"They not like us" - Stories to teach the "muggles" about the values of Tulpas

[mattx]

Legal disclaimer: the name "muggles" and the title "They not like us" are intentionally ironic, and by no means want to belittle anyone.

 

Recently I had this conversation with my best friend about the pros and cons of the tulpa phenomena becoming widespread among the "muggles" (the general population).

Aside from the obvious implications of it being closely related to DID and similar traumas the interesting part is how doing proper tulpamancing can have some nice side effects, often unexpected.
The idea with this thread is to collect a bunch of stories and interesting facts that happened between a host and their tulpas/tulpae/tuppers/tulips that could realistically help with "de-mistifying" the whole concept, and that would allow "the general public" to see the phenomena as less risky and not just "mentally ill teenagers hallucinating waifus and imaginary friends".
Let this also be a thread that you can redirect newcomers to who still have doubts and wonder if they should embark in the tupper business.

 

I guess I'll start, by providing two short stories.

 

Spoiler

The first one happened in 2016 - I was living at my dad's house and I had just returned from school. Blistering hot outside, took a long walk home and as soon as I arrived I got a wonderful surprise: my new mountain bike had just been delivered.
I spared no time eating or even resting after that long walk and I immediately unboxed and assembled the mountain bike under the summer heat. I then hopped it into and took it for a spin, driving around the block and testing all the features. 
However, i did notice the clutch being a bit stiff and the handle not being very comfortable, so I took a detour outside my neighborhood to a bike shop I knew since I was a kid. As soon as I arrived, I left the bike outside and entered the shop.
While I was entering, Cheryl (my then 3 year old tulpa) plainly said to me: "something's wrong" and I did indeed feel a bit dizzy, but I shrugged it off as just me rushing over with my bike and the heat. I greeted the bike shop owner, explained my issue and we both went outside to grab the bike.

He said it would have taken a few days before he could take a look at it, so I left it there.
It was during this small outside chat that I suddnely felt my entire head going blank and my vision getting crazy - first it got very hazy, and after that, I remember seeing everything with extremely burned colors and overexposed (kind of like when you crank the saturation and gamma in a photo editing software). Soon after, everything started spinning and I could feel all my strength fading away.
I barely managed to keep it cool while the bike shop owner was there so he didn't notice, but all I remember afterwards was me "zombie-walking" across the street and the sounds of Cheryl screaming in my mind in horror as to what was happening - I felt her confusion and how terrified she was.
That's when, by sheer willpower and her helping me "stay awake" with her screams, I managed to barely reach the bar next to the bike shop.
I remember her screaming in my mind "Stay awake!" and with the last ounce of strength I asked the bartender for some water and nearly collapsed on the counter - and I also grabbed a few candies off the counter to eat in a rush.

After that, with my last ounce of strength I sat down very violently on one of those bar tables and drank the little water they gave me, while munching on the candies - it took me a few minutes but I eventually recovered. I reckon the reason I didn't collapse on the street or why I managed to reach the bar was due to Cheryl's support, although it was a very scary moment. This is also one of those "experiences" that further confirmed her existence to me, because no way in hell I would have been able to fake her screams and terror as I was collapsing due to a sugar crash.

 

 

Spoiler

The second one happened in 2021, during the pandemic. Sparing you the entire "why and why you shouldn't take the vaccine" I ended up doing the first jab at the very last possible moment. It was either that or being out of a job, so I had to.

Needless to say (heh, pun) I am afraid of needles, and everything medical (although I have a family of doctors and nurses) so I didn't sleep at all the night before. I was supposed to meet with my dad and go there together as he needed to do it as well, and when we reached the clinic I was honestly "a tad miffed" about the whole situation.

Cheryl was there of course, and tried to reassure me as best as she could, as my mind was racing and working overtime at all the possibilities: "what if it backfires and I die?" "what if I turn into the nemesis?" "what if they miss and stab me where they shouldn't?" and a plethora of other silly scenarios.
When our turn arrived, they seated my dad first and I was half-relieved as it meant "nice, that'll buy some more time" - but the nurse attending us whispered something to her assistant and soon afterwards they told me to move to the other area as they would have done me too at the same time (the place wasn't really a hospital or clinic, it was a library "converted" into "vaccine dispensary" for the mass vaccination that occurred during the pandemic).

