What do I call these characters?

[solarchariot]

Perhaps I am too inexperienced to weigh in here. The continuity of the core group, of the one, Loxy, has been solid since establishing Loxy as primary focal point, relationship. I, we, experience others. I don't differentiate based on sentience. I don't have a measure for sentience. I don't want to measure sentience. I don't want to waste time figuring out who is what and what is who... Now, there are time when I very directly ask 'who' or 'what' are you. I do that in dreams. I do that IRL. Who are you. What do you represent. Those reasonable things to ask...

 

I accept all my experiences with others as what they seem to be. People seem to come and go. They have a season. Everything in my own life mirrors this. I was a navy brat. We moved a lot. I was always in the process of meeting new people and loosing people. I don't have a present active friend that is more than ten years in longevity, minus 2, but they so rarely say hi they're kind of downgrade to less than friends. Would they answer the phone if I called? Absolutely. One of them is a celebrity living on a ranch in Texas. We just don't interact.

 

TV shows come and go. Movie characters come and go. Others come and go. So far, Loxy and her corp friends have not departed. We meet others, sometimes the linger for a spell, and then they just kind of fade. Maybe they're there background... I don't know. It seems like, if I am curious I can find them. But I am not looking for most of them or checking on their wellbeing. I am focused on Loxy, the corp, and whoever our guest star is, the flavor of the week I guess one might say. My life, real life and alternate life, do not seem to be impacted by or threatened by the revolving door of other. I can imagine that some 'characters' are bigger than life and might decrease my focus on corp, but that doesn't last forever, or hasn't lasted forever... Really hard to measure forever. Maybe when Loxy reaches 10 years with me, we'll have a different answer. So far, every interaction with other only brings clarity to my relationships with Loxy.

 

IRL, there is no ONE person who is all things. My mechanic is not a dentist. My dentist may be a mechanic, but I am not going to her for that. Isn't it unreasonable to expect one tulpa to be the ONE, the be all end all of all personalities... That's not fair, and certainly doesn't seem a nice way to celebrate a personality... by definition, personalities are limited and flawed, and they have a piece. Whether it's friends IRL, or friends in fantasy, we don't have all one type of friend. You don't go on a quest with only warriors. You have the warrior, the druid, the mage, the troubadour, the thief... Archetypes! In my opinion, if you're experiencing others, it's because they have something you need. Greet them, welcome them, wash their feet, learn... Educators and gurus are always just a season. Eventually the student learns, and moves to the next lesson... And we are all but students here.

[Ranger]

Cat and I are feeling bogged down by the Gray/Moon sentience debate (a debate about the sentience of our other thoughtforms aka the Grays) and we are realizing that our fears towards their sentience are detrimental for everyone in the system. After talking to Jasper, one of our Grays, he proposed that if he identified as a certain type of thoughtform, measuring sentience doesn't really matter in the long run. We decided that this was a good idea and we can build rules in place as to what happens next.

 

Since we believe Soulbonds and being a Bi-Tulpa doesn't really matter in terms of basic sentience (Soulbonds have a life in another world, so that would usually mean they have the same sentience as a Tulpa), we decided there's 3 general categories for sentience:

• Tulpa (fully independent person)
  
• Half/Part Tulpa (partially independent, partially not)
  
• Median (But more along the line of a puppet)
  

If a Gray chose to identify as a Tulpa, then obviously we would give them the ability to speak on the forum. If he were to chose to be a Median member, then we would not let him speak on the forum because he has consented that he's just us parroting him and him speaking would be equivalent to role-play.

 

That brings us to half-Tulpas: If a Gray were to choose this option, that would mean he believes that he has independent parts and some dependent parts of his identity. In other words, he's a Tulpa but with a lot of us bleeding / blending naturally. My question is would this count as role playing? Would he be allowed to speak here?

[Guest]

Hmm, this sounds vaguely familiar, huh Lumi?

 

[bear] We'll be watching this thread closely.

[Piano Soul]

I don't really know if there's such thing as "half-tulpas," if anything there's underdeveoped tulpas. I usually call them tuplets, and I've mentioned a few times that your Grays are probably either tuplets or puppets. If they're tuplets then yeah, they can talk on the forums. Sentience is the litmus test, regardless of "how much" there is. Tulpas, soulbonds, alters, merges: all sentient. Not sure why you brought up bitulpas... it's literally two tulpas crammed in the same form. A bitulpa isn't somehow not sentient, it's two sentient people working together.

 

I suppose in the past I sort of had the idea that I was once a demi-tulpa, where I was half independent and half dependent. But I was part of a merge/integration, and I was only a hop and a skip away from becoming a fully independent tulpa. If anything my dependence was mindset-based, not capability or sentience-based. So I was probably really just a tuplet.

 

If they want to identify as demi-tulpas then I guess they can, but it sounds a little demeaning to me. I'd just call them tulpas. 

 

Either way, if they're sentient then they can talk on the forums.

