#aphantasia is so weird

[emerdoodls]

does anyone else with aphantasia ever say "i always pictured..." then realize you never pictured that bc you don't ever picture anything and you also thought that picture this was a metaphor so you don't say it in a literal way but everyone else will take it literally and ask you what you mean bc "don't you not get the pictures in your head??"

[oc-culture]

Explanation

[nevermore-ramblings]

guess who just discovered they have aphantasia!

[djosephqueery]

I wanted to post Eddie's lines from my exchange piece on their own, because I am still really proud of these.

[shadowbannedthehedgehog]

the tree house thing from my dreams is still occupying my mind space? it was weird. also b4 i left the likeness of my first year teacher in primary school held up her hand to me and i thought she was waving goodbye so i waved back but then she got upset with me bc it meant she wanted a hug actually? wow cloud misreading social cues even in your dreams ahahahha

[bobendsneyder64]

This is so weird. I just found out, through a random instagram story, that I have a condition called Aphantasia. This means that I cannot see mental images. My brain is just words, I never see anything. I always thought that that was normal and thought that the people who could see stuff were special. Guess it's the other way around. Huh, this is a really weird day

[anarkhebringer]

Y'know there's a lot of shit going on in my head that immediately makes more sense once I remember I have aphantasia

[oflgtfol]

cat violence

[phlegmspitter]

Man I love drawing something I think is cool but then I realise it's a carbon copy of something I saw a while back in a show or something and I woooyeah

[yearofthediamond-dogs]

I'm christian now

[crypticroyals]

I always found it strange why some people always said things like "oh yeah I'm an empath! you're aura is bad"

Um, that's not how that works.

An empath scientifically speaking is basically:

Scientists found special group of brain cells that specialize compassion. Basically an empath is just stronger brain bits that pick up other people's moods way easier. The cells allow us to mirror emotions of others we see and such. Which is why if you have a galfriend sobbing over a breakup you might feel a bit sad too. An empath would potentially also cry cause the cells are stronger. The brain is weird and makes us weird and that's what's fun about humanity.

There's different types of empaths too. They're not really "types" but more like, one person stubs their right toe and you feel it vaguely or strongly on your own toe.(this one is fucking weird. Might do more research on it and make another post about it) and another which I think I have but could be totally wrong is something called an intuitive empath. Why it's called "intuitive" I have no god damn clue but it's basically like before (brain bits) and they pick up other people's brain bits. Cause everything is ✨hormones✨ this is why some animals can "smell fear" aka they pick up chemical cues. Research doesn't say intuitive empaths smell shit but they can be like "hey what's wrong?" When the person is neutral cause they "sense" they're upset.

However some places are just "ohhh they're Physic" no. We're not phycic. We're just strong brain bits. Some more so than others. We're not some fantasy superpower.

Edit: I almost forgot. The mirror neurons brain bits is in the bit of the brain called the anterior insular cortex

[year2000electronics]

does anyone have any thoughts or headcanons on how bill got his powers? i sure do!

in my mind, the euclydian massacre almost worked like how dropping experience might work in a video game. to use an example, im thinking of slither.io, where if you die, you leave these glowing orbs that other players around you collect to grow themselves.

(shoutout to that one bill cipher rp account on twitter who made exactly one in character post and then just kept posting his slither.io scores.)

so for bill to not only have killed EVERYONE in euclydia, but also literally destroy an entire DIMENSION and reduce it to an atom, that must have given him EXPONENTIAL power. that's how it works in my mind, anyways- it's a tradeoff. he lost everything he was to become who he is.

but that begs the question, why is bill considered a "dream demon"? destroying euclydia and haunting peoples' dreams have nothing in common. well, i think i have my answer, in that it's not necessarily bill himself that takes on these "dream demon" qualities, but it's because of his circumstance.

