Maybe I've Already Gone Crazy

[rowyn]

So Postvixen points out this LJ community, Soulbonding, saying that she likes it, but she's worried what would happen if the net.bastards got hold of it.

I'm reading, and reading, and reading through the intro (the community creator is a tad longwinded. ;) And my dominant thought as I'm looking at it is:

Doesn't everyone do this?

I've been an avid reader for almost as long as I can remember. (I can barely recall being very young and making up stories to go with the pictures in books I could not read. And refusing to learn to read from my sister. "I'll learn when they teach me in school!") The amount of leisure-reading I did dropped off dramatically in and after college, and has only recently begun to pick up again. But I still do a fair bit of reading.

One thing that I've always done when reading is interact with the book. I'll find myself doing this even with the most ordinary of non-fiction subjects. I read The Federalist Papers and imagine travelling back in time to talk to Alexander Hamiliton about how the country turned out. When I was little I imparted personalities to numbers. (3 was very selfish, as I recall, while 9 was my favorite.)

But my real flights of fancy are connected with fiction, particularly fantasy and science fiction. I can hardly read a book without inserting myself, or, more often, some additional imaginary characters into the narrative. Usually, my imaginary second narrative involves resolving the thorniest, or most persistent, problems in the story. Sometimes I'll employ powergaming tacitcs to solve difficulties, and sometimes I'll just provide my characters with additional insight, or a little special ability, to help them see things through.

When I was 12, I codified my cast of book-interfering characters, all with different and largely dramatically over-powered abilities. They were mostly about my age. There was my favorite, Diana, the Diamond Dragon. She was the only child of a race of shapeshifting diamond-skinned dragons who seldom reproduced. There was Liana, the daughter of Light, the fey, ethereal child of a diety. Crystal, a D&D-style sorceress with long black hair and pale skin (sound familiar, anyone?) with a mischevious bent and a wicked sense of humor. There were four others whose personalities were less well-defined, and who were employed less frequently. They dimension-travelled from one novel to the next, intervening and interacting their way through hundreds of stories.

I don't use them anymore, but I still conduct frequent imaginary interventions whenever I read anything.

It never occured to me that this might be unusual. I always thought that everyone did it. A few weeks ago, I mentioned this to Lut (who reads a lot more than I do), and he said, no, he never does.

Never?

Never.

Wow.

(This may be one of the reasons I read relatively slowly. I need to take the time to build up long scenes in my head, then discard them so I can get back to the events in the actual book.)

Anyway, this isn't my only use of alternate voices-in-my-head, but it's perhaps the most frequent one. And now I'm wondering: who else does do this? I'm sure I can't be alone. So if you're reading this, please let me know if you ever stage interventions in the course of books you're reading, or films you're watching. Or if you don't.

Maybe Lut is the oddity. ;)

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, this shouldn't be too much of a revelation to you, since we've gone over this topic before, but there are a great many stories that I've reacted to, going over alternate endings in my head, imagining what could happen if I could insert myself and make things different. Those weird little fantasies have served as a major creative drive for me; I change details, change names, change places, change whatever I have to, and some core of the result finds its way into story ideas that I ponder (but never have actually written), or, more productively, into adventures for roleplaying games. (Of course, the PCs won't take the same path that I might have imagined myself doing ... but it still serves as a springboard for me to come up with something.)

On Sinai, I was most fueled by reacting to what other people were doing. (When most everyone shuffled off, there weren't as many people to react to!)

In fact, I was thinking about much this very same thing today, while driving downtown with Gwendel. I was thinking, actually, of writing up an entry on why I like Boba Fett. =) (Why is it, when I have Star Wars daydreams, I'm on the losing side of the Empire? If I fantasize about going to Hogwarts, why do I imagine that I would be in House Slytherin? In short, because it's hardly interesting to think about just doing what the characters in a story are already doing, just inserting myself as a substitute hero or hanger-on, on the same quest, with the same problems, from my point of view. It's more interesting to think about how things might be different, or at least be seen in a different light. What might happen if I turned the story over and propped it up on its head?)

But due to the lateness of the hour, the pounding in my head, etc., that can probably wait a bit. Basically, I just wanted to say that, if I'm following you correctly, you're not alone at all. I daydream, too, and on those rare occasions when I read stories that interest me, those stories will find their way into my daydreams.

[rowyn]

I'll admit, you were the one person that I was certain did this, too. I specifically remembered, at the end of the dream logs, that you said you were feeling sorry for Saraizadze (even if she was the bad guy!) and imagined sending some character, or yourself, to swoop in and rescue her. :)