Ask Lemmy

At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I'd moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.

Purple-ish

Male? Maybe?

Too abstract I more imagined an arm more than a whole person

Baseballish

Square, I dunno it was also purple. I get very like, early computer animation type vibes from the whole scene. "Ball" and "table" without any context just leaves everything kinda blank.

I think I already knew. Maybe the gender one was a stretch.

Everything was shadows with rainbow outlines, basically.

I think this is a fun exercise, but Idk I'm oblivious to a lot of things excepts shapes and interactions. More telling is my dreams tend to fall into two categories:

Objects without details but with crisp, colorful outlines and dark scenes with illuminated spacces where the more fleshed out areas that are illuminated.

And my ability to imagine is similar- if no lighting condition is given my mental image is shadows with rainbow outlines. If the instructions include lighting the details are more robust: A cat will have a color, a ball will be plain and white and softball sized.

The ball was red. The gender of the person was unspecified, they were just a hand coming into the scene coming out of a long sleeve green shirt. And the ball was like the size of a softball. What I pictured was a zoomed in part of a table, Brown, but with two zoomed in of perspective for me to know the shape of the whole table.

The ball was blue and kind of glossy, clearly made of plastic.

The person was a scruffy looking femme character in black and white. I just subbed in a character from a comic post above this one.

The ball was about 50% bigger than a baseball.

The table was a round coffee table with that fake wood texture paneling you see on cheap furniture, you know the type? It was a muted brown color.

I did know that I was probably expected to visualize details on the described object, but not the person or table!

I visualized a blue ball the size of a tennis ball being pushed forward on a flat white surface by a shadowy figure with only the hand being visually clear. Upon the follow-up question, I believe that it solidified the gender in my mind to be male and also prompted me to think about the surface of the table edges in relation to where the figure stood. However, my main focus was on the blue ball and the hand pushing it forward over a white surface.

The ball was pale, not any color specific, something life a cream color. The person was nongendered, just a hand extending from a black suit with no determining orientation. They were a suit below the shoulder to above the knee, no other visible details past the table. The ball is maybe baseball sized, just big enough to comfortably fit the hand. The table is my current dining room table, an antique drop leaf table. This detail was the oddest to reconsider because until now I've been imagining either my previous table or the coffee table from my childhood, I don't normally decorate the thought space.

• small dull red rubber ball
• no obvious gender
• they looked simple, like a Simpsons character. Impression of having a body, but only actually saw their hand
• table was standard rectangular, wooden affair

My visualisation is quite chaotic, so I mostly see a jumble of overlapping objects then have to choose which one to focus on.

Surprisingly, I had a real hard time visualising the ball rolling on its own. The hand was either pushing it or it was bouncing off of the floor.

Interesting exercise!

• The ball was orange
• I don't remember
• I don't remember
• As big as an orange
• The ball was on a white surface

I've always found this subject fascinating. Why are we all so different in this regards? What's going or not going on up there? Anyway, this is my result…

The ball was white/light gray. It has the surface texture of plaster of Paris, but it is somewhat lighter than would be appropriate for its canteloupe-like size.

I don't think I actually pictured a whole person as pushing the ball, more likely it was a disembodied hand or the general sensation of pushing it myself.

I remember being specifically intrigued that I pictured the ball rolling back towards the center of the table and pondering why I had chosen the table to be slightly concave. I don't remember more attributes of the table, but I have the feeling that has more to do with inattention to its details rather than not picturing them at the time.

I imagine that, based on the framing of the story, my interpretation was to picture the sphere as a literal entity, but the person as the "concept of a push"... The table probably lied somewhere in the middle.

Red No gender No appearance No size The table was the same color as our dining table, but that was the only property it had.

Well maybe I'm not all that aphantasiac, I immediately came up with a woman pushing a 9-ball on a green billiards table

I have a question OP. Do you read fiction? Recently I've been wondering if aphantasia's why some people don't, almost seen unable, to read and enjoy.

It puts the push in the little backpack it's wearing and thanks the person.

Fun experiment! It's amusing reading the comments.

::: spoiler spoiler Red ball pushed by an older gentleman, only imagined the hand and arm (wearing green long-sleeve but I'm not sure if I added the long sleeve after tbh, Im pretty sure I only imavined the hand). It was a red rubber ball, the kind you throw to a dog and it was on my kitchen counter (it has a distinct pattern).

Except for the log sleeve, I knew the rest without a doubt. Also, I didn't really see it fall, my angle was from across, I couldn't see the other side per say and I stopped imagining the moment it slipped off. I don't really remember a floor either.