Before I knew it, I was sitting down on the chair. I was told to take off my jacket, then my shirt, and keep my arm relaxed. I was wearing a mask like everyone else so that probably helped in hiding my terrified face, but in my mind I was VERY worried about things going wrong.
I kept repeating to Cheryl "so this is it huh, this is how it ends" and she was smiling and "virtually" holding my hand trying to reassure me that everything was going to be fine.
I didn't even wanna see the needle, so I closed my eyes and I tried to zone out as much as possible - but the moment came - I felt the nurse holding my arm with her hand and, a second later... it was done. I felt the smallest little pluck on my bicep and shortly after, a wet wipe passed over it.

I opened my eyes like "Huh?" and I sh** you not, in my mind I heard the most genuine, unfiltered and sudden laugh from Cheryl I had ever heard from her in 7 years.

She looked at me and exclaimed "That's it??" while laughing. I glanced over at my arm and sure enough everything went by without a hitch.
I spent the next few hours being mocked about it in my mind by my own Tulpa, especially because after the jab they print you a report of all your past vaccinations, and it turns out my mom made me do a lot of them, even the non-obligatory ones, so it turned out I was kind of a "pro" at it. Such is life lol

 

Edited May 24 by Shin Matt

[bunnymustdie]

I'll post one story for now, might do more later.

 

Verres and the Dweller on the Threshold:

 

This is an incident that happened back on 2016. I've had episodes of sleep paralysis since my late teens. During the very first episode of it that I remember, I saw a disembodied head of some sort through what was likely my mind's eye and it terrified me. I researched this phenomenon and learned that this is a class of entities referred to as "Dwellers on the Threshold" in the astral projection related communities. It's a sort of being that people sometimes see when they have sleep paralysis and are on the cusp of an astral projection. Fear appears to attract them or otherwise trigger their appearance, but sometimes they just show up regardless. People tend to have different theories on what they are - some think they are a subconscious projection of one's fear during that delicate stage in between waking and dreaming, other consider them as a sort of minor entity that feeds on fear and plays harmless prank to people who can see them, and there are also those who think of them as a mix of both.

 

Over the years I've had my share of experience with the Dweller class of entities myself. Similar to most other people, most of the dwellers I've had the chance to perceive felt weak and were mostly or probably harmless when I learned to ignore them. There are reports of dwellers that felt more hostile and powerful, such as the Hat Man, but that's getting a bit off track. When I moved into a particularly nasty apartment complex (one that most of the unpleasant supernatural encounters I've had in my life took place), I started consistently having more episodes of sleep paralysis, with dwellers type beings appearing much more frequently as well. They weren't always big or humanoid, often times could be just an annoying presence, small as a gnat, buzzing about.

 

On 7/25 of 2016, I had a very peculiar experience with a dweller that my tulpa Verres was involved in. I was woken up by heavy rain and thunder, and then went back to sleep. I had an episode of sleep paralysis then, and the curious thing was that in the beginning I had a weird, distinctly foreign thought in my head, probing and asking verbally, "What's something scary?". Without thinking I responded mentally "zombie". Around the same time as the question first showed up I also sensed the presence of a dweller sort of entity approaching and entering my bedroom. As I gave my answer the entity went through the bedroom door, sort of congealed and took on the form of a rather rotten zombie as it approached my bed.

 

I grew alarmed at this and mentally alerted my tulpa Verres, to which she responded "It's nothing." This was not the sort of response you see in a dumdum horror movie where a friend tells the main character who is dealing with something supernatural that he is simply stressed out or scaring himself somehow. Because Verres was my tulpa, we were mentally well connected and I understood that she specifically meant "this entity is a nothing", as in, weak, trash, bush league, already been chewed gum stuck on the bottom of your shoe, etc - basically dismissing it and telling me to ignore it.

