A few years back, I had what I figured was an astral projection experience.
http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...ad.php?t=90974
I thought maybe some little ghostie was taking up residence in our attic.
Little did I know that that presence- it seemed a mere minor character in the scheme of things- was in fact created by me.
Fast forward to the recent future, several months ago. I am writing a story. I am reading a letter that Gaster, a humanoid spider, wrote to Toriel, a lion/bull chimera, documenting his slow recovery from the many, many ordeals of their tale. I'm adding to it, and meditating on it, and just otherwise being drawn in by it.
I get the sudden feeling that someone is reading over my shoulder.
It projects something like, "It is finished, you know. I don't have any more to say."
No way.
My brain is at once excited
and terrified
and very dubious.
I really have overdone it this time, I berate myself. I've gone so far down the rabbit hole I believe this man can really talk to be across dimensions, like they can in the story.
I don't have time to deal with this. I have stuff to do.
Afterwards, I pull in front of our house and ____ sits in the seat beside me. I leave it blank because I am still trying to decide how to address him as a default. Since we contact each other easily, I never have to say a name for him to "pay attention" to me, so it's really not required.
He has so many possible titles and names.
Doctor. Duke. Wing
Ding Gaster. Huh. I'd never noticed the alliteration before.
Ding, ding, paging Doctor Gaster, I joke in my mind, and he laughs so hard it's like a burst of wind going over me.
A burst of wind from an air 'telemental.' An airbender.
Oh, and in the story, something else rhymes, too. You are also a
Master of the Order. (As in, similar to the Jedi Order. I know, cliche and hokey. Bear with me.)
He assures me that, in addition to my giving him depth and detail as a character in the story, this combination of so many words, manes, connotations, and concepts gives him lots of power as well.
What the heck is that suppose to mean?
Still not in words, he expresses that he
is a concept. So as many that stick to him, the better.
He has, since he appeared, sprouted bat wings, and points out the alliance between spiders and bats I mentioned in my two part story. The mere concept of bats is enough to adhere to him, apparently.
Otherwise he is 'blank.' Because I cannot visualize, I merely know that he has six hands, a black suit, purple skin, and five eyes.
I briefly think about his hair. What does a British nobleman's hair look like? It seems most pictures I've seen have at least wavy, if not curly hair. It can be anything I want to be, though, I realized. I want tight ringlets, more than that, I decide.
Still, the wings are weird. 'So have you graduated to a gargoyle, now? Being a spider not enough for you?' I tease.
Bat ears appear on him. I immediately want to look up some real bat ears to have a better idea of what they would look like, but-
A humanoid with big ears?
'Oh what, now I've slid into full on furry territory? I was so original, starting off with an invertebrate. Now I've ruined it.'
He laughs.
This is even funnier in hindsight because I made it a point to make spiders in that universe come in more than one type- skin and exoskeleton. To essentially lampshade the fandom's interpretation of the game's spiders as just a human's physiology with six arms and five eyes.
Should your body be humanoid? Like with muscles? Or spider segments? The Crystal Gems from Steven Universe are segmented, a bit like insects. (or at least, I associate them that way) I've imagined dong a picture of them on DeviantArt with their shapeshifted "clothes" off and an animation with their rotating their bodies around in a silly manner (as a subtle 'screw you' to people who fetishize their femininity, and just for fun, too.) Picture a wooden artist doll model used for pose referencing, and it has full rotation in all joints. Cool, right?
He likes the idea.
Still, the gargoyle association/thought is hard to escape, and a reptilian tail appears. He suddenly jumps in my lap and, uh. "looks"? at me intensely.
Serpents have all sorts of phallic connotations and that seems to have changed his mood.
We walk into the house and begin discussing what to do about the thing in the attic. I figure if I'm going to be drawn back into the metaphysical I should at least clean house while I do it.
And it occurs to me. The last time I was in such a trance writing? And couldn't stop re-reading it? That was Toph.
And she had a
lot of angst.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5889743...e-Blind-Bandit
Was this . . .?
If it was. Should we fight her? Drive her away? Or try to fix her?
Her backstory is longing for reconciliation with her parents-
The thought isn't even fully formed in my head before he's teleported away and into the attic. He's a parental figure, I reason, and has only just been reunited with his own daughter after a long time separated. He's obviously chosen the latter.
