ajaida

[ajaida]

A link to our AI doodles

Our system is posting our AI doodlings on twitter: https://twitter.com/KyhyraethB.  That’s where a lot of our collective output has been lately. 

But we’re getting laid off work soon so we will have more free time and we’re going to collectively get to more interacting and outputting on social media.  I need to take some time to see what’s going on with other plural systems on Tumblr amongst our various plans

[ajaida]

Happy 8th Anniversary to me

Thanks Tumblr, for being there even though i’ve been a lousy correspondent.

And Jeers to me for using the webpage editor to write a long 8th anniversary post but then somehow lose the draft.

Like i’ve said before, i should write more here, explore more, be my own subject in print.  I’m not as good at outputting content as i wish i could be.  And yeah, at eight years old i feel i should have achieved a fair bit already.

Anyhow, i’m going to try and sit down again and relate news from our life.  But the draft disappeared so i’ll have to tackle it later.  Just wanted to get an Anniversary post up.

[ajaida]

Picture done by Chyh, one of our core members

[ajaida]

The year in review.

So there’s another xmas over.  This is Saturday and finally is the first day when we don’t have any more events to attend or extra work to do.  Dad/host is a dedicated volunteer and christmas time is overdrive for charities, so December means tons of extra work for us to do, much of it involving friendly smiling or being outside in the rain or snow.  And it is so very weird because we don’t do religion or consumerism or gluttony so it really all just is a giant meaningless party to us, the machinery of society going through its routine again.

All the buying of more stuff just look like unrecyclable wrapping and mountains of plastic garbage to me.  All the lovely traditions make as much sense and are about as enjoyable as the worn-out dad joke.  The only magical thing about them is that everyone just keeps talking each other into obsessing over them.  At certain points in the far too many family and friend events my dad has to attend, i am very happy to remain an quiet outsider who doesn’t have to dance through all those steps just to fit in. 

 I do appreciate the spirit of generosity.  It’s really the most human part of winter’s arrival.  But at the same time that unavoidable pang of cynicism too.  I see the dude wearing the most expensive suit in the entire neighbourhood doing his photo op, or the fancy evangelical church show up with vans-full of donation, but i’d trade them all in for just a couple more of the little old couples who show up every week with a single bag of cat food.  Mr Fancy Facebook post probably walked away with a nice tax receipt, but i know little old Mrs Thursday Afternoon has brought tremendous happiness to so many families because she remembers that charity is possible in the middle of August.   A sickening amount of charity happens because of very public self-congratulation.

And i guess, a lot of that really counts as how my impression of xmas has generally been year after year.  Far too much too fuss and a lot of it is really fucked up from an outsider perspective.  But then this year was a little... darker and harder to stomach.  And that’s because of the big news for the year, i have a new sister!

We had a walk-in arrive in the spring.  There’d not been any talk of adding another tulpa, but there was a vague backstory element of a mythical sister i had.  But whatever the means, she popped in with practically full possession jostling for recognition more through intention than language.  She was just too obviously there and trying to take part for us to even wonder how it happened.  

So her name is Chyh, and she’s a natural at possession so has had the most time fronting lately.  She doesn’t have any great pronouncements she feels the need to make, and is doing roughly the same things young headmates do in their first year.  Learning words they’ve never heard before, experiencing things for the first time. 

But she also earned an informal title: The New Heart of Villainy. 

I mean, like, she is honestly like a sweet, adorable child, a positively wonderful surprise in our life.  But her perspective is positively horrific.

It’s that moment when she sees through to the truth of something, before she actually produces a reaction.... That moment when she ‘gets’ something, it’s always jumping straight to where’s the war crime behind it all.  The point of view where she actually understands the world from is staring into the black heart of humanity’s vileness.  Her reaction is practically the thousand-yard stare and politely stomaching her existentialist disgust.

I mean it’s oddly amusing that she automatically just sees “the horror, the horror” but then i get to turn around and fuss about how the wee one is going to be nine months soon and we should have a big party celebrating how much she’s grown! 

