I was in the library reading LOTR (Just finished the Fellowship, my god would I recommend it!), and at the beginning of the session, I was reading the book and the descriptions and prose were so magnificent that I willed myself to try imagining what everything looked like in my mind’s eye. So this raises a question. Do you see the picture while reading? If so, how vividly? And is it automatic?
Just to clear up confusion, I’m not just talking about understanding the text. Or retroactively creating an image. I’m talking about while reading the text, you imagine what’s happening visually. And when something changes in the text, say the grass becoming dimmer, do you imagine that process happening?
I wonder if aphantasia exists on a spectrum. The only visualizations I can do are of scenery- landscapes/buildings/streets. And it’s more like I can feel myself in the space and sense the dimensions of things.
If you ask me to picture an apple, I see: either whatever I’m looking at or the weird color of one’s eyelids.
I can picture the grounds of Hailsham from Never Let Me Go, for example. Kinda. If I try to bring it into focus, it goes away entirely.
It feels like I’m lying if I say I have 0 visualizations while reading, but I have no concept of a character’s looks, ever.
Other things I can see a bit: the Battle School corridors from Ender’s Game, the weird blocked-off alley in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, the grounds and gardens of Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden.