Fennec learns stuff

[glitchthe3rd]

Sorry to hear that things were rough last year, including with your relationships. Yeah, definitely sounds like you were feeling burned out. At times like these, it helps me to take care of myself, even if that means blowing off social obligations. A lot of times I need other people to remind me to take a personal day if I need it, I can be a bit of a workaholic and that can make burnout worse, not better (thankfully my supervisor is good about encouraging me to take personal time when I need to). I've also been... not the greatest about making time to force or even just interact with my girls these past several months, but that largely comes from diving into work and also having an insane video game backlog since, like, July. I've also had a death in the family this month on top of dealing with a lot of bullshit at work, so January alone has been stressful for us. Hopefully things will be better for both of us in February and we can make time for people that matter in our lives (including our tulpas).

[Shaula]

On 1/30/2026 at 12:19 AM, fennecfoxx said:

It's been a while. 2025 was, on the whole, not a good year for me, but it was a year of changes and lessons learned.

 

Aww, I want to give you a digital hug! (⁠っ⁠.⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)⁠っ 

 

Glad you're doing a bit better! 😊 

 

 

On 1/30/2026 at 12:19 AM, fennecfoxx said:

not to mention there's something satisfying about flipping a phone open and shut.

 

Not gonna lie, that's the main reason I would want a flip phone. 😁 

 

On 1/30/2026 at 12:19 AM, fennecfoxx said:

I'm also spending regular time with my tulpas again. I don't have any specific tulpamancy goals at the moment, but that's okay. 

 

Yay, that's great to hear! 😊 

Edited February 6 by Shaula
Fixed a thing

[fennecfoxx]

Thanks for the support, guys <3

 

There hasn't been much to update about lately, but today we came up with an idea that's (hopefully) going to be super cool: The Liminal World. It's going to be part paracosm, part consistent dream world, part RPG. I've been lowkey wanting to have a paracosm again, and a world that I can visit in my dreams with continuity and such is something that I always thought would be super cool. The RPG aspect is basically to gamify lucid dreaming so I practice it seriously again.

 

It's going to start out as a small part of a world (which we haven't designed yet), but it'll expand over time as I complete quests, explore the world inside dreams, etc. I'll earn points for dream journaling and completing goals and quests, which I can use for... something. I'm not sure yet. The real valuable currency, though, is dream tokens, which I'll only get by completing goals/quests while dreaming.

 

I've never had any luck with dream incubation or changing the setting of a lucid dream, but if this pans out, it'll be awesome. (And if not? We can repurpose the place as a wonderland. We don't really have one right now.)

[fennecfoxx]

I went to bed before midnight for the first time in I don't know how long. Funny how having something in your mind you want to work on makes you look forward to bedtime.

 

I imagined I was in bed in my liminal room and visualized that room around me. I focused mainly on the big-picture details: the shape of the room, the placement of the furniture, the color of the walls. Even though I had my eyes closed, I could feel it clashing with my mental map of my actual room/apartment (it's a studio). I did my best to ignore what I knew was there and focus on the visualization.

 

I don't remember ever dreaming about our old wonderland, but I'm a third-person visualizer, and I rarely focused on the details unless they were relevant to something. My hope is that "projecting" it like this as I'm falling asleep might trick my brain into thinking I belong there and having a dream or false awakening there. I also plan on practicing first-person visualization and visualizing the room in detail.

 

I didn't dream about it last night, but I didn't expect to on day 1.

[fennecfoxx]

On 8/14/2025 at 10:22 PM, fennecfoxx said:

We don't have much of a wonderland at the moment (though we do have one). The higher priority is immersing myself more deeply in the mindscape, whether it's a stable wonderland or any other mental scene. This naturally means improving visualization/sensory imagination, but also working on anchoring my focus in the mindscape and learning to visualize in first person (I've always been a third-person visualizer; it's just easier to have a fixed "camera angle").

 

I'm finally following up on this.

 

We just did a visualization session loosely following Teryakywind's guide, though I didn't focus on more than two senses at a time.

