tulpa.info book discussion club

[TB]

56 minutes ago, Breloomancer said:

i don't think you give yourself enough credit as far as your drawing abilities. you may look up and see how much better you could be, but you should still appreciate that your drawings are already pretty amazing. as far as making art, if you just have to make it meaningful, why don't you just, ya know, do that. it sounds like it would be a very easy thing to do

Thanks. A lot of people tell me my art is good, I almost can't believe people call it amazing. I don't think my mentor would think so though. From the perspective of someone who draws really well, it probably looks a lot worse to them. That's actually kind of a curse of being a drawer who wants to get better. The better you get, suddenly old drawings of other people that you used to like start to look like trash. And I feel I can draw some pretty awful things sometimes, but then people will like it. Depends on who I show it to though. For one of my closest friends, they will often think a drawing of mine is bad or not very good, and have made fun of some of my drawings. Some of them deserve it though I guess, and some I don't get why they think it is bad because I like it. Oh well, drawing is weird. People have different tastes I guess. There is some amount of objectivity to if something is good or bad though too, but it is also subjective at the same time.

 

It's maybe surreal but maybe I'm as good as or better than my mentor when I first met them. They might have said that to me once, I don't remember. I look at their very old drawings and can still see a certain level of effort and intelligence in them that I don't always find in my own drawings, especially now. Some of my drawings I do, and I don't remember how I did that. Hoping I can again with the Rena drawing I recently posted

 

And oh, just make meaningful drawings? For some reason I only can occasionally. I don't know, I just don't come up with ideas well. Unfortunate I'm not very creative I guess when creativity is required for my desired hobby/livelihood. I suppose it can be trained? I need to know how. It's probably easier than I think and I just over think things or think in the wrong way because my mind is broken

 

56 minutes ago, Breloomancer said:

yeah, i get that. in my experience dming, running the game itself isn't too hard, but preparing things between sessions can take a lot of time and effort, especially if you're running an original adventure

Maybe it'll be like my new character nitari. I was so nervous I wanted to quit but once it started I got into it. One of my healthcare workers says instead of thinking how something could go totally wrong, start imagining if it went extremely well. Maybe that could help.

 

56 minutes ago, Breloomancer said:

i love coming up with dungeons. i've got a bunch of half formed dungeons rattling around in my head that i need to get around to fleshing out

Me too in theory but then my mind goes blank. Would you share some of your ideas? or would you rather play through them so they are a secret until you DM them? My current dungeon I was working on can be mostly bypassed by the fact everyone can fly and is incomprehensibly strong, except for one room where the threat matches them. I should just put more challenges I think but maybe it's okay to have a dungeon you just destroy. Or I can magically take away some of the powers, idk... This dungeon was made by me a long time ago before everyone got so strong, but I am still fleshing it out, and would like to do it. I am not very creative at coming up with clever puzzles though, and am bad at solving them. I'd hate to be a modern silent hill game and come up with a lame puzzle or riddle that is either too easy, or is broken and can't be logically solved properly

Edited November 12, 2023 by TB

[Breloomancer]

14 minutes ago, TB said:

Would you share some of your ideas?

something i've been cooking recently is what i call "the time wizard's tower". the time wizard, like most exceptionally powerful wizards, was not entirely sane. in order to further his magical research, he constructed a magical tower and locked himself away. that was nearly 100 years ago, and nobody has seen him since, but there have been rumors about what sorts of valuable artifacts he may have left behind

 

the tower itself is a massive stone building that looks surprisingly pristine considering the sole human resident of the tower is presumed dead, much thicker at the top and bottom than the middle, like an hourglass. it is suspended slightly above the ground by four pillars which connect to it at the center. 100 times a day (once every 14 minutes, 24 seconds), the tower does a 180 degree rotation upside down. there are stairs leading up to an entrance slightly above the base of the tower, and the tower can be entered from these stairs regardless of which way is currently down, but only for the first minute or so after the tower rotates, after which it becomes jammed shut

