#this is a test for a project im considering doing... i'd have to start reading dunmesh properly for it though

[tytoalbatross]

is this anything

[windvexer]

Hello chicken!

I come to you today with a question I've had for a long time, and I read a post a while ago where you gave tips on entering the astral for people who struggle with it. In this, you mentioned, if I remember correctly, that people who day dream a lot should find a way to tell apart their spiritual travels from daydreams.

The thing is—I'm not only a maladaptive daydreamer since I can remember but also a fiction writer. Meaning my mind comes up with random places and people and story fractures all the time. And when prompted with something, it can run pretty far. I have no way of determining wether or not my spiritual encounters with familiar spirits have been legit or a complete result of my own imagination.

I really wanna know if there's a way to determine if my experience are "real" or made up and how I can go about differentiating them. If you have anything that could help with that I'd be super grateful.

Have a wonderful day and thank you already

We're in reference to this, I think?

This is one of those situations where there are IME never any blanket tips, because everyone has their own needs.

"Real astral travel is fatiguing whereas daydreaming is not" is not a rule of thumb that is helpful to people that don't really get tired astral traveling, or who are exhausted by racing thoughts.

I believe it's vital to experiment for oneself to build up a system of checks and balances that works for you.

That being said here are some ways that travel can be tested (again, consider how these checks may be inadequate depending on the areas you travel, your innate skills, etc).

If you have tips or thoughts to add, please feel free!

You have valid experiences with your spirits if they pan out - if your spirits give you information, spells, techniques, etc., that work. A lot of valid techniques and lore aren't written down, so comparing it to other sources doesn't always work - you have to put it to the test. You can also ask spirits to do things for you - things that should be easily doable - and see if it happens (like, asking them to visit you at a certain time and setting a reminder after the fact).

You can't really control spirits in the astral the way you control daydream characters. Your daydream character can say or do whatever you think even on the slightest of whims. Spirits do not, and if you try to force them to say or do things they can become very upset.

In the astral, there is no story to fracture. It's not a story, there is no narrative. It's a lived experience.

Astral realms are causal, just like our normal physical reality. In a daydream if you realize a character has on the wrong outfit for this scene, based on that mere idea the story might retroactively correct to suddenly have the character be in the right outfit. But in the astral, for a spirit to have on different clothes, they have to go change clothes. And that takes time. They have to leave that location, go to where they keep their clothes, change their clothes, and come back.

There is no fracturing the story into two versions, one where the spirit has on the right outfit from the start, and one where they don't. There is no story.

In a daydream, you control the experience. At the perfect moment, it starts raining in the graveyard for the dramatic reveal. In the astral, you are experiencing something external. You can imagine it's raining, try to force it to rain, or project rain. You might even see rain for a few moments. But your perception will tend to snap back to the actual experience. And then the spirits might be looking at you weird, asking what you're doing. You can't restart the scene because there is no scene.

In a daydream if there is a locked door, that doesn't necessarily stop you in any way. You can know what's behind the locked door, where the key is, how difficult it is to open the door, if there are alternate routes, and so on. You can even know who made the door and the forest the wood came from. The characters might be stuck on one side but you are the omnipotent creator god of that reality and you have all the information you want.

In the astral if you encounter a locked door, you don't automatically know what's behind it. If you don't have the key, you can use magic to unlock it or you can try to break it down. But if you can't, then you can't. If your path is blocked, you won't automatically know any alternative paths forward. The narrative isn't going to be rewritten to account for plot holes; there is no plot. Do you want to know who made the door? Well, how do you intend to find out? Because that information isn't up to you; it exists externally from you.

The characters are at a gorge. The next part of the story is on the other side. Figuring out how to cross the gorge isn't interesting right now, the emotional energy is ready to carry us deeper into the plot. Let's just put a pin in the crossing and figure it out later. For now, we teleport into the future. The characters are on the other side of the gorge, ready to travel into the city.

In the astral, you are stuck on that side of the gorge until you figure out how to cross it. You can imagine or pretend you're on the other side, but eventually you will be bounced back to where you are actually standing.

Daydreams remain static unless you are there to change them. The changes may be sprawling and nigh instantaneous, but they come from you; you are making it up. You are never going to come back to a daydream and realized the fundamental reality of the daydream changed since monday and is irreversible to its prior state.

Astral realms will change on their own whether or not you're there for it. One day a new path appears that was never there before. You can't "switch back" to the other version because there is not more than one version, it's a living area. One day there is a blockage and you can't go to that location. The next day the blockage disappears, or it remains until you resolve it.

Daydreams tend to be low-energy. You can go through the epic history of an empire in 30 minutes. Astral travel tends to be energy-intensive. You can hang out for 15 minutes and talk to one fish in a fountain before you get tired and sleepy.

