Ninette the chaos spooder

The first recall of something like this we have (“we” as in “I’m a part of a plural system and we literally share a baincell”) is from soon after I started existing. My alien-slime kin headmate was doing dummy stuff and their partner (the other headmate) thought “cute” while I thought ”yummy”. Back then I was still working on understanding myself and my existence -I did not even know yet that I had anything to do with spiders-, so we just laughed about it and that was all. I now understand that my headmate looks like the insides of a half-digested bug and I wanna eat that.

Later on, after being aware of my cravings and us noticing that they were kind of recurrent, I was allowed to bite and eat them -my headmate- a bit if I really felt like it and they were in the mood to deal with me (it’s ok, it’s the headspace, nothing’s gonna happen), but that doesn’t really make me feel accomplished, since I don’t really feel anything.

And they look yummy because it’s not just a “I want to eat bugs” craving exactly. It’s not “bugs” that I want to eat. It’s the proper texture. Like the insides of a mealworm, a superworm, or a mantis. That liquidy-jelly slime-like paste. That of a mushy and squishy half-digested bug. Only thinking of it I literally start salivating more.

Oh, and of course, if it’s the texture and a bug, way better, but I want to feel like I’m eating what I feel like I’m supposed to be eating.

I say “what I’m supposed to be eating” for lack of shorter and better words. It’s not that I need to eat that. Or that I should. It’s not much different from us missing dishes from our home country, just that I’ve never actually ate it. But even then, if feels like I had, as if at some point I did and that’s the norm for me even if I actually never did. I feel like I should be eating bugs. Like, I miss it. Thinking about it gives me feelings close to nostalgia. And on the same way we want to eat that crappy frozen pre-made stir-fried mix we used to eat almost once a week in our home country (we moved), I want to eat my yummy bugs.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I find “human” food disgusting or anything. It’s nice. I’m not a picky eater either. And I do also identify as a human, so yeah, no problems in that regard.

But I also want to eat what the therian part of my identity craves. Like, spaghetti for lunch, a beetle for dinner, you know?

Now, regarding food shenanigans in real life. I’ve tried A FEW things.

Desserts like custard or a very stirred yogurt work good enough for the texture, but they still lack something. It’s hard to describe what, but something feels a bit wrong. They’re not jelly-like enough and at the same time, they don’t feel watery enough. But they’re sweet and tasty so at least my tastebuds appreciate it.

I also tried the yolk of a soft-boiled egg (as when the yolk is “runny and/or very soft”) and texture-wise it almost worked! Like, almost perfect! It just was disgusting. I guess I can’t have everything. I don’t like the yolk of an egg in most of the ways of cooking it, but this one was the worst. I was trying to enjoy the texture since that was the point and it was super good, but I kept wanting to spit it out and clean my tongue immediately every second that thing was in my mouth, so yet another nope.

And here I felt a bit lost. The yogurt one is nice enough but isn’t completely fulfilling.

In some half-desperate attempts, I also tried to eat tasty and easy-to-bite food (like glass-noodles or omelet) while watching videos of spiders or mantids eating -especially in mantis videos you get to see everything-. It weirded our roomie out, but it wasn’t a bad experience -just a bit sad-. I think I was quite desperate those days. I noticed that I feel “more spider” when feeling strong negative emotions (like anger, frustration, nerves, etc) it helps me cope better I guess, and with that, I get more shifts and stronger cravings, so that was kind of a desperate attempt to deal with that on those bad days.

Then I thought that eating actual bugs would be a good idea. And to be honest, even if I was searching for the texture, something inside of me still wanted to eat bugs. But because of hygiene, I won’t just eat random bugs that come into my room, nor do I want to do something like that. And for a while, I had my eyes on 번데기 (Beondegi/Silkworm pupa) and I was tempted to buy it every time I went to the convenience store and saw them, so I finally did it.

To be honest, I don’t hate them. They taste just like the liquid they come in (I guess that’s why Koreans cook them on soup), and they worked fine for my wants to “eat bugs”, but the texture wasn’t so pleasing. I guess that it’s because it’s a pupa, but they’re… grainy? I never ate wet sand, but it felt kind of like that, but a very fine sand that dissolves and it’s inside of a slightly crunchy “case” -the exoskeleton-. May buy them again on a different and tastier liquid, but they didn’t fill the need to eat a yummy squishy buggy.

And after aaaall my search, the solution came to me randomly. Truly randomly. In October we got way too many candies, so at some point, we put one that our roomie gave us in our bag and completely forgot about it for months. Then I wanted to snack, remembered we had that so I took it out, thinking it was a normal caramel candy, ate it and -don’t hate me, I bite candy- bit it and inside the caramel-almost-crunchy-cover, there was a very slimy and runny bit of melted choco.

Just. Perfect. I swear. Texture-wise. And it’s sweet choco.

Now I’m stuck with my perfect solution being a random Russian candy I can’t get anywhere. But at least now I know the direction I must keep searching -just other local brands-. Meanwhile, I’ll keep happily enjoying my yogurts.

