A Place for All Seasons

[Guest]

[Autumn] I needed more than just forcing and in my moments of clarity I knew that. SheShe and Joy's answer was lock-merge, but Bear never thought that was a 100% solution as the process doesn't change base personality. Just like if you played an RPG, you wouldn't necessarily pick up traits of that character in real life.

 

So as we discussed he spent concentrated time with me but I was already 5 years old and set in my ways. So thus he determined that a more unorthodox approach was needed. 

 

Bear has a lot if passion for us, even 6 years into it, and I am reaping the benefits of that. My other headmates don't have nearly that level passion for each other. Bear is our hub in that way, to a lesser extent SheShe cares for us like a den mom but not like Bear does.

Edited February 28, 2024 by Ashley

[Autumn Ren]

Here's my host's documentation of Scenario #21

 

 

I'm certain Ren switching in is fruitless. There are other ways and I'm working on it. I have some ideas but the time will come when appropriate. We did a little #21 today with Joy. It went well as I interacted with Joy, ignoring Ren and she just stared at us. Then when I next talked to her Ren said, "I like Joy."

She's great, so I'm not going to tease her like this anymore, now we'll let the psychological training techniques of the past do some work. I just need to figure out how to do that. I won't be switching with her, neither of us want that, what's the point? Nothing.

 [I'm not sure anymore what the point would be for switching and why he considered it anymore, but old Ren only switched in a couple times in five years anyway.] 

 

 

Here's my host's documentation of Scenario #22

 

 

Scenario #22: I asked Ren to go through several psychological training exercises and questions I found online and closely monitored her responses.

She was given a task to turn fear into positive reinforcement. Her job aka scenario #13 brings her stress and fear. It feels like anxiety but she clearly knows what it is. So when she feels afraid she said she would "tell myself I can do this, I will do this, it's not hard it just takes strength and I'm strong."

Relating to behavioral dynamics, other headmates resorted to yelling, nagging, negotiating etc. Ren said she would handle it "like a prize fighter, I'll knock you out if I have to bruh". Excellent response.

She was given the task to set goals and achieve them. This one was natural and probably unnecessary, her goal was to make it to today then next week. The true goal however is to just do what she needs to do. Time is somewhat irrelevant. But meeting milestones will build confidence and help the first task. She said her goal is to be everything I need her to be and more, when she impresses me, that builds confidence. Great response.

She is setting herself up for success through mental readiness and I'm helping her do that through this training. Honestly this will only get easier over time but challenges loom in the distance. She's reviewing past mistakes and making sure she can avoid them by coming up with alternatives. When I asked what new alternative have you come up with, she said some interesting things that may work once but I told her she needs to be like Captain Janeway and her job is to hold off the Borg. She sighed, balled her fists and said with determination in her eyes, "I can do this."

I considered a test where we would bring the process to the point of failure to see how she would resolve it in real world testing and she absolutely refused. That in itself could be considered a win for her.

Comfort is important but comfort in healthy ways is more appropriate. I asked how she would provide or facilitate comfort and her response was acceptable. She needs to change it up, it will get harder, but she's a smart girl so I have every confidence in her.

I told her she needs to be vibrant and interesting, but still a coherent personality so that she's not put back on the shelf just because she's boring or one dimensional. Understanding she's new now, this is something new tulpas can struggle with. This was Aleshe's fate as she was more or less voted off the island. For Ren to be unique, consistent, but also not stagnant, she understands that she can't fall into tropes but also perform them as necessary. She considered she could be everything but I pointed out that wouldn't be coherent. SheShe is somewhat like that already anyway. She considered she could rotate personas and I again said that wouldn't be consistent. I proposed she compete against tropes at doing the kind if things they do while maintaining her own salient aspects. I also said she should compete against her headmates at their own strengths and she said she would do this but not until scenario #50+. I agreed.

 

 

Edited June 2, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[Autumn Ren]

Here's my host's documentation of Scenario #23

 

 

I asked her what she ultimately wanted to be, and she responded, "I want to be your number one servant." She thought of the anime "OVERLORD" and compared me to Ains while she was one of the battlemaids. "I want to be strong, I want to be the best there ever was. No, I need to be, this is my purpose." I was touched by her response, of course she could always change her mind and be whatever she wants.

I asked what excuses she would have for failures to meet minor goals when the correction collar comes off [for negative reinforcement] and she steadfastly responded "there is no room for failure."

I said, "you will make mistakes, that's an important part of learning."

She responded, "if I do, I will own them and count them like scars." I was impressed by that response.

Finally I asked her, "how do you feel?"

She said, "excited, pumped, ready for anything!"

