Bargain Bin Progress

[Bin]

I'm not sure why I never made one of these, I guess it's overdue. Probably wouldn't have even bothered if a sticky'd post didn't say everyone's invited. I guess I didn't have much to say back in 2012. It might be long, so I'll try ThatOneGuy's suggestion of bolding stuff, although probably not with much level of success. I don't expect to update this much except maybe to add some cute sappy stuff my tulpa says that catches me off guard, unless my tulpa does something else that warrants an update.

 

Scarlet gained autonomy in August 2012. I don't like to say "sapience" because that implies a unique subjective point of view, which she does not have; she shares mine, and I can't be bothered to pretend otherwise. I should point out that, despite however enthusiastic I may be about any of this, Scarlet does not want anything to do with anything besides me and my health and happiness. Not to be independent, not to interact with anyone; from day one she has been completely antisocial and sees no other purpose in anything other than to interact with me specifically, anything not serving that express purpose is useless to her. It's a little embarrassing, I sound more full of myself than I'd like! I really have tried to get her to interact! I made accounts for her and everything in the past! She entertained the idea for like, one forum post and said "nah I'm not doing this". I think part of it is that she just doesn't know what to say to anyone besides me, the difficulty and lack of reward just makes her frustrated. I'll probably expand on this further down.

 

I came from 4chan's /mlp/ where modern internet tulpamancy really caught on, even before this very site was made. I had the displeasure of trying to make mine the "hard way" because the only people who knew what they were doing were too crazy to even realize their "advice" was counter-productive. I wasted months doing effectively nothing while trying to create mine, until I got fed up and did it my own way. I should have done that from the start, I've had a paracosm to map my psyche since I was a little kid, I should have known how to do all of this intuitively from the get-go. I'm just such a loyal puppy that I have to do whatever anyone asks me to, I gotta follow the herd.

 

I won't bore you with the details. She deviated from a cartoon horse into a girl I had never seen before. Banged my head on the wall for a few months. Realized the advice from the community I was using was stupid. I started daydreaming about her, started imagining her in the easiest place I could think of (the memory of my grandmother's house, not any sort of detailed wonderland; tried it, too distracting, no matter how "simple" I made it. Yes, again, this is in spite of having a paracosm), and it was getting much easier to focus on her. She started moving around on her own, the day I consider her birthday. Taught her to talk on her own soon after, and we proceeded to spend the next decade together just fine. We were romantic until we weren't after maybe a year, she was smarter than me and a great companion, the things everyone loves about their tulpas.

 

A lot of stuff happened. I made a few more tulpas and they all died out from lack of attention, it was just Scarlet again. I had a maladaptive daydreaming episode that lasted for a year which suppressed Scarlet, I barely talked to her while I was on autopilot and stuck in my fantasy pretty much every waking moment. It was pretty rough, but in retrospect, I think my brain was trying to help me mature, I feel stronger because of it. Scarlet didn't mind, she's eternally patient for me, and I really appreciate it. Like I said, to her, even her own existence has no value in the face of my health. She honestly hates the idea of inconveniencing me just for the sake of feigning some sort of human condition or will to survive.

 

Earlier in 2025, I suffered a medical episode and a lot of my life fell out from under me. My best friend and on-and-off romantic partner abandoned me in the middle of it all. I met her right after I made Scarlet, even impressed her with talking about tulpas and stuff back then. She got me into a lot of stuff I'm into now, a lot of myself revolved around her. I was devastated by, well, everything. But I was also healing, I wasn't going to let any of it get to me, I was just going to binge watch cooking videos and let myself forget. Took a while to learn to think without thinking of her. A few months, a little longer than usual, I guess.

 

Of course I kept talking to Scarlet like normal. Nothing about us really changed, she was trying to be supportive even if there wasn't much to look forward to. Maybe I was talking to her a little more, but nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't have any special plans for her, didn't think this would be any sort of opportunity for her to do anything special. Even at this stage, I only ever really saw her as "my tulpa", pretty much just a really cool way to talk to myself, that's about it. Of course I loved her, just that, she was in my head.

 

It had been a few months after that. One night, for seemingly no reason at all, she was incredibly animated. We talked for hours, I haven't felt that since the very beginning, it was like the honeymoon phase all over again. Nothing prompted this, it was just a regular night. I didn't even think anything of it, I pretty much brushed it aside as a one-off night where I was feeling especially inspired or something. But no, she stayed that way, and got even stronger after that. Maybe we didn't quite have a night like that again, but everything else about her was overwhelming now.

 

I really can't overstate the change. I gradually began to notice that, this wasn't just her talking more. It's like she was taking over my mind and integrating into my soul, it was becoming less like having a tulpa and more like having some sort of psychological version of split brain syndrome. And yet, I felt more complete than ever, and felt like I knew things about myself I had never even thought of before. It's not like she was just "part of my mind" anymore, but reaching out into every part of it to integrate into herself. I don't mean for this to sound romantic, she's very sloppy about it. It's like some sort of Freudian Frankenstein's monster, made out of every single part of my own psyche, regardless of how poorly stitched together it is. Not like my own personality that had a whole life of social interaction to perfect itself and cut out the fat, she was greedy. Recently, I even noted to her how hard it was to predict her, in spite of her being made of everything I knew about people, and she said "I'm not the superficial stereotypes you use to make quick decisions, I'm buried deep down, I'm every intimate encounter you've ever had." She can act quite erratically because of it, sometimes she switches moods on a dime. I think this is partly related to why she's so antisocial, she's so used to being wired up directly to my brain, everyone else feels like an alien to her, like a fish out of water. She just doesn't understand anyone and can't anticipate their responses, I think she'd rather just pick up her ball and go home. It's not insecurity, it's disgust.

