spiders

daydreams, imaginary friends

traitorous fifth column secret fae here to tear apart the human world floorboard by floorboard with my teeth

we are always learning things about the world, and so excited to share them with you

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endlessforms
@endlessforms

this is a game about the Inside, the Outside, and a Window between them

  • the Outside is where your body exists on the material plane. you may be in the Outside as you read this.

  • create a place in your mind, a cozy place you want to be (perhaps you already have one?). this is your Inside.

  • in your Inside, make a Window. your Window looks from the Inside to the Outside. it can look however you want. perhaps it's a detailed miniature on a table, or a literal window, or a computer monitor, or it might just simply be your visual field on the Inside. my Window often looks like a simple rift floating in place.

by default, the images of the Outside you see in the Window likely come from your eyes, but to play this game, let's move the perspective into the third person.


when you look through your Window, you should be looking down at yourself and your surroundings, in an isometric view, or perhaps floating from behind, or just as a camera free in space. it's likely it will be some mix of these things, as different tasks on the Outside may require different camera angles to be depicted in the Window.

the surroundings shown through the Window will be most accurate directly in front of you, but objects not in your field of view on the Outside might flicker out of view or become inaccurate as you lose awareness of them. extra objects may appear in the Window that are not there on the Outside.

maintaining this perspective is the challenge of third person. you will try to keep your view in the third person for as long as possible.

you might slip back into the Outside from time to time, looking through your eyes instead of the Window. if this happens, but you wish to keep playing, simply return to the Inside and set your Window up again.

it's possible your Inside will fade away, leaving only the Window. the visual metaphor of the Window might disappear. your eyes on the Inside might just become the Window. that's ok if any of this happens.

it can be difficult to maintain the Inside, the shape and characteristics of the Window, and the actual contents of the Window all at the same time. doing all of these at once requires a lot of attention and it's not integral to playing third person.

the more complicated and attention-heavy a task you are attempting, the more likely it is that your Window will break and you will accidentally return to the Outside, but you will get better with practice the more you play third person.

  • play to maintain the Window for longer periods of time.

  • play to maintain the Window through more and more complex tasks.

  • play in response to stress.

  • play in response to boredom.

  • play for no reason at all.

to stop playing third person, simply return to the Outside, or close the Window and remain Inside.

  • play third person only when it's safe to.

  • you may choose to increase the difficulty level by treating the Inside as an Outside, and playing through two or more Windows at once- looking through a Window at yourself looking through a Window at yourself.


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in reply to @endlessforms's post:

i never explicitly describe it as fun in the text of the game

but also, the genre of lyric game is frequently employed as a poetic device to talk about mental health.

see also one art by elizabeth bishop, which, while predating the term "lyric game" by many decades, employs a similar device, asking the reader to practice losing more and more important things to them, to master the art of loss

i think there's also parallels to games like "depression quest". there's no reason "game" and "fun" should be synonymous, and i think restricting one to the other actively hinders artistic expression

i think it's also worth considering that not everyone has the same relationship to these things as you. we wrote this in response to this being a frequent coping mechanism we personally fall back on during distress- hence "play in response to stress".

this state of dissociation is not something we want to be in at all times, but by framing it as a lyric game, it recontextualizes it for us in a helpful way that's kind of hard to verbalize. playing this "game" helps us stave off spirals by replacing them with dissociation, which is more manageable for us then a full-blown laying on the bed spiral into despair.

but conversely to that, we played this game with ourselves even as a kid, not in response to stress, but merely as a challenge to ourselves, to play with how we were perceiving with and interacting with the world. we still play it "for no reason" sometimes.

both a fun and not-really-fun-at-all version of this "game" exists in our life, and the two are not mutually exclusive. dissociation is not inherently bad for us personally, it's only bad when it starts to cause distress in our life, when we are living life constantly behind a glass wall and can't function or feel.

like, we are also dissociating when we read a book, or daydream, or play video games, and none of those things are bad or destructive, unless they get out of hand.

anyways, i hope i did not harm you.

I appreciate the additional context, and do not feel harmed.

I used to have a thing as a kid where I was worried about my fingernails, whether tugging on them somehow dislocated them an imperceptible amount and perhaps should be deliberately balanced by a similar amount of effort pushing them back in. I recognize now that a) this is anatomically nonsense on multiple levels, and b) I was attempting to rationalize a sensory processing issue. having my fingernails brushed against or tugged felt deeply uncomfortable and I didn't understand why, so I invented a why. these games we play with ourselves are truer than truth, more powerful for their complete disconnect with consensus reality, more real to us than anyone else could ever perceive. I cannot express how many hours I spent fussing over whether I was out of balance in one direction or the other and worrying that something could end up seriously wrong with me if I couldn't keep track. and sometimes I still worry.

