JD's Guide to Personality Forcing

[JD1215]

[align=justify]JD’s Guide to Personality Forcing

Personality forcing can be considered an optional step in the process of creating a tulpa, and it’s entirely okay for you to not force a personality at all. Your tulpa can and will develop its own traits and quirks naturally through life experiences. However, it may aid your tulpa’s development to at least partially define her personality as a groundwork for your tulpa to grow or deviate from. The act of personality forcing itself also puts a lot of focus on your tulpa being a separate sentient entity from you, giving you a nice head start on her becoming an autonomous being. There are many ways to influence or define your tulpa’s personality, and what will work best for you may not work as well for someone else. So I’m going to cover several forms of personality forcing that you can experiment with and employ on your tulpa: list-based trait forcing, symbolic trait forcing, parrot forcing, and music forcing. Each of these are varied enough from each other that at least one of them should cover your needs sufficiently.

 

List Based Trait Forcing

This method of personality forcing is covered in the earliest guides of modern tulpa creation. It’s very straightforward, and consists of defining your tulpa’s personality with an outline of many broad traits. In FAQ Man’s Personality Guide, Dane suggests listing about 30-35 traits, and speaking directly to your tulpa about how those traits are manifested in her. You should talk to your tulpa about, “how the trait helps them rationalize, how the trait works within their logic system, how the trait plays a role in morality, their perception, their likes, dislikes, social endeavors, faith, personality, quirks, emotions, how the trait makes them interpret their own emotions, how the trait plays a role in their hobbies, and many other things not listed here.” The advantage to this method is that you will become very intimate with how your tulpa’s personality works, as the whole process is quite straightforward. The disadvantage is that this method is generally slower and less exciting than other methods.

 

Symbolic Trait Forcing

This method of personality forcing is also covered in earlier guides, but is aimed at people who may not be content with the rinse-repeat trait lecture method. It essentially consists of creating a more abstract way of attributing personality traits to your tulpa that resonates well with you. Common symbolisms include letting the tulpa absorb trait-orbs, drinking trait-potions, etc. This method gives much room for your own creativity. For all anyone cares, your tulpa could be eating broad trait cupcakes with more intricately defined trait sprinkles on top. That advantage to this method is that whatever symbolism you come up with, there’s really no way it can fail. The disadvantages are that is can also be somewhat slower than other methods, and has a little more room for some unpredictably.

 

Parrot Forcing

Parrot forcing is a less commonly used method, since the acts of parroting and puppeting tulpa is still somewhat controversial. I personally find this to be the most efficient method for myself, although it does have its cons compared to other methods. Our personalities today are largely defined by our experiences and memories as a person. We aren’t just born with personality traits -- genetic predisposition aside. The goal of parrot forcing is to allow our tulpa to experience life so it can develop a personality in a similar way we do. Where other methods of personality forcing involve telling your tulpa how to act, parrot forcing involves letting them experience how to act through parroting/puppeting. What do you do while you puppet your tulpa? Whatever you want. Make her walk, make her talk. Take her places in your wonderland, force food and games for her. Act through her the way you think she would act. Is she lovable and sweet? Have her hug you whenever you visit her in your wonderland. Is she totally tsundere? Make her act like she wants nothing to do with you (but really she does). You’re basically kind of roleplaying her using her body, while you’re with her in your body. When you start to feel like you’re really getting used to this exercise, possibly in a few days, stop puppeting cold turkey and let your tulpa take the reigns. The advantage of this method is that with it you can tackle personality, speech patterns, gait, and many other behavioral things all at once. The disadvantage of this method is that you may feel like you missed out on watching your tulpa grow from scratch through it’s own will and intentions.

 

Music Forcing

Forcing personality through music is something I’ve been experimenting with on my youngest tulpa. It involves creating a playlist of songs with themes, moods, or lyrics that reflect the personality you want your tulpa to have, and listening to it with your tulpa while refocusing the meaning of the songs to their personality. It’s like attributing a theme song to them. For example, I wanted my tulpa to be a really energetic party animal, so I played a lot of energetic J-Pop songs towards her. The advantage of this method is that you can tackle both personality and voice at once, if the songs you are playing contain the reference voice you want to use for your tulpa -- not to mention that it’s really fun in general. The disadvantage is that it can be the most unclear method of defining your tulpa’s personality, and you may get tired of listening to the same songs over and over.