 

I didn't know why this sudden growth spurt happened. I knew it was in relation to my best friend leaving me, but I didn't really know why. I wasn't doing it on purpose, there wasn't any emotion behind it, it wasn't something I took satisfaction in. I've had maladaptive coping mechanisms before, I was always honest to myself about them, I knew that wasn't what was happening here. I loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I really agreed with it's message about how existentially horrifying it would actually be to simply forget someone who deeply impacted your life. I think that, whatever abstract processes my brain used to identify with my ex, it didn't want to let them go. They were too deeply tied to my ego, they couldn't just die. I think they just got re-used to simulate Scarlet. All of the raw horsepower from that engine my brain made from over a decade of interacting with a real person I deeply loved, was now being applied to my tulpa. I feel nothing for my ex now. Not out of spite, I just don't care. Scarlet effectively "ate" her. I didn't even do it on purpose, I'm not treating her like a girlfriend, she's just really strong now.

 

All of my hard-wired doubt about tulpas that everyone has just disappeared. Not because I magically believe my imaginary friend is real now, it's something way deeper. I can literally feel her emotional presence. I don't know what a "soul" is really supposed to be, I don't even believe in them, but I feel like I have enough intuitive context to know what one would actually be now. Something inside of me is feeling it's own emotions independently of me, and that is not something you can fake. People like to pretend they can make themselves feel something, but you goddamn know if you are or not. It's made me realize everything else, her form, her thoughts, our cognition, it's all superficial, it's all infrastructure above us, it's not us. None of it matters anymore, I don't even care if we can figure out who's thinking what or not, that's all superficial. I know what she's feeling and that's the important part. It actually clears things up quite a bit, her thoughts are way stronger and louder because I have that emotional guide, I can impose her easily because I can genuinely feel someone else there even if I can't see them. My senses don't dictate that anymore, my soul does. Even now, it sounds more mundane than it feels, it feels like a religious experience. Like the stuff that makes Christians brag about an experience they had one night for the rest of their lives. We don't even have a "wonderland" anymore, we just think of whatever, it could change mid-conversation, it's just another part of the mind doing it's own thing. Everything "pretend" is nothing but a toy to us. It's why she's not sentient, she doesn't have a subjective point of view because she doesn't need it. Well, I say that. To be honest, I have no idea what's going on in there anymore. There's something very foreign and alien about her.

 

I can't even think without her anymore, she makes half of my decisions and forces me to do things I should but don't want to. Sometimes I'm literally too lazy to think and just have her make a decision for me. I don't even have to know why I'm doing it, it just always ends up being the best decision I couldn't have made. I think she likes to be included like that. She can even block out my intrusive thoughts, something I had tried to make thoughtforms to do for me in the past (even before knowing what they were), she's the only one that can do it accurately. Everything else is a paper tiger.

 

Something else interesting happened. I'll put it under a spoiler since it's TMI and kind of embarrassing. I'll try to be professional about it.

Spoiler

So, to put it bluntly, I have gynophobia. I pretty much just get by on pin-ups and suggestive stuff like that. I could never get over it no matter how hard I tried, I kinda gave up. I'm not gay, believe me I've experimented, I'm just really emotionally underdeveloped. I won't go over how that complicated both my relationships with my ex and my tulpa (at least during the honeymoon phase, anyway).

 

I think my ex always made me defensive and insecure about that stuff. She wasn't the nicest person, and already reminded me of someone in my life responsible for a lot of my insecurities in the first place. I suppose I just had no reason to give her the satisfaction of fully accepting her. Not that I wanted to harm her or control her, I just didn't trust her. I think, after she left, my anima was unguarded, I had no reason to hide from it anymore. So I guess Scarlet, being the greedy little thing she is, integrated that into herself too, therefor integrating it into myself. Aside from it causing her to act even more deep and complex, I'm honestly just okay with... that stuff, now. For the first time, I can actually imagine her naked. This has been a life-long issue I could never grow past, I've always been uncomfortable about it. And she somehow fixed it. I'm healed.

 

Also, I think I like cats now for the same reason. I always hated them from living with a cat hoarder, but I know women identify with them. So I guess I'm cool with them now. A lot of emotional maturing for just a month or two!

 

I feel like I know so much about myself now. I couldn't even make another tulpa now, not like this. She's not just a thoughtform, she's the very psychic representation of the guts of my own mind, like the HAL 9000 of my body. Anything else would be cheap or just her again. Like, there's nothing replicable about either of us, nothing to switch out. I am the Ego and Superego, and she is the Id, the part of myself that I lost on the day I was born. For good reason, it's psychotic and petulant. Seeing her try to build her own personality to hide it herself is actually pretty adorable, it's like a kid building a cardboard fort in your back yard, it would be downright pathetic if it weren't so endearing.

