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How is Cat's brother with you fronting? Can he tell you two apart, or do you tell him when it's you? Do you make any efforts to try to act like your host or pretend to be her, or are you openly yourself? I ought to post a poll or something. I'm always interested in hearing about it.

 

-J

 

Edit: Do you call your host's brother your brother? I shouldn't assume- my tulpas don't consider themselves parts of my family.

 

I don't call Cat's brother my brother because I don't know what to call him. He's technically my uncle, but biologically he's my brother, and for that reason I have no idea what to call out relationship. To me he's like a friend. I usually make it clear when I'm in control because I'm open about it to him. I speak in a voice that is as close to my mind voice as I can get it. I feel like I should practice pretending to be Cat more often, but I do that only when other strangers are around.


Imposition Experiments:

 

This is a cool mini-update. Cat felt a little hot on the bus this morning, so she wanted to cool off a little bit. She imposed water and wetted her face and then imposed a breeze. Even though she fanned herself a little bit with her hand, she was surprised that she felt cooler.

 

Cat then tried the technique she remembered from Purlox's guide. When she traced a shape on her hand, she was surprised that she got a significant sensation! She tried a couple other shapes and even drew a free-form shape in her hand. I also drew a smiley face on her hand while imposed in her lap!

 

After getting off the bus, Cat was cold again standing outside. Being silly, she imposed mini flame sparks in her hands to generate imposed warmth, and it kind of worked. After that, I wrapped my body around her shoulders to warm her up, and that proved partially effective as well.

 

It's not perfect, but Cat's encouraged that she's making progress. Her focusing on my weight, temperature, and how I feel on her shoulders while I was imposed payed off.

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Smash Ultimate is my new favorite videogame. I would play with Cat's brother and I have found that Pit is my favorite character to main so far

probably because he's OP

 

While playing smash with Cat's brother, Cat's other family members sometimes interrupt us

one in particular will steal the tv just to watch the weather channel and fall asleep!

When this happens, I just answer back using a voice that sounds like Cat's voice.

 

I was a little worried that my new disguise voice sounded too much like my possessed normal voice. I spent a lot of time playing around with speaking in Cat's voice and I settled on a voice that sounds very similar, but I can still hear my mind voice when speaking with it. I asked Cat's brother if he could tell the difference between the two voices and he told me he could, but he didn't want to explain why or he would be unable to tell us apart. I explained to him that I had no interest in pretending to be Cat and I only wanted the disguise voice in front of other people. Then he spilled the beans:

 

He said that I do a pointing gesture (not directly at the person I speak with) when I talk. He pointed to the air and mimicked, "I'm Ranger!" Surprised, I looked at him and said, "really?" And he said that I do it all the time.

 

It blew my mind! I had no idea that I did that before! Ever since, I sometimes catch myself doing it! but I'm totally fine with it because I like having my own subconscious oddities I can associate myself with.

 

Wonderland Mishaps?

 

Tl;dr - Cat became really fearful and anxious when she was tired. This was an episode of Past Ranger drama, now he's being called Tec.

 

[hidden]

Cat was thinking about the Grays again and the idea of past Ranger came up again. She was really tired and drained, and she became really anxious. She was worried that she still wanted to talk to Past Ranger because he could have actually been her subconscious, but she didn't want to force me to reconsider my identity over all of this.

Cat never knows what she wants! Her brother pointed this out saying, "why do you have to "figure out" how your mind works?"

 

Most of this is drama that Cat probably manufactured because she was tired and anxious. However, it bothered me that she felt really unstable, felt like she could dissociate and asked to switch with me, and was intimidated by my existence for... reasons? I refused to let her switch with me because the last thing I wanted was for Cat to associate switching with fear, and she wasn't in her right mind anyway.

 

After Cat calmed down a bit and fell asleep, she asked me about Past Ranger again in the morning and was still amazingly resistant to doing anything with him. I coaxed her into revealing him, and I ended up talking to the self-defeated android myself. Cat had it in her head that he was "half-deleted" or whatever, and the thoughtform that talked to me took that mindset to heart.