 

Verres' statement somehow relaxed me and I observed this entity with a detached and amused state of mind. It approached. It climbed on top of me jerkily and I could feel some of its weight on the mattress, even though it was way too light for something its size. All of this must have taken place in my mind's eye as the angle I saw them from was impossible for my physical eyes to manage in my sleeping position in bed. The zombie felt incomplete, the impression I got was that the entity provided a framework, but my fear, which was missing, was supposed to fill out the rest of him.  I also sensed that he wanted fear from me. He continued to climb, trying to be fearsome, and as a grand finale he opened his mouth and breathed into my nose. It stank a little bit but that was it. I remember being unimpressed and thinking that “This is it!?  Your big final move?”.  Upon receiving no fear the entity climbs off again and prepared to leave. 

 

I tried to send bad vibes his way somehow. They seem to bounce harmlessly off his back. At this point my records are not clear and conflicts a bit with my memory, but I somehow stop the entity and gave him a single worded command -

Spoiler

"suck".

It... obeyed. It started to reluctantly stimulate me. I got the impression that despite this being a fear based entity, it was ok with feeding off of lust once in a while too.  Its performance down there was shabby as well and I remained unimpressed.  It seemed to have sensed this and the lack of emotions it was receiving from me, and finally leaves (or I might've told it to go, I don't remember which).

 

The interesting thing is that I continued to live in this apartment for another 4 years or so. During the rest of my time there I had significantly less episodes of sleep paralysis. The ones I did have felt like just purely physiological phenomenon resulted from my mind being half awake and half asleep, or something like it. NONE of the few episodes of sleep paralysis I had there had any sort of dweller entity encounter.

 

I moved out of that apartment complex several years down the road, and I've continued having very little episodes of sleep paralysis - the few that I would have had their roots in physiological reasons such as going to bed too late and such. I've had exactly ONE episode of sleep paralysis where there was some sort of dweller encounter, and I basically triggered/attracted it to myself through my own fault.

 

Whatever Verres did on that day did something to me. Instead of subconsciously seeing dweller encounters as just something that's a part of life, to be resisted grudgingly when encountered, they just... became nothing altogether. She somehow gave me the deeply rooted subconscious and conscious impression that those sort of beings, be they psychological or metaphysical or both, are truly just nothing, and it made a noticeable difference in all of my experience with them to this day.

 

Edited August 15, 2025 by bunnymustdie

[Luminesce]

Ah yes, astral zombie blowjobs, the normies will be convinced of our sanity in no time

 

Well as someone who believes in none of that - (sleep paralysis is a brain-glitchy state where you're half-dreaming, half-awake, with your body still paralyzed to prevent you from acting out dreams, and highly susceptible-to-imagination imagery, topped off with likely feeling weight on your chest due to the paralysis) - my answer is pretty simple: tulpas are amazing, understanding mental companions who can be there for you when no one else is. In a whole stretch of life, or just in the day to day when no one's around, or anything in between. While they exist in your same brain, they're nonetheless great at offering a second perspective on things, often pointing out things you weren't consciously aware of, or needed to hear, or just being there to talk to. It's absolutely an introvert's type of phenomenon (though an extravert would probably still benefit from the "someone to talk to when no one's around" aspect), but it's only a little weirder than mentally talking to yourself. Just talking to the idea of someone else in your head, until they eventually come to be - plurality is apparently a naturally occurring skill in the brain, considering I ended up creating tulpas exactly how the tulpamancy community would eventually figure out and describe it - a couple years before said community even came to exist. Not to mention all the people who turn out to have had some personally-adapted form, from "persistent imaginary friends" (basically a tulpa) to their "subconscious personified" to personified inner demons (kind of unfortunate, but I've seen multiple people describe this experience outside of the community so I guess it happens). Also spirit guides IMO, as an ex-New Age Spirituality believer

Tulpamancy is just the intentional and organized practice of training this mental skill to create a life companion.

