Essays

This world has always felt like the wrong genre to me. Considering how many stories are based in this world, that sounds absurd. After all, we have free will and therefore the right to choose our own genre, right? One would think so; however, this is often not the case. There can be a myriad of reasons for this, but one large one is the hold that hegemony has on modern society. Despite our diverse world, this hegemony paints a coat of bland sameness over the world, creating a shared reality. This gives us, as beings living inside of hegemony, an interesting problem with a wide myriad of answers: how do we re-enchant our lives, considering the enchantment in question does not exist? My answer is that we alter our own realities, living in fantasy worlds of our own design and giving ourselves the adventure that we deserve.

When hearing the claims that were made in the intro, one would not be wrong to think of the alterhuman community. As a being who is part of it, I hold nothing but reverence for this amazing and wonderful group of diverse beings. They helped me and myself discover ourselves, helped us overcome great shame, and allowed us to evolve into the wonderfully diverse beings we are today. However, many members of this community live the lives of not their true selves but the form in which they exist bodily. While I do not fully blame them, as it is mostly out of necessity, I could not help but wonder if there is another option. Dragons don't pay taxes, after all.

Enter my term, alter reality." To clearly define it, it is having your current reality re-enchanted by means of living in a personal reality (which will be defined later in the essay) that is not the one shared by most individuals, whether voluntary or otherwise. This is about individuals who currently live in a personal reality, not those who don't live there due to their past lives or for any other reason. Let me reiterate that this can be achieved through voluntary means and is a term that can be used by most anyone. You do not have to be alterhuman to be AlterReality, although those two can often intermingle with one another.

Another term that often overlaps with AlterReality is immersive daydreaming (ID). As an immersive daydreamer myself, I can say that one can be an ID and an AlterReality, but there are differences. For one, AlterReality requires the individual to live inside their reality, not watch it like a movie. As such, those who experience AlterReality have their true selves present in their reality, whom they live through. These factors often do not exist for immersive daydreamers.

Earlier, I brought up the idea of a personal reality. This is defined as any reality that is not a shared reality and is often customized to the individual(s) living inside of it. It can be shared, as I will address later in this essay. The nature of an alternate reality’s individual can exist as a hybrid of personal and shared reality, or it can exist entirely as a personal reality. However, AlterReality individuals do not live exclusively in shared reality (if you drank every time I said reality, I deeply apologize to your liver).

If you've made it this far into the essay, you're probably wondering how one can do this. After all, it is very possible for an individual to make themselves alter reality if they so choose. The methods are as infinite as magic itself; however, one common one is daydreaming. If you are interested in this method, please read my essay "An Introduction To Daydreaming V2", as it has very helpful advice in that. However, if you wish to take those methods further and have yourself make this reality real, it is simply a matter of mindset.

This topic is an essay in its own right, but this world is made up of constructs. Everything from jobs to family to even grocery stores is attached to stories. Take the latter: what do you think of when you think of grocery stores? Shopping for your dinner tonight? The dull tedium of the islands? Free samples? These are all items that exist in the shared reality that I am assuming that you, the reader, share as well. Now, what if we change one of these aspects or add one? Instead of going shopping for your dinner, the grocery store can be an epic quest to find sacred ingredients. Instead of the dull tedium of the islands, you can recreate them as sprawling dungeons filled with puzzles and traps. And of course, free samples are the spoils for all of your adventuring. This can be changed to fit your aesthetic and desires, but essentially, anything can be anything if you really want it to be.

It should be noted that this essay is in no way advocating for benign shut-ins or hikikomori. While personalizing your reality is often a solitary activity, it is enriching as well as encouraging to use shared reality as a prompt for your daydream. Being locked in your room on a physical level often creates a boring personalized reality, as your input is often limited. Go on quests, include your friends in your personal reality, and have fun!

Now, the only question left is: what should you even personalize your reality to be? One way to begin is by looking at your favorite pieces of media. You can simply make your personalized reality the media in question, or take what you like in that piece of media and create it based on these aspects. Of course, you can take any combination of media inspiration or none at all. The important thing here is that you enjoy your personalized reality and can feasibly live in it. One thing to consider is self-insertability, or the ability to add yourself to the fiction you create. These differ greatly depending on both the media and the individual, but they often come in the form of categories that the audience can split themselves into; think characters from Homestuck or elements from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Of course,there are many circumstances in which this trait would not apply. Overall, personal realities are just as diverse as their creators!