 

First-person visualization isn't hard as long as I'm sitting still in the mindscape and syncing movements between my physical and imagined bodies. As someone who normally sticks to a fixed third-person view, I'm surprised how naturally my mental visual field moves when I physically turn my head. Touch comes pretty naturally, too, even though it's not something I normally experience in the mindscape (because third person).

 

Walking across the room was kind of weird, partly because my physical body was still sitting still, and partly because my visual field seemed to lag, like the frame rate dropped. The weirdness stopped when I sat down on the other side of the room, by the TV. I tried playing the Sega Dreamcast that spawned a couple days ago, mainly out of curiosity to see what my imagination would conjure up if I turned it on. It gave me this (audio was accurate, visuals mostly were aside from a lot of missing detail) and then Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay, which 1) I watched because I couldn't remember the controller layout and it seemed fine playing itself, and 2) I soon realized was just a repeating loop.

 

I should probably replace the Dreamcast with a console I'm more familiar with. We only have it because it spawned itself. I don't think I've even seen one since around the turn of the millennium, so I have no idea why my subconscious chose that of all consoles.

 

Visual detail is a challenge for me, which is nothing new. Whether wonderlanding or daydreaming, I've always focused on what's happening over having a clear "visual" image. Also, the size of the room seems to change.

 

I'll see how many senses I can focus on at once next time.

Edited May 20 by fennecfoxx

[fennecfoxx]

We've been veering into existential crisis territory again recently. Alex's post today, well intentioned as it was, didn't help at all. I felt an unexplained anxiety when I started typing for him (switching is still a no-go for us), but he was confident in what he was talking about and certain he wanted to post it, so I wrote it off as me fearing the backlash it might provoke. He shared it to reddit, and we almost lost communication while he was replying to someone and he had to go rethink some things before replying. Not because the commentor was particularly critical, but because the implications of his understanding of tulpas hit him and clashed with our trauma in a nasty way.

 

The three of us had a debriefing (Kayleigh also has her issues with this topic), but we still felt unsettled, even after talking things over and getting offline.

 

Then I remembered parts work, which a journaling/emotional awareness app introduced me to last year. I didn't use the app for very long, but it was instrumental in helping me accept my tulpas back into my life. In our first session, we met the part of me that was terrified to interact with any kind of thoughtform, so much so that it wanted to cease being anthropomorphized as soon as possible. It was an emotionally intense session, but we (mostly I) managed to calm it enough that having my tulpas back didn't seem so scary. (It helped that they insisted they're essentially figments of my imagination when they spoke to the part.)

 

So, we held another session. We prayed first that this would bring us peace and healing, then invited the part that was making us all feel uncomfortable to explain why it was making us feel that way and what it was trying to achieve. It gave us contradictory answers at first, but we soon realized we were hearing from two different parts. As soon as we realized that, they both appeared in the mindscape and started arguing. One echoed the dogma we believed in bygone days (which is basically the root of our trauma and rooted in the kind of thinking Alex called out in his post), and Kayleigh and I sided with the part arguing against it.

 

Now, if you know about parts work, you know you're not supposed to argue with your parts. You're supposed to treat them with compassion and listen empathetically. Every part wants to help the self, but some are misguided and end up doing harm instead. Thankfully, Alex stepped in as mediator when the rest of us were ganging up on this traumatized part and got us to listen and it to talk.

 

Not surprisingly, it turns out this part wanted to protect my tulpas. It's also the reason I don't daydream like I used to, since I was (and kind of still am) afraid of accidentally creating more tulpas. Alex and Kayleigh (now that she'd settled down) managed to explain to the part that the belief that tulpas ought to be treated as full, separate people has no basis in reality and has done them more harm than good. It was hard for the part to argue with two tulpas about that, so it conceded it might be wrong and apologized.

 

We felt peace come over us in that moment. The memory is fuzzy now, but I think we felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I'll take that as a sign we're moving in the right direction and not simply retreating into a "safe" delusion.

 

I don't know if that part has or wants a name, but I have a feeling we'll speak with it again. It said it wants to learn the truth so it can do the right thing.

 

To our surprise, a couple other parts surfaced as well, but they were related only tangentially. The session ended before we got far with them because I couldn't focus on the mindscape anymore. It wasn't that I was tired or anything. It was like waking up from a dream while trying to hold onto it: you keep your eyes shut and try to stay immersed, but next thing you know, it's gone, and you're awake and alert and guess you're ready to start (or continue) the day.