 

inside the tower, players will discover 2 things: the bottom of the tower is slowly filling with sand and whenever it all falls down, the tower rotates, like an hourglass; time passes 100 times faster inside the tower than outside of it (which means that from the perspective of someone inside the tower, it actually rotates once every 24 hours). the tower is also full of time-related magical artifacts, and contains many unique variants of creatures which have evolved to live inside the tower over the course of 10000 years. navigating the tower is a race against time, trying to go up before the sand catches up to you, and exiting can be tricky as well, since you may find the way you came in buried in sand, so the best option may be to find a room that the sand can't enter and bunker up until the tower turns upside down, but that can by tricky as well, because, just because the sand can't enter, doesn't mean that other creatures also seeking shelter can't. and then, after the tower turns upside down, you have to find a way to safely leave through an exist which is now at the top of the tower. and then when players exit, they go back to normal time, so if they spend even just a day outside of the tower, now 100 days have passed inside, and all sorts of things will have changed

 

i still need to think more about individual rooms and creatures and puzzles and such for the tower. i have a few vague ideas, but they're not well formed enough to share. i do have an idea though that in the center of the tower players can find the corpse of the time wizard, frozen in time just after death, as a result of a failed attempt at creating immortality, and there will also be some sort of magical artifact which, when taken, will cause the tower to lose the magic that was maintaining its condition, resulting in a mad scramble to get out of the tower before it collapses with them inside

 

1 hour ago, TB said:

I should just put more challenges I think but maybe it's okay to have a dungeon you just destroy. Or I can magically take away some of the powers, idk...

i think that more challenging dungeons are more fun, but taking away powers is a very difficult move to pull off. players tend to be a lot more accepting of enemies getting stronger than of them losing their own power, even if both options result in the the conflict being equally as difficult

 

when i make dungeons, i start with a core concept or theme, like 'time' or 'lava' or 'giant mecha bird'. then i think about the history; how it came to be and what caused it to turn into a nexus for treasure and monsters. then i can start figuring out the areas and ecologies of the dungeon. most of the time i think less in terms of 'puzzles' and more in terms 'challenges'. i like to keep things open ended, but with an obvious solution that the players can find somewhere else if they're not feeling clever enough. most challenges simply come as a result of the history of the location and the fact that the players are not the intended people to use it as they are. only some sorts of dungeons allow for many proper 'puzzle' puzzles, where you have to solve a riddle or whatever

[TB]

Interesting. Thanks for your take on dungeons

[ringgggg]

23 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

1. what did you like about the story? what did you dislike? what parts stuck out to you?

I like how it explored the concept of an exponentially-expanding dream.

 

I was a little disappointed with how the story just ended without giving an insight as to how the treatment affected Mami. That made the story more an exploration of the concept of a long dream rather than a clear cycle of the events that took place. 

Instead of a proper resolution, there’s more rising action thrown at the reader, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to what would happen after.

 

That was most likely intentional, though. I can respect the author for wanting to give a more obvious nudge for the reader to think about a concept with so much potential for expansion. The format of storytelling isn’t inherently flawed, mind you. My criticisms come more from my own personal vision of what my ideal story would look like. Long Dream is a violation of what I've been used to seeing up until that point, but after thinking about what the format suggests the reader to do afterwards, I’m finding that it fits the circumstances really well.

 

Long Dream has one setting and just four characters in total, and while that can just be chalked up to the story not having enough time to introduce additional plot devices, it makes it comparable to something like an analogy where conciseness is a necessity for the idea to go through.

 

Everything in the book seems to be suggesting that the reader examine the concept.

 

23 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

2. did any of you see the film version, and if so, which version did you prefer, and why?

Nah, the book version is probably better. 

 

Apparently the movie’s only 6.5 starts on IDMb, so that probably confirms it
 

23 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

3. in the beginning of the story, tetsuro mukoda talks about how all of his dreams are unpleasant, but when mami takeshima begins having long dreams, she doesn't mention them being unpleasant. why do you think that is?

Her desires sprung from her wanting to have more time to consciously experience the world, so based on her reasoning, a long dream would have a much broader appeal to her because it foundationally caters to her wishes of being able to remain conscious for years longer. The way we experience real life is paralleled in our dreams, and it wouldn’t take long for her dreams to become indistinguishable from reality anyway.

 

The dreams being separate from the real world don’t matter to Mami because they still count as a way for her to be able to have a way of interpreting existence.