Many times, we, as an audience, are just passively observing other worlds. As an AlterReality practitioner, you don't only ascend beyond being an observer; you turn your life into a story. Modern life is filled with tons of stories. Stories about getting rich, having a family, and following the beaten path Why not Alter Your Reality someday and make your own story?

Have you ever wanted to fight dragons? Travel the multiverse? Make soup?? Well, my neuronaut friend, you're in luck! You could do all of that and more for exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents by daydreaming! More than that, you could learn how to make your life better by turning it into a daydream! Yowza! By the end of this essay, you will learn how to go on adventures of your own, find out that magic is real, and so much more!

Now, what is daydreaming? It's exactly what you think it is and nothing like what you think it is. In the most literal sense, daydreaming is simply going into your mind and imaging scenarios. Think of it as a solo TTRPG or just an imagination exercise. However, everything changes when you focus on intensifying the daydreams and making them a part of your physical life. By eroding the barrier between the physical world and the world of daydreams, you, in turn, make your physical life magical! In fact, to a certain extent, this is the same practise done by many religions. I don't want to generalise too much; however, many religions encourage their practitioners to imagine themselves in the presence of a deity of some form or to even imagine themselves in a scenario outside of their physical body. This is not to delegitimize these practises or these religions; in fact, I truly believe that the spiritual experiences that come with these practises are real! If anything, this goes to prove the often overlooked power of daydreaming and how it can positively impact one's life.

How exactly does one daydream? While many do it naturally, many have also unlearned it for a variety of reasons. The best way to describe it for a wide variety of people is to simply imagine a movie playing out in their mind, but for many, it is not that simple. For example, those with aphantasia or countless alternate reasons In this case, I would encourage the individual to experiment to find out what works for them. Keep in mind that the aim is to experience a story, so however that works for you is truly beautiful and shows the diversity of daydreaming!

Now,what are some methods that enable you to achieve these wonderful things? There are as many methods as there are brains; however, there are two categories I have found to easily sort these methods: Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) daydreaming. Keep in mind that these are the methods that I know of, and I am sure that there are countless others that I am not as familiar with. That being said, let's begin with AR daydreaming!

AR daydreaming is augmenting your current reality by adding a daydream layer on top of it. A couple examples could include imagining yourself as waitstaff in a fantasy tavern while doing your dishes or fighting a monster while taking a test. This type of daydreaming is especially useful for individuals with busy lives or if you need to be doing something while daydreaming. The key to this kind of daydreaming is to match the mood of the scenario to what you are doing in the physical world. For example, it would be unwise (but not impossible) to daydream about a relaxed slice of life while exercising. AR daydreaming is an excellent strategy to add magic to one's everyday life!

The other group of methods would fall into VR daydreaming. These strategies are characterised by fully detaching yourself from physical reality and entering a daydream truly without limits. While these strategies do require the luxury of time, they are often more immersive and intense. However, you don't have to just lay still; they could be done while doing almost anything, as long as you can detach from the action itself. VR daydreaming is the more common strategy, and I would recommend it for first-timers, and for good reason! It is truly the best way to get immersed in your adventure.

Now for some tips that I learned to help you on your daydreaming journey. First and foremost, shame is something I struggle with regularly. In terms of this shame, here is some advice to keep in mind: Your daydreams do contribute to the wider world, as you are expressing your unique self (even if you do not do it openly). As well, you don't owe the world a thing! You don't have to conform to the world around you. In terms of more practical advice, a bit of music goes a long way. The specific kind of music is again different for everyone, but in terms of my recommendations, the artists Woodkid, Two Steps From Hell, and 2WEI are all amazing. As well, any instrumental music does wonders for scoring your daydream (I'm listening to Caravan by John Wasson, and it's great for this kind of thing). Also, it may be wise at times to listen to the music before daydreaming to it, as there are times that the music does not line up with what you planned out for the story. As well, make sure you are in a location where you won't be disturbed, or at least not suddenly; the last thing you want is for you to be called for dinner at the peak of the plot!

