spiders

daydreams, imaginary friends

traitorous fifth column secret fae here to tear apart the human world floorboard by floorboard with my teeth

we are always learning things about the world, and so excited to share them with you

see @iliana for our good posts


had an interesting conversation with @iliana, who reads by moving through the text only audiating words or visualizing stuff in xer head when xie is paying close attention to a particular phrase or description (sorry for the short description, i am not xe, so i can't go into nuances about how reading works for xer)

this differs from me. when i read, it is like i am watching a cartoon or stage play of the book in my head; each character has their own distinct voice and appearance. sometimes i decide that the voice i have cast a character with isn't right and go back and override their voice (which sometimes takes an amount of effort). i imagine the action taking place like there is cinematography, sometimes even editing. i often imagine the smells or feel of textures. there are sound effects i get frustrated if the story isn't describing spaces clearly enough because it makes it harder to reasonably model them.

conversations have flow, for instance, if there's a tense moment, the characters will actually stop talking and sit silently for a moment. i will visualize them shifting in their chairs. sometimes the camera lingers on a landscape. when characters are talking in other languages i often picture subtitles delivering the dialogue and audiate the unintelligible foreign language. sometimes i picture unimportant supplementary flavor scenes or characters doing something unrelated in the background of a shot.

when i am less invested in the story, sometimes a lower-energy variant of this mode of reading manifests were there's still individual character voices and a continuous stream of visuals but its less deliberate, less artful, more blurry and abstract and impressionistic

i could choose to not read in this way, but it is both less fun, and also often results in me not comprehending what is happening when i try to suppress the visualization or when i'm being more abstract about it. i think this probably partially accounts for why iliana is a fast reader, while i am a pretty slow reader. this also probably accounts for why i often get so mentally exhausted when i read for a long time.

(there is also semi-echoalic tics, where i scratch or tap out the rhythm of certain phrases or words, or twitch various muscles in that rhythm)

how do you read, cohost


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in reply to @spiders's post:

also sometimes when i'm feeling particularly insane i add a second layer of visualization where i'm in our wonderland in some cozy place reading the book (often in the company of headmates/imaginary friends).

i can't maintain this simultaneously to the visualization of the story but when i "drop out" of the story momentarily i send myself to the headspace and check in there, shift around on the imagined furniture or whatever.

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