Similarly, changes in daydreams can be done with nothing more than the energy of a thought; you can raise up houses, neighborhoods, cities, empires, and solar systems with the blink of an eye. In the astral, if you want a bucket of water, you have to pick up the bucket, go to the well, get the water, and walk back. And if it takes you 15 actual IRL minutes, then that's how long it takes you.

My tl;dr is that if it feels like you're an omnipotent multiversal creator god having adventures in endless stories with clear narratives, side-quests, and character arcs, then I'd be more likely to hazard that you're daydreaming. If it feels like you are a person trying to live your got dang life, if you run into problems that require real time and energy to resolve, and if you drop the ball and the world moves on without you - it's more likely you're traveling.

(The only thing I will say is that time in the astral generally doesn't work like how it does here - time can scroll forward very quickly. But if you have time-god powers like editing the past, jumping around from past to present and into alternate timelines, or flash-freezing the universe to walk around in it, I'd be suspicious.

In addition, what worlds you're going to can have a huge impact - personal astral spaces you're fully in control over are, well, much easier to control than external spaces where you're a visitor.)

[chronurgy]

hiiiiiii im going to need a director’s commentary on this passage from (departure from the vulgar crowd) please…i loved their connection over gortash’s bling:

It was always nice to have one’s work appreciated, especially by someone intelligent enough to truly comprehend the craft. “It uses a miniaturized system of springs and counterweights to generate energy from my natural arm movements. A system of my own design, naturally. In fact, all the pieces are of my own design and construction.”

When they had looked up at him, it was with hunger in those dark eyes. “Fascinating,” they breathed. He wasn’t sure if the intensity in their eyes and words came from a desire to learn more about him or to dissect him. Possibly both. One could never be sure with their lot.

So interestingly this scene was not actually present in the first draft - it went straight from Vesper telling Gortash to leave them alone and let them read into him thinking about their abilities in combat. I added this scene in when I was about halfway through the fic. So where did this scene come from? Several different places. First, my headcanon that Gortash had the gauntlets before the netherstone and that they would have held something else then - in this case a set of magi-tech capacitors that could deliver an electric shock or extra force damage and that this tech was unique enough that he had to have designed it himself. Second, from my rewrites to the scene where they first meet in the sewers. I'd considered having him show off the gauntlets in an attempt to threaten or impress Vesper, but I realized that they're basically one of the most noticeable things about him (especially if he's dressed down compared to his archduke outfit) and that Vesper would immediately clock them as magical and be interested without him particularly having to do anything. Third, that Vesper would desperately want to get their hands on those things.

With all of that, this seemed like the perfect place to put the scene because Vesper and gortash are alone, so Vesper doesn't need to be as "on" as they would be in front of their cultists. I was also happy to come up with this because I felt like I needed a scene where Vesper demonstrated some interest in Gortash which this did well. Vesper starts to respect gortash here because he's just shown them this incredibly cool and well designed magical mechanism that he designed and made himself which makes it clear that this guy isn't just some braggadocious weirdo - he's very clever. It's part of why they're so confident that he didn't fuck up the guard counts and were testing them - they know that he's on their level and that's probably what they would have done in his position. They're still wary of him but there's a sort of game recognize game moment here.

It's also where gortash starts to put together his "in" with Vesper, which is that they are very smart and very lonely (which is a state he would know something about). I originally had him comment on that (I believe he thought something like "got you" when he caught them staring) but I pulled it because it just didn't flow right with the rest of the scene. But it did come back at the end there when he mentions other projects he's working on to further entice them to come to his estate.

Also, though it wasn't intentional, it's very funny that Gortash is out here going on about how you can never tell if "their lot" want to get to know him or dissect him when later that night he's going to say he wants to take them apart in his lab in a way that's very ambiguous about whether he means dissecting them or fucking them (or both). They really are perfect for each other, the freaks.

Finally, I based the mechanisms in the gauntlets on self winding watches. They use a semicircular weight that pivots with natural wrist movements to wind the mainspring of the watch. That's the idea here - the weights tighten the springs which pull on (here's where magic comes in) crystals that can convert that kinetic energy to arcane potential, and gortash has built something akin to a capacitor bank to then store that energy. So that's where that concept came from!

[dove-needsa-nap]

Teacher : why didn't you do your project? You've had weeks.

