I'm roommates, in the dream, with three people, including this guy I met on OkCupid, who outside of the dream I'm now friends with, but haven't really wanted to hang out with because he's hard to talk to. (I've been avoiding a message he sent me asking if we can hang out, irl, so he's been an actual source of anxiety.) In the dream, I see him watching cartoons (irl he loves cartoons), and I realize that I've forgotten that he's my boyfriend(!!!) but we've only been friendly recently and haven't done anything romantic for months. I ask him what he's watching and he says "Sailor Moon Returns -- my favorite!" That episode videotape doesn't exist IRL but I remember in the dream that it's one of my favorites too, so I start watching too. I get tempted to call it a date and snuggle with him, but I realize that we haven't talked in a while and we might just be friends now(?!? Dream logic).
Plot of Sailor Moon Returns (in my dream) is that Sailor Moon comes back from somewhere after YEARS of being away and has pretty significant amnesia -- and at some point has to get married? Maybe she's engaged? And defeats a monster/person/villain at the end before a great romantic ending with Tuxedo Mask or whoever the fiancee is.
Perspective switch to being in the movie -- except that it's live action and I look just like me. There's a castle (grey stone inside and outside, like a cathedral or an Ivy league school) and I'm wandering through it. Layout-wise it's like it's an IKEA in that there are no alternate routes through. I see the guy who's supposed to be like Tuxedo Mask -- who is incredibly cute and has curly hair, and makes me wonder why I must have left without him (amnesia). At one point I see some pictures of the two of us in a hotel room -- not embracing, but together and happy. I'm struck by how young we are (probably middle school! -- which would mean we're probably high schoolers in the dream) -- then a brief flashback to some previous movie in this series where we're in love and together (vague, no dialogue). Back to current movie, I keep trying to piece the relationship together while I follow this castle path -- layout wise it includes a shower (where there's an awkward scene where I can't figure out this complicated shower curtain system, then realize I forgot my soap and shampoo and say to myself "screw it, I'll just rinse off") and at one point a huge trap door that I fall through. As I go, I find a huge project that I worked on and gave to him as a present when we were little kids. There are crowds of people everywhere -- and at one point when I'm holding this big construction paper poster that I apparently gave to him, someone in the crowd -- my mother? -- mentioned that it had always bothered her that he'd given me a VERY small present in exchange. I retrace my steps and go off looking for it in the castle, and when I find it, it's about the size of one of those paper valentines you get at the grocery. I end up finding two other valentines that belonged to other kids -- one of which was kind of a hate mail valentine? -- and I throw them out.
As I approach the end of the one-way path, I realize that I'm heading to the end of the plot -- I need to defeat these huge monsters and then I'll be done.
At some point I go to sleep (in the dream), sleep for like 3 hours, and wake up to find my family and ANOTHER guy in the suite(?) with me. The guy reminds me of Jess from "Gilmore Girls" and I start to wonder if there had been a love triangle. I also notice that HUGE crowds have been gathering. They've been setting up parade bleachers along the one-way route I took through the castle, and performers are reenacting things along the path while the audience cheers. I realize that 1) they're waiting for me to fight the monster, and 2) I have a killer headache and must have lost my glasses en route. So I start climbing through the bleachers, trying to take the path back and looking for my glasses, while all these elaborate shows are going on. At one point, spotlights point at the bleachers right below me and all these five-year-old kids in big, leafy costumes run out of that bleacher aisle and onto the stage. I don't pay attention to their act because I'm too busy trying to get out of the bleachered areas and retrace my steps -- hoping my glasses hadn't set themselves on one of many ledges en route down the trapdoor, knowing that I'd have to fall through it again and grab them with perfect timing on the (painful) way down.
Woke up with a headache -- so that's why there was a headache in the dream! -- and with glasses intact. Also felt residual anxiety from the looming threat of fighting that monster, and from the weird love triangle situation.
At some earlier point in the dream there was a scene where these two men met each other in a gymnasium-like space, recognized each other as familiar/special, greeted each other, and then started growing. Was about as creepy as the werewolf transformation sequence in "An American Werewolf in London", only no sound effects, and these guys were turning into hyper-muscular (and shirtless/greased up like bodybuilders) giants, about ten stories tall, warped and with tiny heads and tapered limbs like in a Salvador Dali painting. They laughed the whole time. I saw that either in a flashback to another movie, or en route down the path. Either way, I figured the monster at the end would be one or both of those guys.