 

Mami’s pleasant dreams could also be due to the fact that she was given Mukoda’s crystals after they had become refined, right when his dreams began to gradually turn less nightmarish and more pleasant. Maybe it could be because of both reasons, who knows.

 

23 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

4. why do you think mami takeshima was so afraid of dying?

She was ill before, and probably had that contemplation that every diseased person has when they have to come to terms with the fact that their days are numbered.

I think what TB said about turning to nothing and the understandable fear of just being meaningless in the grand scheme of things spoke volumes to me.

 

Why are we here? Because a bunch of nucleotides floating around in a comet that crashed to Earth thought it’d be a good idea to link together one day. The fact that we’re conscious of that is mystifying, but something still worth keeping around nonetheless. So much so that the concept of an afterlife had stuck around.

 

Maybe an eternal dream is something like a pseudo-afterlife. Obviously, the premise of it entails that you go to sleep and don’t wake up the next day, but the feeling of dreaming for an unfathomably long time before wasting away will make it feel like a new reality similar to that of the ones that religion speaks of. The feeling of infinity and the feeling of nothingness would be impossible to discern from each other; Mami would be so preoccupied with feeling infinite that she wouldn’t have realized (or had been able to perceive the fact that) she had died.
 

23 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

5. if you could choose to have an eternal dream (assuming it wasn't a nightmare), would you?

Yes, dude, yes. It wouldn’t matter if I’d actually be alive or not in the real world after a few months because the facet of conscious experience would already have been replicated in the dream. If that truly is the premise of feeling alive (as opposed to being alive), I’d take that chance. Everything I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing has been thanks to the former rather than the latter.

 

I already have the essence of A3 brought into being thanks to unconscious conditioning. Every aspect of her can just be beamed into the dream world with no worry of her being a copy of herself. I can finally allow her to experience the real world with equal autonomy and ability as me, fulfilling my mission statement.

 

Everything we can already gather from people’s experiences of lucid dreams - like the mind’s ability to constitute seemingly fully sentient characters and vivid environments - will become evident in an eternal dream. Anything is possible in the real world, yeah, but the amount of effort needed to make that happen is significantly lowered in a dream, allowing you to fully realize the potential of the universe, as well as the scope of what is truly feasible.

 

The eternal dream is neither reality nor afterlife, but it’s a facade of both in the best way possible. I approve

[TB]

You agree with the refined crystals theory I also thought of

[ringgggg]

Yeah, I do

[ringgggg]

TB mentioned I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream in LOTPW, and it caught my interest. Would you guys want that for this week’s story, or nah?

[Breloomancer]

18 hours ago, ringgggg said:

Instead of a proper resolution, there’s more rising action thrown at the reader, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to what would happen after.

that is a very common trope in horror stories i find. often, stories in the horror genre want to leave the audience with some sort of lingering fear or uneasiness, so they will avoid having a clean resolution to the plot

 

ok, so we've read long dream. the floor is still open for pariah to share their thoughts on it, but for now, let us discuss the next story we will do

 

i am considering some sort of rule that a person whose story was last chosen cannot submit a candidate for the next story (once their story is no longer the most recent story for the club, then the can submit a candidate again, of course), because i can foresee situations where one person's picks get chosen by the lottery multiple times in a row, and i would rather avoid that. although i think an exception could also be made to especially short stories, so if this rule were to go into affect, long dream is short enough that tb would still be able to submit a candidate this round, and i have no mouth but i must scream is also short enough that it wouldn't be affected by this rule. i would like to hear your thoughts on this rule

 

for the next story, unless specified otherwise, i am going to assume that people will submit the same story they submitted last time. so i am still going with roadside picnic, and i am provisionally assuming that pariah is sticking with elric of melnibone. ring, should i take it that you are submitting i have no mouth and i must scream in place of lord of the flies? and tb, you now may submit a new candidate for this round, should you wish to

[ringgggg]

2 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

ring, should i take it that you are submitting i have no mouth and i must scream in place of lord of the flies?

Yeah, that's fine. Make it count for my vote instead of TB's because he only mentioned it before I suggested it.

 

2 hours ago, Breloomancer said:

i am considering some sort of rule that a person whose story was last chosen cannot submit a candidate for the next story

Sure, I don't have a reason to oppose it. If it gives more people a choice to discuss their book, then I'm not complaining.