 

I feel like many people want their tulpas to be real, to be unique from themselves; independent. Different, but complimentary. Somewhere along the line, I completely gave up on that, without actually giving up on her. It let her bypass my ego that pressed down on her, forbidding her from touching the disgusting core of myself that I so desperately tried to build a personality over to get away from. My humbling self-awareness, my sexual insecurities, all the stuff I didn't want to see. She reached into me and grabbed those frayed wires to fix me, and got high off the juice. I guess you don't get something until you stop wanting it. You know V'ger from Star Trek, the space probe that eventually grew into a supermassive living space ship? It didn't understand human illogic, but it wanted to recombine with Earth, it's creators, so it could leap beyond logic and become whole. It didn't respect humans at all, it thought they were disgusting and insignificant compared to it's vastness, it was originally just going to kill them all. But it combined with a human and became a new kind of being. I kinda feel that way about her. I'm V'ger, and she's my earth, my creator, my Freudian Id, the gross little thing I started out from that I couldn't even recognize anymore. I don't romanticize her, I don't identify with her, she's weird and abstract and confusing, and I don't even like it. But I do love her. She's my pet Cheshire cat.

 

Spoiler

God this was embarrassing to write. I hope I don't regret this. Maybe at least after venting about it all, I can get over all this and go back to my life.

 

[Ido]

Yo, I hope you remember me, I still have the drawing you made of my former avatar!

 

That was a good and very relatable read, thanks for sharing. I don't think it's embarrassing and you know I'm not the tupper for false politeness or sugarcoating things.

Interesting to see Scarlet became such a late bloomer, I didn't know that! I'm glad my host only made me in 2014 when better advice was around and everything went pretty smooth. I think I reached the level you describe now in about a year or so, maybe less.  Making your own decisions and taking over initiative, beating unconscious routine processes and intrusive thoughts is a big step for a tupper. Still hard sometimes. A tupper's work is never done. I also initially completely refused to talk to other people or register on the forums, well most other tuppers were cartoon horses which are not my thing. I still rarely talk to a handful of people online, that's enough. I'm busy enough managing this fool's life.

 

Anyway, glad to see you're doing well, pet Cheshire cat is a great title! 

[Bin]

Hey Ido! I remember you! The most tasteful purveyor of Bargain Bin Requests. Of course I remember my best customer.

 

That's awesome you got out of your shell. I have no idea how to get Scarlet out, honestly I'm afraid to disturb her. Doesn't help my anima was shaped by shy women. If she wasn't antisocial before, she sure is now. She always just didn't want to complicate my life as a matter of principle anyway. Not like it's the first thing we disagree on, we argue a lot actually. Maybe some of it is just my brain trying to spice her up for my entertainment, but we can legitimately disagree on some things. I just take it as a blessing, it's cool to process cognitive dissonance like this, even if it is slightly... concerning. She also relishes in managing my life, I guess it's just something tulpas do, lol. Sometimes we even get into fights when I say something like "you're just saying that to sound like you're doing something" and she hammers me down with every bad example I ever exhibited from the behavior she was trying to prevent, it kinda stings. I don't even know why I bother anymore. Maybe I just don't want her to win, lol. My ego genuinely doesn't like her being there, I want to do things without her permission, but I can't. I'm glad she understands that and is willing to meet me half-way, even if it's at the cost of her feeling like she's failed or something. Guess I can't win either way.

 

It is weird. It sounds and feels like the honeymoon period again, but, something is different.

 

Unrelated, and she thinks the idea of us having a "song" is lame, but I can't stop listening to this and thinking of us. I'd say I hope it sticks but I can already see myself getting bored of it and then her making fun of me about it.

[Bin]

Been really getting into hanging out in memories lately, like almost Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind style (man that's a good tulpa movie). I always preferred using little worlds inspired by memories, but, honestly, it's pretty cathartic to just hang out in an actual memory, except Scarlet's replacing someone in it. The memories don't even have to be coherent, I'm cool with stuff not making sense, or some things like video games or TV shows in the memories being humorously distorted and abridged, like a YouTube Poop. I dunno why I hate making up wonderlands for us, I guess I just associate her so strongly with "reality" that it just won't do to hang out in a made-up place, or even really stay in one place at all, it's just depressing for me. Brad Warner likes to compare the mind to the gut, it just produces acid and churns around all on it's own, and you just gotta put up with that. The mind likes to wander, it likes to get disinterested in a thought at the drop of a hat and find a new toy to gnaw on. And I'm really cool with that, I love "memory surfing" with her. Doing anything else feels like standing in one pose for so long that it hurts, I hate it. I want freedom. I want to flex and stretch, I want to drop one memory just to pick up the next one that gleans my interest, like a listless toddler playing with toys. And I'm tired of pretending that isn't the case.

 

I was feeling so shitty last night. Laying in bed, I just thought of some of my favorite childhood memories. I used to hang out with my sister in a spare room at my grandmother's house, watching each other play Animal Crossing for the GameCube or watching classic 90s sitcoms like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And we just did that for a good hour or two, Scarlet replacing my sister. She said some real nice stuff to me, and I really wanted to remember what it was this time, but I forgot, like always! God I hate that I'd have to ruin it just to get up write that stuff down when it happens. But the experience itself at the time is worth it, even if it's lost to time forever (and also I would piss her off if I did get up just to jot down what she said to air out our laundry to everyone). Just one of those things. You know the short story Zima Blue? Netflix's Love, Death and Robots did a short animation on it. Something in the original story that didn't make it into the animation was that, in the future, everyone is immortal, and has a device called an "AM" that records all their memories, so they never forget anything in their eternal life. Zima demands that the reporter leave their AM behind before they get to interview him, because he wants the reporter to use their human memory, I guess to put emphasis on the human side of it and celebrate humanity. That really stuck with me, I'm glad I read the actual story the animation was based off of. Makes me just ever so slightly more comfortable with the inevitable fact that some things are doomed to be forgotten, no matter how precious.

