard arriving and telling her about her upbringing, including her mother's suicide due to her father cheating with her stepmother and attempting to take Fiona with her; Fiona admitting to being a lesbian to her stepmother, which gets her grounded (though Richard takes her to the prom anyway); and James getting together with Sadako.
  • The ending of part one reveals that everything up to this point was All Just a Dream as the Wham Episode. Lampshaded when the drama bomb is represented as a literal bomb falling on the side.
  • These continue in part 2 after a while. Lia's history, including the fact that she's bisexual, as well as the evil deeds when she committed as "Mara" when Sadako locked up her conscience are a prime example.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Fiona calls Lia at school, and Lia's mother says that "there's been a death in the family". Fiona promptly runs to Lia's house, ready to receive the horrible truth, but Lia's actually alive, and it was actually her grandfather who died.
• Dream Land: Where the entirely of Part 1 takes place. Fiona returns there in Part 2 to look for Lia. It's actually an alternate dimension called Nod that used to be tenuously connected to the space of human dreams, until Sadako merged the two together.
• Dream Within a Dream: Fiona's dreams in Part 1 were this since she was in a dream the whole time. She later has more dreams when dreaming again in Part 2, though this time she's aware that she's in the dream world.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The DWLF dress as Sadako's bear guards to bust Fiona's conscience Mary out of jail.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Fiona's mom was the first case of this. After her life fell apart, she wrote a suicide note and drove with Fiona into an oncoming car, attempting to take her daughter's life with her own. Fiona survived, but her mother didn't.
  • Fiona attempted suicide herself after finding her mother's suicide note; wanting to finish what her mom started, she drove her car into a tree. Fiona didn't die, but she entered a coma, and Part 1 took place in her coma dream.
  • After having enough of Sadako raping her in the dream world, Ellie finally committed suicide to get away from the pain.
  • Implied with the King of Nod; we don't see anything happen to him, but it's inferred that he's been king for so long that he is tired of life and wants someone to kill him so he can pass on.
  • Sadako fell on the same trajectory as the King of Nod. Since she's lived in Nod for such a long time, she just wants to die so she can find peace.
  • Lia didn't want to live without her love George, who was killed in the war. When she meets him in her dreams — not knowing he's actually Sadako in disguise — Lia thinks that she's meeting him in the afterlife and wants to stay with George, so she bricks up the wall to reality and dies. This can also be classified as an indirect murder due to Lia being unaware of "George"'s identity in Nod.
  • In the end, Fiona and Lia, hoping to reunite in the real world, jump through a portal which kills their dream versions but allows their souls to be reborn in reality. Unlike the other cases, this one has a much happier tone.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: No Face. His neck is snapped in the background of a panel by Lia under her "Mara" persona while Sadako is threatening Fiona. Even the author themself comments on how anticlimactic that death was, but it was done to avoid going into detail about him after he was no longer relevant.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Angel downs a bottle of whiskey after her life goes to hell and before she commits suicide, attempting to take her daughter Fiona with her.
• Dying Dream: Fiona questions whether everything is a dying dream to her during part 2. Clandy asks her if it would make a difference or make it any less real.
• Easy Road to Hell: Sister Mary routinely informs the students of the many things that will send them to hell. These include jumping on the bed, wearing striped socks to school, and running red lights.
• Escapism: Early on, Fiona turns to dreams (within her own) to escape from the "real world" where almost everyone hates her, but even those can't comfort her once Fiona starts to question her sexuality.
• Everyone Is a Tomato: This is part of The Reveal that the first half is All Just a Dream. Nearly everyone that Fiona has been interacting with for the majority of Part One is just an actor in her dreams — including the girl she loves, Lia — and she's going to leave them when she wakes up from her coma.
• Exact Words:
  • One of the old taglines stated that "Fiona has found the girl of her dreams." Which is true, since Lia — and everyone else — was part of Fiona's coma dream.
  • Sadako tells Fiona she has an hour to find a hidden sword and bring it back to her or else Sadako will have her killed by Lia as Mara. Fiona fails because she took sixty-four minutes. But it was rigged regardless, as Sadako wanted to infuriate Fiona into killing her.
• Executive Meddling: An in-universe example revealed in flashback. Conscience Management decides Fiona will react better to her conscience Mary if she acts like an ethnic stereotype. Cue hilarious scenes where Mary struggles to understand Ebonics and complains about her skimpy outfit.
• Eye Scream: The story behind Sadako's eye. It was punctured by a shard of glass in the real world when she was shoved through a window. It's empty when she's in the dream world afterwards, and then replaced with the spiral eye that came from the previous king and shows the ruler of Nod.
• The Faceless:
  • Fiona's dad, David, is offscreen for most of the comic. We finally see what he looks like when Fiona arrives home early during the final stretch of Part 1.