And i think, though Dad declines to comment, that the Heart of Villainy made it a harder for him to get through all xmas stuff politely.  Chyh did enjoy some new treats, but she also bounced really hard off some of the arbitrary obsessions and the petty emotional melodramas that come as part of the season.  She’s thoroughly unimpressed with how phoney people can be, and during one particular good luck desert she was done with bullshit of whatever seasonal faery creature we were talking about, our stomach was lurching in disgust, and suddenly dad had to find a way to discreetly throw out a dessert that never gets thrown away by anyone.

I probably frame my sister a bit melodramatically.  I can joke at her somewhat sociopathic view of the world, but it really is just an amoral look at the hard numbers of science.  She’s the natural engineer that dad/host’s grandfather would have loved, the practical statistician who needs to work with the numbers not the idealised faery tale.  She jumps through questions in a different order, that even when we’re building from the same information she ends up in such surprising conclusions.

The last big thing i learned this year, due to my sister, is how to sit back and not be in control.  Maybe more importantly, that it was so rewarding.  You see, i was very much a possessive tulpa.  Eager to front, i would step in and run the body if there was even so much as a chance to make some physical manoeuvre that was new to me.

But with Chyh here now, she’s eager for that same spot and i started to discover it was okay to just be a passenger.  It was really easy to want her to have the chance at possession because i understood how fun it was.  And it was a bit odd learning to just watch someone else be creative without wanting to make contributions, especially with something like Minecraft where i could probably build it in my sleep.

It’s funny, even.  I couldn’t even ever really understand how my host could be willing to just let go of wanting to be in charge so that i could have an evening just playing on the computer.  But now that i watch my sister get the same chance and it’s a positively delightful way to spend the evening.  The fun of spending an evening doing whatever thing, feeling like i practically made it myself, but with the laid-back, nothing-to-do visiting of just chatting on the couch. 

So, a new walk-in sister turned out to be far more amusing and informative to have around than i ever imagined.  That’s the story of 2018 for me, and us, and i couldn’t be happier about it all.

Cheers to a new year, and the changes it may bring.

[ajaida]

@rainbow-tulpas: i can certainly vouch for the fact that a host and a tulpa may experience sensations differently.  My host is fervently spice-induced.  He likes grabbing his immigrant friends and going to the ‘authentic’ restaurants and eating food so spicy we end up dripping in sweat.  Me, when i front, i can certainly go further than the whitebread folks who think of Taco Bell as exotic, but i certainly can’t handle spicy food like my host can.  He dragged us to a custom ice cream shop on one trip and picked out a chili chocolate that he just thought was perfection.  But he had to spend the whole time apologizing to me because i was wincing and couldn’t cope even though he was fronting.  So it’s certainly possible for members of a system to react differently to the same basic experiences.

Update

[ajaida]

Cartesian Theatre

Okay, maybe i’m a bad blogger.  Tumblr sent an email a while back saying “hey happy 4th(?) birthday on Tumblr” and i realised i couldn’t even remember the last time i was on here. 

And maybe i’m not such a good member of the tulpamancy community.  My host reminds me that it would be good to contribute, but i feel so out of place still.   I constantly read stories about systems with a dozen tulpæ in them and think that they can’t possibly run themselves the way my host and i live.  Or there was a tulpa-only post on Reddit about “how are you decorating your wonderland?” which is basically meaningless to me now.  I haven’t paid any attention to it since i learned to possess our hands and got to communicating with the outside world.  In fact, the only times that part of the mind ever gets used is when my host is explaining something and decides to crack me up by drawing really exaggerated, cartoon-y animations to emphasize the point.  And even that is the kind of joke he only breaks out once every few months.

