“Everything is both a trap and a display; the secret reality of the object is what the Other makes of it.” – Jean-Paul Sartre [hr] [i][Editor's note: These interviews have been transcribed exactly as they appear on the audio.][/i] [smcaps]Professor John Webster – Department of Ontoliterature[/smcaps] Misato was both one of the best and one of the worst students in the Department of Ontoliterature. Her grasp of the subject matter was extremely powerful, and even while attending less than half the lectures she was still ahead of every other student. But her personality was … problematic, shall we say. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen – Student, History and Philosophy[/smcaps] Misato was a bitch. [smcaps]Tom Johnson – Student, Ontoliterature[/smcaps] Misato? Yeah, I knew her. She was [i]hot[/i]. I'm not even kidding. A solid ten. Ass like a … a really round … well, uh, yeah, anyway, she was so hot. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] I liked her. I know she could be difficult at times. But once you got to know Misato, she could be lovely. I miss her. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] As I understand it, she had a difficult upbringing, and indeed, I never met her parents, but that is the extent of my knowledge on the matter. At the time, we were working on the philosophico-literary foundations of reifying and manifesting abstract textual objects. It's unfortunate that things ended the way they did. [hr] [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] And she was arrogant. Christ, was she arrogant. Look, I know she was a genius, alright? But that doesn't excuse the way she acted. I tried asking about her past once, but she just said “Mind your business,” and left it there. We only really started to talk a couple of months later. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] When she got excited about an idea, there was no stopping her. You could see the gleam in her eyes. I, um, know it seems a little odd, but I think she was actually very sensitive. The world cut her deeply, which was why she had such troubles dealing with it. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] This one time she sucked me off behind the faculty building. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] No, Misato never hooked up with Tom. Christ. He just goes around telling everyone that because he's a fucking misogynist loser. Actually, you know what? I saw it when he first made a move on her. Maybe it was the first … might have been the tenth for all I know. It was a black tie event. Anyway, he thew this cheap-ass PUA line at her and she just held his gaze for ten full seconds. Then, quite calmly, she upended her drink on his head and put the disposable cup on him like a little plastic fez. I'll be honest, it made me laugh. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] Of course. I'd be happy to. The term “tsundere” comes from the subculture of people who watch Japanese animation, but it's reach extends far beyond that. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] She did drop a G&T on me! Twice! [Laughter] And once a plate of chicken wings, which honestly was a waste of good food, I thought. But allow me to let you in on a little secret, sweetheart. You know what separates the men from the boys? [i]Persistence.[/i] [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] The core idea is the division of the fictional personality into two parts. This by itself is a step further standard archetypal characterisations. But pay close attention to how the division is made. The external personality, the side everyone sees, is aggressive or cold. But for those who can fight through it, the “true” personality is one of warmth, affection, and even obeisance. The tsundere is thus a caricature of how we experience intimacy with another person: First we see strength, then we see vulnerability. In this way, it is almost pornographic. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Nothing happened between them, get it? [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] I use the adjective advisedly. The tsundere's affectionate inner essence is a sort of prize for the man who might wish to woo her. She offers a superficial resistance to give the illusion of real problem, but ultimately, she rolls over for her suitor, regardless of his lack of admirable qualities. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] In the end, she actually came to me! [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Misato's lovers? I'm sorry, I don't really know. I … I think that's her business. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Okay, so this is a few months later. It's after another party. Sun's gone down, and away from the common room everything's dark My friend has vanished and hooked up with some loser. I see Misato. She's alone. She's leaning over a railing with a drink in her hand. I can tell from here's she hammered. I'm about to turn away, when I think about that time she made me laugh, so I go and talk to her instead. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] Now, I'd like to draw a connection between tsunderes and Plato. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] And holy shit! She's actually friendly for once! I mean, yeah, she's struggling to stand and slurring every syllable. But once I've got her some water and she's thrown up and I've got her even more water, we start to actually talk. She says something like, “Don't you feel like you're a puppet for grotesque forces beyond your control? That even the deepest parts of yourself are just given to you from on high by something you can't trust?” [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] Plato gave us an ontology composed of two fundamentally different categories. There is the everyday world of sensation, which is really nothing more than images, than shadows dancing on a cave wall. It is harsh, often unpleasant. And there is the world of forms. This is true world. It is pure, incorruptible. Do you see the similarity? The Platonic universe is a tsundere. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] When she tells me this, I try and brush it off with a friendly laugh. I tell her that it's college. Everyone's having an existential crisis. She gives me a dark look for a moment. Then she turns away. “Maybe you're right,” she says. “But what the fuck am I gonna do?” [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] But what if Plato was wrong? Here, I mean not simply Plato but the whole metaphysics of a world with “real” essences that sit behind the “illusory” world of sense data. This question is foundational to our entire project. What I want to put to you, in other words, is that perhaps the image of a thing – how it is seen by others – is ontologically fundamental. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] What am I supposed to say to something like that? I'm not an inspirational life coach. Except I'm kinda drunk myself while she's saying this, so [i]of course[/i] I'm an inspirational life coach. I tell her, “Look, it's still your life. You can choose! You make yourself with every choice. If you see something inside you you don't like you, you can turn against it. It's hard as hell, I know, but it can be done.” At least, that's the gist of it. I was probably a lot less eloquent than that. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] This is not a new idea, I hasten to add. There are intimations of it in the heroic epics. You see it in Berkeley, in Nagarjuna, even, in some aspects, in the logical positivists and the post-structuralists. But in ontoliterature, we think we can take it one step further. Consider: If the representation [i]is[/i] the object, then perhaps we can create an object simply by creating a good enough representation. “Good enough” hides a wealth of difficulties, of course, which is why such a task has rarely, if ever, been done before. But the core idea is there. In other, we believe it may in principle be possible to create a tulpa. [hr] [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] She was still uncertain. So I asked her what she wanted. She took a while to answer, like every time she came up with an answer she had to reject it, but then she said, “I want to be free. Let's hang out.” So we did. I actually asked her about Tom, and she laughed and said he wasn't worth talking about. We went to get a kebab. Then we went to my room and watched some TV. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Yeah, she came to my room. I knew she would! [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] If we could figure how to construct a tulpa, then literature would take its rightful place alongside physics and chemistry as one of the great foundations of human technological prowess. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Were we friends? I dunno, man. We had some fucking deep conversations about life, the universe and everything. But she didn't talk about herself much, just her thoughts, you know? I never even learned her last name. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Actually … um … huh. Can I be honest? Yeah … I wasn't expecting her. I don't know why she came to see me. But all of a sudden she was so sweet. I don't know what came over her, but … [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] Consider for a moment the moral burden that comes with creating a tulpa. Once reified, they are real, physical creatures. But being derived from fiction, they can also be fantasy objects of their creator. Their lives are not their own. Their own deepest self is the expression of our own sordid desires. We can make them perfect consenting slaves. Here I can do no better than quote Milton by way of Shelley: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me Man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?” [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] It kinda … freaked me out. So the first night, we just talked. The main think I remember about that night was the way her eyes lit up when she got excited about something. Half the stuff she talked about was over my head. She lurched from anthropology to mathematics to literary theory and made it all seem natural. I could see why she was the professor's best student. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] You know what? I'm not actually sure she was Japanese at all. It all seemed perfectly natural at the time. But I'm trying to picture her face now, and I can't quite quite pin it down. It's like having a word on the tip of your tongue. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] I remember when she explained to me her ideas about how multiple tulpas could reinforce one another's existence. They'd be, like, self-sustaining, I guess, and separate entirely from this world. She called it the bottle theory. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Yes, I remember her saying she wanted to try out theatre. She was a brilliant actor. When she was in character, she could genuinely fool you into thinking she was someone else. I don't know how else to put it. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] We believe that even after reification, tulpas will remain images. In a sense, a tulpa is nothing more than a composite image, made of the impressions of everyone who knows them. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Look, uh. You're not gonna put my name on this are you? Or could we do this off-record or something? [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Okay. Good. Misato was the first girl I ever slept with. I know that's hard to believe, but … well … anyway. Yeah. She was perfect. We kept the whole secret at first. In public we didn't talk. That kinda hurt … but, well, you know. You like someone enough, you learn to live with it. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] This gives them a sort of fluidity. They can become what they're seen as. A tulpa can easily masquerade, because a masquerade is what they are. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] It was fine. I was happier than I'd ever been! But I don't think she was. She was struggling. I couldn't get her to talk about it. I guess you could say we had sex in place of intimacy. In the end, neither of us could stand it anymore. One night we ended up sitting next together on my bed. I asked what she wanted. She wasn't sure. So I asked what she really thought of me. She … she said a lot of stuff. But the main thing is what she said at the end. “I'll love you forever. That's the problem.” [hr] [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] I suppose I should say that I didn't really know Misato until a month or so before the end. The rumours were in full swing then. She wasn't happy often, but she always had time for me. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Yeah. Yeah, we stopped seeing other after that. Stopped talking at all. She started hanging out with Alexandra Rowen for a while. Then I started hearing things about her. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] This fluidity is both liberating and constraining. Again: A tulpa is the image people have of it. If that image begins to change, so does the tulpa. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Did I like her? Christ. What am I supposed to say to that? Yes, she was a bitch! I stand by that. And being all vulnerable and angsty isn't a free pass, not in my book. I think … well, okay, fine. I did like her! That's why the betrayal hurts. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] The first I heard of it was in the professor's office. Part of my evaluation. We were talking about how contradictory images might affect literary reification. I mention an idea Misato told me about. And of course I credit her. He says something like, “Yes, that was a very insightful idea. It's a shame about Misato.” I ask what he means. He says, “She's decided the course and the people on it are no longer worthy of her time.” I'm like seriously, what the fuck? But he brushes it off, says it's not his place to gossip, and moves on to layers of compositional ontology. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] I heard about other people she was seeing when she wasn't hanging out with me. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Why should that matter? … I … It doesn't matter. But there was other stuff too. I heard some of the stuff she was saying about me. How I was nothing more than a … Well, it was about how little she thought of me. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Actually, there's something odd about the professor's office. At the back he's got all his books stacked. You know, standard professor stuff. Phenomenology of Perception, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, that sort of thing. But then in the middle of it all there's this boxset of anime DVDs. It's looks so out of place. Makes me smile every time I think about it. Actually, you know what? You should ask him about it! [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] I asked her about it. Of course I fucking did! I'm not going to just turn on her without giving her a chance to explain herself. But she couldn't answer me. In the end she could only apologise. I told her that wasn't good enough. Then she went cold. She told me to deal with it. She said she had bigger things to worry about than my feelings. And that was that. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] I tried to support her, but it wasn't good enough. She'd lost what few friends she had, apart from me. So she left. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] No explanation. One day she just vanished. Left her room torn up, windows broken. It was insane. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Can you blame her? [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] If once can create a tulpa, the natural question that follows is – can one destroy it? And once again, we get into ethical quandaries. Is it murder to destroy a tulpa? Before we make the leap from theory to practice, we need to have a legal and moral framework in place to protect the rights of tulpas. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Guess I really dodged a bullet there, huh? [hr] [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] After Misato left, the university had this internal investigation. Lots of proctors asking weird questions. I talked to them a couple of times. Told 'em what I'm telling you. No one's found her yet. And with her acting skill and intelligence, I bet you anything no one will be able to find unless she wants to be found. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Where could she be? No idea. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Don't know. Don't care. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] I do miss her. Dunno what I'd say to her if she came back, though. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] I wish I could see her again. She was brilliant. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] But – quite fortunately, I should add – our research points to the fact that it's more difficult to dissolve a tulpa than it is to create one. In fact, in that regard, tulpas should be rather more sturdy than human beings. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Did she have any friends before she left? Oh, I'm sure she had some. None I know about, though. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] I can't think of anyone. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Alice? Never heard of her. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Dunno. Wait! I think I've seen her around. Does she have brown hair? Or … maybe black? She's new, isn't she? [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] What's her surname? [hr] [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Sure I like the professor! He's a bit stuffy, but he's a great teacher. Even the people who think he's a crackpot respect his intelligence. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Professor Webster? Well, he's not my teacher. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] He's head of the Department of Ontoliterature. I have nothing bad to say about him. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] I don't like him. Don't get me wrong, he's not a shitty person, but there's just something kinda … off about him, you know? Like, he has this weird obsessive academic fan club based around bringing fantasy characters to life. And he encourages it. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Remember that debate he got into with the guy from Oxford? That was insane! [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] And there's this other thing. I overheard him once when I was walking past his office. No, I wasn't eavesdropping. He was shouting. He was [i]really[/i] pissed. It was kinda scary, because I've never seen him lose his cool like that in real life. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Yeah, he was pretty friendly with Misato. She was his prize student, wasn't she? At least at first. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] I think he was on the phone. All I caught was, “The little cunt has gone rogue! Project ruined! I have to scrub and start from scratch …” That's it. [smcaps]Professor Webster[/smcaps] A tsundere archetype would make a very poor choice for a first tulpa. The assertive, aggressive aspect to the personality, combined with the tulpa's fluidity, is asking for trouble. Now, while we do have to acknowledge the risk of the tulpa being manipulated or otherwise abused, I would prefer a tulpa with a straight submissive personality. This will reduce the risk of conflict between the tulpa and its creator. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] I really have nothing to say about the professor. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Why are you asking about him, anyway? [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] I really mean it when I say you talk to the professor. Maybe you could watch that anime with him.From what I've heard, he likes cute girls. Or, you know … if you wanted to come back to my place … [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] I mean, no one else from the university inquiry team asked about him. [smcaps]Tom Johnson[/smcaps] Oh. Uh … Okay. Sorry. [smcaps]Alexandra Rowen[/smcaps] Wait. No. No. Hold on a moment. Are you with university inquiry team? Who [i]are[/i] you? [hr] [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] It … it [i]is[/i] you, isn't it? [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] [snuffling] I thought I'd never see you again. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] But why did you come back? And why the interviews? [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Oh. No, no. It's fine. I understand. It's like restoring a painting by bringing out the original colours. Even the negatives are important. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] No. He keeps a close eye on me to make sure I don't get out of hand. This is as free as I've felt for weeks. I think that's because of you. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] But what do you need me for? I'm of no use to anyone but him. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] What bottle? [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Oh. Oh! The two of us. I complete you, and you complete me. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Of course! But before we go … let's take his work. And … and you can leave this behind. Someone will figure it out. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Yes. [smcaps]Alice K.[/smcaps] Let's go. [i][Audio ends][/i] [hr] “It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.” – Jorge Luis Borges