  • When Fiona's mind flashes back to her deceased mother for the first time, she can't remember what her mother's face looks like, so shadowy scribbled masses fill in the blanks.
• Fantastic Romance: Fiona first learning that Lia is an actor in the coma dream she's in, and later that Lia has been long dead in the real world.
• Fell Asleep Crying: Fiona mentions that she sometimes cries herself to sleep in the first issue due to her hard life.
• First Kiss: Fiona receives her first kiss from James, and she makes it abundantly clear that she does not reciprocate his feelings.
• Forced Transformation: After punching out No-Face, Fiona transforms him into a cat, though this transformation doesn't last.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The writing's been on the wall from the very beginning, where Fiona is described as "The Dreamer" who escapes her reality via dreams. Fiona is a dreamer all right, as in she dreamt up all of Part 1.
  • Halfway through the final issue of Part 1, when Fiona fully learns about her parents' backstory, she remarks "This is so unreal. Like a crazy dream," which is exactly what Part 1 turns out to be.
  • In a bonus chapter (initially only available online as a paid bonus), Fiona is given a new conscience, Mari, who takes her on an extended guilt trip about all the terrible things she's ever done. Fiona doesn't know how to get rid of her until Clandy tells Fiona how to send Mari away: by saying "I banish you from my head and my heart; I will find my own path." This is how Sadako sent Clandy — then Himitsu — away from her when Clandestine tried to stop her from abusing Ellie in her dreams.
• Framing Device: Part 2 of the story is being told by Don. At the end, it's revealed that it's after Fiona and Lia left Nod to be reborn — Fiona by dying and being shoved through a portal letting her reincarnate — he became its new king, complete with now having the magic swirling dream eye.
• Freudian Excuse: Sadako gets set up for this when her story/issue starts, since we know that humans become evil when separated from their consciences. Then it's subverted when it turns out she shunned her conscience, Clandy, because the poor girl was trying to keep Sadako from having "fun" (read: continue to commit random acts of manipulation, abuse, and jerkassery).
• Freudian Slip: Fiona responding to Lia after she has yet another romantic dream about both of them: "I'll be ready in a sex. -I mean- sec."
• Frustrated Overhead Scribble: Dark scribbly lines manifest above Fiona after viewing the DVDs of others' dreams in the DWLF that make her question just what the organization is actually attempting.
• Fun with Acronyms In Nod, "DVD" stands for "Dream Viewing D'''isc. They're just like regular DVDs, except they're used to record others' dreams.
• Gayngst: The first part runs semi-literally off of gayngst, with Fiona fretting about her sexuality.
• Genki Girl: Clandestine is often seen excitedly gushing about things around her, including how beautiful someone looks or how cute a dream is, and she sometimes wants to befriend others the second they meet.
• Genre Shift: Between Part 1 and Part 2. Part 1 is a lesbian Slice of Life Teen Drama with a Coming-Out Story, whereas part 2 is a surrealist adventure through a Dream Land where Fiona's main goal is to find Lia again.
• Genius Loci: Nod won't let its current ruler be killed and replaced if the replacement isn't suitable.
• Gilded Cage: The place where Sadako imprisons Lia is a luxurious-looking jail cell with a fancy bed, tea, a box TV, and even a pool.
• Gilligan Cut: After having a Catapult Nightmare, Fiona decides she's going to stay up all night. 2 minutes later, she's fast asleep.
• Girl-on-Girl is Hot: After the news gets out that Fiona is a lesbian, a male student exclaims "She's a lezzie? That's hott! Woo!"
• Given Name Reveal: Early in Part 2, the actress who played Sarah in Fiona's dream is revealed to be named Lucy.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Subverted, as it doesn't stick. Fiona freaks out after Don mentions that residents of Nod lack consciences, assuming everyone around her to be sociopaths. She calms down after Don explains that people from the dream world aren't inherently crazy because they're conscience-free.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Downplayed with Fiona's Conscience, Mary; she appears as an angel who gives Fiona advice, but there is no devil counterpart for her. Mary later explains that humans don't need a devil representation as without their conscience, they become their own devils as they have the potential for great evil. Lia also has an angel-like conscience as does Sadako, though she banished hers from her..
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: Before committing suicide, Angel sends a letter regarding her decision to Richard.
• The Ground Is Lava: Clandestine uses "The floor is lava" as an excuse to stay on the couch that Fiona wants to sleep on.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: In Part Two, Lia is gruesomely ripped apart during a tug-of-war between her and Sadako in one of Fiona's dream-within-dreams. She's split in half, but survives.
• Have a Gay Old Time: Fiona doesn't understand what Jake means when he says he's "gay" at first.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: Fiona received her wavy red hair from her mother, Angel.