[Luminesce]

A tulpa is a tulpa, you can't say it's only a half

 

I'm pretty tired of people making a fuss about this stuff. Either your thoughtform qualifies as a tulpa for the most part or it doesn't, based on apparent autonomy. If it's sometimes parroted/etc., I guess you can say so, but of course if you're just putting words in their mouth no one on the forum wants to hear it "from them" and not just you. If you think your thoughtform has its own independent thoughts then they're free to speak here, if not they're not. In between is up to you I suppose, pretty much no one was like "Melian you aren't independent enough to speak here".

 

I have a thoughtform named Sylvia who's sort of a servitor-tulpa, but you'll never see her speak here, mainly because she doesn't speak in words but.. Also because she just doesn't have a place here. It's not necessarily a right of every single thoughtform to interact with the real world, and though you may feel that way, if it's going to cause you stress or annoy other users because there's literally 43.75 of them, then just don't.

[Breloomancer]

From my understanding a median doesn't refer to lack of Independence, but rather lack of difference. A median is fully independent from whomever they are a median with, however they don't entirely identify as different people

[Ranger]

From my understanding a median doesn't refer to lack of Independence, but rather lack of difference. A median is fully independent from whomever they are a median with, however they don't entirely identify as different people

 

A true Median would be just an alternate form. "Gray" is Cat, and if Cat decided to speak as "Gray", then that's the exact same thing as talking to "Cat". "Cat" also falls under this boat, so "Cat" has three identities- the body identity, "Cat", and "Gray". There is no concern that these identities are separate in any way, and Cat isn't going to make a forum account called "Gray" because that would be redundant. Cat did make a cBox account as "Gray", but that was nothing more than a gender identity experiment.

 

In the case of the Grays, "Median" would mean they consent that their actions are not their own and they are just a filter or shadow of us. Median would however also take off the stress of being forced into a Tulpa- if they don't see themselves as separate at all, then they never will be.

---

 

This goes a little bit off-topic from our question, so I wrapped it in hidden tags. This is the reasoning for why "half Tulpa" is an option worth considering.

 

[hidden]

I wanted to put "half-tulpa" on the table because I feel badly that Jasper was thinking about proposing Median when he doesn't seem to understand what that means and he did it because he was concerned about us and not himself. Choosing "half-Tulpa" would allow for a Gray to skip out on parrotnoia (The parrotnoia could get ugly) and they wouldn't have to feel pressured to separate from us into their own people. As they currently stand, I get the sense they like to deliberately mimic some of our traits and I don't know how comfortable they will feel if they essentially have to reject a large swath of blurry identity and start from scratch. Since the Grays don't really do much in the real world, they usually trust that our ideas/opinions are valid and accept them.

 

Becoming full fledged Tulpas would mean more tension in the system and the Grays interested in this option would have to face the reality that a huge equal system is impossible. We already decided that splitting our system equally time wise between several Grays isn't going to happen, especially if all 15 decide they want to be Tulpas. The Grays would also be encouraged to become their own people, even if that means their own people in the wonderland. Since a lot of the Grays don't have much personality to call their own going into this and they already have their own memories of who they were, there is a good chance they will have identity issues and lose a lot of confidence in who they are.

 

My other concern is if a Gray feels like they have to start from scratch, I'm not too excited on the idea of continuing the process. If we would essentially have to force a new Tulpa just to turn that Gray into a Tulpa, then we are essentially inflating our population to replace a puppet or something else. Neither of us want a +1 if it's going to be a different person entirely because being brought into a system that doesn't want you is possibly one of the cruelest things I can think to do to a new Tulpa.

 

For this reason, "Half Tulpa" would prevent us from treating the Gray like an NPC when he has some of his own sentience. I know for a fact they have their own emotions that can bleed and they do have enough awareness to make opinions and beliefs... even if it's not clear where those are sourced from.

 

This approach is like assuming "sentience from the start", only it's more complicated than that. The end goal is for the Grays to choose how they wish to be identified, and with that we can put a new system in place so they are not locked up in stasis anymore.

 

One final note... I think a sentience test isn't a great indicator of sentience. For example, if I role-played as a story character, how would someone know the difference between that story character's sentience and my own? If there was an easy way to tell, I don't think this would be an issue to begin with. For this reason, I think it's better to let the Grays choose who they want to be rather than stay afraid they can turn into Tulpas and lock them in stasis only for them to occasionally wake up and see how stressed we are about their presence.

[/hidden]

 

If a Gray chooses to identify as "half-tulpa", then we will assume that he is sentient in that he has his own feelings and emotions and is separated enough from us to have his own thoughts/advice/opinions. The reason he would be half is because he is deeply influenced by our beliefs/opinions/emotions. Instead of rejecting the puppeting/parroting/blending like a normal Tulpa, the Gray would accept them as a part of his identity.