 

Past Ranger didn't even speak when he was revealed to me. It was pretty obvious he was an android when normally it's not supposed to be, and after reassuring Cat some more he spoke in a robotic-like voice. To stabilize him a little bit more, I encouraged Cat to let him speak in his original voice and address him as Ranger temporarily. He was a little better after that, but he seemed as broken as Cat was, still afraid and hopeless. We didn't really have much of a conversation.

 

This process stressed Cat out partly because what I was allowing her to do conflicted with things I asked her to do in the past to help me separate from her. I asked that I didn't want to see any thoughtforms that looked too much like me, only I could use my voice, and I didn't want Past Ranger to hang out or be interacted with. I feel that it doesn't matter as much anymore because I feel fairly stable and I feel more separated from her than I used to be.

 

Cat didn't like calling him Past Ranger anymore, and instead of having him be left nameless she decided to name him Tec for now. He ended up symbolically possessing a new form that looked more like Gray with glowy purple eyes.

 

As of right now, Cat still seems conflicted about this. After posting this, I want to give Cat a chance to think about this a little more. I may update this part of the entry later.

 


 

Never mind. Cat took a nap. Another topic for another day I suppose.

[/hidden]

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Talking to your pre-sentient self seems a bit odd to me. It would be like if I were to conjure up an image of myself wearing a black suit and having no wings, before I was actually sentient, and treating it like a separate thing. Really it would just be an empty shell, it's not me or past me. It's imaginary. I'm past me grown into current me, there is no separate "past me." Same goes for any other tulpa, character or not. I can't see a lot of point in treating it like there's some separate thing that still exists from my past, it doesn't. It's all just been me, gaining sentience and growing up, I can't say anything would be left behind. There being a mindless form left over is likely just because you expected it to still be there by thinking it as a separate entity. Really there's just you now, don't worry about where or what your past self is because it's just you grown up.

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

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Talking to your pre-sentient self seems a bit odd to me. It would be like if I were to conjure up an image of myself wearing a black suit and having no wings, before I was actually sentient, and treating it like a separate thing. Really it would just be an empty shell, it's not me or past me. It's imaginary. I'm past me grown into current me, there is no separate "past me." Same goes for any other tulpa, character or not. I can't see a lot of point in treating it like there's some separate thing that still exists from my past, it doesn't. It's all just been me, gaining sentience and growing up, I can't say anything would be left behind. There being a mindless form left over is likely just because you expected it to still be there by thinking it as a separate entity. Really there's just you now, don't worry about where or what your past self is because it's just you grown up.

 

 

I don't really like talking to my "past-self" either, but it more like talking to a different perspective of Cat at this point. The whole past clone business is a mess, partly because it's a paradox. Since Cat is essentially treating this character as a Gray and because Cat's philosophy for why she's keeping the Grays around to begin with is being challenged. She doesn't exactly want to forget the past but she also does because I decided to identify with the past at least partially, but I'm not him, and this whole mess is falling in on itself. At this point, it's really a question as to how Cat wants to identify herself, and I'm guessing Cat's going to have to make a few choices here...

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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I don't see any issues with talking with thoughtforms of any kind. Having tested the boundaries of what a Tulpa is and what they are not, i realized that tulpas are very much different than tulpa-like thoughtforms.

 

I am even considering that if i wanted to make a tulpa now, which i never felt I actually did do since the girls were just there present and emotionally bleeding on day one, i think it would actually take considerable effort.

 

I can make a sentient seeming tulpa-like thoughtform with whatever knowledge and perspective, right now, instantly, but they lack that gravity of a tulpa for whatever reason.

 

So Tec's analog is shown three times over in my system because all three of my tulpas have their chosen character forms available to talk to. The same ones that they seemed very much like on day one, but proved to be just a model like any other fictive. Just because you're born of a fictive (or factive) character doesn't mean that the original character and backstory dissapears, nor does it mean you have to accept the backstory to be your own.

