"I know no one is looking for realism in porn (I'm definitely not)"

[AG31]

I'm also aphantasic, but I don't experience it as you do. I asked DeepSeek for further information. You may be interested in the response:


'Yes, this is a recognized and fascinating variation within the spectrum of aphantasia and internal experience! What your friend describes aligns closely with concepts in cognitive science, particularly:

1. Motor Imagery / Kinaesthetic Imagery: This is the ability to mentally simulate bodily movements, sensations of force, effort, position, and balance without necessarily generating a visual picture. It's the "feeling" of performing an action in your mind's body.
2. Embodied Cognition / Embodied Simulation: This broader theory suggests that understanding concepts (especially action-related ones) involves partially reactivating the same sensory, motor, and emotional systems used during actual experience. When reading about kicking a ball, your brain subtly activates the motor programs and proprioceptive sensations associated with kicking.

Here's the breakdown of how this relates to your friend's experience and aphantasia:

1. Dissociation of Imagery Modalities: Aphantasia primarily refers to the lack of voluntary visualimagery. However, mental imagery isn't monolithic. People can have strengths or weaknesses in different sensory modalities:
   • Visual: Seeing pictures (absent in visual aphantasia).
   • Auditory: Hearing sounds/music internally.
   • Olfactory/Gustatory: Smelling/tasting internally.
   • Motor/Kinaesthetic: Feeling movements, touches, weight, balance, proprioception (body position).
   • Emotional: Feeling emotions associated with memories or imaginings.
     Your friend seems to have strong, involuntary motor/kinaesthetic imagery/simulation, compensating for or existing alongside her lack of visual imagery. Her brain is simulating the actions sensorimotorically rather than visually.
2. Research on Aphantasia and Motor Imagery:
   • Studies (e.g., Dance, et al., 2021; Zeman, et al., ongoing) show that while people with aphantasia generally report reduced vividness across all sensory modalities of imagery compared to the general population, motor imagery is often relatively preserved, and sometimes even reported as the strongest modality.
   • Some individuals with aphantasia report relying heavily on "spatial" imagery (feeling layouts, distances, relationships) or "motor" imagery to navigate the world and understand concepts, especially physical actions.
   • The experience of involuntary motor/kinaesthetic sensations triggered by reading (like your friend's) is a specific manifestation of this preserved motor simulation system.
3. The "Muscle Memory" / Proprioceptive Feeling:
   • What she describes as "feeling responses in her muscle memory" is highly consistent with kinaesthetic imagery. This involves simulating:
     • Proprioception: The sense of where your limbs are in space and how they are moving.
     • Effort/Force: The feeling of exerting muscles.
     • Movement Trajectory: The sense of the path a movement takes.
   • This simulation can feel like an internal "echo" or "preview" of the physical action, engaging the motor cortex and sensory areas related to touch and body position, even if the muscles themselves aren't actually moving (though subtle muscle twitches, or ideomotor phenomena, can sometimes occur).
4. Why Reading Triggers It (Embodied Simulation):
   • When we read action words (verbs like "run," "grab," "throw") or descriptions of physical interactions, our brains automatically activate relevant sensorimotor areas (a key tenet of embodied cognition).
   • This is thought to be facilitated by mirror neuron systems – neurons that fire both when we perform an action and when we observe (or read about) someone else performing it.
   • For your friend, this automatic sensorimotor simulation is her primary way of experiencing the narrative internally. It's not a conscious "choice" to imagine it kinesthetically; it's how her brain naturally processes the action-based semantic information.

Is it a Specific Named Phenomenon?

• There isn't a single, universally agreed-upon specific name just for this combination (aphantasia + strong involuntary motor simulation from reading), as research into the variations within aphantasia is still relatively young.
• However, it's accurately described as:
  • Aphantasia (specifically visual aphantasia).
  • With preserved/strong motor/kinaesthetic imagery/simulation.
  • Exhibiting embodied simulation in response to language, particularly action language.
• It falls under the broader umbrella of studying individual differences in mental imagery modalities and how semantic knowledge (understanding meaning) connects to sensorimotor systems.