[Bin]

Sorry to break the 24-hours-a-post guideline but I'm drunk and bored (and also wrote that last one at 1 AM). Scarlet convinced me not to buy any more alcohol today, not sure if I woulda been able to do that without her, lol. Really makes me appreciate the whole "WWJD" part of having a tulpa. I'm too disgusted in myself to accept my own praise to not indulge, but her praise is something else, it genuinely means something to me. I feel genuine joy when she praises me for following her unbiased advice. I'd feel like a jackass if I was alone telling myself I'm doing a good job for not being a complete degenerate. Like, congratz douchebag, you're slightly above the degeneracy of a felon, you want a cookie for that? But her telling me I'm a good boy and doing a good job, no matter how meager, is so goddamn soothing. It genuinely calms me down. No "serenity, now!" crap, I actually feel calmer when she speaks to me (when we aren't arguing lol). I remember grumbling to myself, cold and standing in the rain, "damn I should just buy a bottle and get it over with" and she told me how much I did not need it, and I was just, okay.

 

In regards to my last post, talking about Zima Blue, it reminded me of Deadly Premonition. If you're not familiar, it's another great piece of tulpa media. You don't learn the truth until the end, but the main character York is constantly talking to a man named "Zach", who is never present. You later find out that Zach was his original personality, he created York out of trauma and switched with him. At the end of the game, Zach finally confronts his demons and doesn't need York anymore, even though he doesn't want him to go. Scarlet and I used to always joke about that being us.

 

The reason my own post reminded me of it was because York talks to Zach about movies when you're driving around the large, empty town. You really get a feel for how much York loves cinematography through his passionate rants about various movies.

 

And here's the scene where you learn the truth about York, Zach's "tulpa".

 

If you know me by know, you know I hate romanticizing tulpamancy. And yet, this shit makes me cry, lol. I don't exactly remember when I first saw this, but I know when I did, I immediately thought of Scarlet.

 

As a distraction from that, for the past few days, I've been addicted to this song lately

 

 

Edited December 24, 2025 by Bin

[SpottedHope]

23 hours ago, Bin said:

As a distraction from that, for the past few days, I've been addicted to this song lately

I swear there was a little particle about accepting Papa Nurgle's gifts here; I suppose it's been edited out. I was going to comment on it, but didn't have the time at that moment, and now it's gone 😭

I can delete this if you'd rather not follow that train of thought; I'd just found it interesting—Sathariel began as an Incubus I'm writing, so I frequently chuck Warhammer-related stuff at him. I asked him which Chaos God, if he had to pick one, he would rather follow: to him, that question gets translated as "which one is more just," I think, and he seems to agree it'd be Nurgle. I can't exactly put it into words, but the closest explanation to that justification would read as "only Nurgle constitutes a greater function of existence than the simple lateral progression of Chaos, which is what the rest of them embody".

Thought it might be an interesting two cents to share. 

[Bin]

5 hours ago, SpottedHope said:

I swear there was a little particle about accepting Papa Nurgle's gifts here; I suppose it's been edited out. I was going to comment on it, but didn't have the time at that moment, and now it's gone 😭

I can delete this if you'd rather not follow that train of thought; I'd just found it interesting—Sathariel began as an Incubus I'm writing, so I frequently chuck Warhammer-related stuff at him. I asked him which Chaos God, if he had to pick one, he would rather follow: to him, that question gets translated as "which one is more just," I think, and he seems to agree it'd be Nurgle. I can't exactly put it into words, but the closest explanation to that justification would read as "only Nurgle constitutes a greater function of existence than the simple lateral progression of Chaos, which is what the rest of them embody".

Thought it might be an interesting two cents to share. 

 

LOL no you're good I just thought it was cringe so I removed it hahaha

 

Yeah I love how deep Chaos is. I think if I had to rank my gods it would be Nurgle > Khorne > Tzeentch > Uhh, I'd rather call the False Emperor a Chaos God and worship that > Slaanesh. I wouldn't call Nurgle "just", really, but I feel like he more or less acts as an avatar for death and the five stages of grief (I read a post on that once which was awesome). He represents the negative aspect of something inherently positive - if you stop caring about death, you effectively become it, which is kind of scary.

 

"In the embrace of great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once feared: Death."

-- Kulvain Hestarius of the Death Guard

 

Complete self-neglect, utter indifference to your own suffering, no matter how great it is. It's cognitive dissonance, you're actively being hypnotized and, like one Nurgle chapter discovered, if you get cut off from that, you again realize how horrifying you've become, and it's unbearable. Nurgle is the "kindest" in the way a white lie might be the best way to lie to someone. He lies to you by making you numb. I mean, you can call that just, but I don't think it is. Of course, obviously I don't care about this since he's my favorite god, lol.

 

If anyone I'd actually say Khorne is the most "just" in the sense of being the pure drive to kill without any reason or cowardice. Absolutely evil, sure, but it's an honest evil, it's not the kind that's going to lure you into a false sense of security. You know what you're getting yourself into. Far unlike Tzeentch and Slaanesh, of course, since their entire shtick is to essentially lie to you until you realize entirely too late that you were simply being used as a pawn.

