Dreamcrush: the coining post of the word and the aesthetic
WARNING: Mentions of dereality
If you've been on my blog for a while, you'll notice that I use a peculiar word: "dreamcrush". But in my one-and-a-half months of using tumblr, I've never defined what it is.
Dreamcrush: A crush that you know can't be reciprocated, due to being fictional, a celebrity, etc.
Though anyone who's fictosexual, fictoromantic etc. can use the term as it encompasses f/os, this term is more broad in mind. Case in point, my current dreamcrush: Jimmy Page. Not only is he a celebrity, but I'm also exclusively crushing on his young self (between the '60s and 1975). Of course, most of my dreamcrushes have been fictional.
The real point of the term comes from my MaDD experience. Most if not all of my dreamcrushes have been paras in my daydreams, in one way or another. I had the term in my mind before I even knew what a "para" was. As such, it came from "a crush, but they only exist in your (day)dreams".
This term isn't exclusive to romantic or sexual attraction, however! Aspec people can use "dreamsquish" or other equivalent terms based off their type of attraction. They can also use the original term if they're comfortable with it.
Recently, I've also thought of an aesthetic for it:
The Aesthetic
I use two tags for this word rn: #dreamcrush for posting about my dreamcrush(es, if there's a shift) and having a dreamcrush, and #dreamcrush-aes for the aesthetic in my mind. I may change it to #dreamcrushcore if it gets more popular, but it'll have the aes tag for now.
Now you'll be wondering: why don't the posts under the #dreamcrush-aes tag match that much with each other? There are hearts and it's romantic, but also weirdcore and unsettling glitches? What do they have to with each other?
I can't really find that many crossover pictures (or i'm not searching hard enough, idk). But I'm trying to cobble together something that resembles the explanation below:
This aesthetic is an offshoot of lovecore, with a focus on unrequited love, fantasy and escapism. The usual aspects of lovecore are still here: hearts, yearning, dates, gestures of love...
There's a heavy influence of MaDD, and its symptoms and effects, be they negative or positive.
The "dream" aspect could be interpreted in any way! I personally use dreamcore as a near synonym for weirdcore (because dreams get really weird at night). However, the "ethereal/dreamy" aesthetic and the more coherent parts of "surreal" dreamcore are the other main influences on the dreamcrush aesthetic.
Hazy filters and low quality/compressed images may feature at times to enhance the "daydream" aspect.
Despite the alluring fantasy, there's still a looming feeling that none of this will ever be real. As such, glitches are common to this aesthetic. They represent the reality calling from afar, how disruptive it may be to a maladaptive daydreamer, and the impossibility of the relationship.
There are usually two types of glitches in this aesthetic: datamoshes to represent repeating or changing daydream scenes, and the more usual neon glitches for the blurring between reality and the paracosm.
The glitches are usually less in-your-face than in glitchcore (and some other weirdcore-adjacent aesthetics) due to the nature of MaDD. This is my interpretation, though.
Music-wise, I think one of the songs that best exemplify this aesthetic is the Sewerslvt remix of Hi High by LOONA. The original song is all about innocent love, with cheesy metaphors. While it had dreamy elements, Jvnko took it up to eleven and into the realm of surreality. It'll definitely be in the dreamcrush themed playlist I'm curating.
Sorry if this got rambly at parts: it's probably me not knowing how to articulate some things (adhd+esl). Regardless, feel free to ask me anything about this aesthetic!