Me : in the past weeks I have

Had such horrible anxiety attacks just on my own in my room over literally a random thought that's popped into my head. "What if my mom happens to drive by our house just on chance and sees us... She'll know where I live... I won't be safe. No. Nononononono." They got so bad all I could do was stare blankly at a wall while I'm curled up in the darkness silently crying with an emotionless look

My good friend who've I've considered like a cousin or even a brother since I was nine, he's like ten by the way, was literally kidnapped after his dad was arrested for online distribution of child pornography that was probably of him

Gone to a therapy session this Thursday (today as I'm writing this) and completely broken down because I thought I'd be with my siblings but they didn't tell me they wanted to talk to me alone and I panicked and I started crying and I wouldn't look up and I wouldn't talk and my throat closed and I just froze and couldn't move.

Questioned if anyone really cares. People only try to calm me down or cheer me up for a few minutes before walking away. I need affection. I need hugs and comfort. I need my family and friends to 'coddle' me as my birth mother would say and make sure I'm okay. I need someone who will listen and not get this look on their face of "ew what the heck is wrong with you? You're so weird. Why do you think that way, it isn't normal, you need help". I need friends who after I tell my problems to them won't run off to their friends and say "what a freak. She's definitely a psycho."

I haven't been eating right. It used to be because I wanted to be skinny and I got better for a bit... But now it's because I don't care. I just don't care. I'll hear my stomach growl and I'll get hunger pains but I won't eat unless my foster mom forces me from my room to eat dinner.

I haven't been drinking water. Again, I don't care enough about myself right now

I don't really even change my clothes. Yes I'll change my bra and stuff like that after I've showered but I just throw in the same clothes again because they're familiar to me and if I feel sad and even the smallest thing changes, I break down. It's nice to have something familiar near at all times.

I stopped caring about school. I want to care... I do. I wanna be able to say "great job, you did it! Just like you used to! You're getting your stuff together!" But I don't... Sure I do worksheets that are handed out and I do good on test... But I don't actually care. I get good grades of course, only ever always been all A's and B's, but I don't really care anymore. I don't even wanna go to college. I'm gonna be a high school drop out. I'll just be a house wife or something. Wow.... How sad is that? A kid who is so broken and depressed she's thinking of the easiest way out for something that's years away because she doesn't wish to put up with the stress and extra depression...

Continued from seven, in the mornings after I manage to drag myself from bed, I slip on what ever jacket I can find over my same shirt and a random pair of pants over the tights I've had on for weeks. Not that I don't have clean clothes, I do, plenty of them... I just... Agh go read seven again

Had such horrid nightmares when I did finally sleep that im paranoid constantly at every little sound. I once had a nightmare I was at a funeral for every friend I'd ever had, and as I walked past their tomb stones I heard the things they'd said to me... The bad ones. The "oh ew" the "what a freak" the "looser" the "mistake" the "you aren't meant to exist" the "just die already".... Yeah... Then I looked up from the grass of the cemetery and saw my own tomb stone "here lies xxxxx. Mystery girl. Forgotten forever. Far to low of a scum to be remembered. Worthless."

I've been exausted. So so so so tired. You know, teacher, you comment on it almost every morning. We laugh and joke about it but you don't know the reason I'm so tired is because I'm just a mess. I've been so depressed that I stay awake till midnight every night crying. "Get off your phone and get some sleep" says my foster mom even though I plugged in my phone and put it down hours ago. I've just been crying because random depressing thoughts pop into my head. Some include :

Why me? Why did I have the mom role with my siblings since I was eight

Why am I the one who had to be abused day after day by my grandma only to find her dead on our couch after my last words to her were "yeah whatever I'll be in my room" after this woman who had abused me for almost four years begged me to stay with her because her head hurt

Did she deserve to be left alone? How was I supposed to know she'd die? Do I even feel bad she's gone....

Why couldn't I get a childhood?

Why can't I be happy

I don't deserve my friends

I'll never be able to go to therapy. I know what'll happen. Same thing that happened on Thursday. I'll break down. Everytime I open up, it hurts me because they don't really care. Talking about it makes me relive it and it hurts. I'd rather just spend my time drawing and listening to music and pretending I'm happy when I never truly will be.

It's my own fault I'm depressed. It's my fault for being such a coward that I can't even go to one simple therapy session to make myself better

Me : so yeah... I didn't do but one or two small bits if my project because I'm just so tired and depressed and so full of anxiety that doing anything other than sleeping is a chore. trust me, I tried to work on it I really did. And I could make up some stupid excuse like "oh I lost the paper" or "oh yeah I completely forgot!" But no. I'm telling you the honest to God truth : I'm depressed. Too much so to even think most of the time. Sometimes I stare blankly at the wall and try not to think at all because thinking hurts and it makes me relive things I tried to put back in the vault of my mind. So yeah... No project because every time I tried my depression spiked and I realized all my dreams are worthless and so is school because I'm never going anywhere in life anyway. Yeah... Sorry?

Fun fact : I actually do plan on showing my teacher this tomorrow if she asks about the project. It was due today while I was sobbing in a therapist office....