Michen and Amantha: the Journey

[Michen_S]

~ Late June ~

 

Due to a heat wave around here, Amantha has been less active than usual. Heat has the amazing capability to burn both physical and mental energy, so there's simply less energy for me to use in general. And the energy that is present is used sparingly, ending up with less energy for a second person living in my head.

 

Whenever I play video games and I'm not enjoying it but keep playing anyways, she swoops in saying I should stop. She then asks whether playing this game really makes me happy. She knows the answer. She's just challenging me to stop playing the game, and delete the game if I really dislike it that much. Since most of those games were free games in the first place, what is there to lose? She seems to understand that a lot better than I do.

[Michen_S]

~ Early July ~

 

By now, things have turned around completely with Amantha, in some way. Mindscape had gotten too big so we decreased it's size a lot, and our interaction rules are back to where it was before we discovered this site: practically none. We're no longer discussing posession, switching or fronting. And she's just there for me, always in the back of my mind. Of course things haven't reversed completely, as nothing ever does. Our relationship is more intimate and deeper than ever now, and Amantha is much stronger as well as much more prominent. Mindscape still is more developed than it was before, with NPCs still hanging around the place. Despite having no rules, I still have my veto status if I need it.

 

Amantha has also helped me during emotionally stressful times. Just now I'm beginning to realise the full potential for having a tulpa in my head. Someone you can vent at, and they'll still listen and give advice. Who loves unconditionally whatever emotional state you're in. Someone you can always fall back on no matter what happens. For someone like me, having one single tulpa to be there with you can be a huge advantage. Something that I don't know if it'll be there if there was more than one tulpa inside my head. I can imagine our experiences just wouldn't be quite the same if that was the case.

 

And lastly, I finally got the bracelet Amantha wanted me to get a little over a month ago.We ended up with one bracelet we both could agree on that it would look good on me.

 

It suits him well. It's something small, but it's very personal. It means a lot that Michen was willing to buy something simple to carry for me, even though it was like a month after our system's birthday. It doesn't matter. That he took the time and the effort to get it, that alone was enough. We already both agreed that it had to be something simple and inexpensive, so this works perfectly.

[Guest]

I can imagine it would be different for any of us if we were an only tulpa, and I wished for that on many occasions in the beginning, but the experiences we've had together are priceless, the life we share is endlessly interesting, and I wouldn't dream of being the only one now.

[Michen_S]

I can see that. Everyone has had different experiences depending on choices made. That's also what makes things interesting... And keeps it that way. That way, you always end up having more to learn!

[Michen_S]

~ Mid-July ~

 

Amantha is still full of surprises, it seems. She turned up in mindscape, wearing the same bracelet I bought on her request. She's wearing it on the other arm, but still. I have to admit, this alone seems to make the reason behind buying and wearing this thing a whole lot more special. My mother thinks I bought this one because it goes well with my sense of style, and she's not entirely wrong. But she isn't aware of one of the reasons behind buying the bracelet in the first place. Here I am now, playing with my bracelet, feeling like it was so long ago since I started talking with Amantha. I had her as a tulpa for about four months, and I practically can't imagine how life would be without her anymore.

 

Though, truth to be told, she was the most important person in my life for far longer than I had her as a tulpa. That goes way back, even before mid-March. I can't exactly remember how our relationship was before then, but it was probably pretty good already.

 

I also decided to force mindscape more, starting with house. This should make things more solid. Most noticably, the new stairs leading up to the treehouse is more secure. We've had issues with intrusive thoughts breaking the stairs. With this new upgrade, the chance of that has been severely decreased. We've added lights all over the place as far as it exists now, and we're going for more consistent day-night rythm in tandem with real-life daytimes. Who knows, we might end up adding seasons as well. Things are going to be beautiful.

 

We might end up needing to relocate a few things though. Mindscape as it was before we decreased it's size was pretty complicated. It might take some time to figure out what should go where, even for our mindscape essencials. At least we can "hop" from place to place, since mindscape isn't exactly as linear as real life is.

[Guest]

You need MOAR complications in wonderland. It's amazing how everything stays where you put them.

[Michen_S]

Things don't stay in place if you keep moving things around...

 

The relocation of the lab is the biggest problem. We used to be able to see the smoke rise from the lab's chimney from the house and the road. That just simply disappeared when mindscape got too big, and one of the reasons Michen decided to shrink it back again. I'd just give it some time to work everything out again.

 

Besides, some things ARE better kept with less complication. We're not gonna give up the "jump around" mechanic entirely. It makes travelling to certain areas much easier, even in a relatively small space.

