Michen and Amantha: the Journey

[Michen_S]

There's virtually no sexual tension between us, actually. I have no sex drive of myself, and Michen's sex drive isn't directed at me. The only problem with seual tension we've had was externally guided imagination, caused by the way in how Michen processes information written by others and those would've resulted into intrusive thoughts either way. Those are predictable and quite easy to break by us both.

 

The real trouble here was with romantic, non-sexual intrusive thoughts. Yes, that exists. Think of things like non-sexual physical intimacy in a romantic setting. That is the kind of stuff we've been having problems with. But this was a period in general where intrusive thoughts were worse than normally, so I suppose it was to be expected they'd start popping up here.

 

As for NPCs, they just make the place look more lively. Other than that, they don't do much. The owl flaps it's wings from time to time, and the gecko occasionally changes poses. They've all got so many restraints that they can't do anything on their own outside of basic, small pre-scripted movements. We don't need more of our NPCs anyways. Though they're a permanent addition, unlike me they're only there if the area they reside in is "loaded in". Leave the area they're in and the area gets "loaded out" together with the NPC in that area. This also counts for mindscape as a whole when Michen is doing stuff in the physical realm. Like now when he's typing this out for me. I'm the only thing in his head that's active as he's typing this, the entire mindscape is inactive.

[Guest]

We added NPCs a little too early and had a ton of walk-ins.

[Michen_S]

Yeah, we didn't have that problem. With the "loaded in" time the NPCs here have been getting, the chance of walk-ins is and was rather low. Even then, the NPC creation was heavily controlled. Only already planned or created RP characters could join in as NPC. And with all additional measurements put up to ensure no second tulpa would pop up, you can probably guess the possibilities walk-ins had to appear.

[Michen_S]

~ Early June ~

 

A lot happened in this timeframe, so we're gonna have to split things up. There'll be another "Early June" post after this one.

 

There has been a few emotional instability spells here and there. Like saying one thing, and after I'm comforted by Michen, I'm in an entirely different mood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these mostly happened with sadness. Being happy or neutral is a lot more stable than those two. It might very well be related to those emotions occuring a lot more then sadness. And by that I mean I'm almost never sad. I wonder if it's just that, or that it's related that Michen suppresses sadness himself, as well...

 

I once tried to do a little active forcing session right as I was in bed, before falling asleep. Of course I fell asleep whilst I was trying to keep forcing, but that's besides the point. When I woke up the next day, I swear I heard Amantha's voice. Not in my mind, but like she was physically present in my room. It was only one single sentence, but it was enough to confuse me. Just a couple of seconds. Not sure what this is, but looking back on it my best guess was that it was a waking hallucination, as I never quite heard Amantha's voice like that ever after this single instance, even not after trying.

 

I feel like Amantha is the strongest a while after an active forcing session. I am a very small streamer, and I never hear Amantha whilst I'm streaming. Whilst streaming, I am talking almost constantly, leaving little time for Amantha to respond. And it certainly doesn't leave me with enough time to think about her. This time was different. In one particular match of Lupinball against one of my viewers, my opponent and I were both silent to be able to concentrate on what was going on in the game. That is when Amantha made a brief entrance to say something, and then went silent again immediately after.

Usually, she only popped up when I was thinking of her in some way up until then. We were already focusing on Amantha's ability to initiate contact with me when I wasn't thinking of her. That evening, she did exactly that. This is an important step in the right direction. Unless Amantha already appeared by herself by making me think of her. She already appeared to only need a split second opening of thinking about her to pop up in my mind... I'm going to need more information about that. This time, she didn't even need that split second though. That was all one day after I did an active forcing section during which I didn't fall asleep. It's interesting to see how she's developing.

 

On top of that, she also seems to be a lot fluffier than she was before. She seems to be much more detailed in mindscape now. And it's not only her, that counts for the mental form I use for myself in mindscape as well. Whatever we're doing to improve how things look in mindscape, it's clearly working. That counts for sound as well. As far as touch goes... I'm going to need to adress that in the next part of early june, because that's kind of a long story for the rest of this post. That, and it's NOT a good one.

[Guest]

That was hypnopompic or hypnogogic, we can all speak in that 'loud voice' even Bear. It's definitely imposition, something to look forward to. She sounded different because so do we, it's not always perfect, but the majority of the time we sound superreal like angels ^^. Bear just souds like Bear, Joy and Ren sound normal too, but us angels aparently sound divine.

[Michen_S]

The weird part is that I wasn't trying to impose her at that time, so she wasn't "really" present in the room (I couldn't see her). Also, my room's tiny, but her voice seemed to come from a small distance. I guess tulpas are able to mess with things like that easily because they're not physical. Also, this is the only time this has happened. We haven't had any other events like that for a month.

[Guest]

We don't do anything, no messing, we're blaming all the good and bad on body OS for now. We don't know 'how to' do it. If we're in the right state, it feels like a microphone is on and we start to be able to hear or see something, it's predictable only in that state, but once it's locked in, it sticks until the fronter falls asleep.