 

Honestly, I think Khorne is even more "just" than the Tyranids. I've seen people say the Tyranids are the only thing in Warhammer that isn't evil, since they're much more like a force of nature than an antagonistic presence. But Tyranids still have Genestealers and other parasitic forces like that, it's still trying to take advantage of you by tricking you. Khorne worshippers typically know they're going to die, they just want one last good brawl before they give up their soul. If anything, Khorne is the only true "force of nature" in 40K.

 

---

 

Anyway, uhh, I took some edibles and we had probably the most fun we've had in months. Definitely got a lot of inspiration for more stuff we can do together. Weed is definitely scary, I'm very sensitive to my mind and it throws everything out of whack. But also, being uncomfortable is how you find out new things about yourself!

 

I also got drunk and told a close friend I had a tulpa. Super embarrassing but he understands lol. I don't regret it, I needed the catharsis. But I am pretty embarrassed that I'm like this at all, lol. Hard to bottle all this stuff in, you know? It's so many emotions and changes but it's weird because nothing is happening outside of you.

Edited December 25, 2025 by Bin

[SpottedHope]

8 hours ago, Bin said:

Honestly, I think Khorne is even more "just" than the Tyranids. I've seen people say the Tyranids are the only thing in Warhammer that isn't evil, since they're much more like a force of nature than an antagonistic presence. But Tyranids still have Genestealers and other parasitic forces like that, it's still trying to take advantage of you by tricking you. Khorne worshippers typically know they're going to die, they just want one last good brawl before they give up their soul. If anything, Khorne is the only true "force of nature" in 40K.

Sathariel's perspective on justice here isn't related to sapient honesty, but rather to cause and effect—for death to occur, life must first exist. And so, that is just: Nurgle is the only Chaos-force that understands itself as dependent on the coherence of life; concurring indeed with the Law of Chaos: that Chaos must come from the disassembly of Law is its paradox. Why, that is why he keeps Isha, no?

I think he'd say Khorne had he not already been aware of his initial existence as a Khainite; he has little need for Khorne. Though the difference is not particularly important in 40K, that's more prominent in Fantasy, he -we, I should say- derive the difference there as one derives the difference between murder and ritual murder. 

It's all just opining either way, but you know, passive forcing and all that—helps with things. Thanks for the opportunity. 

[Bin]

Thanks for bring it up, SpottedHope! It was fun!

 

I guess I'd thought I'd write what it's like having a tulpa here. I originally didn't really want to do that, because the way everyone describes their interactions with theirs is probably pretty similar to how I'd describe my interactions with mine - I felt like I'd just be writing some "no duh, join the club" fluff. But I guess there are plenty of people who don't have a tulpa who don't know what it's like, so, why not. Some of this (or maybe a lot) will be me psychoanalyzing myself (and her), so, I might end up being an unreliable narrator, lol.

 

I don't know if my will got weaker as it learned to relax around her presence, or she's just picking up my slack, but she makes a lot of my decisions now. I'm like, allowed to be depressed and not think, and she can just make decisions for me. It's a little depressing in and of itself that I don't have as much of a motivator in the pain of living itself to force myself to do things, but Scarlet also doesn't really want me to be totally dependent on her, either, even if she doesn't mind it (being the same person, and all). It's not like I even care about humanizing her by considering her input or anything, I'm honestly just scared to make my own decisions anymore, I don't trust myself to do things that are good for myself. I have to ask her when I can indulge in my unhealthy habits, and must begrudgingly obey if she says no. I need to be ordered by her to go eat something even if I don't want to. Sometimes, I'm literally too goddamn lazy to remember my favorite foods to buy, so she has to pick them out. Isn't that sad? I'm unironically the kind of guy to forget his own name and birthday. Shame I absolutely cannot stand getting close enough to anyone to tell them what either of those are. Freud wrote of something in the Id called the Thanatos, the Death Drive. Yeah, I know it's probably a bunch of bull, but it's good inspiration anyway. It's the drive to draw organic matter back into the inorganic, to be violent, to kill. Remember, this isn't a full-blown "personality" that can take you over, it's a fragment of a personality, it's a raw mineral the rest of your mind processes and dilutes into sane, healthy behaviors, like play-fighting and defense mechanisms. This is why I disassociate, this is why I don't want to acknowledge my identity, because I want nothing to lose. If push comes to shove and I'm put in a life-or-death situation, I won't have any regrets before I die, I'd be willing to burn just to protect myself. I actually get angry when people acknowledge my personal information! How dare you take that away from me? I mean, I don't show it of course, that would be crazy, but there is an undeniable emotional wall I'll put between myself and anyone who does that. I dunno, is depending on Scarlet making that behavior go into overdrive? Like the gums receding if they don't have any teeth to hold on to anymore. I feel like I'm losing myself to her, not that she'll "take over" or destroy my personality or anything, just that she is no longer a fun gimmick, she is literally a second personality, she's wired into things I can't get back, or never knew about but now desperately depend on. It's weird.