I hope you enjoyed this quick look at this long-ignored art form! Many write daydreaming off as frivolous, but it's anything but! Due to the fact that it exists solely in one's mind, it is arguably one of the purest forms of art, despite the backlash. May your journeys be plentiful, young traveller!

What is Wonderlight? Well, Google says that its a portuguese lighting company and Chatgpt has flat out never heard of it. However, when we& first heard the term, it was something from an interview that our video art professor showed us back in university. When we heard it, I remember it just…clicking. I can't explain why, but calling ourselves the wonderlight system just felt…right. I am thankful that no one asked us what wonderlight means, cause the answer I would have given back then is,,I don't know. To clarify, I always did have an answer as to what it means, but I never knew how to explain it properly. So consider this my best attempt to explain what the hell wonderlight even is, and hopefully inspire whoever reads it to take it on in their life.

Before we were called the wonderlight system, we were called the possibility system. I remember not being able to make up our minds on a system name, because what do you call a magical princess, a god of reincarnation, and a punk straight out of 2008 slapped together in a single brain? However, what we all agreed on is that this system, and the concept of alterhumanity in general, opened us up to so many more possibilities. Thus, the possibility system was named! However, it just didn't seem fully right. Yes, the name made sense for us, but it didn't click. Its not just that so many possibilities opened up, it's that we can CREATE whatever possibilities that we want. We want our school work to be an adventure? So be it! Wanna be an overpowered Mary Sue? Hell yeah! Meeting your favorite fictional characters and traveling the multiverse? Thats what wonderlight is for!

“You can do anything you set your mind to" is a cliche at this point, and one with many caveats at that. If you, let's say, wanted to be a dragon, yes you can play a dragon in a mo-cap suit in a movie if you take the proper steps, but that's not really being a dragon, isn't it? It's playing as a dragon. What wonderlight does is bridge the gap between play and reality. Wonderlight lets you be a red panda guardian of imagination, an orca-cat hybrid, a god of reincarnation, a magical girl, or whatever else because you Believe that you are, and you believe that you are because well, it's fun to believe! Wonderlight is more than just identity too, if you heard the term “alterreality” before, it's about making your life magical by believing internally that you are in a magical space and narrative of your creation, turning exam rooms into cosmic battlefields, and grocery stores into enchanted forests. This too, is wonderlight! To give a straight definition 437 words in, wonderlight is believing an unrealistic world into existence. Funnily enough, even the wonderlight system are not masters at wonderlight, but it's a goal that we're working towards. A goal that most of society would call insane at best, and a goal that requires so much blind faith that it will work. However, this goal has been made even somewhat possible, thanks to you! Thanks to both everyone in my system as well as everyone in the alterhuman community as a whole. So with this, cheers to around three years of wonderlight, and here's to many, many more.

Imagine that your on a date. During this date, your partner stares off into space, talks to people who aren't there, gets easily distracted, and overall seems generally bored of you. Would you want to go on another date with them? Spend a life with them? Ever speak to them again? When I participate in alterreality, I often fear that I act like partner. While it is often said that there is no moral value to any form of alterhumanity, I can't help but to feel that in the case of alterreality, there is to a specific extent.

In response to this you may ask: why don't you just..not alter the times when you are around the same space as others. First off, when one is in a living situation with other individuals, individuals that they do love, is it not imperative that they spend time with them? Is quality time not one of the greatest love languages of them all? As well, when I'm not spending time with others, I am either a) too exhausted to do anything or b) doing schoolwork or applying to jobs. As well, while I do often spend time with my family and I genuinely think they are kind, t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶r̶e̶d̶i̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶. As well, when you are in a family, it makes sense that you are responsible for them. How many movies have you seen about artists who miss their kids recitals to keep working on their art to follow some selfish dream?

My third limitation that I would like to bring up is the unpredictable nature of reality. You could plan a perfect hero journey circle, but all social reality can give you is a confusing mess of hero(?) spaghetti. If the event that you were planning on creating the final battle over got cancelled, not much can be done but shrug and throw in the towel. As well, conversations in reality do not pan out the way they do in a story. I am still holding on to the conversation about pottery I had with my friends and a random museum worker, thinking that it has to be important for some quests coming up. Meat reality has many, many beautiful things. However, more often than not, it becomes a monkey wrench in my imagination.