I walk down to my own parents, who, surprisingly, are sitting on the couch together. They've been on terse terms for a while. His hand is even resting on her knee.
I get the feeling of the last supernatural experience I had, where coincidentally my dad and sister were doing something together when usually they hardly spoke to each other.
Have you been to the dogsitting house, they ask. My mom apologizes for "shooting" questions at me the minute I walk in.
I smirk and backbend a little in a Matrix-like move, as if dodging bullets, and both of them chuckle.
But in all seriousness, no, I hadn't been and it was getting late. I went up to my room briefly. I had completely forgotten of course. Per usual ADC (Attention Deficit Condition, for I refuse to give it the legitimacy of calling it a 'disorder.' Google it and 'France' and you'll see what I mean.)
Toph is standing in my closet, 'feeling/looking' at me pitifully. I kneel down and hug her. I've sort of become that mom that she wanted to see so badly.
I tear up as I remember identifying with the worry for a missing child. (Why would I, though? That's never happened to me. I'm puzzled. Well, there was that one time I daydreamed that I was a lady in a European country who died alone because her children were grown and married and moved very far away. Sort of morbid for a daydream, yet it also
felt different than a daydream. A past life, perhaps? In any case . . .) Then I remember that I sort of missed my siblings as semi-children when I went to college. I am six years older than they are, after all.
Toph is crying and Gaster is standing behind me with a hand on my shoulder.
We head out. My client tonight is a big white Great Dane. Toph projects excitedly, 'He's so much like Appa!' and embraces him. He's also blind, too, like her.
He doesn't seem to react to her presence, and I test if the cat can sense the two
tulpas there. Animals can supposedly sense supernatural things, right?
Gaster concentrates and pets the cat, but there's no reaction.
I make a mental note to try with another cat later.
On the ride back, Gaster and Toph are busy projecting to me in how many ways they align with each other.
Gaster is nobility, and so is Toph, though she's rejected most of what that entails.
Gaster is an air elemental, and Toph is earth. So they balance each other.
Gaster flaps his wings and points out that the wolf-bats in the Avatar universe are blind, and were strong thematic arcs in the character examination I did of Toph.
At the thought I sense that he's becoming slightly more werewolf-like, curly hair migrating down his back like a mane.
Even though he's 'air' to me, in the sense that I can't see him, the idea is still there.
His tail reverts back to serpent after briefly becoming puffy.
'Great. Another cliche.'
You and your obsession with being original, he smiles back. Isn't it enough that you've written a story that is unlike any other? he jokes.
My English major friends will be able to ascertain
if that's true, I reply impassively.
I'd like to think so. I haven't cracked open a fantasy book proper in a while, binging solely on TV Tropes instead.
They sit very 'quietly' in the back seat. Gaster has impressed upon Toph the importance of not distracting me while I'm driving. I do that well enough on my own without their interference.
When we get back, I ask, 'How old are you, anyway, Toph?' If I created you back in 2010, does that mean you're eighteen now?
Her form changes and she lets out a whoop of joy at finally being seen as a grown up instead of a little child, as she was treated in the ATLAverse.
When I wake, I'm busy mulling over the words
Toph Tulpa
Tough Tulip
T times 4. Hm. T4 is a hormone called thyroxine. It was elevated when I had hyperthyroidism. It regulates growth and metabolism.
This Doctor's number is 4, as well.
"Toph" means both 'supported lotus' and 'beat' like a tambourine.
A tambourine even looks a little like a flower, doesn't it, I muse, with a big middle and tiny petals.
A character I created and dearly loved before that specific writing with Toph starts to vaguely materialize, a fairy with both air and plant/earth aspects. She has green clothes and blonde hair. (her poem is in the poetry subforum
http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...52#post1443852) In my mind, she merges with the aesthetic of the intervening Rise of the Guardians movie, that had a hummingbird fairy. She gains so much of my thoughts that she leaps on Toph, fusing with her through the seeming repeated 'incantation' of associated words.
Her 'hard won' adulthood is in turmoil now, because the fairy represents innocence. I say to her kindly, you never had a proper childhood, right? Why don't you give into it?
What results is barely recognizable as Toph anymore. She's not sarcastic or jaded, prematurely grown, hardened, and adult, as she was in the series. She's my own creation now. She has beetle wings and blue eyes, and still has many feathers.
Linear Mode