see, the realm he immediately hops into after he destroys euclydia is the nightmare realm! one described as being "in-between dimensions" and a place where "the physics work different" (all made clear in the book of bill). of course bill would be able to slide into that realm as this uber-powerful 2d being who entered a very 3d world.

but then you get to "our" universe, and the planet earth, which is an entirely 3d plane made of 3d beings. the concept of 2d exists for us, and it's demonstrably not something where alive beings can live or even move. so, in my mind, bill can't just "pop in" to our world. he needs a rip in space-time, exploding weirdness from the nightmare realm that makes the laws of physics just bendy enough so that he can manifest himself in there no problem. but if earth is 3d and he can't access it, how is he supposed to make that portal?

easy. what's a "world" where the laws of physics don't exist in our world? the world of our minds and dreams! our imaginations don't obey the laws of physics. one person might be able to "perfectly visualize" something in a 3d plane, but another might have aphantasia so can only read words in a book and understand them. and that's not even beginning to take dreams into account, who follow NO rules because theyre subconscious thoughts haphazardly stitched together!

tldr bill can exist in the mindscape because it's not a "3d plane" that obeys the laws of physics, and the reason he's known as a "dream demon" isn't because he has a particular affinity for dreams, but instead because that's the only place in our world he can appear! thats my headcanon for it anyways

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for asking my boyfriend to stop watching porn?

This is pretty simple tbh. NSFW mentions of porn, sex, and masturbation.

🐣🐣

I am a transgender man and struggle a lot with sexual intimacy. I don’t think I’m on the ace spectrum, I just have a lot of insecurities and dysphoria that I’m working through. I still crave sexual intimacy, I just get very anxious about it. My boyfriend is understanding but a little pushy at times because he’s got a high sex drive. He doesn’t do it on purpose and backs off when I tell him to. Important to mention that my boyfriend is cis. So, because of this, my boyfriend usually takes care of himself. I help out whenever I feel comfortable.

Recently, we somehow started talking about porn and hentai (don’t remember the context of the conversation) and I asked him what he does when he takes care of himself. He said he watches porn, which I was surprised to hear but it makes sense because he has aphantasia. So, he can’t really imagine me or anything. Sometimes he uses my photos, but he said he needs some movement. At first I was fine with it, but then he mentioned that he only watches straight porn.

Now, I know my reaction was out of line, because I started crying and calling him an asshole for watching straight porn when he’s dating a trans guy. He’s pansexual, so he can really watch any kind of porn he wants, but I just started freaking out for some reason.

He kept telling me that there was no good gay stuff or ftm stuff, which is just straight up not true. There’s plenty of ftm nsfw content, but when I mentioned that, he said it felt weird and fetishistic.

I told him it hurts me when he watches straight porn, he said that’s stupid and he needs something to get off to. Fair enough but it still hurts me. There’s just something about me trying so hard to get past my anxiety and dysphoria so we can finally be intimate with each other and him blatantly disrespecting my gender identity that hurts like hell.

Plus, every time I suggested we do something that I’m into, he shot me down. I’m a bit of a kinkier guy and he’s very vanilla, despite insisting that he’s into the same stuff as me. I 100% respect his boundaries and never brought it up again. But I don’t think it’s fair that he won’t even try stuff with me that might make intimacy more enjoyable for me and then goes and watches straight porn. I keep trying to make our sex live work and he can’t even be bothered to figure out ftm bodies. Idk.

I talked to an online friend and they called me biphobic.

Am I out of line for trying to tell him what kind of porn to watch? Am I overreacting?

[copperbadge]

Okay so wait a minute, with this aphantasia thing. I don’t think I have aphantasia because I process audio fine, in fact I prefer not to have any visual, but apparently there is some relationship between it and ADHD. I’m not trying to be confrontational in any of this but I’m bewildered by the idea of mentally picturing things you listen to or read about. It’s bothered me since I posted the ask. 