Sometimes I am mute, a membrane like a thick walled bubble is between all the thoughts in my head and the space/tools I need to express them out loud. I rarely have much trouble pushing through it when I need to, but I recognize this membrane is most likely what causes mutism in other autistic people. Someday it could maybe even do that to me. I mention it because it seems to exist in this same space, where it is only real to me, and I recognize it is dangerous, even as it is familiar. And there's really nothing I can do about it. I've never found an actionable way to strengthen or weaken this membrane, even though it fluctuates in strength all the time, it feels like I should be able to learn to, but maybe that's another illusion. It seems to me that I have no more innate power over my mind palace than my physical surroundings, it truly does contain me, I don't construct it except through deliberate effort, and sometimes that effort is counterproductive, just as in the physical world.

My point being: I am cautious, perhaps overly so, in this area. I don't know if other people experience this space in the same way, perhaps some of my caution is warranted and yet, equally so, it's not as dangerous for others? I have no wisdom to share. I think I will stick around to learn, though.

been wanting to ask someone who can do that for a while now, and now is a good opportunity. i think we have some form of aphantasia. the thing is, i can imagine 2d/3d models in my head, but they're there as models, until i explicitly render them from a certain point or perspective. i can look at that, but that is not where the video feed from my eyes is. it's like having a 2nd monitor, it's roughly the same thing but i cannot a) overwrite vision of my eyes (which ive heard a lot of people can do) and b) disable the vision of my eyes ("you might slip back into the Outside from time to time, looking through your eyes instead of the Window."). when i depersonalize/dissociate, my vision feels off, but even then it doesn't go away completely. i can imagine the window though, but its on my "2nd screen". how is that for you? it sounds like you can do both, im really curious how that is for others :3 id really like to try to get there (or in general have some form of headspace because i can make one up but its only there when i consciously create it and maintain the though), but idk if that is the same thing & if this can theoretically work for me

also this is beautifully written and i was not even aware that lyric games exist, ty for writing this <3

i would guess that you are maybe talking to the wrong person because i don't think i have this condition, and also have a fairly abnormal perceptual system with some quirks that apparently most people don't experience (very strong visual snow which is basically always present, and frequent but mild drifting/breathing hallucinations, tracers, etc)

i would suggest replying to irenes' comment on this same post to compare notes with them, since they have afantasia and can probably help you figure out better if you do as well

what i will say is that for us, we conceptualize of our visual system as being made up of multiple modules (and note that this is not entirely a scientific model, this is just how i infer the system to work based on a mixture of reading scientific literature and carefully observing it myself)

  • the material body parts that serve as sensors- eyes, ears, skin, etc

  • the internal map of the body. this is not necessarily the same thing as how the body is shaped on the material plane- see for example phantom limb experiences, the experience of being trans, otherkin, etc

  • our sensory feeds from our sensory body parts. the brain maps sensory feeds onto the body map, approximately where they were received from- thus we (and quite probably, people generally) have the sensation of our visual field usually being located "at" our eyes. when we feel something touch our skin, the sensation of being touched is mapped onto that location in the body map, we feel loud sounds "at" our ears, etc.

but note that you don't actually get to see your raw, unmanipulated visual feed, hear your raw unmanipulated auditory feed, or any of your senses. they are closed off to "you" by your brain, because it needs to process them first (manipulating them in often radical ways) to make it comprehensible to "you"

  • the sensory processing chain, an incredibly complicated neurological system located deeper in your brain, where innumerable calculations, adjustments, interpretations, and alterations are performed. my assumption has been that many of my mild perceptual hallucinations are introduced somewhere along here, while some (like my tinnitus, vestibular issues, entopic phenomena) probably are introduced physically at the source of senses.

  • the actual place in the brain/nervous system where the experience of sensation is actually ""happening."" we can call this the "qualia place" for short. in reality this might not be one specific central physical place, but it kind of feels like one.

unless they've thought about or read about this a great deal, people generally confuse all of the above mentioned things as being the same thing- because the sensory feed of vision is mapped onto the physical eyes, people imagine their eyes as being like little windows they are looking through. but in reality, the mind is juggling all these components, to produce a very effective illusion. everybody is constantly hallucinating consensus reality together. when your hallucinations differ from those of others, or when you dream, you are probably experiencing those things in the qualia place, rather than in the actual incoming visual feed, but they feel very real and are not necessarily overridable while they're happening

  • sensory attention - i.e. what senses (material or imagined) we are devoting attention towards, generally to the detriment of others. if we are listening very closely for something with our material ears, we stop paying attention to what we are seeing with our material eyes. if we are examining an object very closely, we might not notice a lot of the sounds going on around us- a sensory feed can "fade away", because we aren't actively processing it, aren't devoting attention to it.

