are you really all out here having perfectly clear voluntary mental images
@monorail not perfectly clear all the time but uh
i can get stuck in that mode of everything visual if i read enough comics/graphic novels tho, because my brain just goes "oh so THAT'S what we're doing, ok then"
idk what sort of syndrome THAT is
put-down-the-comic-book-you-nerd-itis
@wigglytuffitout @monorail I feel like everyone's replying to Holly about this with some sort of idea that they need to be able to have photographic mental visualization in order for it to be "perfectly clear" when we're actually talking about like
"you picture an apple. it looks like an apple."
@InspectorCaracal @monorail i do have times when it gets more... mushy? like when i'm trying to work out a scene for writing - usually it's listen to a song and then picture shit to it, lol - sometimes the idea starts as more movement, and then i have to refine and refine to focus on what's going on and how it works.
maybe part of my imagination is actually a frog and as such only sees movement?? 
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
@wigglytuffitout @monorail yeah but presenting that as "kind of the same thing" is like saying you prefer drawing in b&w and that is kind of like being color blind <.<
@InspectorCaracal @monorail very true LOL, i'm guessing that maybe it's a bit of a gradient and the norm isn't like perfectly perfect recall, but that there are areas where things get mushy at the borders
thinking about thinking is weird
at least this has actual science behind it and not that "fun fact" i've seen a few times that "if you hear your thoughts like a voice at all that's a sign of mental illness!" which just makes me absolutely sure that's bullshit bc otherwise HOW DO YOU THINK
@wigglytuffitout @monorail I think in nonverbal concepts that I translate into verbal thought-speech so I can talk about it...? <.<
@InspectorCaracal @monorail honestly i sometimes think in that kinda way too, but when people say that if you think in a voice/spoken narrative at ALL it's a "fun fact that you're mentally ill" is when i call bullshit and a half lol
like, wtf do they do when they read a book??? bc when i do that, it's like my mental voice is reading aloud. and you got different voices for different characters of course! like it's so common to do this that the fun fact is B U L L S H I T
@monorail I don't either! *high paws*
@wigglytuffitout @monorail a lot of things people think are legit facts about mental health are bullshit, even xD
@InspectorCaracal @monorail oh definitely
it drove me fuckin buckwild to see it passed around as "fun fact" without any sort of source for this or references because all it did was make people panic that they were broken forever
and it's not bad!!! neither is the inverse!!! it's Fucking Normal!!! and making people panic about it was a shitheel move and i want to kick the person perpetuating this square in the crotch basically
@wigglytuffitout @monorail ngl I've literally never heard this one before you mentioning it >.>
@wigglytuffitout @monorail A lot of people don't read that way, actually! It's why they have so much trouble reading plays.
@wigglytuffitout @monorail I read things like I'm reading them aloud in my head, which means they're all in my "mind-voice" - which is also the voice I use when I read out loud for real, which confuses the heck out of people sometimes because it sounds completely different from my usual speaking voice.
But I don't do character voices. And a lot of people don't do the mental-speaking part at all!
@InspectorCaracal @wigglytuffitout i've actually seen websites designed to train you to read without your mind voice, since if you read with it then you're usually waiting for it before you can move on to the next sentence or whatever
if you can learn to not use it you can read faster
@monorail @wigglytuffitout *blinks slowly*
okay maybe I read in less of a literal mental speaking voice than I thought, thinking about it
I have a big skimming problem, you see
@monorail @wigglytuffitout which is to say, my current goal in terms of reading is to *slow down* <.<
@wigglytuffitout @InspectorCaracal i definitely don't do voices