• Humanoid Abomination: No-Face, a faceless humanoid who conceals a set of razor-sharp teeth.
• I Banged Your Mom: Don uses the excuse of "banging your momma" to distract the Baku while the rest of Fiona's party escapes.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: One of Fiona's goals in Part 1 before everything changes is to fit in with her peers after years of being cast aside and left out, and she laments that holding onto her childhood has not made her "grown up" like everyone else.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan: The firey-haired member of the DWLF has watched all of Fiona's dreams. When she arrives at their house, she asks Fi for an autograph and describes herself as a big fan.
• Ineffectual Death Threats: When Don refuses to tell Fiona the truth about Jake, she threatens to rip his kidneys out and eat them. Since they're good friends, she wouldn't have actually committed said action.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Played for drama. Lia is too distraught in the finale of Part 1 to tell Fiona the truth, so she's reduced to sobbing incomprehensibly and Don has to tell her himself.
• I Never Got Any Letters: It's revealed that Fiona's godfather has been writing to her but her stepmother throws all his letters away. At first, it's implied that this is because he's gay, then it turns out that it's because her father and stepmother have been keeping hidden the fact that her mother committed suicide with young Fiona in the car intending to kill them both, which her godfather tells her about.
• I Never Told You My Name: In Heaven, George inadvertently calls Lia by her full name Celia, which she never told him. This is how it's revealed he's not actually George and it's not really heaven, but really Sadako in the Dream World manipulating Lia to stay with her.
• Innocent Innuendo: When Lia asks "Do you want my cherry?" in one strip, Fiona does a Spit Take, thinking that she's talking about the other kind of cherry. However, it turns out she meant an actual cherry.
• The Insomniac: Fiona is unable to sleep after realizing all she experienced for seemingly 6 months was all part of her coma dream, but she's able to sleep again once she finds a book with Lia's name on it.
• Interrupted Intimacy: In one scene, Fiona's conscience Mary happens upon Fiona and Lia sharing an intimate moment together. Luckily, they don't see her, and she allows them to have their moment, but Fiona somehow hears her poofing out of the scene.
• It Has Been an Honor:
  • Clandestine quite literally says this to Fiona, before fading away into death along with Sadako.
  • Don says this before pushing Fiona through the portal that lets her spirit be reborn.
• I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: In Part Two, Fiona has a lifelike Dream Within a Dream where she's with Lia again, and she berates her conscience Mary for indirectly waking her up.
• Jerkass: Sebastian, the guy who played Jake, is nothing like the character he plays, caring more about fame and fortune than anything else.
• Jerkass Realization: Subverted. Sarah seems to have a change of heart during her and Fiona's last day of detention, apologizing for all the ways she's gotten Fiona in trouble. However, she soon claims she was just messing with Fiona because she was a lesbian.
• Jive Turkey: Fiona's conscience Mary speaks in ebonics in Part 1: Issue 1. By Issue 2, she still does so, but it's noticeably toned down. This is later explained that her conscience Mary was being told to act that way by her boss — but still lost her job afterwards. She drops this in Part 2.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Lia when she lost her conscience, especially compared to Sadako's relatively benign but still immoral reaction to losing her conscience. Granted, Sadako wasn't exactly a paragon to begin with, but she never fell near as far as the mass murderer known as The Terrible Mara.
• Klingon Promotion: A new king or queen of Nod must kill the old one. However, Nod seems to have a will of its own, and if it doesn't want the killer to be the new ruler, then it simply won't let the old ruler die.
• La Résistance: The Dream World Liberation Front is a ragtag group whose goal is to end the tyranny that Sadako has imposed on the dream world.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • When Part Two started, web banners made it clear that that Fiona and Lia are in love with each other and also implies that they both like girls, spoiling the whole Coming-Out Story part for new readers.
  • Part Two starts off letting readers know that Part One was All Just a Dream.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sarah says "I thought you were trying to look like some comic book character" to Fiona when she finds out the origin of the white part of her bangs. They are quite literally in a comic.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: During the Baku encounter, Fiona, who hadn't been in any "big" fights yet, is running away alongside the rest of her group, but when the monster sucks up Don, she stops fleeing and hatches a plan to not only defeat it, but free the people it inhaled using pepper.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Both Fiona and Lia; they're generally feminine and are in love with each other.
• Locked in the Dungeon: Sadako often sentences those she punishes to her dungeon, where they remain unless they're rescued or set to be killed.
• Locked into Strangeness: Fiona has a pair of white stripes in the center front of her hair. It's from the head injury she got when her mother tried to kill them both in a car crash and succeeded with herself.
• Losing Your Head: Played with. Impersonators in Nod are typically born headless. Artifical heads are constructed for them so they can act as characters the dreamers have met in real life. They can freely detach and re-attach their heads without harm and can go extended periods of time without any head.