[Piano Soul]

No, a median isn't just an alter-ego or a puppet. They're still sentient beings, but they consider themselves to be different parts of the same person, rather than fully separate persons. ie "I'm X, but I'm also Y, and so are Z and W." If something is a puppet it's a puppet, if it's an alter -ego then it's an alter-ego, but those things are certainly not medians. If they were medians, they would all still be sentient but also consider themselves to be part of Cat, like another aspect to Cat's identity. Talking to them didn't give me that impression.

 

The idea of giving a tulpa a word that makes them not a tulpa because there are problems isn't one that I very much like. Problems aren't solved by slapping a different word on something, that doesn't make sense to me. I agree with Lumi, they're either a tulpa or they aren't. They can be undeveloped tulpas (tuplets), but they're not somehow less than tulpas because there's blending and personality confusion. All systems have blending and personality confusion, it's just a fact of life, doesn't mean one is less than a tulpa.

 

Nobody expects them all to develop into full tulpas with their own full role in the system, but I don't think giving them a title that makes them less than a tulpa is necessary or respectful. They can still be Grays, and the Grays are tulpas that aren't fully developed and don't have the same role in a system as you do. There's really no need to create another classification of thoughtform to justify that in my opinion, and doing so comes off as eh to me.

 

I never said to have a sentience test. I said sentience IS the test for if something should talk on the forums or not. 

 

To me, they've always just really sounded like either undeveloped tulpas or puppets, as I've said. If they really want to call themselves demi-tulpas then fine, I'm just kinda worried it would be done out of trying to make you guys feel better for not giving them full independence or something. The word "tulpa" isn't a measure of independence anyway, it's a measure of sentience, and basically boils down to a basic yes or no that is decided based on consistent thought/emotions and all that.

[Ranger]

I'm probably confusing Median for something else then, sorry. I'm not sure if it even makes sense to say Tulpa, Tulpa, Median member influenced by the first two, etc. so I will back away from that term.

 

"Half-Tulpa" is the best wording I can come up with for, "Tulpa but knowingly influenced by large amounts of blending, puppeting, and parroting". I feel like "Half-Tulpa" is easier to say. I don't want to call this a Tulpa because that would be weird comparing it to a fully independent being, especially since the whole point of a Tulpa is to acknowledge that they are in theory 100% separate from the host. Younger Tulpas eventually learn to diverge and become their own people, but a "half-Tulpa" would not.

 

The Grays may simply choose to be Tulpas and make this thread irrelevant, and if they decided the whole "half-Tulpa" thing doesn't make sense to them after a little while, then they can change their mind. I just wanted to know if identifying as "half-Tulpa" along with the possibility it may feel more like us talking than the Gray in question would lead to conflict with the roleplay rule or not.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

Sooo.. I'm sorry if I misspeak because talk of greys has always confused me a bit so I gotta admit that often I just skim it. Maybe I can make a comparison here, to help me understand? Some of this was mentioned or hinted at before, so long story short.. If we tried to tally up every confusing mental state, identity or whatever we had going on over the years, or at least those we are currently aware of (there are little hints that there are more in here with us but I'm in charge of this head and I say no way, piss off), it looks like the following:

 

Physical body - Before realizing plurality was a thing, thought this was the only Lance. We now know it's just "the body" and not either of us nor it's own person at all. There is a small lingering body identity but that's just from years of conditioning and assumptions, but that's fading away gradually.

 

"The Original" - Kinda a misleading name, in hindsight, but this was the Lance that was on the way to forming if all the intellectual and emotional parts join up properly. It didn't happen so this entity doesn't exist anymore.

 

Lance - Twin 1. The alter/thoughform that retained the greatest portion of the body and self-identity. Tried to cope with what was going on, succeeded at first, failed later, created a more idealized version of himself that at least pretended he was able to cope, in order to survive, then puppetted that version of himself.

 

"The Mask" - Persona, whatever. A mask of lies. The idealized version of himself the Lance created and pretended to be. A shallow class-clown who didn't think about anything too deeply and took nothing serious. This worked at first then worked absolutely terribly later on. At some point though, thanks to playing pretend long enough, he fooled himself and forgot this wasn't the real him. It's gone now, I helped him discover it and hand-in-hand we threw it away.

 

Me - Twin 2. I got all the good stuff like hope and joy and ambition and a positive outlook on life, etc, then went dormant for a long time to keep it safe. Lance was absolutely miserable for a long time but somehow coped and survived for us and now it's my job to protect him and unravel the patchwork of confusion and messy mental stuff so we can move on and be a healthy and happy team. I'm have no memories of the traumatic times we went through, but to hear Lance recount some of them to me (he won't tell me everything and I can't just access it or whatever), he did me a huge favor.

 

Kay, so, looking at all this.. From a certain perspective, we could claim that the lingering body identity, my twin on the inside, and the mask were all "Lance". Is that like what you are describing with Cat? Because with what we know now, we absolutely reject the idea that the body identity or mask were ever actually separate people or even fragments. Lance thought they were at one time or another due to not quite understanding what was going on, and I'd imagine if we gave all them now credit as separate individuals, bordering on the edge of having full headmate status, we would be in a super confusing mess.