First, we have the concept of a tulpa being “fully developed” (completely sentient, vocal, with their own opinions, tastes, and blah blah blah), and we’re only talking about stuff that happens after that. We believe that with just being sentient or kinda sentient you already get the metaphoric ID of being a person, valid and all that. Being someone and not something (tho if u wanna be called something, das cool too). But being sentient or even fully developed doesn’t necessarily mean that you will feel equivalent to someone who has been on the body since forever. Even after being “fully developed”. Which is fair, one has been there -let’s say- 20 years and another 2 months. Even if both have the same capabilities, feel the same age, and even share memories, there’s a huge 20-year difference of experiences. It’s that reference person (who would be different for everyone), who we call the “full person”. Who is not really more person than anyone, but it may feel like that to some, or in certain situations. We can just talk from our own experience, but we have seen people refer to that “gap” in many ways through the time we’ve been on the community, so it’s definitely an “only us” thing.

Yet it’s on us to put weight to that gap or not.

Here’s where K and I kind of clash. At the start, he always felt empty.

In any other way, there was not much difference between him and Aily (our “reference person”, the original and -back then- the host), but while K didn’t have any hobbies and almost no interests, Aily was WAY too complex as a person. Obviously, that was because Aily had existed for -at that point- more than 19 years while K only had around a year of proper practical existence (and not very practical counting lockdown and that he didn’t front all that time). Aily had 19+ years of time to get tons of hobbies, forget some, don’t care much about others, be able to lose and re-gain interest in things and have complex feelings about them. Have preferred activities for rainy days, for lazy days, etc… while K was just like “well, I like mint bubble gums and cats” and that was all. A couple of mild interests with no depth to it. Regardless of how complex his personality and thoughts were, everything about his interests was just… very simple.

He felt empty, or in other words, not a “full person”. He was lacking things Aily had -and everyone on our IRL surroundings seemed to have-. And that bothered him tremendously.

He didn’t feel comfortable feeling “less” -which is how that gap felt for him- even when he knew he wasn’t (this sometimes led to short existential crisis) and it didn’t get better for him until he found his thing. Which later triggered more and more discoveries of hobbies and interests. All around the same topic, so not as complex as Aily, but strong enough for him to feel “ah, this is it” -and a year later I believe our wallet regrets it-.

While me, I don’t have many hobbies, I just have counted interests -some stronger than others- and then if I’m bored I just “borrow” their hobbies till I find something that entertains me for a while and then leave it and not do it again in months since it’s just not my thing. And I’m ok and cool with that. I don’t feel empty or lacking in any way. Yeah, I’m quite simple in that regard, but I don’t mind. Probably with time it will change. A while ago I didn’t write essays about us! But even if I remain “not that full” I’m ok with that. I don’t feel the need to not be.

Our guess is that it depends on how we view the front. K has always been fronting a lot, and his amount of fronting time has grown organically (and he’s gone through being co-host and now host). So he had more time to feel empty, to sit on a chair without much to do. Even from the start, he knew he was going to have at the very least, the same weight Aily had on the front, so he felt he was required to have that “fullness” that people who have lived whole lives have, or at least be close to that. Meanwhile, I don’t front much, I just pop in, do my things, spent my time and that’s all, I don’t need or wish for more. If I have to help, I come, help, leave the body with nice hair and pretty nails and see u again in a few days. If for some reason I end up fronting for long, after 2 days or our brain fries, or I end up being done with the world. I don’t need much for that, and I prefer small things to do here and there than big things that have too much weight in our lives. And again, I like borrowing hobbies/interests.

Still, I get it, having a list of things I want to do, “an appointment this Friday”, a project to finish or an account on Tumblr or a save on a game, a group or band that you’re obsessed with… are things that just feel good. To a certain point, they can give some sense of worth or meaning to existence, and that can have A LOT of weight for some, and probably the more weight that thing has in your life or the more meaningful it feels, the more that may add to someone’s experience.

Not saying that internal experiences don’t matter. They do -and a lot-, but for some, they may fall into a different category, if we can say it like that. Sometimes they just feel different, or their fulfillingness is of a different kind. Goes to fil a different need.

So yeah, the weight on that gap is the one you give to it.

Of course, this is not always something voluntary or completely voluntary, but knowing about it, knowing what to look into can help, whether how to think about it, work on it, or ease the possible harsh feelings about it if they’re there.

Sadly, this is not a tutorial on “how to find your hobbies” and if there’s any magic formula for it, we definitely do not have it. I can only say that we have found a bit useful to look first into the current hobbies of the reference person and then branch from that or look into past/almost forgotten hobbies of them. And that “mainstream hobbies” aren’t necessarily “one size fits all”, so there’s nothing wrong with not finding joy in them.

Also, although there’s a luck factor to it -to find/think of something you like-, time (and especially fronting time) is key, since it will allow you to see, experience, try, etc more things and/or get more into them. If that’s what you’re into, of course. But even for me, who has just a few interests, for some, it took a while, and I don’t even know how much I actually like them, since I haven’t invested enough time in them yet.