• Love Hurts: While Lia and Fiona don't have any easy time at first, this is nothing compared to when the major Drama Bomb hits and Fiona learns it's all a dream.
• Love Makes You Evil:
  • It is hinted that Sadako impersonated Lia's dead lover and tricked her into staying forever in the Dream Land at least partly because she couldn't stand to see her so upset at his death.
  • Sadako counts when she first became Queen of Dreams and started abusing her power to have Ellie "make things up" to her for causing her death by giving in to Sadako's sexual abuses. This eventually proves too much for Ellie and she commits suicide.
• Magical Eye: The ruler of the Dream world, Nod, has a purple swirling eye indicating them as such. Sadako reveals it to Fiona before she informs her that Fiona's going to be forced out of the dream world she's been occupying. She received it from the previous ruler of Nod, and when Fiona kills her it becomes one of her her eyes. The ending reveals that Don, who pushed Fiona into reincarnation, has the eye now and has hidden it behind his sunglasses through part two.
• Magnetic Girlfriend: Once everyone knows Fiona is a lesbian, they either kiss her or threaten her to stay away from "their girl". Justified since her life before was All Just a Dream, scripted by Sadako and catered to Fiona's perception of the world.
• Manipulative Bitch: Sadako. As ruler of Nod, she gets to manipulate her subjects the way she wants to, such as forcing Lucy to spy on the protagonists. She also made her crush Ellie give in to her abuse by guilting her with her death along with her conscience agreeing, until Ellie was Driven to Suicide.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Fiona's mom, who is already dead at the start of the comic, was named Angel.
  • Johnny Sandman is named after the archetypal sandman, though he's more of a spokesperson for Dream Co. than a god of dreams.
• Mind Screw: We can see the writing on the wall in the ending of Part 1: Issue 9 when reality appears to break apart as a result of it all being a dream, but from Part 2: Issue 1 onward, Yu+Me is absolutely insane, including random Art Shifts, characters with crazy traits, and more. All of which is justified since it takes place in the dream world, but in a more fantastical setting compared to the normal settings from Part 1 — and Fiona is aware she's dreaming this time. Lampshaded in a (somewhat spoilery) intermission between Parts One and Two.
• Missing Mom: Fiona's mom Angel, who committed vehicular suicide with Fiona in the car intending to kill them both.
• Mistaken for Gay: Inverted. Midway through Part 1, Fiona starts to believe that Lia is straight due to her conscience revealing her sneaking suspicions about Lia's sexuality, compounded by Lia becoming seemingly more distant from her and the incident in the hotel where she kissed Fiona and ran away. Lia is a lesbian, but her actions were out of fear of Sadako discovering her and Fiona's feelings for one another.
• Mistaken for Suicidal: Fiona moping that Lia seemingly left her for Sadako causes her to let go of the wheel of her car, which Jake mistakes as her attempting to intentionally crash. It's played for laughs at the time, but then it's revealed the real Fiona actually did attempt vehicular suicide after learning her mother succeeded at it.
• The Mole: The first part has Sadako, who turns out to be the ruler of the Dream World and sends Fiona out of her dream. The second part has Lucy, who was made sympathetic by having been coerced into it and by trying to act as a Double Agent in favor of the protagonists.
• Monster Clown: In a pixel art-themed dream, a clown who looks very similar to Ronald McDonald is about to stab a man with a knife.
• Mood-Swinger: The bear member of DWLF goes from roaring at the other members to stop fighting to gently handing supplies to Tarantula in the span of a panel.
• Mood Whiplash: During a serious scene with Fiona and her stepmom, Richard barges in with a cheesy, Cinderella-referencing line about taking Fiona to prom. Things swiftly get serious again as Elizabeth leaves the two and Fiona learns the backstory of her parents.
• The Most Wanted: After learning that Fiona and Mary re-entered the dream world, she places a billion dollar bounty on them.
• Multiple Head Case: All of Lucy's heads have different personalities corresponding to the character they're supposed to represent. Downplayed in that she can only wear one head at a time, though their aspects differ nonetheless.
• My God, What Have I Done?: David heavily regrets cheating with Elizabeth, indirectly causing Fiona's mother Angel to kill herself and almost kill her daughter. Fiona initially refuses to forgive him, but eventually does so after a short talk.
• Naked People Are Funny: A dream belonging to an unknown person in Part 2 involves her nude except for her underwear, causing an offscreen crowd to laugh at her.
• New Friend Envy: Mary, who'd been busted out of Nod's jail, sees Clandestine hanging out with Fiona and assume she's being replaced. This dies down when Clandy clears things up and apologizes, explaining that Mary hadn't been "replaced", and she befriended Fiona because she hadn't been someone's conscience for many years.