I can picture things in my head, if I stop and make a conscious decision to build them, but if I’m doing that I can’t do anything else -- I can’t listen to a podcast and picture it in my head and also do something with my hands. Come to think of it I probably couldn’t even keep up with the podcast if I was trying to picture it in my head, I’d struggle to choose which things to imagine and by the time I got them built they’d have moved on. It never feels like a very useful thing to do, because I’ve already got the words, that’s the important part, and I’d rather be doing stuff. I just assumed that most of the time when people talk about picturing stuff they’re either doing it very deliberately, like a guided meditation, or they’re being poetic, like people don’t actually do that, we just say we do as a way of describing someone thinking about something.

So, I’m listening to a podcast in which the host reads a letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to his brother, discussing his brother’s relationship with his wife (“she’s still young, let her dance if she wants, don’t lock her up with the kids all day.”) If you see images in your head when you hear audio, are you seeing the host reading off a sheet of paper, or Napoleon writing the letter, or Napoleon talking to his brother, or are you seeing Napoleon’s brother being mean to his wife? If you don’t know what any of these people look like, do you just make something up? 

Jesus Christ, when people read erotica do they picture the sex happening? What’s that like? You just get porn in your head involuntarily? I mean, not involuntarily, you’re choosing to read the text, but it just shows up when you do? 

Writers, when you write do you get mental images as you go? I often will pause in writing to build a mental image in my head and then describe it but as soon as I do it disappears, and it’s mostly a waste of time so I really only do that when I need to describe a space that people are moving around in (like the fishing lodge with the kitchen bar dividing the living room and kitchen, I do have several mental “camera snaps” of that setup, but I don’t picture it when I’m writing about it). 

This might explain why I always get yelled at for not describing people in my books. It’s simply unimportant to me 99% of the time and awkward to try and insert it the other 1%. I don’t picture people in my head when I read -- they’re a personality, a collection of characteristics. My characters don’t have faces to me, like how people in dreams don’t have faces, you just know who they are. I describe them but that’s just words I really like, or I pick out people who already exist and just say “oh they look like that”. Obviously when someone wants a description I do my best to supply it, but in prose it’s just not important. 

This is genuinely blowing my mind. This is why people always want descriptions of things! They get to see the descriptions! Reading a book must be like going to an art gallery anytime you want without moving. Is that what it’s like? Is this super common, like am I the weird one, or is this just like for people with super vivid imaginations? 

[thebibliosphere]

i just started hunger pangs and ursula immediately going “hm. that’s weird why did that happen” after being extremely injured instead of “wow!! i am extremely injured!!” tells me immediately that this is going to be in my top books of all time

(also i have to say the descriptions in here are So vivid it feels like im watching a movie and that doesnt normally happen so like props to you)

Hgskl. Ursula is such a mood sometimes. I'm enjoying writing her scenes in book 2 atm.

And thank you! As someone with aphantasia who can't visualize my own world, that's quite the compliment. 😅

[nohoperadio]

A weird thing about when I'm reading fiction is I always experience something like cognitive dissonance whenever the scene being described has very different weather from the irl weather. If it's 28°C and sunny outside my window then that's by default how I'll picture whatever I'm reading about, and if the narration tells me it's actually pouring with rain in the middle of winter it will take real effort to incorporate that information into my imagining, often so much so that it significantly distracts me from the actual content of what I'm reading.

Weirdly--or not? I'm not actually sure whether this is weird or unweird as considered in the light of the above--I don't actually have a super strong visual imagination, I definitely don't have aphantasia but I also definitely don't have anything remotely like a cinema screen running in my head while I read. I guess the argument for this being surprising is that if I'm not imagining scenes strongly in the first place why is it so noticeable when the weather is wrong? And the argument for it being unsurprising is that maybe my weak-ass imagination is "borrowing" the weather from my actual sensory input when it renders scenes because it doesn't have the processing power to efficiently generate that kind of thing from scratch.

If this is at all a recognizable experience to anyone else I'd like to hear from you.