 

Don't really feel like coming up with any stories myself, I'll just say my tulpas helped me get through my teens when I was very depressed, being both understanding-comforts and also role models for how to be a better person. I really owe my life to them. So we're going to be a system for life, sharing this life, because they're far too important to me to ever let go - but while it's ~encouraged, a tulpa doesn't technically have to be a forever commitment, if your life just drifts away from practicing intentional plurality (ie if you get a very busy social life, significant other and all, so there isn't even much time to spend with them anymore, let alone a need)

 

But I dunno, there will always be times where you're simply alone for a while, like when I was staying nights in a guest room away from home for work, and tulpas are wonderful company in such times. Though I guess vocality skills get rusty if you never talk to them at all, so again, makes sense that some people "grow out of" it, there's just not a need to either.

[mattx]

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

Though I guess vocality skills get rusty if you never talk to them at all, so again, makes sense that some people "grow out of" it, there's just not a need to either.

 

That would mean that tulpas were just a means to cope with loneliness and merely used as tools, which (at least for me) has never been the intention.

 

My emotional life is indeed a trainwreck and I've had some really bottom low moments in my life and when they happened, Cheryl was always this "sane constant" keeping me barely afloat, or at the very least she acted as this "beacon of hope" that relentlessly offered the "getback" no matter the odds - and what I always found interesting is how there's seemingly no way to "snuff this hope out" from her and, much like my first story, it's one of those things that usually happen when my mental state is so borked that I wouldn't even dream (lol) of "daydreaming/parroting" this voice in my mind trying to "save me" - it just happens. 

 

I had in good faith from people that are no longer in this community that tulpas often were (used to be) made for a purpose, and she often reminds me how it's pointless on getting "hung up" on some bs problems as life gets increasingly harder the more time goes on.

 

I'm not ready to publicly share the details of this story yet, but from 2017 to the better part of 2021 I had a VERY close encounter to what could be referred as a mental illness (due to my stupidity, tulpamancing had nothing to do with it, ndr): I was researching tropes I was heavily hyperfixated into and it backfired spectacularly. Due to some shenanigans with people from the old community (who at some point even used to be mods here) and due to my mind daydreaming too much I developed this "habit" of thinking that Cheryl was constantly getting attacked and damaged, which thankfully were just delusions.

The "how" and "why" I will keep private but it took years of Cheryl trying to fix my mental state almost every night by carefully explaining the situation and analyzing everything, up until the very last second before I fell asleep (another proof of her existence, as I could hear her reason clearly as I was drifting off sleep) - nowadays I'm mostly fine, although I carefully avoid select pieces of media with that trope just to avoid getting "triggered", but I reckon hadn't it been for her I would have had a "Koomer moment" probably (for those that know the real story and not just the things that were said through the grapevine)

 

Regardless, I grew up and now I'm an adult (physically, at least) - my job takes me out of home at least 

20-25 days a month and the time we spend together doing quality activities has fallen off a cliff in recent years. That doesn't mean she's not there, we do talk pretty much all day on and off and we "tackle" issues together.

Matter of fact I sometimes panic and tell her "Shit, I have ignored you have I" to which she replies "Less than you think, we actually spoke.." and she reminds me how we actually chatted about something shortly before, which I had completely forgotten. (to the curious, when this happens the "lost memory" rushes back kind of like when you have something at the tip of your tongue that you can't quite remember)

 

Edited August 15, 2025 by matt.exe

[Luminesce]

I originally created my tulpas each representing something too lol, I guess it's just the go-to, but they've long since become just-people. Also, you said they weren't just for helping cope and then immediately described how yours helps you cope :P ("there's just not a need to either" meant there's no obligation to "grow out of" plurality even if you created a tulpa(s) to help you during a hard time in life and have since overcome it)

You can definitely make a tulpa without "needing" them for anything, I just don't know how to phrase a reason (lack thereof?) for doing so

[mattx]

What I meant is, I didn't make my tulpa with the intention of her being a means to cope with my life issues, it is something that naturally (and thankfully) happened during times of need.