 

When Dashie imposed the last kiss, it was still completely unexpected, but there was a sense like static, but without sound, kind of like rubbing a balloon on your shirt then feeling the static field, just very very subtle.

[Michen_S]

I see... Well, since Amantha is far from imposed and we don't work a whole lot to that goal anymore, I doubt I'll be able to get more experiences with it anytime soon. The only thing she can impose right now are hugs... More on that in the next post.

[Michen_S]

~ Early June ~

 

Well, here's the story about touch you've been waiting for... I had to use spoilers for rather violent depictions.

 

Because early June is when I realised why touch is such a problem for visualizations and mindscape. This isn't the first time I'm trying to incorporate touch into my imagination. I've tried to do that before, way back when I was still relatively young. Say, roughly half the age I was now. Back then, I succeeded in "feeling" things in my imagination. Or rather, it took very little effort to get it done. Unfortunately not in the way I would like. It turned out that intrusive thoughts, which I already had plenty back then, used this function first. Similar to me hearing Amantha, this also happened when I was still trying to wake up properly.

 

 

The intrusive thoughts were about getting cut in my lower arm, with a table saw. When my lower arm hit the table saw, I felt a jab of pain there that immediately destroyed the intrusive thoughts.

I tried dismissing the intrusive thought before the impact, but I failed to do so. Like the intrusive thought was too strong, similar to how some of my nightmares had been. Thankfully it didn't hurt nearly as much as it would if it really happened, and it only lasted a couple of seconds, but it was enough for me to freak out a little.

 

After that happened a second time, again with a table saw, I manually put up a barriers in my brain to prevent intrusive thoughts from hurting me again. I'm surprised by how easy it was to do that. This barrier has helped me for years, despite forgetting all about it until this period in time. It was only now that I want to look at making mindscape more immersive that I realised this barrier was still up. The awareness of that makes me very hesitant to try to incorporate touch again now. It's no longer just about practise to make things immersive, but also about decreasing the strength of the barrier to do so. I'm worried that doing the latter could mean intrusive thoughts might be able to hurt me again, and some of the intrusive thoughts are still as bad as they were then.

 

 

Getting hit by a car or a truck. My hand getting stabbed with something. Getting poisoned.

They're not very common, but they do still occur whenever I've just experienced stress, or when I have stress pent up. This is particulary noticeable when I close my eyes when I'm tired, but end up with about-to-sleep terrors. I know I can make mindscape more immersive, but I'm scared by the cost it could potentially come at.

 

Surprisingly, Amantha is the only exception to this. It seems that she can "circumvent" the barrier easier than everything else in my mind. Whenever she hugs me I can feel her arms around me. It doesn't really matter whether it's in mindscape or if it's imposed, as long as I'm looking at things in first person. I'm trying to also get to feel other things she does to me, but that's probably going to take a while to get right. Not that I'm complaining too much... Hugging is one of the best things to have touch-wise.

[Michen_S]

~ Mid June ~

 

I was at a party for volunteers recently. Under normal circumstances, I'm not much of a talker, I don't like having a lot of people around me and I'm especially not fond of loud noises. Nevertheless, I wanted some company, and seeing noone familiar to talk with, I decided to talk to Amantha instead. I saw her in mindscape, with a big smile on her face, holding a drink. As I spoke with her, she asked me why I wasn't enjoying the party. She could tell immediately what was going on and why I was looking for her. So I grabbed a drink, and enjoyed it with her. Still, she told me this was not the time to force her. She wanted me to have fun at the party, talk to other people around me that I wasn't familiar with - not talk with her. I'm not the type to do stuff like that at all. I usually wait until someone comes to me and otherwise just stay on my own until I get tired and decide it's for the best if I call it a day there. I'm not normally very social. Here she was suggesting me to do exactly that. And I didn't know how to act on it. That lasted until a show started, which featured lewd humour to such an extent that it ruined my mood and I decided to leave the party prematurely. Amantha had no objection.

 

Amantha has really grown a liking towards tulpish in certain situations. Sometimes I accidentally end up think in her voice, making me confused about who is speaking sometimes. What also doesn't help is that sometimes we're thinking exactly the same thing at the same time. That's no surprise, since we do share the same brain, but it is very annoying. I once even got a message, with a tag in tulpish saying "this is from Amantha". I only have problem distinguishing whose thoughts are which, and whether or not I'm accidentally using the same voice she uses when I'm thinking. This has been an issue before mid-March, so it's not much of a surprise it has come up again now that I'm trying to develop her further.

 

As for the original goals we had, we dropped the idea of imposition. I can make her enter "the real world" by imagining it there, but there actually ended up not being that much interest in it at all from both of us. With what we have now, we have something that already works. Maybe that's much more important than any "tulpamancy goal" we could ever think of. Eh, who knows. Maybe in the future we'll work on it again. For now, we mainly use imposition for real-life hugs and to make passive forcing easier when watching anime or a movie together.