On Tulpas—an essay about plurality in general and tulpamancy in particular

[Shinyuu]

Tulpas. A community with questionable ideas and goals, united by a mystical word. Dozens of people practising forcing, hypnosis, altering their consciousness, meditating, trying to cope with their disorders. They are united by a goal to create what Wikipedia calls “an imaginary friend”. But what are those tulpas?

 

Humanity tries to figure how consciousness works for a long time, creating and disproving hundreds of theories. Are some people more suited to be “multiples”, to house more than a single consciousness in their mind? Are others bound to be singlets?

 

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Note from GAT: While the page linked is clean/SFW, other pages/articles on Shinyuu's blog are not. Tread carefully if you are at work/school or are a minor.

 

waffles noted you want a backup link too. I'm experimenting with off-site copies on medium.com, so this article will exist even if I die (unless medium dies first).

[Jamie]

Review here (Google Docs link)

 

Opening and conclusion paragraphs: 

 

Hello! Gavin here. I love to see general essays about tulpamancy written by those within the community: stuff like this is often the first introduction people have to tulpamancy. That being said, this one needs some revising in order to do the topic justice. With some revising, I think this will make a very solid general piece on tulpas.

 

I’m going to be commenting for each paragraph or so saying what I felt the main point was. You might find benefit looking at the list in Ranger’s review, and deciding which points you want to convey.

 

Overall, a nice piece, but it isn’t going in a clear direction yet. Find a stronger central point (it can be pretty general, still) and have at it with a new draft or a revision, and I think this piece will end up as something really great. I didn’t go into grammar because I think so much of this could be changed around, it’s not worth going into nit-pick level for paragraphs that might wind up slashed. As is, I can’t approve it, but once it’s revised to have a clearer point and some of the other issues are addressed (confusing definitions, apparent contradictions, lack of sources), I’ll be willing to do so.

[Breloomancer]

It is incorrect to see tulpas as lesser beings only based on them not being able to control the physical body, or preferring wonderland to the physical world. You must consider the tulpa’s personal age and the amount of experience that the brain accumulated before they came to be. It would be unreasonable to ask a two-year-old tulpa to be a perfect hiker, even though they can relate to twenty years of previous host’s hiking experience – personal experiences are stronger and more efficient than ones of your systemmates

 

many tulpas can control the phisical body, and many systems are able to use the experiences of their systemmates just as well as their own. sometimes a tulpa is also just natrually really good at something despite no one in the system having had experience with that thing.

 

other than that paragraph all of the general ideas were good, though in a few cases the phrasing was odd. I won't go over the phrasing though because my biggest problem with it is that none of your different ideas fit together into a coherent essay, it's all just throwing an idea out there then immediately moving on to something else. to fix this would require rewriting almost the whole article, so for that reason any phrasing corrections would be rather pointless.

 

I'll approve once you have an actual thesis that the article is built around