The visuals we make and how accurate they are

[dirk2024]

If anyone really wants to know what I look like: I'm the bloke standing next to the hot redhead.

Sorry, I'm too focused on the redhead.

 

[vanmyers86]

My view is that everyone here is tall, thin, trim, in terrific health and built for endless sex.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

[alohadave]

OK, here's a bit of body language that I can't say I really understand, but I liked the comment.

I was talking to the receptionist at my place of work and she complained that another employee "never says hello to me when she walks by the desk." I said, "I never say hello to you when I walk by." And she said, "Yes, but you never say hello to anyone," in the sort of voice that assured me she was just fine with what I did. Can you make anything of that?

Perhaps she feels slighted if she notices the other person saying hello to other people. Since you don't greet anyone, there is less reason to be annoyed, and she's probably used to how you are.

 

[ElectricBlue]

And this is why I avoid writing detailed character descriptions. It's a lot of words about nothing important.

You got me at the hair, though, and the height. I think I'd somehow sensed the clothes from a picture of you in my mind, and possibly comments you've made in posts, although the very pale complexion caught me by surprise. I came back to read your description again, which, if you were in one of my cafés, is what would have happened, looking twice. Me being a very visual person, thanks for that sharing. Very generous, and complements your literary persona, for me anyway.

I'm a bit like @SimonDoom with regards to seeing myself in mirrors or reflected in windows: seriously, I need to get back into that pool for summer, trim the weight of my gut. I'm on a road trip holiday at the moment, and thankfully my wife doesn't want too many selfies, because whenever I don't take my glasses off I look like someone else. I can also lose the silver hair grizzled beard persona I used in my Adam stories, because my hair now is just about white, trimmed very short with a #2 razor out in the backyard - we put the clippings in a bag for birds' nests.

Unless someone has described themselves, I don't have a visual picture of most of the folk here. Some, none at all, but others might be surprised how much they do describe themselves.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Post, Text, Fuck

 

[Comshaw]

If the other employee is saying hello to other staff, but not to the receptionist, it suggests that they consider the receptionist beneath their notice. This is something that admin personnel often experience and dislike.

If you don't say hello to anybody (and the receptionist has picked up on that), that isn't sending the same message; that's just your general style and not suggesting that the receptionist is less important than other staff.

This ↑

Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

My view is that everyone here is tall, thin, trim, in terrific health and built for endless sex.

Thank you. I've found that I can sustain this image of myself when fortified by enough whiskey and staring into the blackness of my backyard from my porch, and the opossums creep out from unseen corners with their ghostly faces and they wonder, "Who is that old human looking blankly into the dark?"

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Thank you. I've found that I can sustain this image of myself when fortified by enough whiskey and staring into the blackness of my backyard from my porch, and the opossums creep out from unseen corners with their ghostly faces and they wonder, ....

"Will that old human die already, we're hungry."

 

[lovecraft68]

Thank you. I've found that I can sustain this image of myself when fortified by enough whiskey and staring into the blackness of my backyard from my porch, and the opossums creep out from unseen corners with their ghostly faces and they wonder, "Who is that old human looking blankly into the dark?"

The Opossums in my yard like the dry catfood I leave out. I sit outside at night and "Ollie" isn't shy about getting a snack.

 

[SimonDoom]

The Opossums in my yard like the dry catfood I leave out. I sit outside at night and "Ollie" isn't shy about getting a snack.

View attachment 2566484

Ha. I knew you were a softie at heart. Feeding the opossums at night. Good man.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Honestly, I just assume everyone here is Comic-Book guy from the Simpsons. Not because everyone is, but because anyone might be. As long as people write good stories and are good company on the forum, it doesn't matter to me. I'm never going to (knowingly) meet anyone on here in person and I'm even less likely to be able to get intimate with any of them (even if I wasn't monogomously married which I am).

The exception is some of the voice actors I've worked with where it's impossible not to visualize a person based on their voice and where I know the voice is definitely them.

 

[Britva415]

OK, here's a bit of body language that I can't say I really understand, but I liked the comment.

I was talking to the receptionist at my place of work and she complained that another employee "never says hello to me when she walks by the desk." I said, "I never say hello to you when I walk by." And she said, "Yes, but you never say hello to anyone," in the sort of voice that assured me she was just fine with what I did. Can you make anything of that?

She was saying-without-saying that the other person does say hello to other people but not to her, and so she thinks that it's about her, but since you don't say hello to anyone, then, when you don't say hello to her it isn't about her.

The other woman is singling her out, but you aren't.

 

[Erozetta]

You got me at the hair, though, and the height. I think I'd somehow sensed the clothes from a picture of you in my mind, and possibly comments you've made in posts, although the very pale complexion caught me by surprise. I came back to read your description again, which, if you were in one of my cafés, is what would have happened, looking twice. Me being a very visual person, thanks for that sharing. Very generous, and complements your literary persona, for me anyway.