In Summary:

Your friend's experience is absolutely recognized by researchers studying aphantasia and mental imagery. While she lacks the visual component of imagination, her brain has a strong propensity for simulating actions and physical sensations through the motor/kinaesthetic modality. This "muscle memory" feeling when reading about actions is her brain's way of embodying and understanding the narrative – a fascinating example of how diverse our internal experiences can be, even among individuals who share the label of "aphantasia." It highlights that aphantasia is not necessarily a lack of imagination altogether, but often a difference in the format of that imagination.'


It may be related to 'the immersive experience' which many people report when they read fiction. I don't.

Absolutely fascinating. My son has aphantasia and he's also got a PhD in education (specialty teaching kids with learning problems. He's read a lot about this, but I don't recall our ever talking about somaticism. I'm sending this along to him.

 

[iwatchus]

I would posit that a decent number of us are here because we want to write about situations that might be based in reality but didn't quite turn out as sexily as we would have liked them to, so instead we rework them into fictional narratives that are plausible enough to be believed.

This is certainly close to my original series, that describes an exaggerated version of our life forty some years ago, with a wild card added in that never happened in reality.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Now, if I'm reading story about a man with two dicks who's DP'ing a woman on her knees, and he's on his knees, his dicks better be lined up vertically and not side to side, otherwise that angle of penetration is going to seem quite uncomfortable and I'm not going to believe he's enjoying himself.

This, this is why I've noped out of so many snake man stories. If he has two penises because he is part snake, then they're side by side and he cannot be DP'ing a woman.

 

[AG31]

That one's fine for me, because "the time when X happened..." needn't refer just to the instant in time when X happened; it's commonly used to refer to an episode in time. If I say "remember when our team won the grand final?" that isn't limited to the moment when the full-time whistle blew; it can encompass things like the runs scored along the way and the victory parade after.

You've definitely got a point. I came back to your post, thinking there might be a technical term for referring to a whole episode. I wanted to google (or chatgpt) it to get examples to see if I had problems with all of them, or just some, and what the pattern was. But I see you don't provide a technical term for such a construction. Anybody else?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This, this is why I've noped out of so many snake man stories. If he has two penises because he is part snake, then they're side by side and he cannot be DP'ing a woman.

Unless you state she's on her side and he's standing...

 

[Bramblethorn]

You've definitely got a point. I came back to your post, thinking there might be a technical term for referring to a whole episode. I wanted to google (or chatgpt) it to get examples to see if I had problems with all of them, or just some, and what the pattern was. But I see you don't provide a technical term for such a construction. Anybody else?

If there is a more specific term than "episode" for that, I don't know it.

 

[AG31]

I never read Death of a Smuggler, but "The last time he heard the words, 'You're an absolute gem,' was when he'd handed in his arithmetic homework with no mistakes," is a broad picture statement encompassing the entire event that led to the compliment. To take yourself out of a story because of that statement is nothing more than self-torture.

I don't take myself out of a story. I experience an involuntary hiccup in my reading. @Bramblethorn gave a good description of what's going on at a technical writing level that matches yours. But my experience is based on the somatic elements that come into play when I process information, most particularly when I read. Check out the DeepSeek explanation that @XerXesXu supplied up thread.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Unless you state she's on her side and he's standing...

That would be sexy as hell. But unfortunately you seem to be the first person to think of that.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

That would be sexy as hell. But unfortunately you seem to be the first person to think of that.

Seems kind of obvious... but that's not really my genre.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Seems kind of obvious... but that's not really my genre.

I might write it someday...

 

[AG31]

@ElectricBlue said:

This is the scene you were looking for:

I saw how the back of her hand was lightly freckled, the veins like a river on a map, and ever so slightly blue. Her skin was quite pale. A long scar ran along the side of her little finger, and I imagined some childhood accident, a young girl running inside to find mother, when only a father would do. I saw a tiny pulse on a vein near her wrist, and counted her heartbeats. Her pulse was quite quick, and I lost count at twenty-two.

This has been one of the most (for me) enlightening threads on AH. I thought more about remembering the freckles scene. When I think about stand-out "intense focus" bits from your stories, it's always from the perspective of the viewer. It's not the vision of the freckles, it's the somatic act of looking that I remember. I assume you saw @XerXeXus' post from DeepFake up thread?

