A Lack of Imagination

[Auspice]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in A Lack of Imagination:

@Auspice Story of my life as well, that. I tag people with some tagline on Ares pages so I can keep them apart. In real life? Same, but on the cell phone. It's not that I don't care. I just literally can't tell people's names and faces apart, and I get them mixed up most embarrassingly.

Oh yeah, it'd be almost embarrassing to show someone my phone and have them open the contacts. People are tagged with weird nicknames sometimes if they have the same first names because just using their last name wouldn't help in some cases.

[Roz]

I remember some things very well. The way I sort of collect knowledge in a mental repository on Arx can also be reflected in my work, which is a good skill to have.

I don't visualize stuff habitually almost ever, but I can? Like, if I consciously attempt, I can visualize an apple, sure. I was actually just driving home listening to Quadrophenia in the car and visualizing how GREAT A STAGE MUSICAL IT WOULD MAKE and how I would design it and shit, so I'm definitely not incapable. But I don't generally visualize, like, RP scenes as they're happening for the most part. I'm somewhere in the middle of that -- apple scale or whatever.

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Roz I retain information by turning it into a narrative. This is why I can't seem to retain even pretty simple information in real life but I can absolutely tell you what happened in an RP scene six weeks ago. Because that was a story and hence, retainable.

[Tashly]

I'd like to quickly apologize if the thread name offended or upset anyone. I wasn't meaning to imply that aphantasia is a literal lack of imagination, I suppose I more meant it like with air quotes? Kinda? Also I had this little laugh because I thought it was a bit punny, using a kinda common-ish phrase to reference something similar but not quite?

Anyways, I'm finding it super interesting reading about how different all our brains work, with imagination and memory and stuff. It's kinda neat and kinda amazing. Like, brains are crazy, yo!

Like it's a fun little reminder that you can't just assume that someone's experience of any particular thing is identical to your own.

Now, having read that so long as you can visualize things in your imagination even a little bit then you can improve with practice, I feel like I need to go like find a brain gym or something to work out. Cause I want some of that sexy rexy photo-real imagination porn too!

[Auspice]

This guy actually teaches you memorization techniques and how to build a mind palace: https://www.youtube.com/user/punknellis14

[Rinel]

@Roz said in A Lack of Imagination:

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

I don't have an internal narrator. I am the internal narrator.

[Auspice]

@Rinel said in A Lack of Imagination:

@Roz said in A Lack of Imagination:

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

I don't have an internal narrator. I am the internal narrator.

This.
The idea of it not being there is what's weird to me!

[RightMeow]

Ummmm....

I think I'm pretty descriptive and purple prose, but I don't PICTURE it. I sort of recall it from reading or because I just generally know. Like I know that silk is smooth, I cannot recall in my brain what it feels like. I know someone's eyes are blue because we've talked about eyes and it came up, but I can't picture it. I have been to a thesaurus to get shades of blue, but I don't picture them. I just know the words and set it with dynamic, but I don't PICTURE it in my head.

People picture all that? For real? This lack of picturing is a thing? I'm a little blown away. I don't think I have it, but I don't picture things. I've always been told that I'm a 'visual person' because I have to draw things out to 'see' them. I have to have them on paper.

Y'all have given me questions I'm not sure I wanted. Heh.

[Rinel]

@RightMeow said in A Lack of Imagination:

I've always been told that I'm a 'visual person' because I have to draw things out to 'see' them. I have to have them on paper.

I can imagine a 3D shape in my mind and rotate it to view all sides. If you can't, then there's probably something different in the way we think.

[Salty]

@Ninjakitten This is the same exactly for me. Visual is a non thing, location or feeling and the like, very strong. Smell not particularly strong, but for me, taste is pretty strong and distinct too, but mostly by feel and 'impression' fitting much more than 'imagination' for how my mind works.

[Lisse24]

@Rinel I can look at an image of a 3D shape and I will know that if you turn it one way or another how it would look, but I do all that without an image in my mind. I've never known how I know, I just know that, say, if you turn an apple on it's side, the stem would be sticking towards me.

In decorating my house, it's been interesting. For example, I know that I can fit two recliners into my living room, and have ample walking space and space to recline. I have NO CLUE how those recliners will look down there. Will they take up too much visual space and block my view of the woods? Will it be too crowded? Will it make my dark living room seem even darker? NO IDEA.

So I've decided when I find a model I like, I'm going to order one, shove it down there for a month or so before deciding if I want a second.

[Rinel]

Now I'm curious. I realize there are confounding factors here, but do any of you who don't do the picture thing enjoy the building aspects of games like Minecraft?

[Kanye Qwest]

@Roz said in A Lack of Imagination:

I remember some things very well. The way I sort of collect knowledge in a mental repository on Arx can also be reflected in my work, which is a good skill to have.

I don't visualize stuff habitually almost ever, but I can? Like, if I consciously attempt, I can visualize an apple, sure. I was actually just driving home listening to Quadrophenia in the car and visualizing how GREAT A STAGE MUSICAL IT WOULD MAKE and how I would design it and shit, so I'm definitely not incapable. But I don't generally visualize, like, RP scenes as they're happening for the most part. I'm somewhere in the middle of that -- apple scale or whatever.