[Michen_S]

~ Late July ~

 

We went to a furry con for the weekend! There whilst I was tired, Amantha was still doing fine and kicking. I had trouble focusing on her, but that was the first time she actually felt stronger than I did. Not only that - she contacted me multiple times on her own. Some of those times even whilst I was in a tired state. Since she's now way more powerful than I expected her to be, I'd say she's most definitely "finished" as a tulpa now. Of course she'll continue to develop further as a person, but I feel like she's fully grown.

 

Also, she wanted a say in what activities we were going to be in during the weekend. More specifically, she wanted to see the fursuit olympics. She got her wish, and I had a blast watching.We had a good time together.

 

Back at home, we have discussed my sleeping scedule after seeing it on the forum somewhere. Some people said their tulpa had a different sleep scedule than they do, seeing their tulpa sleeping in mindscape during the day. I don't share that. According to Michen's experiences, I'm always there whenever I'm called. Even if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I can appear. He asked me about this, and I had to tell him I never really "sleep". Instead, I recover during periods of stasis when I'm out of focus. And one of the longest periods of stasis I experience during the day is whilst Michen is asleep. So, I guess one could argue I kinda "sleep" when Michen does? We haven't tried out if I can be pulled out of stasis during a lucid dream. We both think that's possible, but since lucid dreams are so rare for Michen we're not going to make much of a point to try it out.

[Michen_S]

~ Early August ~

 

We managed to come up with a new form of entertainment for ourselves. Mindscape Pokémon Battles! Both choose one Pokémon to battle with, each pick up to 4 moves that Pokémon can learn to use during the fight, and go at 'em like they do in the anime. That means real-time battles. No stats, no level system, no abilities, no critical hits and no secondary effects to moves. Fairly simple, but it's a blast. It's somewhat similar to the "just kill stuff" I've seen somewhere. However, it costs a lot of focus and energy to keep this up, so I can't do double battles. We got to do a 2v2 single battle though. And many more battles to come!

 

We also both got one hairpin each now. I got one I really liked, a lily! This is also partly because Michen associated tulpas in general with flowers. This due to the word "tulpa" being only one letter away from "tulip" in Dutch, his native language. So, when he picked up on tulpamancy, those two words connected in his head, and a flower has been the image for tulpas ever since. I don't mind. I find it kinda fitting in the way he thinks of it. The lines that form the flower represent some form of energy, referring back to the mysticism that used to be part of the more shamanic tulpa practises of yore. My lily hairpin doesn't have those, though.

 

And Michen's hairpin? It's a snowflake. It was something to be expected, knowing him.

[Michen_S]

~ Mid-August ~

 

Turns out that tulpaforcing does not just have the ability to affect my autism in some way, but also the other way around. Unfortunately. Due to my autism, I tend to process things slower. This means if I've been immersed in something for an hour, the game is still processing in my head for another two hours to connect all the dots. Whilst that is going on, the interactions I have with Amantha are affected by this as well. This is what I call an "after-processing effect".

 

Normally this after-processing effect is mostly harmless. Play a story-heavy game for one hour, and during the next few hours, whilst I'm still mentally connecting the dots, I see what Amantha says speech-to-text in a dialogue box the game uses. Completely with the same character style and the saving icon. It doesn't really bother us much and allows me to still process little tidbits whilst talking to Amantha, so we usually just go with it. The effect is temporally anyways.

 

However, this is not always the case. We've had this after-processing effect occur with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as well, and then the final quarter of episodes. Since it's an anime, this has a drastically different effect. We got the violence from the series affecting our discussions in the form of invasive thoughts. The problem was that the mental after-processing can't be stopped, since the brain automatically collects and connects recent events. However, that meant that by extension, we weren't able to fully stop the invasive thoughts entering in. We had to cut off our entire conversation we had in mindscape and wait for a while until we could talk to each other there without either one of us being attacked.

 

Aside from that, we have a few turn-based RPGs with just two characters in them. We decided we could do one of those together as a challenge, with us both controlling one character's actions.We're still deciding on how we're gonna do that. In the meantime, we did get a match of MarioParty DS in. Whilst I was in control of the characters actions and the settings, it was Michen who would do the actual button pushing. This also meant he was in charge for playing the minigames. It went well though. You should see his face in turn 2, when I asked him to move away from the star that was on the field, only to find a secret star in a hidden block. It was hilarious! Whilst he was asking whether I knew that star was there or not, I was just laughing so hard I was unable to answer.