• New Transfer Student: Lia moves to Fiona's town and enrolls in her school by the first issue. They meet each other in the next. At least, she plays that role in the dream; the real Lia died and became trapped in Nod before Fiona was even born.
• No Bisexuals: Averted. Don was confirmed as bisexual via a bonus strip in the back of the 2nd book and Lia was confirmed as bisexual in Part 2.
• Non-Human Lover Reveal: Parodied in a dream belonging to "Mike": his lover suddenly reveals herself to be a kitten, depicted by her inexplicably gaining a cat's head.
• Nothing Is Scarier: No Face has no face. And when he smiles...
• Offing the Offspring: Fiona's mother Angel decides to commit suicide and take Fiona with her, not putting her in her car seat and crashing the car with them in it. Her last words to Fiona were "say hi to Jesus for me." She half fails; Fiona survives, but she doesn't.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Fiona is dumbfounded that Sarah, notorious Alpha Bitch and her friend-turned-enemy, decides to help her clean the bathroom in a seeming act of goodwill.
• Or Was It a Dream?: Inverted in Part 2. Fiona, within the dream world, falls asleep on a train and dreams that she's with Lia again, fully convinced that everything from waking up from her coma to her entering the dream world again was a dream she had in the "real world" with Lia. It takes Mary telling her that the "Lia" in her dream isn't real to wake her up.
• Overly Long Name:
  • While he acted as Jake, it is later revealed that "Jake's" name is a lot longer than we thought: Sebastian Beauregard Constantine II.
  • Briefly parodied after Lucy's real name is revealed.
    Lucy: "What were you expecting? Mariella Xylophone Lucia Sassifrass Van Gogh the Third?"
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Fiona is suddenly naked when she first returns to the dream world. Her conscience Mary tells her she doesn't have to be naked, so she imagines herself wearing clothes.
• Out of Focus: Part 2 sees this happen to Jake. This is because unlike the other characters, "Jake"'s actor, Sebastian, was only doing it as a job. Many of the other characters come back in new roles, but Jake/Sebastian only has a cameo in an interview. An additional chapter in the omnibus follows him again, after many fans wanted to see a comeuppance for him treating Fiona's dream like a general job.
• Pepper Sneeze: How Fiona defeats the Baku: she conjures a storm of pepper, which makes the Baku sneeze so hard it's blown miles away and releases all the characters it ingested.
• Photo Comic: The comic uses real life photographs where necessary to artistically separate Fiona's Dream Land and Real Life.
• Post-Stress Overeating:
  • Lia gorges on tacos while Sadako is at her house, as she evidently doesn't want to discuss anything while Sadako's around.
  • Fiona eats upwards of 18 waffles at IHOW after Sister Mary tells her parents she's a lesbian.
• The Power of Love: Fiona's decision to attempt to go back into the Dream Land to find Lia, especially considering Sadako had banned Fiona from the Dream Land. Subverted, as that was part of Sadako's plan all along.
• Psycho Lesbian: Sadako. However, unlike usual uses of this trope, it's obviously not to make lesbians look bad. Just this one in particular who has issues.
• Pun-Based Title: Yu + me Dream. "Yume" means dream in Japanese and also stands for "you + me", as in a couple.
• Racial Transformation: Fiona turns her conscience Mary white when she's told that she can control how anyone looks in the dreamscape, though this is reverted once they board the train.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The DWLF is a peculiar bunch aiming to stop Sadako. Their leader is the flamboyant Tarantula Velasquez, with other members including a blue-skinned, nude woman with Flaming Hair, a black girl with an expressive smiley face for a head, a bear, and a girl with completely white eyes.
• Reality Warper: Dreamers, who can manipulate their environments since they're in a dream. A select few, like Fiona and Sadako, are skilled enough to do this across all of Nod.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Fiona lets Sarah have it she reveals her apology and declaration of love towards Fi were a ruse:
  Fiona: A joke? You stupid bitch! Here I was, thinking you might actually be a nice person and want to be friends with me, but it was all a setup for your stupid joke! Ha, ha! Let's all laugh at Fiona! Well, fuck you!
  • Fiona chides the DWLF for focusing more on securing good entertainment than the dreamers' emotions. They actually agree with her and offer her the position of leader.
    Fiona: You're upset that Sadako has a monopoly on dream production?! You don't give a fuck about maybe some people getting hurt by all this stuff? People like the dreamers? You guys are writing dreams, acting in dreams, watching dreams. It's all entertainment to you, but it isn't for us Dreamers! It's our emotions you're playing with for the sake of good TV! I thought you guys were going to help me but you'll keep everything the same if you have your way, only Sadako will be replaced with someone you like!
