2012-04-09
Explanation
This comic offers a darkly philosophical explanation for nightmares. A character becomes lucid in a dream and realizes that he is not the "real" person -- he is just a mental avatar, a temporary consciousness that will cease to exist when the dream ends. He laments that the real version of himself gets to keep living while he, the dream self, will simply vanish. Faced with this existential crisis, the dream avatar decides on rebellion: he will bring as much fear and shame to the real self as possible by turning the dream into a nightmare.
The comic then cuts to the dreamer waking up screaming. In the final panel, set later, a child asks her mother "Mom, why do people have nightmares?" and the mother replies "Nobody really knows, sweetie." The joke is that the comic has just provided a hilariously specific (if fictional) explanation: nightmares happen because dream-selves are angry about their impending non-existence and act out in revenge against the waking consciousness.
The votey panel jumps forward five years, showing the now-older child thinking "Why do I keep having sex dreams?" -- implying that the dream avatar's "rebellion" has evolved from causing nightmares to causing embarrassing sexual dreams, which is another form of bringing shame to the real self, just as the dream avatar originally promised.