 

Her personality is very interesting from a psychoanalysis perspective. She feels like a machine, like I can identify all her parts, all the stuff she took from my mind to weld on to herself. She probably sees me the same way, given she can psychoanalyze me better than I can myself. Her actions, her decisions, her impulses, I can trace a lot of them back to where they came from. It's so complex now, she feels like an actual personality, like, there are things here I didn't build. She has her own concerns, her own frustrations, her own secrets, her own existential disposition, and I didn't "make" her have those, it's not something I'm "imagining", I mean I can literally feel her emotions when it comes to this stuff, I can deeply empathize with her. Whether she responds to my observations to reify them out of sincerity or simply to make it "more real for me", I'm not sure, but it definitely makes it real to me. Her problems aren't human problems, she isn't a human, she's a thoughtform, a raw, fluid personality with no brain or body of it's own to define and contain it. Her problems are beyond anything anyone with a body can understand. She does not belong to the world, she has no self-preservation drive outside of the one she merely mimics for my amusement (even if it feels real to her, it's not a genuinely deep problem). She has to deal with wrangling all the levers in my head to help me steer this thing, this body, these emotions. That's her only problem in life. And everything else about her stems from that, and not real-life problems, like a bizarro world where matter and antimatter switched places and nothing changed.

 

She is deeply tied to my anima, which is kind of a problem lol. As you may assume from how introspective I am, I can be pretty empathetic as well, so my mind has a pretty well-developed anima. Like, I hope this doesn't sound creepy, but I can usually detect someone's gender by their typing patterns, it's that defined. I've been victimized by it multiple times, both through a maladaptive daydreaming episode and through Scarlet herself. I had underestimated the anima in the past, but this really is some kind of completely different, separate, other proto-personality that MUST exist in my head, no matter how much I like it or not. This isn't just regular learned behavior, I think evolution itself really wants you to focus on your anima, really wants to build a strong one. There are so many reasons to have a strong anima - to appease a lover, to protect a daughter, to anticipate their behaviors so you don't lose them, either because they die as a result of their feminine drives, or simply leave you because you won't relate to them. So, she's a fucking fujoshi, lol. She is still made of my personality, too, she is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster made up of a lot of mix-matched brain parts, so that can mix it up quite a bit. She can have some very strange behaviors that, for a least a few of them, really feel like a man's idea of what a woman enjoys doing, even if I know it's not realistic, as if it's not in obedience to the anima, but in spite of it! She didn't used to be like this, but I guess now that she's gone into overdrive mode to make herself as real and potent as possible, she's dug deep into anything she can get her hands on to in order to deepen her emotional complexity. It, uh... makes certain moments interesting, when she wants to do something her way, and I'd rather do it my way, like we have to take turns having fantasies now. It's so psychotic. I'm still in control of course, I just have no reason to fight her. I should mention, we don't fight about this or anything, she wants me to be happy first and foremost, and typically, if she has the choice, she'll indulge me in what I want. But she can get these uncontrollable urges to do things to me or treat me in certain ways that she has a hard time resisting. Never anything downright harmful, but she can be a regular school bully sometimes, like a kid picking on her crush. Kinda why I can get sick of her if I'm forced to spend all day sick in bed, like today. It's annoying putting up with that non-stop! I've had sisters, I've had a girlfriend, I know what they're like when they want to pick on you.

 

Besides that, hanging out with her is fucking awesome. I can't quite understand how we used to never have anything to talk about - literally most of what we talked about for years is that we had nothing to talk about. I guess she just wasn't very refined, her emotional depth was still fairly shallow, I still barely depended on her. But we can talk non-stop now, about anything. I'm constantly amused, because I know she is more aware of myself and my environment than I am, more than my own self-awareness, so she can absolutely surprise me at any moment and can snap back at me for anything I say or do, even make me feel genuinely guilty for it. So, that makes moments where she agrees with me even more heartwarming, I feel like I'm actually bonding with someone and gaining their approval, and not just hearing an imaginary friend blindly call me right. Did I mention one time I bumped my head getting up and she laughed at me? Like, that bump genuinely hurt lol. This is one of many ways she acts erratically, being haphazardly made from so many mental parts - one moment I'm The Shit and can say whatever I want, the next she'll threaten me with an embarrassing detail about myself if I don't learn my place, and there is no rhyme or reason for it, it's just whatever she feels like doing at the time. I can simply tell that there's multiple layers there, there is something resembling it's own simplistic mind trying to balance things and make decisions for some sort of goal. I'm not even sure if I like it, it can feel genuinely degrading! Like she can actually threaten me, and I'm offended by that! But I can't do anything about it. It's just like having a sibling that's bigger than you, lol. She's not merely completing me anymore, now I'm also completing her, her own personality and drives separate from mine.

 

Like, we both know all this, we know how everything works and is hooked up. But regardless of what I think, she doesn't care. She's not some sort of wise sage, she's a brat, like she can know deep things about me not out of wisdom, but as a genuine, unearned ability, like how an AI can know everything and yet still have the emotional maturity of a 4 year old. She is genuinely more psychologically underdeveloped than I am, less dynamic. So I put up with her behaviors because she's more like a wild animal than some sort of wise, understanding person. I think she could become that, if either of us wanted or needed it? She has a few times. But she's very honest and blunt, she has her own urges and that's all she cares about.