As far as the complexion, I've definitely mentioned being a vampire in jest before, lol. I am mostly nocturnal, though.

Hair and height have been the bane of my existence for a long time. The curliness made an excellent spitball target in high school, so naturally, I straightened it all the time. Now I never do and once I learned how to care for curly hair, I love it. I grew up in a straight haired family. Myself, one cousin, and an uncle were the oddballs with curly hair, so no one ever knew how to teach any of us to care for it. Now it's almost always ringlets that I twist up into an clip, and I cut it when stressed so it rarely gets longer than shoulder length when dry. It loses about 2-3" between wet length and dry length from the curl and I've had some horrible haircuts as a result of people not understanding curly hair, so I only ever cut it myself. I cringe anytime someone mentions drying curly hair with a towel in a story. Cotton T-shirt, pillowcase, or microfiber only unless you want poodle hair.

While my height tended to make me come across as intimidating and made it more difficult for me to blend into backgrounds to disappear. Guys tend to not be thrilled when a woman is within a couple of inches of their height and they will often get actively mad if you are taller than them by even an inch. Wearing heels around them is tantamount to cutting off their balls, or so they would make it seem. And they get big mad if they first see you sitting down, but your legs are a bit longer than your torso, so you look shorter sitting than you do standing.

My clothes are extremely modest for the most part, not because I dress for modesty, but because I dress to avoid sun exposure when out and about and modest clothing is a consequence of that.

Before my recent shoulder injury I roller skated, and did weightlifting for exercise, so I've always had very muscular legs. I cannot wait until my shoulder is healed up and I can get back to it. Part of my exercise regimen involved planned meals at specific times. Without the scheduled exercise, I don't really eat because I don't get hungry. My husband usually puts food and water in front of my because I just don't feel the desire for those things on my own. Particularly when I'm focused on working on something and am ignoring my alarms.

My weight differences are basically: lowest - while in denial of having an eating disorder, which is where my general lack of hunger comes in. Highest - when I tried to eat at the same times as my husband (and eating less than half of his quantity of food with over half my meal being veg. He continued to be 150-170-ish lbs at 6') the mid range is exercise + scheduled meals, which is typically 1-2 meals a day, a protein drink, and a snack of some sort before bed. Like, it's not uncommon for me to just have a bowl of oatmeal with baked apples, flax, chia, and sunflower seeds, and pecans, and some buttered toast. But it's a meal that's very filling. And I'll just have a protein drink or banana or a spoonful of peanut butter before bed otherwise.

To me, this is a better description of me and puts context to the other description I gave. It will likely cause adjustments to the original visualization, even though the original description was more detailed in visuals, it was largely devoid of personality or insight into what those descriptors actually meant. Knowing my exercise and diet tendencies is going to make those weights I listed carry different on a visual. Same as the reasoning behind my clothing choices, etc.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I imagine what the characters in your stories look like, but don't spend many cycles on the authors. As for me, sure, I'm absolutely a scantily clad, super hot, redhead with long hair and fairy wings.

 

[lovecraft68]

Ha. I knew you were a softie at heart. Feeding the opossums at night. Good man.

I'm soft on animals. We have ground hogs living under the shed that I toss carrots to, and there's a raccoon that shows up from time to time. There's also a ton of brown hares since it seems like the coyotes are no longer around.

People on the other hand, they're on their own.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I imagine what the characters in your stories look like, but don't spend many cycles on the authors. As for me, sure, I'm absolutely a scantily clad, super hot, redhead with long hair and fairy wings.

Didn't you say something like, people kept thinking your profile picture was real so you got one with fairy wings just to put a stop to that? Did it work?

 

[alohadave]

While my height tended to make me come across as intimidating and made it more difficult for me to blend into backgrounds to disappear. Guys tend to not be thrilled when a woman is within a couple of inches of their height and they will often get actively mad if you are taller than them by even an inch.

I feel sad for those men. My mom is the same height as my dad, and I never once saw or heard anything that would indicate that he had a problem with it. While my wife is shorter than me, I'd have no problem with a tall woman.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I'm soft on animals. We have ground hogs living under the shed that I toss carrots to, and there's a raccoon that shows up from time to time. There's also a ton of brown hares since it seems like the coyotes are no longer around.

People on the other hand, they're on their own.

I don't mind groundhogs scurrying around, as long as they burrow under a woodpile somewhere and not a building.

Rocky and the Rockettes can eat birdseed from the ground, but when they try to climb the posts and get to the feeders, they're gonna get baffled.

Rabbits? Waddaya gonna do?? Watch and laugh.

Pepe LePew? Nope, nunnya you.

Possums are one thing, but now we're getting the armored version.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Didn't you say something like, people kept thinking your profile picture was real so you got one with fairy wings just to put a stop to that? Did it work?

Nope. Still getting hit on in DMs and e-mail.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I am truly the God Emperor's most dedicated soldier.

 

[iwatchus]

My avatar is 100% correct in what it shows. Since it doesn't give much guidance, I will give some here.