 

I need to practice piano.

 

We will take a look at the replies to Alex's thread, but we need a break from existential stuff for now.

Edited May 24 by fennecfoxx

[fennecfoxx]

We're doing okay. The existential anxiety has passed, as has the health anxiety that was probably contributing to the body and everyone in it being stressed. (Don't worry, we didn't have a health scare or anything. Autism + OCD make me prone to fixating on and worrying about bodily sensations. It's nothing new.)

 

I haven't been on top of visualization practice much, but I did have a lucid dream last night. I remembered I want to build a persistent world and tried to teleport there, and I made a portal appear—my first success creating anything in a dream!—but stepping through it woke me up. That was a disappointment, but progress is progress!

 

I don't really have much to say. I just figured I should follow up on the last post sooner or later so anyone reading this knows we're okay.

[fennecfoxx]

Kayleigh: I've succeeded in my master plan of taking control of this body to play horror games

 

(fennec will update later)

 

-----

 

(fennec's update)

 

Yeah, so, that happened.

 

We haven't had much experience sharing control of the body since before my tulpamancy hiatus, and anything more than short episodes of simple possession (that is, maintaining identity separation) has been confusing and/or anxiety-inducing. Last night, it crossed my mind that sharing meals (not in an imaginary way but in a "let's go co-conscious and enjoy this food together" way, which we've done a few times in recent months) could be good practice for getting comfortable sharing the front again.

 

Kayleigh really liked the food. She wanted to stay in front to keep eating (Alex and I let her), then put YouTube on to find something to watch while we (she) ate, looked up the music video for a fansong of her favorite video game (Bendy and the Ink Machine), sang along, and asked if she could play the game.

 

Why not, right? I know she's been wanting to, and it isn't a game that's easily played by proxy.

 

It actually went really well. My own thoughts arose here and there, but I didn't worry too much about whether she was there or I was faking it or if some hidden thoughts or feelings would arise that I unconsciously suppress when I'm in front because I can only handle understanding her as imaginary or any of that. (I worry a lot, okay?) She was having fun. She was immersed in one of her games. There wasn't much room for the self-conscious thoughts and worries that have gotten in the way before.

 

Also, it was pretty obviously her in control. I didn't feel like I was a different person in my body (or like someone else was controlling me), but she recited a lot of the dialogue alongside the characters, doing the voices and everything. It was kinda funny and also pretty wild. I can't voice-act and had no idea we even remembered it that well.

Edited June 1 by fennecfoxx

[mattx]

Good stuff, possession is always fun.

 

4 hours ago, fennecfoxx said:

My own thoughts arose here and there, but I didn't worry too much about whether she was there or I was faking it or if some hidden thoughts or feelings would arise that I unconsciously suppress when I'm in front because I can only handle understanding her as imaginary or any of that. (I worry a lot, okay?)

Given your "modern" mindset on the whole tulpamancing phenomena, I wouldn't worry about it. For as long as you were comfortable with it and it worked, it's fine.

 

Here's a recommendation: try to play a game that the host (fennec) knows by heart and that one of the tulipers is willing to play. It will feel like a "familiar but different" playthrough and could lead to lots of interesting choices and fun moments.

 

Here's a snippet for when Cheryl played Portal 2 about 50 centuries ago, mind you she was like, 3 months old and was full body possessing me for days at the time so there were a lot of surprises:

 

Spoiler

 

Also ancient Minecraft shenanigans:

Spoiler

 

[fennecfoxx]

1 hour ago, mattx said:

Here's a recommendation: try to play a game that the host (fennec) knows by heart and that one of the tulipers is willing to play. It will feel like a "familiar but different" playthrough and could lead to lots of interesting choices and fun moments.

 

That sounds fun! Maybe I'll make them reckon with the N64 controller and play the Pokemon Stadium minigames or something (Pokemon Stadium was my first-ever video game, so it holds a special place in my heart, even if I rarely play it these days)

 

Funny you bring up Portal 2, since we've been meaning to (re)play it. I don't remember it all that well, though. It's been a long time.