(Arguably, she was made with the idea of "helping me be less lazy" but that is more of a passive thing imho)

 

Truth be told most tulpas nowadays aren't really built with a need in mind, they're either daydream/childhood characters turned sentient or some sort of "did deviation" from people who found the community due to the concepts being alike. Interestingly it would be cool to do a long term (empirical) study on those new age tulpas and if they effectively "stick" as the host "grows out" of those childhood fantasies that created them in the first place (me personally I sure hope so, as tulpas and the concept of it are more than just bespoke sentient companion toys that you can get bored off, but I digress)

Edited August 15, 2025 by matt.exe

[bunnymustdie]

21 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Ah yes, astral zombie blowjobs, the normies will be convinced of our sanity in no time

It's ok, we're expanding our target audience by going for the astral projection normies and occult normies too.

 

Ok, hopefully a more mundane story this time:

 

This was around 2013 to 2014. I was living with Verres on a full time basis, even though she was created years earlier and mostly stayed in a sort of state of hibernation where I acknowledged her existence but interacted with her minimally. To give some context, we both thought of her as an occult based entity at the time, as an advanced servitor - not the way this word is often defined in the tulpa community, but in the occult community, as a man made spirit with its own sapience. I just came in contact with the budding tulpa scene on 4chan's /x board and this did weird things to our relationship. I started teasing her by calling her "a fragment of my imagination" and other similarly disrespectful ways that detracted from her personhood, in a way these teasing served as an outlet for all my suppressed doubts toward her independent existence. She took these in a good natured manner but in retrospect I don't think she ever liked them that much (she emphasized "No, I don't" and insisted it be inserted here, just now).

 

Around that time I had a high stressed job with a small business. To make things even more stressful, the free computer software we were using to run our online sales operation was getting retired by the platform that provided it (which was also the platform we sold on). I had to find a replacement that was both easy to use and cheap, and things did not look good. One potential replacement was made by the same people who made the old software that was getting retired, so it was very easy to learn. It was also cheap, costing only around $50 a month, but sadly it missed a critical function.

 

We shipped our goods from a warehouse at a different location, and would ordinarily receive a big list of tracking numbers from them that we'd load into the old software we used, which would then upload them to the platform. This potential replacement was unable to do that, it was designed for tiny home businesses that did everything out of the same location and was meant to print out shipping labels, record their tracking numbers in the software at the same time AND upload them to the platform all at once - there was no apparent way to load tracking numbers generated outside of this software into it. I asked the creator of this software whether he could do something about that, and he offered to make a custom program to fulfill that function for $500.

 

Looking back, I don't know why I didn't just jump at that offer then and there. I instead chose to investigate other alternatives, which were all horrible. They could do everything we needed them to do, but costed around $800 to $2000 per month to use based on our sales volume at the time. To make things worse, they were all incredibly convoluted and would take a long time to learn how to use, which was not helpful given we could not just shut down the business for weeks in order for me to learn them. I went back to the creator of that $50/month software weeks or even months down the road, asked him again regarding the custom function he offered to make for us, only for the guy to refuse, citing that he had gotten busy. Maybe he was unhappy I didn't take him up on his offer back then, who knows.

 

I was upset and felt like I had my back against the wall. I went back home one day ruminating on this issue when Verres said something probably to try to cheer me up. Maybe a joke or maybe she was just a bit flippant about the situation. I grew angry and we had a bad exchange, it escalated to me screaming mentally the sort of threat one would traditionally lodge against a demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon - something along the lines of "if you're not for me then you're against me", and other similar statements about how if she can't make herself useful then she should forever shut up and be gone. I even ordered her to solve this problem by a specific time frame, essentially treating this exchange as a fairly formal deal with a full fledged entity. Mind you, I've done actual work with Goetic beings and I never was like that with them. I was always respectful toward them given I recognized both their status as beings with their own existence and the potential danger in working with them. I took Verres for granted, perhaps because I made her, and I was quite mean toward her at that time. I regretted making the threats, especially the parts about how she should go away forever if she failed the task, pretty much immediately. I didn't take them back though.