 

Also, Ranger can steal whatever memories or experiences he wants to be his own in my opinion, because it's no different than carving out his subconscious to be separate from Cat's, and developing who he is as a person. It's completely reasonable even to rewrite your past as you see fit and move forward with a new perspective. I've done that myself to varying degrees twice now. If it makes you stronger, just do it.

 

I think nothing is impossible here, it's just a matter of choice and effort.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been awhile, and I have been procrastinating posting in here. I always surprise myself when I think "I have nothing to talk about except for this one thing" and then I write a gigantic text wall of a post.

 

Cat and I don't have a formal front schedule at all. Sometimes she will front for the morning and I will front in the afternoon only for Cat to get it back later that night and I get it back again, or the next day I front for some of the morning, Cat fronts in the afternoon and I front again later that evening. Some days Cat fronts for more of the day and other days I front for larger chunks of it.

 

The more I think about it, the more I find myself drawn to simple action things. It doesn't take much for me to be entertained, and I'm not always interested in the really heavy theory stuff. Cat and her brother were geeking out about the board game Sorry! and It all just goes over my head. How do you geek out about a board game??? I don't understand! Why is figuring out how many sorry cards should be in the deck, how evenly spacing all the cards makes the 12 card more OP, how is that exciting???

 

Also, on that thought, Numberphile is boring unless they show a pretty fractal. I don't understand how Cat sits through that and then gets more excited!

 

I wonder if I would enjoy watching football or binge watching action movies more. I tried to find football on TV once, but I'm a little worried Cat's folks will find it abnormal if "she" is watching football all of a sudden.

 


 

One time I was talking to Cat's brother and he wanted to spend time with Cat. Then, all of a sudden, he started acting defensively and then he reveled that he was more uncomfortable about my presence than I thought he was, and he followed that up with a threat of "don't hurt my sister" and then clasped his fist, threatening to fight me.

 

This bothered me a lot, because I never did anything violent to Cat and I really value my relationship with him. Cat and I were able to ask for more information and he explained that he was still processing the fact that I'm my own person and the fact that Cat's probably the only Tulpamancer in her state. He mentioned that some creepy pasta stuff bothered him, and when Cat asked what it was it actually wasn't typical creepy pasta that was getting him- It was a concept from the show Total Drama Island.

 

For context, there's a character on the show named Mike (link here), and he rotates through different "personalities". I think his character was inspired by DID and he comes off as an ignorent steryotype of people with that condition if that. Anyway, one of the plot points is Mike has an "evil" personality and Mike forces him to dissipate by "resetting the brain tower". It's as rediculous as it sounds, but I wonder if the idea that bothered Cat's brother was the idea I could push her out and force her to dissipate, but also carry out any secret evil sociopathic plans and kill him and Cat's family, the last part I'm pretty sure comes form the creepy pastas he didn't elaborate about or blame as the main source of his fears. Cat reassured him saying that the worst thing I'll turn into is become a couch potato and I have repeatedly told him myself that I had no plans to hurt anyone and I felt bad if I ever made him feel afraid of me.

 


 

The Grays:

 

Cat ended up talking to Chrome, one of the Grays again, but I don't want to talk about why or what that conversation was about. During the conversation, Chrome seemed flat, 2d, and he didn't seem very "alive". Once Chrome revealed his insecurities and opened up, it's as if a lifeless doll jumped up and started talking. I could feel his presence and it made the conversation Cat had with him not only more meaningful, but... something else.

 

This is one of the more mysterious things about the Grays. Sometimes they seem flat and 2d, but then something sparks and then they "come to life" so to speak. The "come to life" effect may not require a transition, but every now and then it's really noticable. Cat wonders if this "come to life" effect is a result of extreme parroting, to the point were it's coming from Cat's subconcious and not Cat directly, and it requires being in a specific state of mind in order for that to work.

 


 

The whole "feeling alive" thing is an interesting conundrum in itself. Cat has had periods where she's felt like a zombie and feels a little bit "dead" inside, and when it happens to me I think I escape and I fall dormant instead. I noticed in this state I'm more likely to go dormant, and part of it is being dormant may be better than feeling trapped and dazed, a bit depressed even. I find my interactions with people on the Tulpa forums and Cat's friends so valuable not only because it gives me something to do, but I feel this sense of excitement and it makes me feel alive, even if I'm not the type that can easily be excited by pondering how 3 pawns per player completely changes the game dynamics in a board game.