 

[AG31]

I asked DeepSeek for further information.

What was your exact prompt?

 

[XerXesXu]

What was your exact prompt?

I'm aphantasic. I was speaking to someone who is also aphantasic, but differently. She doesn't experience what she reads as visual mental images but feels responses in her muscle memory. She feels she is performing the actions she is reading. Is this a recognised psychological phenomenon and can you give me any information about it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

This has been one of the most (for me) enlightening threads on AH. I thought more about remembering the freckles scene. When I think about stand-out "intense focus" bits from your stories, it's always from the perspective of the viewer. It's not the vision of the freckles, it's the somatic act of looking that I remember. I assume you saw @XerXeXus' post from DeepFake up thread?

That's why I like writing in limited third person, I can get right up close to a character, into their intimate thoughts. It's as good as first person for me. And I suspect, because I am a very visual thinker, that's what my narrators do best - describe what they see, translate those feelings into vision. When I word cloud my content, "look" or "looking" is always there as a high usage word.

That's intriguing, the change in direction of the optics for you. I'd not thought of it like that before - the act of seeing, not what's been seen. I'm not sure what I'll do with that insight, but there it is, on the page! Merci beaucoup.

 

[RetroFan]

Well, I'm highly interested in your alternate universe story!

Thanks, I hope you enjoy it.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I'm not black myself, but having black characters named Jamal or Tyrone or Marcus takes me out of a story. I'm sure there are black people with those names - I even know a Marcus - but they show up so often it makes me think the author has no experience with black people outside porn.

Of course they exist, but you speak truth, and it's gotten to the point those names are generic, because everybody uses them, and not just here, youtubers and comedians, too, as generic hood dude, examples.

I am black, and I've never met a Jamal, I've known one black Marcus, and one Tyrone.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Does it need to be realistic... not exactly, but it'd be nice if it makes sense, and is believable.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Of course they exist, but you speak truth, and it's gotten to the point those names are generic, because everybody uses them, and not just here, youtubers and comedians, too, as generic hood dude, examples.

I am black, and I've never met a Jamal, I've known one black Marcus, and one Tyrone.

BTW, their surnames are Washington, Jefferson and Brown.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

BTW, their surnames are Washington, Jefferson and Brown.

Aieght... I'm calling Jesse Jackson.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

BTW, their surnames are Washington, Jefferson and Brown.

Gotta be a Lincoln in there somewhere.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Gotta be a Lincoln in there somewhere.

I almost mentioned one of the other stereotyped names, but it's my husband's surname so...maybe not.

 

[Bramblethorn]

BTW, their surnames are Washington, Jefferson and Brown.

And if the author really needs to ram the point home, it's "LaMarcus".

 

[XerXesXu]

Absolutely fascinating. My son has aphantasia and he's also got a PhD in education (specialty teaching kids with learning problems. He's read a lot about this, but I don't recall our ever talking about somaticism. I'm sending this along to him.

At the end, I speculated whether there may be some relation between aphantasia, and the immersive experience people report when reading fiction. I followed that up with DeepSeek. There's some sketchy research. This is the most interesting section of its response:

• Aphantasics disproportionately prefer:
  • Fast-paced plots (thrillers, mysteries) requiring problem-solving rather than descriptive world-building117.
  • Character-driven stories focusing on relationships or internal monologues (e.g., Jane Austen, Brandon Sanderson)1.
  • Non-fiction, where factual engagement replaces sensory immersion517.
• These preferences align with their reported immersion pathways—emotional and conceptual rather than visual15.

This is a spot-on description of my preferences, both reading and writing.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

And if the author really needs to ram the point home, it's "LaMarcus".

Let's not forget his sister Shaniqua.

 

[Jw75766]

I dislike studio porn. It's just not my thing. I don't like seeing women being taken advantage of or being treated disrespectful. I know, some have their fetishes and desires. For me, when I did watch porn, it was homemade videos. Videos expressing true passion between the couple engaged in their love making. I much prefer to see passionate love than a jackhammering and fake moaning.