this is a bit of a babble, but i'm thinking about shen yuan, shen qingqiu, the aphantasia/hyperphantasia spectrum, and the system's punishments.
this might be a bit disjointed so try to bear with me, but I'm specifically thinking about shen yuan's body having aphantasia (no mental imagery) while shen qingqiu's has something closer to hyperphantasia (very vivid mental imagery). the ability to picture things and how vividly you do it is inarguably neurological, and people who are on one extreme of the spectrum have a hard time conceptualising that there's someone on the complete opposite end.
what do you mean you can visualise things as clearly as a picture and see a movie in your head? what do you mean you can't picture anything at all and when you close your eyes it's just a black void?
being in another body means having a different brain. this comes down to thinking about what it's like to switch bodies with someone who
has a specific mental disorder, but that's a very complicated topic for another day.
all in all i think it'd be super interesting if shen yuan's body couldn't picture things. people with aphantasia can still love reading after all! i think it'd be an interesting twist on why he hated reading PIDW while simultaneously loving it.
people with aphantasia are more likely to be picky about prose, as they don't have an internal movie supporting the descriptions. we know airplane's writing was actually pretty good in the beginning of PIDW, hooking cucumber in until it all starting going downhill after he lost his outline and cucumber has been at least partially holding onto the hope that it would become good again. not only this, but by that point he was! attached to binghe!!!!! he could have gone looking for fanfic with better prose, sure, but that's not really the same.
with that in mind i think shen yuan loves fanart because it allows him to put a picture on what he's reading, and the monster designs become less wtf is this and much more cool. another reason he might've stuck around with pidw, especially if he could not picture all the harem smut even if it haunted his mind lmao
because of this i think it'd be funny for shen qingqiu's body to be on the opposite side of the spectrum — that he can picture things very, very vividly. more torturous for poor shen jiu alas, stuck vividly remembering and seeing his past.
i don't know, i personally can't picture shit, but i do have some friends with hyperphantasia and to me it sounds?? pretty terrifying???? i think i might picture things a teensy bit in dreams, but i can't even be sure about that. especially nightmares like holy shit
so i think that for shen yuan, now in a body that can picture things and see actually human-demon luo binghe in front of him, in the fucking flesh, it's not just animation or fanart or nebulous mental descriptions, that's a whole real person in front of him and now he can picture that face vividly in his mind too holy shit?
slap onto his forehead the demon mark design he saw on all PIDW propaganda and get rid of some of that baby fat, add a few inches to his height, and now the emperor that'll kill him is super easy to imagine, to picture, to see. intrusive thoughts, which most people get at least the once, would become that much more distressing surely
i don't think the system would have necessarily risked sending shen yuan to another dimension for his punishment; what if a glitch or smth happens hello? i think it just would have taken advantage of shen yuan's newfound fear being heightened due to how vividly he can visualise and hear and feel things and sort of given him essentially a very, very vivid nightmare that he couldn't escape with fancy cultivator teas or simply not sleeping as immortals are wont to. only he doesn't have the relief of waking up from a nightmare, because he knows the system sent him there, he knows it's possible, and now all his imagined scenarios are unmistakably vivid (how many times will i use the word vivid holy shit) and what if? what if this is what the system actually has planned for his fate rather than just the original that he never could actually picture while simultaneously reading?
whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif—
i think at some point in the novel shen yuan was also unsure if the actual luo binghe was in front of him or bingge's copy :')
i don't know what the end goal of this post was tbh! just yapping!
i think it'd be funny if years down the line shen yuan and shang qinghua have a conversation and sy is like gee the imagination really is rampant in this world. sqh is like tf you on bro, and sy is like oh yk how people can actually see things in their mind in this world, meditation makes so much more sense. meanwhile sqh, who always had a decent ability to picture things is like hold the fuck uuuppppp bro hahaha also because i think it's a fun addition to sqh's "you're more handsome than I ever imagined" or smth line rather than also making him aphantasic hahaha
Working hard with 2 jobs, looking at my own place from time to time and for the moment, I have no commissions/contests etc hanging on my back to be finished!
Does anyone know what happened to fox-babi 's tumblr? I really wanted a commission from them but the post I have in my likes say the blog is deactivated..