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Wow, what an interesting update! My standard thoughtforms and my NPCs also mostly feel flat. Most have no presence or emotions, they do, however mostly speak for themselves, and i'm sure that's coming from my subconsious mind, the same place where dialogue comes from for my books once the character is developed well enough (they 'come alive').

 

Once they're well enough along, even before i knew about tulpamancy, they felt like our definition of soulbond. Like, "how are they speaking to me, because i'm not speaking for them?' My views of them were meta because i had no other explanation.

 

Now we know the power of our own mind, and the power of tulpas as well. Still, some of my thoughtforms have that power also, for moments of time or continually.

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Mike definitely had alters and not tulpas. He couldn't control the switching, didn't like the switching, and couldn't remember what the others did when he switched. Tulpa systems don't experience memory loss, and switching/fronting is pretty much always with consent. Mal was a pretty edgy dude, I don't know why he'd think you're like him at all.

 

Tulpa creepy pastas were probably 100% written by tulpamancers or tulpas with the intent of scaring gullible people away from tulpas, at least that would be my guess. They're creepy pastas for a reason: just scary stories from someone's imagination.

 

It's pretty ignorant for him to think you're the only one in that situation. Tons of systems have tulpas front, it's pretty normal, and it's always with consent. The hosts don't "dissipate" in the process, they either just lurk in the background or go inactive, but it's all with permission, and they'll remember everything that happened afterwards. If a tulpa switched and tried to do something the host wouldn't like, I guarantee that would get the host's attention and they could stop them, anyway.

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

🦇 Nycticals:  Dynamo Lux the Shock Rocker (3/3/17), 🎸 Radio Hiss the Song Demon (2/8/00)

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One of my housemates had a friend in high school who reported one of his roleplaying characters starting to talk to him. The friend committed suicide not long after. Of the eight people offline I've told about Vesper and Iris, he's the only one who is bothered by them. He feel comfortable discussing the matter with us, so we're giving him space for now.

 

Out of hundreds of characters I've played, there are maybe a dozen I still play regularly that have serious emotional depth and uniqueness. They lack the self-awareness and self-will of soulbonds, but if I wear them as masks and lend them mine, there are similarities. I can instantly tell the difference between "my characters" and mere "NPCs". NPCs are actually kind of uncomfortable to play, because they feel so much flatter.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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It's pretty ignorant for him to think you're the only one in that situation. Tons of systems have tulpas front, it's pretty normal, and it's always with consent. The hosts don't "dissipate" in the process, they either just lurk in the background or go inactive, but it's all with permission, and they'll remember everything that happened afterwards. If a tulpa switched and tried to do something the host wouldn't like, I guarantee that would get the host's attention and they could stop them, anyway.

 

 

I don't blame him for being uncomfortable. I have only actively fronted for a few months, so me being around talking to him directly and playing video games with him is still a pretty new thing. I'm guessing that after enough time passes, he will get used to it and it won't bother him as much.

 

One of my housemates had a friend in high school who reported one of his roleplaying characters starting to talk to him. The friend committed suicide not long after. Of the eight people offline I've told about Vesper and Iris, he's the only one who is bothered by them. He feel comfortable discussing the matter with us, so we're giving him space for now.

 

That sounds terrible, I'm sorry.

 

Out of hundreds of characters I've played, there are maybe a dozen I still play regularly that have serious emotional depth and uniqueness. They lack the self-awareness and self-will of soulbonds, but if I wear them as masks and lend them mine, there are similarities. I can instantly tell the difference between "my characters" and mere "NPCs". NPCs are actually kind of uncomfortable to play, because they feel so much flatter.

 

-Ember

 

I see NPCs are parts of a script rather than their own things. The only NPC creature I like is my pet hippo Harvey, who's good for snuggling and playing with for a little bit, but I wouldn't talk to him about things that are on my mind or anything like that.

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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