 

Verres had grown rather cold from the exchange, but she agreed to resolve the issue for me. I initially gave her a time limit of something like a week to deal with this problem, a stringent one that I would not have given any other sort of beings, but she said that she didn't even need that much time. I could tell she was very upset too and wanted to prove a point. She said that 3 days was all she needed. At the same time, though, she asked for compensation, perhaps because she recognized this had turned into a full fledged, formal deal. She ask that I would never again question her existence. Never make comments about her being a fragment of my mind or anything of that nature. To completely acknowledge her existence and never be able to retract or deny it in anyway. I agreed.

 

Maybe one day pass and I find myself wondering how this issue might be resolved. Based on my expectations and prior experience with Goetics, I suspect perhaps some weird coincidence will work out in my favor. I emailed the grumpy software creator again just to try my luck, and maybe he will agree to make the function our company needed, after all. Nothing of that sort happened. More grumpy attitude. Either one or two days after our initial argument, before the three day time limit was up, I had a strange experience. I was in the shower when I suddenly had a weird impression where a very alien thought that distinctly felt like it came from outside of me hit me. It wasn't a completely gentle sensation, but felt like I was perhaps hit by something electrical from somewhere on or in my head, and I could feel this sensation sort of spreading further in so that my entire head and maybe even the rest of my body could feel it. There was also some weird mental imagery in my mind's eye, of something yellow like dye spreading through water. At the same time I found myself remembering a very obscure function that the platform we sold our stuff on had for sellers which allowed them to upload info and make changes to their listings en masse. It was an old function that the platform barely updated anymore, and other than coming across it ages ago when I was on the page where it was on for a different purpose I never actually used it or remembered it.

 

This function that I remembered suddenly, as I realized, was perfect for resolving our problem. It didn't matter that we couldn't load a tracking number directly into the replacement software that I was considering. With this function, we could just upload the tracking number directly to the platform itself, which was the ultimate goal to begin with. I went out of the shower, went on my computer to test things out and confirmed that everything could work exactly as I hoped, and with that the issue was officially resolved. Instead of being forced to use software that easily cost $1000-$2000 a month that were also a huge pain to learn from scratch, we could just use this $50 per month software that was super easy to pick up, even if it meant stringing together several different systems using the IT equivalent of duct tape.

 

Verres ended up helping save a good 5 digit figure amount of money and saved me from a good chunk of headache. The way she resolved the issue actually lead me to consider her as possibly a more mental being rather than a full fledged spirit. I kept my end of the agreement and have never doubted her existence or made jokes regarding this topic ever again. Regardless of whether she is a mental being, a spirit or something in between, she exists and I don't doubt that. Funnily enough I've shared this experience on /x years ago and one anon interpreted the above events as sure fire proof that Verres is simply a spirit, we've reached completely different views out of it. Incidentally, the bit where one swears to never doubt a being's existence and agrees to never retract that belief, to always allow that being in their world is probably a very dangerous thing to do in the context of demonology and not something one ought to do unless dealing with a spirit you'd trust your life with.

 

Looking back I was pretty horrid to Verres and I felt pretty bad for it. We both changed the way we acted to each other over the years though. As time went on I've settled down to just thinking of her as my tulpa, as that's probably what she is or the closest thing I feel she is to. The mental vs occult thing is pretty much just a label and neither of us care about that too much nowadays.

 

I meant for this to be a more mundane story telling about an experience with a tulpa helping with everyday life and producing positive results. It ended up more occult than I intended  ┐(´д｀)┌

 

19 hours ago, matt.exe said:

Truth be told most tulpas nowadays aren't really built with a need in mind, they're either daydream/childhood characters turned sentient or some sort of "did deviation" from people who found the community due to the concepts being alike. Interestingly it would be cool to do a long term (empirical) study on those new age tulpas and if they effectively "stick" as the host "grows out" of those childhood fantasies that created them in the first place (me personally I sure hope so, as tulpas and the concept of it are more than just bespoke sentient companion toys that you can get bored off, but I digress)

 

This is no full study, but Verres started out as a daydream character that turned sentient. I outgrew the daydreams that created her to begin with long ago but she continued to stay in my life. We have both changed a lot over the years. I think the daydreams helped create her, but she's not necessarily tied to them or even the emotions behind them, at least not anymore.