50 years ago, I was about average height. But since then I have shrunk and the average has grown, so I'm now maybe three inches shorter than average. I was skinny back then, too. Now I have the opposite issue, but I have dropped 30 pounds since covid (not counting 5 more the last two days being sick).

I have long curly hair that I generally keep back in a pony tail. Like someone mentioned above, I grew up in the late 60's when hair was supposed to straight. I worried about it for a while then just to hell with all fashion sense, an attitude I still carry forward.

I was always very intense until recently; my doctoral advisor thought I was always angry. But it the last ten years, my visage has swapped to a kinder face (I think at least). And I have started wearing glasses as well.

And if anyone has me pictured properly from this, I will be shocked.

 

[Belegon]

This is an interesting thing people do. I never saw myself as attractive in my youth. When I looked in the mirror, the image I saw looking back at me appeared to me one of those that could easily be lost in a crowd. You know the kind that isn't distinctive, one that is commonplace with nothing memorable about it. One that you can see and a bit later you can't remember because my features were so bland and common.

My wife and many of my female friends insisted differently, but I never saw what they saw. It's interesting that our minds won't allow us to see what we do not want to, or can not see.

Comshaw

I have experienced something similar. I've never considered myself to be very attractive, although never thought I was ugly either. But I've received quite a bit of feedback recently that seems to indicate that most of my female friends thought very differently than I did about that subject. A lot of my feedback was generated by the rather appalling loss of wieght I had in the first six months of my ongoing chemotherapy. I dropped sixty pounds and ended up much too thin. My chemo was pulled back to a less aggressive posture and i have since regained 40-45 of those lbs. I look much better than i did in the summer of 2024, but I lost a lot of muscle structure that was held over from my youth that I will never get back. That experience of being underweight provoked conversations I'd never had before with several female friends.

Overall, it's probably good I was so unaware of their opinions of younger me when I was that age... I may have messed up some good friendships. We'll never know.

 

[DeMont]

Through your writing, I hear your voices in my head and I often wonder, if I met you in real life, what would be my first impression? Would your physical being match that voice I've constructed in my head? And if the imagined you didn't match the real vision of you, would I have difficulty reconciling the two?

I'm going to try to give you a visual description of me the best I can. I don't expect ya'll to do it in turn. This is just an exercise for me because I'm curious how people construct visions of others without any visual clues. Sooooo, sit back and juxtapose the picture I draw for you with the one of that person you have constructed you thought was me.

Visualize an older guy, hair turning white with a small amount of fading brown still mixed in, sometimes shaggy and sometimes neatly cut. I'm always bald-faced (growing a beard runs me nuts so I have never been able to) 5' 10" in height and 280 lbs. (yes the quintessential fat old man). Most times you will see me in blue jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt (a dark blue jeans color today) with the sleeves rolled up.

Sometimes in cooler weather, it will be in a brown Carhartt jacket when I'm working at the barn, or a brown leather motorcycle jacket, scraped and faded from years of use, when I'm on my bike. No, not a Hardly Dangerous. I ride a Triumph Trophy sport tourer.

My hands are those of a working man, big knuckles, the fingers of one of them crooked from being broken. The skin of my forearms is ruddy and brown with a spider web of small scars on both from the work I've done all my life.

Does it match the one you have in your head? Or are you now going WTF??? How did Billy Bob get out of the hills???


Comshaw

@Comshaw,
Good morning, just, my dear colleague. As @MrPixel noted, "Great literary exercise BTW"

I'll play, height is 5ft 11-1/2 inches (yep, never did make that extra 1/2 inch!) current weight 258# (at last weigh in) I have been told that although I'm heavy I'm, quote, "A big bloke so I carry it well". "Surfer blond" hair, long (kept it that way since being a keen, teen to twenties surfer and Club Goer) Grey-Blue eyes (depending on mood) Not wishing to boast but I have had several young ladies (and their mothers) call me handsome (I don't see that in the mirror btw) Even though I've been a steel worker/welder for the majority of my life I still have all my bits and no disfigurements. I have "bling" - not "gangsta" but spiritual at neck, wrists and fingers... a lot of bling mostly silver, oak and gemstones. 63 years old.

My avatar depends on whatever whimsical mood I'm in at the moment!

See, sometimes truth is stranger than "imagination" - Th...th...that's all folks!
Respectfully, naturally,
D.

 

[nice90sguy]

I've met quite a few litizens in my time. I was twice suprised by the mismatch between my image of them and the reality, but on the whole, I got it right.

@Comshaw , I got most of your self-description right, except your weight. I assumed you were skinny with a prominent adam's apple - more of a Crocodile Dundee type.

In the past I used my real face for an AV. Never again: Now I just stick to my JL Austin av, which bears a very slight resemblence to me (white, male, glasses)

 

[Off_base]

onehitwanda is Michelle Pfeiffer, in my mind. Please, don't anyone ruin it for me.