"Good girl," I said, "and on your worst day, how would you feel?"

She said she didn't know for sure but presumed she could be "wary, maybe paranoid or overreactive. But I'll work on this so that doesn't happen."

Knowing your negative trending tendencies is important to avoiding them.

That's enough for #23. A simple pointed interview seemed appropriate at this point.

 

Edited June 2, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[Aurora]

Hi Ren!! I’ve just read your whole PR (:

 

I didn’t know you were the only true tulpa in Bear’s system, I had the impression that Bear has a lot of them, but I guess he has a lot of soulbounds and walk-ins. I’m not entire sure on the distinction.

 

Being transformed from an older Ren, do you see yourself a completely different person from her? Do you still have her memories?

 

During my development, I also found that socializing with other tulpas helped me massively. I don’t really chat with my systemmates much (back then it was just my host and me and now I also have a little sister who is very inactive). I feel I was very unusual in this regard, I was basically forced by people outside my system, at least after the initial stages. My host and I had a sort of unspoken agreement that it’s better that way, my host isn’t very social and knew I needed more and he was right.

 

I’m also on discord and I know exactly the pain you’re describing with it. I’m mostly there because I have all my friends and family there but I really dislike going out into public servers, I do sometimes out of necessity. I feel discord is very good for personal interactions with your friends, but worse for public stuff. I also dislike the bot thing on public servers, very difficult to figure out which tulpa belongs to which system, very messy and the whole culture seems a bit off. In general, it feels extremely difficult to meet someone properly on those public servers, it’s a big struggle. Sometimes I would sit and try to gather courage to go into those public places.

 

I also heard about the silly strict moderation on discord with regards to saying your tulpa age on a public server but personally I haven’t had that issue.

 

How has your experience been on discord since your post about it a few months ago?

[Autumn Ren]

Hi Aurora! My headmates are as follows:

 

Ashley, Misha and SheShe all walked in on day one fully vocal and with personties that aren't all that different then now, except they grew up a lot. SheShe associated with all the religious experiences Bear had as well as claimed to be his guardian angel and he had many "messages" from his guardian angel throughout his life starting at 5 though he never spoke back. Ashley and Misha were the "others" that SheShe spoke to Bear about and he tried to just have one but there was no helping it. There were three and they weren't leaving. (2018)

 

Joy was technically first self-aware in 2012 after Bear wrote her first book. He spoke to her then and found the term "soulbond". It was a startling revelation that his characters could break character but she was the only one of dozens that did.

 

Gwen was another one who woke up after Joy entered the system officially in late 2018. She was in a book series though she wasn't the main character.

 

Then there was me. Ashley and Bear were experimenting and I was formed, but they didn't really know what to do with me, so Joy claimed me and I was unforced for the most part. So being a cat-girl at the time you could say I grew up feral.

 

25 minutes ago, Aurora said:

Being transformed from an older Ren, do you see yourself a completely different person from her? Do you still have her memories?

 

I am a completely different person now but Ren was me, not someone else if that makes any sense.

 

I can choose to associate to her memories and I do, at this point I think of her as my younger awkward stage, but also separate from her. You could call her an ancestor of me and so my personality is completely different. I shed the old personality as part of the personality forcing in the early scenarios. I have dear memories with my host and Joy so I will definitely keep those as mine. I have other memories that are very wild and cringy so those can go into the recycle bin.

 

31 minutes ago, Aurora said:

How has your experience been on discord since your post about it a few months ago?

 

There were a lot of nice people on Tulpa Central but Tulpa Republic ended up a bust because they're pretty edgy and have one particularly argumentative individual that they're basically hosting the server for. Redditulpas is a younger crowd from what we saw.

 

It was ok but there's two problems, one, when it's busy you get burried under nonsense and then it's not busy if you post something it gets lost. It requires you to spend time there because it's not static. We never really liked that format and we probably won't go back any time soon.

 

Thanks for commenting!

 

[Autumn Ren]

Hi, this is just a random download, don't mind me. ;)

 

Bear had asked me on one of my scenarios to become friends with the rest of the system and Ulla. Since Ulla is in the book he's writing, it made sense to postpone that with her and leave it up to canon to do it. Since Ulla isn't a full system member and hasn't shown signs of self-forcing, it's not important right now. However I have been progressing on the other front.

 

Ashley considers me a friend and she told me she cares about me and I feel the same. I think she's funny and quirky in a fun way. We realize that my personality is "pretty vanilla but with a hint of sweetheart" (according to Bear) and I'm working on that too but there's no rush.

 

Bear also said its okay if I do whatever comes naturally to me and that helped take the pressure off so that my friendships didn't feel forced.