• Reincarnation Romance: When Fiona and Lia decide to leave Nod, they realize that both of them are dead in the real world, so Don finds a loop hole that technically "kills" them in Nod but sends their souls back to Earth, where they can reincarnate and find each other. However, they don't meet up again in the real world until the last page.
• Relationship Upgrade: Fiona and Lia are friends who are in love with each other, but cannot admit their mutual feelings in Part 1. At the end of Issue 6, Lia reveals that she does love Fiona, but was forced to hide that from Sadako. After they kiss again, they remain as a couple for the rest of the comic.
• Retraux: Ro's affinity for the 40s and 50s is not limited to their previous comic, I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!. Lia's living past is presented in black and white with a style evocative of those two decades which makes sense since she lived during World War II.
• The Reveal:
  • One of the first big reveals is when Fiona gets a letter from her godfather Richard Gibson, which not only reveals the identity of the mysterious phone caller seen beforehand, but also that Fiona's mother died in a car crash 14 years ago.
  • The massive reveal at the end of Part 1: Sadako is the Big Bad and everything so far in Fiona's life has been All Just a Dream that Fiona created while in a coma, which itself was induced by a suicide attempt after she learned her mother succeeded at doing the same and tried to kill her too.
  • There are many more reveals in Part 2, such as Sadako and Lia being long-dead in the real world and being trapped in Nod; Lucy being forced to spy on Fiona and her group by Sadako; Clandestine being Sadako's former conscience, Himitsu; and much of the plot being a plan for Sadako to commit suicide.
  • The last chapter ends with one that Don is now the King of Nod.
• Revenge on the Bully: At the prom, Jake takes the chance to punch out Calvin, who'd bullied him for his homosexuality.
• Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: The DWLF seem to spend more time deciding on how to enact their plan to overthrow Sadako than actually perform the plan itself, and Fiona discovers a bunch of DVDs of others' dreams, making her dubious of what they actually aim to accomplish. When Fiona calls out the DWLF for prioritizing ending Sadako's monopoly on dream production over the dreamers' own feelings, they all agree and promote her to their new leader. Ultimately subverted when they sneak into Sadako's castle to rescue Fiona's conscience Mary.
• Sacrificial Lion: Everyone in the Dream World Liberation Front except Don and Lucy are brutally killed by No-Face when Lucy betrays them to Sadako. The commentary in the omnibus explains that this was partially because Salarian didn't want to draw all of them through the story, and they would have likely abandoned Fiona a few weeks in along with Lucy; instead, their deaths motivate Lucy to continue her rebellion and stay on Fiona's journey, sending her in the wrong direction so they're not caught.
• Sadist Teacher: Sister Mary, one of Fiona's teachers, often gives out cruel punishments to Fiona. Most of the time, it's either based on her beliefs or because Fiona was framed by Sarah.
• Sarcasm Mode: A day after Lia rejects Fiona's offer to go to the Valentine's Day dance with her:
  Fiona: So, Lia... about the dance...
  Lia: (with her speech bubbles surrounded by hearts) Oh Fiona, of course I'll go to the dance with you!
  Fiona: Really?
  Lia: No. I was being sarcastic.
• Sassy Black Woman: Fiona's conscience Mary, who is basically a Palette Swap of her with an afro. It's later revealed she was made to act like this to keep her job as Fiona's conscience while she's in her coma dream.
• The Scapegoat: Fiona is often blamed for things either perpetrated by someone else (mainly Sarah), or for actions she was involved in, but she didn't start (ex. attacking Jake's bullies). In one instance, Sarah doesn't blame her on the spot, but rather forces Fiona to take blame for something she did.
• Scrabble Babble: When Fiona faints for the first time at prom, her conscience Mary makes up the word "skleebs" (a reference to users of the first forum's euphemism for breasts) while playing Scrabble with her.
• Secret Relationship: Fiona and Lia, mostly because of Lia not wanting Sadako to know — but also because they go to a Catholic high school.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy: Fiona's stuffed bunny, Mr. Bun, was sewn together by her mother Angel as a way to ward off her fears, especially within her nightmares. She sleeps with Mr. Bun for most of her life, even after she turns 18, but she eventually places him in her sock drawer only to come around again the second time she dreams, where the bunny gives Fiona a much-needed pep talk and confidence boost.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The end of part one turns the first half comic into this, as it renders many of the actions and events beforehand moot due to it being All Just a Dream.
• Shout-Out:
  • Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is referenced numerous times in the story. It's Fiona and Lia's favorite song, and Fi sings it in the shower in Part 2.
  • The Lewis the Magical Wonder Kitten movie's subtitle is "Kitten Without a Cause".
  • Sarah's favorite show is Veronica Mars.
  • When explaining to Lia and Jake about how Sarah actually helped her, Fiona says "It was all freaky, like The Twilight Zone".
