on specifically using digimon

Written: 28 December 2025

Digimon partners as a fragment of your soul

To be honest, I think Digimon lend themselves quite nicely to becoming daemons (and possibly tulpas, should you want to develop them that far).

In a lot of the anime depictions, Digimon are often depicted as fragments of a soul or a reflection of their partner. While I don't necessarily like the concept of "chosen children" and fate deciding that you're to have a partner, because a bond that you have intentionally sought out and forged can be just as valuable -- it does play nicely into the concept of daemonism and turning your internal thoughts into a second being.

The recent anime series in particular, Beatbreak, likes to push the concept of someone's Digimon being a mirror of themselves as well without the whole "chosen" shtick. In this series, a Digmon is born from a person's sapotama (something like a smartwatch/digital ID unique to a person) when enough emotional energy is fed into it, and this can happen to anyone. Often times a human's Digimon will represent a person's internal thoughts and feelings -- possibly even including what dislike about themselves or don't understand yet.

(The video games and v-pets are a bit less relevant here, as they're often just focused on raising Digimon as they die and are reborn. Digimon Story is just its own thing where it's mostly a monster collector JRPG)

I think 2heartsbecome1 on Neocities was my first exposure to this concept, where they talk about using daemonism to meet their own partner. And, similar to when I was first exposed to tulpas back in the 2010s, my initial thought was "this doesn't make any sense!" However, after I got into my recent tulpa studies I ended up revisiting their page, and with my mind more open to the concept, and I honestly now completely get what they mean.

However, daemonism still seems to be mostly grounded in reality -- a lot of resources seem to dismiss fantasy creatures as not being realistic enough to visualise accurately, and they often dismiss the idea of ever being able to see your daemon in real life, acknowledging that at the end of the day, you're still just playing pretend with a voice in your head that you can visualise being in the world around you.

To be honest, while I initially intended for Phalanx to be to be his own character, it just so happens that a lot of his traits are also mine, so I feel like he's a sort of daemon-turned-tulpa -- daemonism generally seems to end at visualisation, but that isn't enough for me -- I desire to go beyond that.

However, I will say that even just visualisation can be very fulfilling and bring you joy. Even if I currently (at the time of writing) lack the skills for imposition, I feel like there is a joy in embracing having someone you have a special connection with being present throughout the day with you.

"Rules" that help with visualisation

I like to think that I generally think more logically, so it helps for me to have specific "rules" for how I should be visualising Phalanx interacting with the world, as it makes things more consistent and structured.

I think watching Ghost Game specifically helped me with "rules" for object interaction -- in Ghost Game, Digimon are present in the real world, but are generally immaterial and not perceivable by humans.

In the immaterial form, Digimon can still interact with objects and surfaces to a limited extent in this form, but they cannot touch humans, instead phasing through them. If they so choose though, they do also have the ability to phase through objects and surfaces for the sake of convenience or otherwise. And then of course within the anime, Digimon can also "materialise" into the physical world and fully interact with humans and objects, but obviously that isn't really relevant here. Unless...?

A good example within the anime is Jellymon -- she has the ability to materialise, but often remains in an immaterial form when beneficial (ie. being out in public with her human), or if she wants the convenience of being able to pass through walls and go wherever she wants.

This helps me with visualising Phalanx because it gives me 1) a "logical" reason for why only I can see him, and 2) it helps define rules for him existing in the world, especially in public spaces. It seems like a small thing, but just having a "why" and "how" helps with a sort of immersion. A good example of this is whenever I'm in Union Station downtown Toronto -- it's a very busy area with some narrow halls and low ceilings, so it would be tricky to visualise Phalanx in there under normal circumstances. But because I have the rules that help with this -- he isn't just phasing through people because he isn't real, it's because it's Lore Accurate(tm)! -- it helps make it easier to "believe" so to speak. I don't know if that really makes sense and it probably sounds stupid when I write it out, but it really is a small thing that helps.