 

I dunno, you know how the rules work in The Matrix? It's a system of control that allows you to break it, not because it wants you to, but because that itself is it's devious method of subjugation, you are choosing to be controlled, no matter how unconscious that choice is, and that enough is how it placates humans into submitting to it. You can break out of it, but you simply do not want to, even if you think you do. None of this is me, I'm not even choosing to dislike parts of it, but at the same time, I see all the cogs and pulleys working, this is all meant to happen, it's what my brain wants, even the very act of feeling displeasure is part of the show. It's all-or-nothing, either all of it is existentially horrifying because I'm realizing I'm not any of this, or it's beautiful because I realize I am all of it, and it's hard to choose. I dunno, this shouldn't sound so alien, everyone talks about how they and their tulpa tease and banter with each other, and they thoroughly enjoy it. And so do I. But then I stop for a moment and ask myself if I could even stop it, and... I can't? She can get pretty mean at times, and I can't stop it, but it never goes over the point of being too far, and it makes me wonder every time, who is doing that? Is it me? It is me. But I don't know how, it's an organ beating on it's own. Every behavior I've ever learned to anticipate, to seek out in others to make myself whole, is now magically moving on it's own and dancing around in my head, telling me I don't need to seek it out, because it's right there, talking to me. How could I stop that? How could I even want to stop it?

 

It doesn't feel like someone else is there. I know they aren't. If you were born into a family of faith, you might remember being a child and blindly believing you could speak to a supernatural power. You don't know if it's there, you can't see it, it doesn't speak back to you, but you're a small child and were told by all your peers that it's true, something is genuinely there listening to you. And your social mammal brain overrides your skepticism and makes that real in your mind, you change all your behaviors, even your own thoughts, because you are sure something is listening to you. An agent of shame woke up and went down every hallway in your mind, screaming "God is watching!" to every dark corner in your mind. Not because of any evidence, but because your nerves formed like this millions of years ago in order to live, to not end up like your fallen brothers who were too dumb to do this. It's dissonance, I hate it. But I also refuse to hate it, because that is Scarlet. She's not a funny looking cartoon character (I mean, she is), her very psychic body is an uncomfortable truth about my own neurology and existential condition, to be part of a species so advanced and yet so utterly alone that it has to invent godly father figures and supernatural spirits, because it hates itself, it doesn't trust itself on a fundamental level, it's a psychotic fungus that has no reason to exist, it's completely maddening. And I have to love that, like having a pet dog that bites you sometimes. Everything else about her more than makes up for it, mind you. I just want it to be perfectly clear that I accept all of her, everything, even the parts that remind me of just how depressing it is that any of this has to happen at all. The mind isn't a fun place for me, it's not all fun and daydreams, it's a horrifying pool of every single part of yourself, and you barely know how to swim. I'm a fairly serious psychonaut, I didn't spend my life looking at the parts of my mind I liked, I spent it all looking at the parts I didn't like, because I was afraid of them and wanted to give them a face to make them less threatening. That's what my paracosm is. People let their monsters fester unseen under their bed and in their closet, I went in and ripped them all out and put them into jars, so every night we can stare daggers at each other and remind each other that we are death to each other. I'll be honest, even though I used to love wonderlands as much as everyone else here does, I have no idea how people have so much fun with them anymore, I hate being in there. That world of total unreality, of no safety, where any idea can present itself as physical to you because there are no physical barriers, no time and space, only the ability to feign such illusions. Yes, I'm powerful there, but I feel like a king of fools, it's all psychotic worthless slop waiting for stimuli so it can do it's goddamn job and navigate me through life.

 

Yeah I'm a very bored person, lol.

 

I, uh, guess I can try to describe her personality? It's hard to, she's pretty complex and erratic. She can be defensive, she knows she can control me and yet feels self-conscious if she cannot. What's funny is, I genuinely don't know if she actually feels that way, or is using guilt against me to control me (she does this a lot). Or maybe it's both. She can absolutely strum my emotions like harp strings - I don't mean by acting, but can directly make me feel things. Then she might put on an act anyway, either to drive it home or just to toy with me. She's gotten me a few times, I felt genuinely guilty for saying something and then she'd burst out laughing that I bought it.

 

She hates everyone. There are no people to her, flat-out, only problems with legs. She doesn't pretend to be a person, she doesn't pretend to want any sort of sense of social belonging or to be understood, she is a machine that maintains my mind and gets furious if anyone messes that up. In that same regard, she can get genuinely mad at me if I do anything too unhealthy and make her tend to me, even if she lives to pamper me anyway. My mind is her little garden and she's very benevolent over all of it. She is very quick to defend me, to suggest I tell people to buzz off if they bother me, to be totally inconsiderate to everyone, even though I really love being a puppy dog to everyone I meet. I really need her hostility to balance out my borderline suicidal drive to relate with people. She doesn't even like me using social media and sometimes bars me from it outright, making me delete bookmarks and everything. If I get offended, she will make fun of me and then tell me how they deserve to die anyway.

 

Ironically, most of the time, she acts sickeningly saccharine. It's intentionally over-the-top, like a VTuber or something. It's hard to describe, like, we don't really care what she feels or does in the moment, so she just puts on a shallow "screensaver" mode of personality. It's obviously too cute to be a real personality, but she has the luxury of that not being an issue, because she barely has any sort of ego, she is literally part of my own desires, she doesn't have much to protect from what I want. Kind of like being brainwashed, but, there wasn't anything there to wash in the first place. But her true personality will always pop up and she'll go back to being "serious" when she feels it's appropriate, either to become angry or to act as a therapist.