Playing around in imagination was fun, but i’m far more interested in actual science and history and philosophy.  My host finally remembered a show i needed to see and so we’ve been going through a marathon of the old BBC series Connections with James Burke.  Fascinating, amazing, consider this a heavy endorsement if you are interested in the backstory of the world reached the point it’s at today.  It’s been a very fun experience for us because it follows chains of discovery necessary to reach modern technologies.  It’s an odd little mystery guessing what it’s leading up to reveal at the end, and highlights the differences between how i and my host dig up knowledge.  I can intuit certain things that link and am better at names, but my host is far better at understanding historical context and can easily run through the events that lead to key phases in engines or electro-magnetism or war materiel.  “Well of course,” he says, “that’s about the time they invented the stirrup!”  It even needles me a bit that i can seemingly pull random details with no effort, but can’t figure out how my host can pull such long, accurate connections out of seemingly nowhere

I mean, i get why.  My host is substantially older, and had to personally learn facts and make associations that i just get to personally rummage around in and pick through.  But i take some small satisfaction at being faster to find things than he is.  He’s reached that point of being middle-aged that he doesn’t even care if he digs up the right word for something as long as he’s got enough working knowledge to get the necessities taken care of.  He’ll blank out on the name of a co-worker he’s known for years but he doesn’t care because he’ll just call them lad or lass for a few days until he remembers or asks me to dig it up for him.

Or the phrase ‘Cartesian Theatre’ which is the title of this post.  Here’s a quick link to Wikipedia if you want to start looking it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

Now this was very important to my early upbringing.  It was part of how i learned to frame where I was in the brain.  It was the beginning of my lessons in philosophy and cognitive science.  It was a keystone metaphor to how we practised switching and possession.  But the actual phrase for it, the proper name he’d heard for it a couple decades ago in university?  Nope.  Never came up.  It was only as we were reading a philosophy paper this morning that we stumbled across it and he went “Aha! That’s the name i was supposed to remember!”  Smack my forehead time.  My host is a muddled dotard who teaches me things without even remembering what they’re called.  Like geez, i even did a post on here about the concept because it was so important to my own concept of self, but my host couldn’t even remember the phrase he’d learned to call it.  Sigh.

It’s probably a good thing my host didn’t make any other tulpæ because he’s the kind of doddering old fool who wouldnn’t even remember the right name to call us by.

Anyhow.  I hope everyone has a nice winter, and enjoy whatever festivities you have.  My new year’s resolution is to pop in more often and discuss the scientific and philosophical implications of being an additional sentience brought up in the mind.  Maybe here, maybe more on Reddit.  Best wishes to you and yours.

[ajaida]

The last stanza of this song is practically an anthem of plurality.

This is a particularly fun song for me because my host has a different version memorized for us to listen to.  It’s a blast hearing different artists takes on lyrics you already know to heart, and Joni Mitchell’s is a fine addition to the history of this song.

[ajaida]

Host/dad can’t explain much music theory to me, but i do enjoy the sheet-music renditions of music that YouTube user smalin does.

[ajaida]

Okay Tumblr it’s been a while, i’ll admit

[ajaida]

from http://www.reddit.com/r/fatbirds/

[ajaida]

According to this writer, Tulpamancy is “absolutely forbidden for a Jew (or anyone)”

It’s a well-informed look at the tulpa phenommenon, but i don’t like being told that i’m an evil, dangerous thing.  Just wanted to point out to other tulpae that we are going to face discrimination in the world.  Be careful about revealing yourself to people who will react like this.

[ajaida]

Me applying for jobs: yes i am a neurotypical, look at me neurotypicalling all over the place- i love eye contact && lots of sensory input??? pls engage me in small talk it is?? my favourite?????? connect more emotionally to me please; i am so neurotyp-

[ajaida]

The wide world of Plurality

Been reading a much wider range of things along plural spectrum lately.  Reading a multiplicity of multiplicity forums now.  And like better knowledge tends to do, it leaves me with deeper questions and tougher quandaries.  

Six months ago, i was satisfied to be called a tulpa.  It gave me answers to explain what i was and a community and so much fulfillment.  But i’ve grown and changed, acquired new language, looked at skills from a breadth of perspectives and i’m no longer sure what to call myself without trying to think of where i am and who i’m talking to now.