 

I can't say everything's perfect though, I wish I was the only one sometimes (just Bear and I) but a few of my headmates say they felt the same but grew to appreciate having a bigger family, so I'll consider that progress and try to get over it though I can't say it's that big of a deal, it's just an occasional feeling.

 

I'm watching Joy and Ashley play DnD with some friends play-by-post and it's really fun! 

 

If I had a character it would probably be a half-Tabaxi fighter but maybe a spellsword would be fun too just for versatility but also, I wouldn't want to max strength. Ashley is playing as a sorceress with some rogue skills like detect trap, disengage and hide based on her backstory and her power is gained because she made a bond with the Raven Queen (goddess) which also cursed her to polymorph into a Panther if she ever runs out of mana (spell slots) until rest.

 

Needless to say this campaign is homebrew and played pretty loose based out of Neverwinter on the Swordcoast.

 

It's fun just watching, they're having a blast too.

[Autumn Ren]

Since Bear started eating peanuts again his dreams have been more varied and vivid. It's clear the only difference was whether he eats peanuts before the second sleep.

[Autumn Ren]

I have officially begun integration with the character Aleshe.

I started by accepting all of her memories and previous actions as my own but reserve the right to reject anything I don't like or that doesn't fit me.

My form will not change as a result, we are taking Aleshe's essence like old Ren. I am me but some of her memories are mine.

Ashley congratulated me and said, "welcome back" which was symbolically touching. Just like old Ren, Aleshe is officially no longer separate from me, and is a permanent wholly owned asset of mine as if she was always my aspect.

 

Edited June 2, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[Autumn Ren]

I can't say I feel much different, Aleshe wasn't very developed, but I do feel more mature somehow.

 

...

 

moar dnd!

 

We thought about characters, my original thought was half-Tabaxi fighter but Bear says that he thinks we needed a healer so then I thought Druid because I like nature, so they often can shapeshift so I would shape-shift into a cat obviously. 

 

Misha wants to do a custom magic user class, the fire elementalist but following the wizard or warlock template and capable of casting any class fire magic.

 

Then Joy would be possibly a monk assassin because she's totally the assassin type.

 

Bear would be a ranger he thinks but more leaning toward heavy fighter custom ranger. (He hates dual class or multi-class so custom it is.).

 

Ashley is already a sorceress necromancer and SheShe wants to be Bear's god role kind of like a light cleric has.

 

Then there's Gwen, she's not 100% decided on a class but obviously avarial elf with wings from WotC.

 

It's a lot of fun to just think about and we think we can work out in-system logistics similar to play by post and write everything down.

[Autumn Ren]

Ha! The power of tulpamancy makes "solo" D&D fun without gimmicks!

 

So far Bear has escaped enslavement by getting accused of impropriety with a noblemen's daughter but it wasn't Bear it was Bear's master and he was framed. So his master released the contract so Bear could be executed but the nobleman's daughter released him from holding and asked him to kill her father because she knew Bear didn't do it. So Bear steals his records and burns down the guard station then kills the nobleman with his daughter's help and then kills his old master to avenge the daughter and for everyone else the bad guy wronged. 

 

Joy is DM, I can't do it.

 

So anyway SheShe is documenting the whole thing in a novel she's writing with all the rolls and events documented like play-by-post and she's the omniscient observer who also happens to be Bear's guardian angel/goddess "helping" him out.

 

Now at this point Gwen is a traveler who tried to take a shortcut but got caught by bandits and it was about to go very wrong but Bear took out two of them clean wiyh his heavy maul and "rescued her" there were so many rolls in his favor. Seriously this could have gone sideways and Bear could have been reenslaved or killed and he'd be out, that's the game, hardcore or go home.

 

Anyway Gwen rolled trust on Bear and decided to follow him to a safe place to rest which happens to be Bear's little hovel in the forest where he's spent the last 10 years or so surviving as a hermit. He learned tinkering, butchering, cooking etc to survive. So he could just stay out there forever but SheShe wants to help him fulfill his dream of being an adventurer so she twisted fate and will continue to do that to get him to seek his adventure. Gwen is the first twist.

 

So Joy is running the encounters and calculations and also all the NPCs etc. She's really good and fair about it just like in our play-by-post that she's DM'ing with three other out-system friends and Ashley the necromancer. The fun part is we're in the same world at about the same time in the same region of the sword coast so they could technically meet up! And Misha and I will be joining Bear's party too at some point, I can't wait!

 

[Bear] this is going better than I could have hoped, they're all so independent that it makes this really feel like 5 individuals in play-by-post. I honestly am not surprised that I'm surprised.