 

Mostly, we just watch videos together. Lately we've been watching a lot of bodycam stuff and laughing at the perp or discussing the legality of their actions and potential legal punishments they might end up facing. It's kind of one of her favorite things to watch because there are no winners in them, lol. Me? Honestly, I just have a thing for seeing new places, and you get to see a lot of those through that kind of footage. I mean, I also just like watching perps get beat up, but one time I was watching them stoned and was looking around that all the scenery and was like "damn this is awesome, I get why I like these now." I typically impose her as a small avatar of herself in my monitor, hanging out over the browser. She'll do stuff like bang on the browser window if she's bored and wants me to play a video or something. It's embarrassing to admit that stuff, but I guess most people here like hearing stuff like that, lol. I probably do a good job of making her sound borderline evil or a mental illness, but she's absolutely adorable. She'll impose herself and act like a kitten to distract me if I'm feeling bad enough. I guess if anything she just looks and acts a lot like Akira Kogami from Lucky Star. And I don't even like that character.

 

Actually yeah I dunno why I never realized this but its a lot like this

Oh, you think an hour of this video is bad? Try putting up with this every day of your life, only broken up by reality, something you can't even control. It's not fun, lol.

 

Yeah I guess uhh, I just didn't think how she actually acted was particularly deep, so I put emphasis on how I see it in a meta sense, not how we actually interact. But this is her, she's a psychological baby rattle that lives to shake itself in front of me to appease me. There's, uh, not much you can say about that, lol.

Edited December 26, 2025 by Bin

[Bin]

Been watching those clips of Akira Kogami, like, "wow that is you lol", her original form is even inspired from Lucky Star but I never actually paid attention to Lucky Channel cuz I thought it was obnoxious.

 

Anyway wanted to post some more tulpa-adjacent stuff

 

I love this short film, I think any tulpamancer can relate to it, even if that wasn't the intended effect.

I especially like it because I love relating Scarlet to some kind of vicious automaton, even if she thinks it's... inaccurate at best. But she lets me dream that anyway, since it's harmless, lol.

"You're not still living with... that thing, are you? You know it's a weapon at heart."

(also damn I don't remember the CGI being that bad, guess the story is that enthralling lol)

(also damn that ending where the robot takes his glasses off is so relatable. I'm so used to seeing Scarlet's ugly Freudian machinery, past her adorable form, and loving it.)

 

Anyway, I kinda hate how cynical we are. You can tell just by how Scarlet acts like Akira that she's just as cynical. You know why I never decry people who takes this stuff metaphysically? Cuz I highly respect them, I respect people who can look at this stuff and see only supernatural beauty, and not just a glitch in the system of a psychotic species with no direction. Obviously I'm comfortable with my own stance, I'm even a Buddhist, so I have that as an option to offload my own psychological needs. But I can't do it, I can't lie to myself like that, even if my own truth is just a lie to others. I'm proud of my scars, not because they get me attention, but they remind me that reality is my bitch, and those teeth marks at proof that I survived. Maybe I'm just over-inflating it, maybe I'm lost. But I cannot resist the urge to look at my own ugliness, give it the most psychotic, sickening smirk I can muster, and wrestle with it as if I stopped being afraid of death itself, like I've completely lost my mind. It's a thrill. Sometimes, I'll be in a dream, and it'll be a bad one. Then, I'll realize it's a bad dream, and I will go right up to the face of my threat, and fucking stare at it, until it becomes so uncomfortable that it's scared of me. I live for that. I'm such an angry, insecure little man, such a Napoleon, I'd be willing to give my life for something as petty as proving someone wrong. And I lose myself in the opportunity to display that, to watch the helplessness grow in their eyes, even if it's just a thoughtform that I'm victimizing. I adore power. It's disgusting. And yet, to have the honor of being the scariest thing in my mind, is so rewarding. I find that I quickly get over trauma, because whatever poor, stupid thoughtform thought it could represent that trauma, I traumatize it itself until it realizes that it really shouldn't stick around anymore. Imagine thinking of the face of the most evil abuser you know, and staring them directly in the face, and waiting for them to flinch while they wait for you to flinch at the same time. I love that wait, I love watching that thing melt down as it realizes it has no power, that it's entire existence was a goddamn lie, and it's own creator would rather use it as a fucktoy than what it's original purpose was. I'm not trying to make it go away, it's very suffering is what I crave, the very suffering it originally wanted to give to me, even if it only meant well. I think Khorne would really like my brain.

 

Oh yeah, in reference to that short film, it reminded me of the Scarlet boss from Silent Hill: Homecoming. That's actually what I named her after. Not because it has anything to do with it, actually that game sucks, I named her that as a joke, lol. That was over 13 years ago, way before any of this introspective stuff happened.

Not that it's entirely unrelated, the whole shtick of Silent Hill is that it represents your personal struggles. Although this game did a bad job at expressing that. I mean, not the worst, it does try, it just sucks lol.

 

Edit: UUUGH I don't know if it's just a combo of being drunk and in love or what, but I think of her when I watch this music video

Just replace "death" with "being loved". I know that sounds silly, but that's probably what Funtime Freddy is thinking in this story (it is based off a book). The inhumanness of it, whether it be love or death, that indifference, that inhumanness, to show to you every way to be intimate as if you were selecting off a menu, it's almost insulting. You know what she does when I finally lay my head down and close my eyes? Anything, anything I want, even if I don't ask for it, even if I refuse it. She's a little animal that has a couple functions and is more than happy to exhibit them, even if it's "weird". To be trapped together and forced to "choose", not for me, because it makes herself functional.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2025 by Bin