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

Oh my god brains are so weird. I absolutely visualize scenes. Sometimes I get held up because I'm like wait but they were right HERE and now they are posing being THERE and arms don't work like that!!!1 And I realize it's my deal and I don't push it on other people but it slows my poses down as I adjust and try to figure out how to describe plausible animation I see happening.

I also have an internal narrator, and it narrates things like I'm a character in a book, sometimes. If I'm not DOING something, my brain fills the silence and dead space with actual narration. I can also hear this narration in different voices. I was doing mantra meditation for awhile but just saying the word mentally, and the voice I was doing it in kept shifting. Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, Tim Gunn...

[gryphter]

I can visualize with focus, but I can really only 'see' what small bit I'm directly focused on, and it's a lift. It won't hold or persist. My thinking is much more notional and nebulous.

To @Rinel 's question: I'm not much on Minecraft specifically, but if I try to play Fallout 4 it'll end with me spending 72 straight hours building settlements to a level of detail that does absolutely nothing in actual game mechanics. Behold my ridiculous fortress pyramid, unassailable, where I am Pharoah.

[Ninjakitten]

@Rinel said in A Lack of Imagination:

Now I'm curious. I realize there are confounding factors here, but do any of you who don't do the picture thing enjoy the building aspects of games like Minecraft?

Absolutely. The main things I did in Minecraft were the puzzle-y bits (basically figuring out how to automate All The Things and what should go where to be efficient and the like) and all the building. ALL the building. The people I played with would go off and explore and kill things and collect stuff and, well, mine, and I would mine some as well, but mostly I designed and built our places. (And did a lot of sorting and managing our resources because come ON people, if you just throw everything into any chest we will never find it again, and then we might as well not even have it.)

@Kanye-Qwest said in A Lack of Imagination:

Sometimes I get held up because I'm like wait but they were right HERE and now they are posing being THERE and arms don't work like that!!!1 And I realize it's my deal and I don't push it on other people but it slows my poses down as I adjust and try to figure out how to describe plausible animation I see happening.

I have this issue too, but again, no visual component to it. I just know X can't be here AND there at once, and I could swear A was between B and C so how is she now leaning on D, who I'm pretty sure was seated on the other side of the table? Sometimes I annoy people by trying to get OOC clarification of just who is sitting where and the like, but I need to know or I don't know where my character is and thus what movements or direct interactions are logical.

I could draw the relevant bits out for you as long as people haven't made them all non-Euclidian, I could gesture around myself to where other people are if I'm where my character is, but if I close my eyes and try to see it, all I get is black. And maybe afterimages of whatever light was in the RL room.

[faraday]

@Rinel said in A Lack of Imagination:

but do any of you who don't do the picture thing enjoy the building aspects of games like Minecraft?

Not at all. Or building things like legos. My kids can envision and then build these elaborate structures, but I can't manage anything better than a blocky box.

[Auspice]

@faraday said in A Lack of Imagination:

@Rinel said in A Lack of Imagination:

but do any of you who don't do the picture thing enjoy the building aspects of games like Minecraft?

Not at all. Or building things like legos. My kids can envision and then build these elaborate structures, but I can't manage anything better than a blocky box.

I've been having this weird experience with watching that Lego Masters which I swear must be how some people are with sports (I mean I enjoy watching sports but I don't get shouty at them). Like the camera interviews they'll be like 'gosh we don't know what to do for this' and I'm like HOLY SHIT YOU FUCK NUGGET IT'S OBVIOUS JUST......
and then they're like welp we failed but we had no idea where to go with this build womp womp.

[Grayson]

@Rinel said in A Lack of Imagination:

@RightMeow said in A Lack of Imagination:

I've always been told that I'm a 'visual person' because I have to draw things out to 'see' them. I have to have them on paper.

I can imagine a 3D shape in my mind and rotate it to view all sides. If you can't, then there's probably something different in the way we think.

I can do the whole 3D shape and rotate thing, including how light from any given point will cast shadows and reflections if it's shiny, but I specifically trained myself to be able to do that. These things can be deliberately honed.

[mietze]

I don't have a good visual memory including for faces without repetition (but it is not horrible). I do remember music, voices, and sounds very very well, people assume that I recognize folks immediately on sight after a first meeting but it's really their voice that triggers my recollection of their name. And smells for good or ill.

I dont always dream up things visually when I read something but I definitely create soundscapes in my head and I often "hear" the voice of other people's PCs as part of thinking about then in RP.

If I RP often or significantly with one of your PCs you can be sure that while I won't remember who the PB is or necessarily have a visual picture I'll definitely have a strong sense of their audible voice that I relate to.

[faraday]

@Auspice said in A Lack of Imagination:

I've been having this weird experience with watching that Lego Masters which I swear must be how some people are with sports (I mean I enjoy watching sports but I don't get shouty at them). Like the camera interviews they'll be like 'gosh we don't know what to do for this' and I'm like HOLY SHIT YOU FUCK NUGGET IT'S OBVIOUS JUST......

Lol whereas I watch Lego Masters (the kids are really into it) and I'm like.... OMFG HOW CAN THEY EVEN DO THAT? I'm in awe