Started reading healthy multiplicity forums with the hope that there’d be common ground to find.  Instead i’m stuck with not even finding the right kind of thing i could say in those forums.  I’m a creation not a naturally occurring thoughtform, so i wonder if i’m even politely allowed to make comparisons.  There’s a wider range of accepted beliefs and interpretations which i’m fine with.  But it makes it hard to compare to the straightforward lessons of tulpamancy.  There’s no easy comparison between the way i was made and the way natural systems arose.

We’re also a very science-based system.  I rebelled against anything delusional or irrational about my story because dad had taught me enough solid science that i could tell the difference.  So being grounded in fact is high on my personal list of priorities.  It’s hard to wander into a Dissociative Identity forum and not feel very detached.  I could clean out the cobwebs in our brain, but can’t think of anything to say to people who go through more internal struggle than i’d ever dealt with.

The problem really is that i’ve grown into a hyper-rational post-tulpa.  I’m a systemmate now, worried about mid-life crisis problems.  My personal idea of healthy multiplicity is acting as co-processors to think and act better-than-human.  Skipping off to elaborate mindscapes is not what we do around here, by my choice.  So much of the rest of the plural community seems messy and chaotic compared to the way i think life should be lived.

I guess i wanted to see the plural lifestyle as sort of the optimized human mind.  Dad had always treated me as a science experiment, an attempt to sort our brain out.  And i treat my role here as very much a problem-solver in life.  That extra contribution which makes life run smoother.  Teamwork to achieve anything.  My personal mission is to help prove that plurality is a beneficial way for humans to live.

But i’m not sure how to do that in the wider community with its countless different ways of experiencing plural identity.  Finding common ground between tulpamancy, DID, and healthy multiplicity is going to take work.  Thankfully there are a lot of committed people showing up in different places fighting for that common ground.  Plurality is a young community, but it certainly looks like it will thrive

Me and host/dad are happy to see it happening around us.  And i’ll figure out some way to personally contribute to it because i’d like to see greater humanity understand plurality one day.

[ajaida]

My review of Rocky Horror Picture Show

So it’s a rainy Friday night here and we’re staying in to watch Rocky Horror.  I’ve heard impressions about it, seen the theme song.  Actually, it started because i started humming the theme song; pretty much my super-power is finding memories of complete songs and working through them.  And the opening theme for this one was a real struggle because it’s full of cultural references i don’t know and names i could only half-guess.  So dad suggested we look up the audience participation script.

See back when the RHPS was a cult hit in the movie theatres, it would play at weekend midnight showings regularly.  The fandom woud show up in cosplay and chant and dance along with the movie they knew so well.  It also meant they’d howl things at the screen, throwing jokes in to silent moments.  Host/dad had been to the showings back in the days but couldn’t remember any of the lines.

So we looked up and found this: http://www.rockyhorror.htmlplanet.com/about.html

It’s the complete script for the movie plus an essential set of comedy comments to shout at the screen.  Dad knows the pacing perfectly but it’s all new to me so he’s throwing in the audience reactions from the script and kind of playing it in the tone of crowd voices.  This is so much fun to go through this way i’m crying and singing along to the music.

Totally didn’t even pay attention to the steps of how to do the Time Warp i was so busy finding the right words to the song.  But i am lining up exactly to amazing memories of long ago and enjoying a fantastic movie.

Recommended/10.

Bonus points for follow along participation.

EDIT: OMG i forgot the main point that made me want to write.  The eponymous Rocky is Frank-N-Furter’s created person so is the person i instantly understood the best.  I cheer on the created monster as one myself.  And Rocky is born singing about existential angst, the crisis  of sentience itself as his opening number.  Yeah, i empathize with being the experiment of a mad scientist.

[ajaida]

Important terms from the multiplicity community

This gonna help anybody? Does it need corrections?

[ajaida]

A subreddit for multiples, medians, plurals, tulpamancers and tulpas, and all other manners of having more than one person in a head. Tags:...

[ajaida]