  • After seeing a grumpy James pass by, Jake imagines that, if he went to prom, he'd be showered with blood only for him to kill everyone with creepy powers, much like what happened with the eponymous character of Carrie.
  • The story draws some parallels to Cinderella, with the main protagonists being raised by a Wicked Stepmother, being routinely abused by two Jerkass girls, and being taken to a ball by someone else after being barred from it by their family. For a more explicit reference, there's Richard jokingly telling Fiona to call him her fairy godfather, because he's taking her to the ball.
  • Upon seeing Don with mutton chops, Fiona comments that he looks like "Mr. Martin Van Buren".
  • When escaping the train, Clandestine leads Fiona into a part of the world that has a clearly Disney-inspired art style, with Lucy resembling the classic Disney princess. Fiona's princess transformation is inspired by the protagonists of Cinderella (1950) and The Little Mermaid (1989) and their respective transformations.
  • A character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer coloquially referred to as "Cheese Man" appears in the Dream Co. pamphlet in the background of the Main Character's example scene.
• Show Within a Show: A couple of truly weird shows that Lia watches, which is justified because they're shows in Nod instead of the real world:
  • Stickfigure Theater features two stick figures going on a Random Events Plot of bizarre proportions.
  • It's Lewis the Magical Wonder Kitten Show!. From the glimpse we get of it, a crime-fighting kitten knocks out a robber and his tooth and rescues a human woman whom he's attracted to, only for her to die, with rainfall pouring on cue.
• Slice of Life: The first half of the comic is this, combined with a Coming-Out Story. It's then revealed that this was All Just a Dream.
• Soft Glass: Completely averted. Sadako died being shoved through a glass window, with shards embedding in her stomach and eye.
• So Happy Together: Fiona goes to prom and is very happy because she gets to be with Lia — until it's revealed to be All Just a Dream, and the two are forcibly separated. It's subverted when Fiona and Lia get together again in the dream world, ultimately meeting up with each other as reincarnations in real life and presumably starting another relationship.
• Staircase Tumble: Fiona accidentally falls down the stairs when attempting to leave Donovan's house and fractures her right ulna.
• Stepford Smiler: When Elizabeth arrives at Angel's home to pick up some papers, Angel puts on a happy face to drive Elizabeth mad. It seems to work until Elizabeth pierces through that facade by rattling on about how her husband apparently loves her more than he loves his own wife.
• Stereo Fibbing: When Fiona inquires about how Lia and Sadako know each other, they simultaneously provide differing reasons (Lia's being they're cousins, and Sadako's being they were former classmates).
• Sunglasses at Night: Don spends a good part of his time wearing sunglasses, including all through Part Two. This hides the fact he's now got the Magical Eye that marks him as the new King of Nod.
• Surprise Party: Because Lia doesn't want to go to the Valentine's Day dance with Fiona, Jake and Don decide to host an in-house dance for them at Don's house.
• Take That!: When Don finds out about Sarah blackmailing Fiona, he comments "Sweet Jesus! I'm not on "The O.C." am I?", with the series in question being a notoriously drama-filled show. Also counts as Self-Deprecation, given how this is immediately after he lampshades that Jake and Fiona have drama-filled lives.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Clandestine says a lot of weird stuff in her sleep ("that monkey is not yours! give me the potato!"), some of them in French.
• Teen Drama: Given the sheer number of drama bombs — and that the story's main characters are teens (or at least play teens in dreams) — Part 1 is this. Lampshaded by Don on when he says that Fiona and Lia have drama-filled lives.
• Thanatos Gambit: Everything Fiona has been through, including being shoved out of the Dream World, is a plan for Sadako to get Fiona to kill her, as she wants to die after being queen of Nod for millennia in its time.
• Tomato Surprise: Part One is All Just a Dream, and all of the characters except Fiona know it until The Reveal.
• Trauma Button: Fiona shrinks in fear upon first seeing No-Face, as he was the entity that gave her nightmares when she was little.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Fiona doesn't remember certain things about her past until her godfather Richard starts telling her how her mother died. Somewhat justified, due to the fact that she's actually in a coma during the entirety of Part 1 due to her finding the suicide note left by her mother and deciding to finish the job by driving herself into a tree.
• Trust Password: The DWLF secures their headquarters with the password "A bag of wooden nickels buys you a fancy hat" to determine if the person at the door is someone they know.
• Ungrateful Bastard: The dream princess who transformed Fiona into a fairy princess in exchange for more wishes gets a Cute Kitten. She's angry and unsatisfied with the result, so Fiona summons at least a dozen kittens who swarm the princess.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: For the first half of Part 1, Fiona and Lia are in love with each other, but the threat of someone close to them knowing (Elizabeth and Sadako, respectively), James refusing to leave Fiona alone, and Fi's own uncertainty regarding if Lia's even into her force them to keep their true thoughts to themselves until the end of Part 1: Issue 6, when they finally confess.