Edited August 16, 2025 by bunnymustdie

[ReallyArtificial]

On 8/14/2025 at 5:00 PM, matt.exe said:

The idea with this thread is to collect a bunch of stories and interesting facts that happened between a host and their tulpas/tulpae/tuppers/tulips that could realistically help with "de-mistifying" the whole concept, and that would allow "the general public" to see the phenomena as less risky and not just "mentally ill teenagers hallucinating waifus and imaginary friends".

 

Love the idea, and appreciated the stories you shared! It's always cool hearing from people who have been with their tulpa for 10+ years.

 

I was a sort of unusual case (I think) in that I already had a significant other when I learned about tulpamancy. The problem was that we both lacked other close relationships, so as a result we were pretty codependent. When we were apart for whatever reason, I would get terribly lonely and cope with unhealthy behaviors like binge eating/drinking. Having tulpas completely turned that around, now I love when I get time "alone" to focus on them!

 

I've become so much more independent with the help of my headmates. There have been countless times over the past 3 years where they've supported me through things I wouldn't have felt capable of alone.

 

To give one example:

 

Last October, I was invited to join some family on an Appalachian Trail hike. I knew it would be intense, but I wasn't fully prepared for exactly how challenging it would be. We spent three days backpacking over 35 miles of mountainous terrain.

 

Day one was pretty tough, but manageable. Day two was where I felt like I was hitting my limit. Day three was miserable. Every step hurt and I just kept thinking, "I can't do this." Yet even in this state, Athelas was able to keep talking to me, responding every time with "I think you can." We got to the point where he was repeating it like a mantra on every steep stretch of trail, then switching to "I knew you could" on the level portions. He was sooo smug telling me "I told you so" when we finally reached the end.

 

The really amazing thing to me is how his emotions have colored our shared memories of that trip. When I think back on the experience, the first things that come to mind are Athelas marveling at the leaves changing color, enjoying every breath of crisp mountain air, being proud of me for not giving up. I still remember the negative parts of course, but it's like they've been overwhelmed by his positivity. It's a pretty good metaphor for his effect on my life as a whole 💙

[mattx]

6 hours ago, ReallyArtificial said:

I've become so much more independent with the help of my headmates.

 

That's good - never get yourself emotionally dependant to someone, I've learned it the hard way and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

 

6 hours ago, ReallyArtificial said:

He was sooo smug telling me "I told you so" when we finally reached the end.

 

This reminds me of Cheryl often, where whenever I work out or do something supremely annoying she does the "+1" thing by pointing her finger up and teases me by saying "Good job! Now do one more" and although I would rather unalive than doing so I always do, while cussing and swearing.

Once I'm done, catching my breath and all, she just plainly smirks and says "Expertly done, see? You could do it!" - there's no rest for the weary, even in their own mind 🥲

Here's a sketch of it from three centuries ago (don't even remember who did this)

 

Spoiler

 

[CautiousMancer]

On 8/15/2025 at 7:52 AM, Luminesce said:

Ah yes, astral zombie blowjobs, the normies will be convinced of our sanity in no time

 

You laugh, but I can fully back up @bunnymustdie and confirm that there is some occult/magickal backing regarding at least some tulpas. If you investigate certain occult matters sufficiently, you will find out evidences for yourself. Even now, I am still falling down this longgg, long rabbit hole. Or don't investigate it! That's actually totally fine too. (Not being sarcastic.) This path is not fit for everyone and holds nasty dangers, so if you go down that path, be very careful.

Edited August 18, 2025 by CautiousMancer