So...now what? to be perfectly honest I am not sure. I have considered two options, with the help of my friends. My first option was too include them inside of my alterreality, which proves difficult when they insist on discussing more general topics, allowing anything fantastical to fall to the wayside. The second option while more discreet, is to treat alterreality like a filter over current reality.. This again, is a) difficult to impliment in excecution (especially when focus ought to be on the conversation topic at hand and me activley participating) and b) still has a bit of the moral failing of the idea of "I cant be in the same reality as you, making me a bad relative/friend. 

  It should be noted that I do not feel this way with my many nonhuman (hell even some of my human) friends, moreso a specific loud minority that I have no choice but to interact with.  Overall, while I do still believe in the concept of alterreality, I cant help but understand that I am a citizen of a modern, human society that I can't opt out of. I would love to have some kind of alterreality mentor to assist me in these growing pains, however at this point I have no choice but to regularly pause alterreality to make room for a mandatory truth of connection over creativity.    

I always wanted to believe in magic. I believed in Santa Claus way longer than I should have (especially as a Jew), any outing to walk my dog would be considered a magical adventure, and I would take anything as an excuse to use my imagination. I remember when I was in elementary school, role playing Skylanders on the playground, and believing deep down that they were showing me the way to Skyland. I’m 21 now, and since elementary school, I learned a lot about the world. After all, no one really believed in magic, and anyone who I thought believed alongside me just did it to entertain a child who didn't know any better. How else would you explain the support of those delusions? Now, this is not to say the magic they do believe in isn't real. Science is extraordinarily beautiful, wondrous, and fascinating, every word you would use to describe any fantasy world. However, I always found something off about science. While yes, it is all those things I described, it is also un-fantastical in a way, for lack of a better word. This apathetic nature of science, while hard to describe, is easy to feel. It carries a sort of terran monotony that this whole plane of existence is suffering under. Perhaps its simply the aesthetic of science, or the need to ensure everything is proven, but science (as it is very happy to admit, from my lack of knowledge), does have its fair share of gaps. Gaps that are filled by children with overactive imaginations…out of all people. I am no child psychologist (I would love some input for those who know better about this field than I do), however when kids play dinosaurs, there is a level of..well play. They know it is a game, and they know that they are six year olds stomping around and roaring at each other. But there is also an unspoken contract, a rule to suspend their disbelief and believe wholeheartedly that they are dinosaurs. For those 15 minutes of recess, they were not human. In those 15 minutes, magic was real.

TTRPGs are a space that I do not know much about. I know that people sit around a table, telling a story with their friends, and that story often involves a lot of dice rolling, playing cards, writing, and everything in between. And many parts of this space do intrigue me. Specifically the RP (role play) part. At first glance, those who partake in this hobby are those kids on the playground playing dinosaurs, each consenting to play in this world of fantasy. And although I do hold a place of reverence for TTRPGS, like science, something is missing. Although they do play in this fantasy world, they don't see themselves as full acting participants. Like watching a movie in a theater, they enter the game, play for 3 hours, and then return to their normal lives. In a relatively short timespan, they go from being the main character, to being NPCs. Furthermore, of course this is just pretend, they don't really believe they are orcs, elves, and dragons, that would be unscientific! These games are just vehicles to hang out with your friends with, after all. This is not an attack on TTRPG players, not at all! In fact, they are getting somewhere in the quest to replicate the magic that I am seeking, but once again, something is missing.

I first heard about the otherkin community at the age of around 16. I remember watching a “This Exists' ' video (a now-defunct series about the weird and wonderful sides of the internet) on it, and while I don't remember specifically how I felt, I did feel a sense of yearning. A sense that these individuals hold the answers to what I am seeking, what I truly am. After doing some digging, I found the therian subreddit. After seeing people do tarot readings for what theriotype they were, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I asked if I was a dolphin or a red panda, two of my favorite animals. The result itself was irrelevant, as I was inadvertently excluded from many therian spaces. I do not wish to play the blame game, or point fingers at any one person or group of individuals, after all this exclusion could be a simple misunderstanding of the customs. However, from my understanding, you can't choose to be therian. I fully expected Sir Ian McKellen himself to enter my room, scream at me “YOU ARE INDEED A DRAGON YOUNG MAN” and leave in a puff of smoke. While I did hear stories of divine intervention, I also heard tales of everything from dehumanization to LSD trips. I also do not personally vibe with the whole “creature of the forest, living away from technology” thing they had going on, an aesthetic I do indeed respect, while not being my own. In short, they had a wonderful community, that was just not my community. They had a wonderful community, but something was missing.

