The original text is in Korean, and this translation was produced by ChatGPT.
What is logically possible can be imagined. So we can dream anything, and really have dreamed anything… but the dream meant when one says this is a metonym for images in general that appear when we close our eyes; with respect to dreams that come to us while asleep, it indicates only possibility. Yet real problems usually arise from such restrictions ― restrictions like the one from images in general to dreams dreamt while sleeping. In this context, perhaps the most difficult problem of reality is that changing the order changes the result. In other words, such problems of order cannot occur inside our image of a universe that simply has one additional dimension of time (or else it is the problem that there exist knots which cannot be untied; I learned only recently that these two are the same). What I want to say is that, no matter how logically possible something is, it does not always appear before our eyes with concrete marks. At the same time, dreams dreamt while sleeping are sufficiently concrete (for how far dreams and reality can be confused, see R. Descartes (1641)).
The meaning of a dream one wants to dream is now clear. The content of such a dream is made of things whose concrete forms one wants vividly to witness ― no, rather, must witness ― even though they have no route whatsoever to occur through physical phenomena. It is worth noting that this naturally becomes part of visual art. Meanwhile, without limiting the range of otaku to yumejoshi (夢女子), I can still write this: there is the fact that an otaku has at least one dream they want to dream. This fact follows from the possibility of grasping every otaku, in the broad sense, as a creator of derivative works. Here, the dream one wants to dream is visual art as a derivative work of reality.
Yet analogizing the otaku who has a dream they want to dream to the artist in general instead conceals the matter. Such an analogy, as before, is a burial: it hides the mournful property of the dream one wants to dream. The point is that the dream one wants to dream has one aspect as a natural extension of a state of mourning. After all, one who must mourn has a dream they want to dream, and one who has a dream they want to dream has the ache of a “failed” mourning ― one in which “the dead person (…) continues to live inside me.” To that extent, otaku have been not only analogized to artists, but have also become mourners.
To dream the dream one wants to dream, or to come outside the dream one wants to dream, is therefore the realization of romance, the most personal act of derivative creation, and at the same time the “success” of mourning. Yet such a coming-out is, in reality, nothing. This is because the dream one wants to dream is a double dream. Having a dream one wants to dream is different from having a dream. The dream in having a dream is oriented toward reality. It is the dream that this or that thing would really happen. By contrast, having a dream one wants to dream is a phenomenon in which dreaming the dream itself has again become a dream, and the realization of the dream has become a contingency unrelated to the will or action of the dreamer. Even if that double dream is fulfilled, it is not the result of the dreamer’s ceaseless effort; it leaves only a cloud of meaninglessness, as though the dream had been fulfilled without any change being made to the world. A dream is certainly concrete, but because it is concrete, the boundary between absence and presence is clear, and that place is a distinct front where dense meteorological activity occurs. In that sense, the boundary of the dream one wants to dream is meaninglessness.
To dream the dream one wants to dream is the end of the dream one wants to dream, in that it is the “success” of mourning. And that end, an end that looks almost like salvation, is nothing other than meaninglessness. Therefore, after coming outside the dream one wants to dream, one can no longer remain an otaku. Further, even though mourning for the content of the dream has “succeeded,” melancholy changes its direction and persists: since the result of the dream one wanted to dream is meaningless, one again clings to its aftertone. The end of the dream one wants to dream resolves nothing; it merely castrates the dream. Since the dream has ended, when time passes and the clouds clear, the content of the dream one wanted to dream will at last no longer remain. This natural forgetting, which one might also call treatment, is the murder of derivative creation, and a graduation beyond graduation. What remains is only the boundary that will sometimes be seen.
Thus, at the endpoint of this analysis there is the injunction that the dream one wants to dream must not be dreamed. If there is a property of necessarily arriving, that property is no longer optimistic. Unless an otaku comes to hate being an otaku, an otaku wants to be an otaku for life. The strategy of producing a new dream each time a dream ends does not solve the problem. Therefore, the dream one wants to dream must not be dreamed. To shake off this inevitable double bind, there is no choice but to realize the dream one wants to dream without dreaming it. From this it follows that the otaku is placed in a situation where they cannot help but become a creator of derivative works in the narrow sense. Now I claim, finally, that this double bind surrounding the otaku’s dream one wants to dream is precisely the fundamental problem of the otaku.