 

The only suggestion I have is to add last week's candidates in if not everyone has voted just to keep those votes going

 

Can we keep the stuff we read short at first? Maybe when the club starts to settle in we'll read our first novel-length

Edited November 13, 2023 by ringgggg

[LiquidExodus]

Sorry for the delay everyone! Been busier than I thought this weekend. I'll write my thoughts here though!

 

On 11/11/2023 at 2:02 PM, Breloomancer said:

. what did you like about the story? what did you dislike? what parts stuck out to you?

I thought it was definitely really interesting. Dreams are such an otherworldly experience because it lets you explore your subconscious that manufactures wonderful stories out of what you experienced in the day. There really is nothing like it and I have no clue why our brains even do that. Is it trying to parse what happened through the day in an engaging way? Teach us something? For all intents and purposes it just seems like a strange bodily function. So I really enjoyed the concept of being trapped in a longer and longer dream. You can hear the character's fear as he recounts the events and the whole thing about him "evolving" was really interesting as well, if a little corny. I understand that people aren't meant to live and experience that much in their lifetime, but I much more preferred how they explained how his intonations were strange as if he'd been practicing different languages a bit more than physical alteration. Junji Ito does this thing in his works where he kinda just leaves things open at the end at really strange moments without a particularly satisfying conclusion. I don't hate it, per se, but it's something I've had to get used to with his works. Being trapped in a nightmare for that long seems absolutely terrifying and being helpless as you are thrown deeper and deeper into madness is what scares me more. Unlike Ringgggg and TB, I'm not as scared of dying at the moment (though that may change in the future and I understand those that are worried). For me, the fear in the Long Dream is the lack of control. Knowing every night that you can't sleep because in the span of an instant you'll live longer and longer lives and that all the previous lives you lived were all false. I explained to my friend once that the greatest torture you could give to someone is hope, because if someone continues to hope then they'll never get used to the pain and anguish of loss (assuming of course you continue to strip them of their joys).

 

On 11/11/2023 at 2:02 PM, Breloomancer said:

2. did any of you see the film version, and if so, which version did you prefer, and why?

Sorry didn't get the chance to. The thumbnail looked kinda goofy though.

 

On 11/11/2023 at 2:02 PM, Breloomancer said:

3. in the beginning of the story, tetsuro mukoda talks about how all of his dreams are unpleasant, but when mami takeshima begins having long dreams, she doesn't mention them being unpleasant. why do you think that is?

Very interesting question. I don't know if I fully ascribe to the "refined crystal" theory myself, I believed that her long dreams were nice simply because the long dreams lessen her own fear of death. In her waking life, Mami fears dying, but the realm of dreams usually has you preoccupied with whatever is happening in it. Sure if your fear of death is strong enough, you might have constant nightmares of being killed, but she seemed to be much more fearful in wakefulness in all her appearances. I like to think it's simply that the longer dreams she has, the more peace she gets from her fears in the waking world and she's comfortable living and experiencing them, even though they're not real.

On 11/11/2023 at 2:02 PM, Breloomancer said:

4. why do you think mami takeshima was so afraid of dying?

Maybe I'm a bit boring, but I think it was just kinda thrown in. The theme of the Long Dream is that Mukoda gets to live forever, but hates it because he's trapped in terrible nightmares and, even if he doesn't, is faced with the realization that his previous life was a lie. It makes sense to have a foil of someone who is scared of dying that she wants to live forever in an eternal dream.

On 11/11/2023 at 2:02 PM, Breloomancer said:

5. if you could choose to have an eternal dream (assuming it wasn't a nightmare), would you?

Don't get me wrong, I love dreams and I really want to get back into remembering them. One of the main reasons I stopped lucid dreaming was because I liked seeing how my subconscious would make amazing stories. Then again, a long dream? Living for eons or eternally? I don't know. If it was a rational and normal world, I would say no, because life would become so boring and I would lose control or my mind would change unpredictably with living that long. But if it's not a nightmare, the logic of dreams tends to always keep you engaged and focused in them, understanding context easier, and not realizing that you've been in a dream. If I'm in a non-lucid dream then, yeah I dunno that seems kinda pleasant. I wouldn't be upset if I wasn't in an eternal dream, but hey it'd be pretty cool to be in one.