I am an A-list actor, producer, writer and director. I starred in multiple movies that were hits in the box office, a 12 season action-adventure-comedy tv show, and I live in a mansion with an arcade, waterslides, a mario-esque pipe for transport, and doors that could take you anywhere in the multiverse. Sooner or later, I became a protogen (what, you didn't see the furry thing coming from a mile away?), and after that, I became a guardian of imagination, a red panda dragon fursona thing. I could hear the keyboards of 1000 neurotypicals typing now, saying truly insightful comments such as: “this is what people died in wars for” “Jesus will save you” (again, im Jewish) and my personal favorite, the snowflake emoji. However, I could practically see 1000 kids just like me, their faces beaming with excitement and joy, with a million questions, chief among which being “can I do that too?”. After recess ended, I kept my non-normal non-human beliefs. Same with after I graduated, after high school, and even after University. While its easy to say that this is a game for me (to some level, it truly is), it is also something much more. Like those kids on the playground, these beliefs turn mundane existence into a game. A once boring test now becomes a perilous boss fight, family drama becomes unimportant exposition, and my purpose is beyond the capitalist cycle of education, work, retire, die. To those who argue otherwise, a proposition; at what age do you stop believing, what time period do you stop pretending, what phase of life makes you done with believing in your imagination? Simply put, for those questioning if they are beyond human, if they are something greater, if their identity is that of imagination and art, the answer is a simple “do you want to be?”.

How many of your favourite Dungeons and Dragons sessions had their hero picking out a phone plan? How about going to the grocery store? I’d give more examples, but you get the idea. You would think that by now, after alterreality is more established, I would have dreamed that I, out of anyone, would have a solution on how to turn these things into an epic quest. While I am working on these answers as we speak, more often than not, I am the victim of these situations. I would call this essay something generic, like “factors that may get in the way of alterreality," but the title I chose rings some sort of truth to me. Although we technically have free will (extistentialist theories nonwithstanding), there is so much boring crap in life that just needs to get done. While this mundanity corresponds with how many individuals see the world, it very much does not gel with the “magical girl/fantasy hero” alterreality that I have constructed for myself. With this, here are some limits that I have found when practicing alterreality.

Another limit that I have found is the cognitive limit. I have discussed this with others before; however, it is very hard to be both immersed in a given story to the point of belief and complete a cognitively draining task at the same time. Personally, I was working on a project while performing alterreality recently. Everything was going smoothly until I encountered a technical error in which I felt kicked out of my personal reality and back into my regular, mundane existence. I plan on experimenting with preparing an alternate reality beforehand, focusing on the task at hand, then returning to my true reality after; however, I would love a solution that would be more immersive in the moment.

My third limitation that I would like to bring up is the unpredictable nature of reality. You could plan a perfect hero journey circle, but all social reality can give you is a confusing mess of hero(?) spaghetti. If the event that you were planning on creating the final battle over got cancelled, not much can be done but shrug and throw in the towel. As well, conversations in reality do not pan out the way they do in a story. I am still holding on to the conversation about pottery I had with my friends and a random museum worker, thinking that it has to be important for some quests coming up. Meat reality has many, many beautiful things. However, more often than not, it becomes a monkey wrench in my imagination.

I did think of one solution to many of these problems. One factor that I think would fix a lot is if modern designers cared more about wonder and whimsy. To put it simply, there are too many Costcos and not enough castles. I’m not saying there should be cathedrals on every block (my city is messed up as it is and does not need the Catholic Church adding to the list of problems). However, I am saying that if you are going to design a place with a lot of foot traffic, it should both serve as fun and imagination fuel. This being said, this does not solve the social aspect. There will always be scenarios where one must maintain a mask of munanity in order to go about day-to-day life. There will always be situations that are too cognitively difficult to create a reality over. There will always be boredom. I may not have consented to this mundanity, but my hope is that I will forge an alterreality for myself that will transcend the physical world, and my life will become a true fantastical adventure.