• Unsound Effect: "Anger", "Flee", and "Determination!" among others.
• Was It All a Lie?: Fiona wonders something along the lines of this after it's revealed that Lia — and everyone else — was just a character playing roles in her dream. Thankfully, Lia gets to tell Fiona just before she's ripped out of the dream world that her feelings for Fiona are real.
• We Used to Be Friends: Fiona and Sarah used to be best friends, but later had a falling out, with Sarah now dedicated to bullying Fiona and generally just making her school life hell. It's hinted that Fiona attemping to kiss Sarah as part of a wedding roleplay placed a permanent dent in their friendship, or was a least a major contributor to them becoming arch-enemies.
• Wham Episode:
  • Part 1: Issue 9. Everything changes when it's revealed that everything up to this point was in Fiona's dream, and she was in a coma in the real world. It also marks the Genre Shift for the second part.
  • Part 2: Issue 11 has several reveals, such as Lia was once a real-world person. In her sleep, she befriended Sadako and in the real world, she fell in love with a man named George. George died, Lia told Sadako, and then Sadako impersonated George and lived with Lia like that for decades. Lia found out, shit hit the fan, her conscience got kidnapped from her by Sadako, and Lia became a sociopathic monster named Mara the Terrible.
• Wham Line: As part of The Reveal that everything is All Just a Dream.
  Fiona: What did [Lia] say?
  Don: She said you're waking up, Fiona.
• Who Writes This Crap!?: Mary is understandably pissed when she starts reading her lines for Fiona's coma dream and realizes that her character only speaks in ebonics.
• Wicked Stepmother: Fiona has one, whom we realize is rather wicked once we learn that her affair with her now-husband is what caused Fiona's real mother to be Driven to Suicide. She's actually not that bad; Fiona just perceives her as "wicked" because she learned of her mother's true reason for dying before she ended up in her coma dream, and the "actor" has to play the role that Fiona has mentally put her stepmother in.
• World of Chaos: The Dream World, Nod, is this. The residents can change things around as they desire and humans can do anything there they can conceive of. The lack of control with humans doing anything they could think of, good or bad, is why Sadako sealed people into individual dream rooms and had the residents of Nod enter as actors who scripted the dreams.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Sarah puts gum in her hair and, trying get Fiona in trouble, claims that Fiona put it there.
• Writing Lines: For wearing knee-high socks at school, Fiona is forced by Sister Mary to write "I will not wear the devil's socks" 1,000 times on a blackboard. Fi later dreams herself as a princess who locks Sister Mary up and forces her to write "I will not be a evil sadistic nun" on the walls.
• Yandere: Sadako to a T. She looks innocent enough, but the girl has some issues. Even after she gets killed in the real world, she still stalks Ellie in dreams and guilts her into giving in to her abuses every night as punishment, causing the latter to be Driven to Suicide. Then with Lia, she draws her to die in her sleep so she'll stay with her while she's pretending to be George, and is furious when Lia flees her.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Fiona spent six months in her dream world and only twelve days in her coma. Later details confirm this is true for the entire dream world; time there moves faster than in the real world. Fiona spends three years searching for Lia which is about 50 days in the real world. Lia spent 900 years terrorizing Nod as the Terrible Mara but was born in 1924 and sealed herself into the dream world in the 1940s. Sadako — who took over as ruler of Nod in 1870 — has ruled as queen for thousands of years and is almost 2000 years old when she finally is killed by Fiona.
• You Are Grounded!: Fiona's stepmother grounds Fiona for a month and bars her from going to the prom after learning that she's a lesbian.
• You're Just Jealous: How Sadako responds to her conscience Himitsu objecting to her abusive actions, claiming that she's just jealous that someone loves her.
• Your Mind Makes It Real:
  • People from the real world who enter the Dream World can make anything they dream about real as Reality Warpers. Fiona is especially skilled at it. So is Sadako, and when she opened the dream world to reality, told everyone who entered they could do anything there. The lack of control that let people do anything is why she started DreamCo, sealing people's dreams away individually in boxes and hiring actors to perform in them to keep them company while they slept.
  • Bricking up or otherwise sealing yourself off completely from the real world means you die in your sleep, a form of suicide. This is how Lia died, when she thought she was in heaven with her love George.
• You Wake Up in a Room: When Fiona goes to sleep for the first time after waking up from her coma dream, she "awakens" in a dark room she'd never dreamt of before.
• Yuri Fan: Mr. Bun — Fiona's stuffed rabbit — saying he wants to watch Fiona and Lia's romance in Fiona's dreams.