 

Creating Your Own Method

There’s a possibility that none of these methods really suit you, or sound appealing. Fortunately, tulpaforcing can be a very creative process, as the rules and laws of it are easily bent by your own will. You may want to go down the path of concocting your own personality forcing method. The focus point of your method is how well it can communicate the host’s intentions to the tulpa, which may actually vary depending on your personality and the desired personality of your tulpa. Perhaps if you wanted a very artistic tulpa, you could create a forcing method involving abstract painting with your tulpa, collaborating with her to create paintings that convey her personality. Or maybe you’d like a tulpa who enjoys traveling around with you; you could take your tulpa to places that instill emotions and memories you’d like to correlate with your tulpa’s personality. There are many possibilities, but the most important bit is that your method can clearly convey your intentions to your tulpa to properly influence her personality. Other than that, you're at your own creative freedom.[/align]

[Sands]

Yup. Just like 100% of smokers die, 100% of non-smokers also die. You're fucked.

[Shikyu]

Wait so what does this have to do with personality forcing?

[Sands]

Why would you have to spend ten hours in the personality "stage"? You don't have to do anything. Other than die but eh, that happens when it happens.

[Shikyu]

Well I thought that's how much you should put in atleast to get a good tulpa personality. I've never forced before so how bout you go ahead and tell me what I should do to force a good tulpa?

[Sands]

There is no shoulds or musts. Personality is a step you can ignore if you want to. Hell, there's not really even steps you have to finish before you move onto another if you don't want to. There's no magical hour count that makes a difference between a "good" something and "bad" something when it comes to personality. Hell, personality if you're doing it the talking way is basically nothing but narration, which is what is believed to be the key to making them sapient. The only thing you basically have to do. They'll have a personality and no matter how much you try to force one on them, it just might not stick if it's not them.

 

You find your own way. Guides are just guides, not the rules you must follow. You gotta follow your heart, because you know what works the best for you and what doesn't. Not us.

[Shikyu]

I have a specific personality in mind and I'm afraid I might screw it up by like not spending a enough time on it or something. It's my first time really doing this so I don't really know how to go about it.

[Sands]

Again, personality is not something you can force on them if it doesn't stick. It might, it might not. It might change as they live and actually have experience of living a life and being with people. There's no screwing up.

[Lacquer]

Do it for however long you feel it needs, and whatever feels natural. Note: this cannot be determined beforehand. You have to simply personality force until you get "that feeling" that the stage is done. Also, you should do narration interspersed throughout this time, and if you have a form already set in your mind, you should do some visualization, too.

 

Don't worry about the personality or anything. Since you know what you're doing and have us to talk to, nothing is going to go wrong.

 

sapient

 

 

"Sapient" or "Sentient"? What's the difference?

[Sands]

Sentient and sapient are usually used to mean the same thing. I could cite some Wikipedia for you to show where I'm coming from.

 

Sentience: Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or be conscious, or to experience subjectivity. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think ("reason") from the ability to feel ("sentience"). In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known by the technical term "qualia").

 

>This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts that mean something or are "about" something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining "consciousness", which is otherwise commonly used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.

 

Sapience (redirects to wisdom, but has an entry for sapience): Sapience is often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment, a mental faculty which is a component of intelligence or alternatively may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.

 

(and here's some wisdom if you want to think that sapience=wisdom): Wisdom is the judicious theory and application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions (the "passions") so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one's actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action.

 

I would say many animals are sentient as they can obviously feel things. They can be in pain, they can enjoy sensations, hell, you have a friend of theirs die and you can see them acting what I would call sad and depressed. But I couldn't call animals sapient.

[Lacquer]

So then tulpas are sapient. Okay, that makes sense.