note that this fading away is not unique to replacing a physical sense with a imagined one and in fact happens frequently for us with our physical senses alone

  • our imagined senses (mind's eyes, mind's ears, mind's touch, etc). when we imagine stuff, those imagined sensations go to the qualia place, but generally speaking they aren't as vivid as the feeds from the physical sensory system, unless we devote a lot of sensory attention to them. the more sensory attention we devote to a imagined sense, generally speaking the less sensory attention we have left to devote to our physical senses, and so if we are trying very hard to imagine something, that outside world fades away in response to just not having enough attention left to be experienced.

so in one sense, we are overwriting the visual feed from our eyes, but in another sense, it's not the same thing as experiencing the visual feed from our eyes in the qualia place, when we imagine our headspace, it's not usually as though we are standing there physically, and it doesn't usually feel as though that information is coming from our physical eyes

getting our imagined senses to appear realistic and vivid is difficult, and it is a skill that requires practice. if we haven't done it deliberately in a while, we are worse at it, and the imagery is more faded and shadowy. when we were actively constructing our headspace through deliberate effort, we were practicing almost every day at imagining more and more vividly.

sensory imposition is the skill of using your mind's senses to edit your physical senses' feeds. it works because you are adding this additional information in the qualia place. i can imagine somebody hugging me, and impose it onto my physical touch sensation in the qualia place. it doesn't feel quite like the "real" thing most of the time, but i imagine if i practiced at imposition more i would get better at it and it would feel more "real".

i can edit in some object that is not there in the physical visual feed in the qualia place, but it does not appear as "real" as all the other objects. it requires a lot of sensory attention to maintain, and because i'm now editing my visual feed in the qualia place, everything takes on that shadowy brain feel of an imagined thing, and if i trip up and start paying attention to the physical feed instead, it stops being there. again, i imagine the more i practice at this, the more realistic it might look.

the Window in third person is a kind of middle space between imposition and pure imagination, the sensory information from the physical eyes is being spatially reprocessed within the qualia place by your mind's eye. the processed visual feed contains information about the room you're looking at, and then your mind's eye rotates that around, infers what it would be like from a different camera angle. because this requires an enormous amount of sensory attention to accomplish, your physical visual feed "fades away" due to a lack of sensory attention

when you lose your focus, and stop rendering the world in third-person in the qualia place, the outside world fades back in, because you are no longer distracted from it by playing third person. you once again have sensory attention to devote to your physical visual feed.

(or in general have some form of headspace because i can make one up but its only there when i consciously create it and maintain the though)

our headspace is only "there" when we devote sensory attention to it, though the structure of it is persistent because we spent a lot of time constructing it (and would like to go back to doing that, but it involves rebuilding a habit)


anyways. this is my interpretation of senses. i hope any of that made sense and helped you better understand in turn how your sensory system might work (this model is accurate for me, but it may not be for you! that's for you to decide through observation and experimentation)

first of all, thanks for the long reply!

i never really thought about it being separated into multiple layers, and it really makes sense. i mostly tried to project stuff on my sensory processing chain, and tried to actively focus on the raw feed of my eyes to project something there, i never really had the idea of going the other way and trying to unfocus from my actual senses. (writing this, that really makes sense, why should it be the other way around?)

getting our imagined senses to appear realistic and vivid is difficult, and it is a skill that requires practice

that does make sense too, i have (to my knowledge) zero experience, and maybe with practicing i can reach it too, which would be pretty nice

sensory imposition is the skill of using your mind's senses to edit your physical senses' feeds. it works because you are adding this additional information in the qualia place. i can imagine somebody hugging me, and impose it onto my physical touch sensation in the qualia place. it doesn't feel quite like the "real" thing most of the time, but i imagine if i practiced at imposition more i would get better at it and it would feel more "real".

i think i can do the same thing with touch, i have tried to and can imagine touch (i dont even know why exactly), and i think i might be able to do the same thing with other senses with practice

because this requires an enormous amount of sensory attention to accomplish, your physical visual feed "fades away" due to a lack of sensory attention

that makes a lot of sense too, i have never really tried to do it that way, which could work. i think i just need to do a lot of experimentation with myself to figure that out

our headspace is only "there" when we devote sensory attention to it, though the structure of it is persistent because we spent a lot of time constructing it

that's really reassuring to know, i didn't know i was really plural until like very recently (and i am still kinda in the denial phase even though the "evidence" is huge lol), and the whole headspace thing seems like a nice framework but it's very hard to maintain, again, probably because i just lack the experience

i hope any of that made sense and helped you better understand in turn how your sensory system might work

it definitely did! and again, thanks for the elaborate reply :3

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