A bizarre dream; it came across as a narrative, I usually was watching or maybe even reading about it, but sometimes I was experiencing it from the perspective of the protagonist... but always it was clear that this was a work of fiction, which I knew well and was a fan of. (what it's name was was unclear, but the name of the franchise seemed to be Magnolia) This led to me understanding things not from the ongoing plot but just because I knew it.

So our protagonist is of college age, apparently male, living in a hotel his family owns in some small distant suburb of San Francisco. (His mother has disappeared, but his father remarried) Over time, some strange things happens that he doesn't really notice as they creep up on him; his appetite goes completely out of control, eating huge amounts of food without gaining weight, never seeming to get tired, appearance becoming androgynous, etc. He didn't notice these things but people around did.

Anyways, eventually things start happening around the town. Earthquakes become more common-- they're in California so this isn't hugely out of the ordinary, but they're not behaving like normal earthquakes, and it's limited to this town. Wild animals start avoiding the area, trees start growing in distorted ways, buildings begin to crack even when there aren't earthquakes. What I know is that this is because the protagonist is gaining powers and doesn't even realize it. But eventually, he does.

The military gets involved. They've triangulated the odd occurrences and traced them to the one hotel, but since it's a hotel, they think it's a guest there. Our hero, meanwhile, starts to realize what's happening: his mother was from the royal family of another world, who fled to try to avoid the life of a royal. So he's actually a princess of this other world, and his powers are because he's losing his humanity. None of these concern him (this dream is happening in my subconscious, and I don't care about losing your gender or losing your humanity), what concerns him is that other people are being harmed, and also becoming a test subject of the military.

So eventually his friend reveals that the military is quietly putting the town under quarantine, all vehicles are being turned away at the borders. After the protagonist had the revelation above the strange events harming the town have stopped, but the military was able to figure out that someone in the town was developing powers and wanted them for themselves. (They might be aware of the other world)

Our protagonist decides to flee now, since right now they're only turning away cars and trucks, not pedestrians. He starts running, running through the large string of forested very New England-looking suburbs (this is California, Nicole! Keep the plot going) without getting tired for many hours, until eventually reaching San Francisco (which looks a lot like New York City in the winter in this dream). By sheer chance he runs into a woman who I instinctively know is the villain of the story, a superrich billionaire media mogul who is secretly working with the military because she wants to use the powers of the other world to rule this one. But the protagonist doesn't know any of this, and tells her a lot of things (she just seems to him to be curious about what's going on in the town), enough that she realizes he's hiding something.

The military decides to forcibly evacuate and quarantine everyone from the town at another hotel roughly midway between it and San Francisco; they're outright telling people that the townspeople are dangerous, something is going on, don't interact with them. Our hero fears the worst and has to sneak into the hotel (which isn't hard, since the people there know him and it's kind of chaotic), only to find that they're actually being treated very well, they're having a Pokemon cosplay competition and our hero makes a sexy MissingNo costume (it is beyond my capabilities to explain what this means, you'll have to take my word for it).

However, our hero is quickly noticed by the military because he (she at this point maybe?) can't control her appetite, so now she has to escape the military base and try to hide out in the abandoned town. At this point I start to wake up and am disappointed, but then I realize that since this is just a media franchise I can just look it up online. Then I realize it was all a dream and I'm fully awake.