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Imagining books in your head


Athena

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I suppose this mostly applies to fiction and biographies and not always to non-fiction information books depending on their subject, but anyway! I've been thinking lately and I thought it might be nice to talk about this (I couldn't find a topic similar to this, but it's possible I didn't use the right search terms). When you read a book (see first line of this post), do you imagine it in your head? Like, if you read a story with characters, do you imagine the characters talking to each other? How much detail do you usually envision? Is what you imagine in your head always matching with what's in the book? Sometimes certain details about ie. a character's look are not revealed until a bit into the book. Are you able to adjust your 'picture'? Note: when I say 'reading a book' that includes audiobooks. If you see a movie or TV show based on a book, do the characters look like the way you imagined them?

 

For me, the picture is not terribly detailed. This is wholly personal, but partly because of my autism I recognise faces mostly by people's hair colour and hair style (including facial hair like beards) and skin tone. When I imagine characters from a book I always imagine their hair (and facial hair if they have any), but the rest of the person is sometimes more of a 'faceless black blob' than anything else (I do take heights into account if they are mentioned). I cannot do the face in exact detail. It annoys me when a main character's hair colour or style is not revealed until a long time into the book. By that time, I am no longer able to adjust the 'picture' in my head even if it's not fitting the book. I imagine the clothes of the characters and try to imagine what the book describes, if there is a description of their clothes (and also depending on the genre I'm reading; where and when the book takes place).

 

For imagining houses, when I was a child I usually imagined books taking place in the house I lived in (if the book was contemporary fiction taking place in my country or one similar to it), unless specific details about the house were mentioned, and the same for schools. But I've grown up since then and now I'm able to imagine a larger variety of buildings and also landscapes and cities, towns, etc.

 

Everything in the picture in my head remains a bit blurry to some extent, if I wanted to fit in all the details, that would be a lot more difficult, it is just too much to process. It's just like how I can look at a photo for a long time if I want to take in all the details. I think it's just the way I work.

 

I was just curious what everyone else's experiences are, for those who are willing to share :).

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I think I'm less visual ; I'm more focussed on the type of person described, so I would categorise them and guess at the sort of music, films, food and books which they would like. :)

 

But, if a place or room is described , I would see it as something similar to a place I'd previously experienced myself (unless the description was so good that I would be able to construct something in my head ). :)

 

Edited by Little Pixie
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I tend to have a hazy mental imagine of what is going on and the characters involved but it isn't detailed.However, the more I read about certain characters or places the stronger the image becomes. For example I have read just over half the Wallander books by Henning Mankell and I have a pretty detailed mental image of what I think he looks like and the place he lives. I have avoided watching any of the Wallander TV shows as I know that my mental image will differ greatly to the actor portraying the character.

 

On the other hand I have read the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson and watched the movies and to me Mikael Blomkvist is now Michael Nyqvist in my head. 

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Yes I visualise a lot as well, especially if there's a good description of a character, otherwise they can be a bit blurry.  If there is a good description I'll often imagine a particular actor/actress as well.

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It depends on the book. For the most part, I usually imagine particular places/scenes. And these will often be different from what is actually described, my brain takes a general cue and goes with it. For example, in a series of books I've read with a character called Stacey, with a particular accent, I imagined Stacey Solomon, the singer from X-Factor, who has what I imagine to be a similar accent. Turns out book-Stacey is actually black. The latest book was based around hate crimes, and as such her colour became a focus and now I have a good mental picture of what she actually probably looks like. She's also pretty kick-ass, I'm glad she got a stronger part in the books. I definitely associate certain names with certain colourings - Vanessas are blonde, for example. I don't know why. Mikeys, Mikes, Mickeys, Michaels etc have dark short hair. (Thinking of examples from recent reads). Bridgets are red-heads, I grew up with a red-head Bridget! Almost no man has a beard unless explicitly stated in the book.

 

I still remember the interiors of houses and landscapes I've imagined from other books. Hills, moors, warm cottagey kitchens and a living room with a wall of pure window/glass. The alleyway behind a row of houses where a murder victim was dragged (allegedly).

 

In a book I finished yesterday, about a wasp nest, an ill baby and weird dreams the baby's older brother has, I can picture the bathroom, the older boy's bedroom window, the position of the nest on the house. The nest is on the right, as you're facing the house, around the corner by the roof, near a tree, and the tree is close to the brown wooden fence bordering the property. None of those details were in the book, just that the nest was under the baby's window. So I picture the baby's window being in the upside-down V the roof creates, and the nest under it, even though I know that's incorrect as there is an unused attic above the windows! 

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I am definitely a visual reader.  I can't get over how my brain does this, but my imagination just takes over so that no location is ever the same twice in my head, and even with scant description of a property or place I still have amazing and vivid images of what things look like - it's so incredibly detailed!   Different houses, different landscapes, different faces - every single time. 

 

If only my brain could remember the plot-lines  so vividly weeks after I've finished a book!  :giggle2:

 

 

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Interesting Janet, I tend to visualise the same thing over and over, I suppose I have a generic sort of template, unless it's a very specific description or era, eg historical such as the Tudor period, or maybe a Georgian house, thatched cottage etc.  Fascinating how our brains work differently!

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  • 3 months later...

I rarely picture characters in much detail, just general (fuzzy was the word used above) images, but I can instantly identify whether someone fits that image if I watch (say) a TV series based on the book. I try to avoid watching films and series of books before I read them simply because that image then superimposes over that general image and interferes with my impression, whereas if I read the book first, I quite enjoy comparing the director's perception of the character with mine.  For me, the people are much more about their character than their physical image, although that character will inevitably influence the image I see.  It's why I hate so many thrillers etc where the characters are so often simply vehicles for the plot (and why in this case, I often happily watch the films of the books before, if ever, reading simply because the characters are often so much better developed in the films).

 

Settings, on the other hand, I see with absolute clarity, and if I don't, I will go back and read any descriptions to help fill that image in.  If there is none, I find my mind fills it in.

Edited by willoyd
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On 19/05/2018 at 11:43 AM, willoyd said:

I try to avoid watching films and series of books before I read them simply because that image then superimposes over that general image and interferes with my impression, whereas if I read the book first, I quite enjoy comparing the director's perception of the character with mine. 

I am exactly the same - I like to read a book first where possible to avoid getting someone else's idea. 

 

My original Harry/Ron/Hermione from the Harry Potter series didn't look like the actors in the first couple of books, but then they did after I'd watched the first film.

 

Similarly I read My Family and Other Animals about 10 or so years ago and I would have had my own impression of how the family looked, but now, on rereading, I'm picturing Keeley Hawes et al!

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  • 7 months later...

Lots of people are picturing Keeley Hawes after Bodyguard has moved her centre stage in the public imagination.

The Durrell film also influenced me greatly insofar as it shaped  my mental image of Gerald etc in the book.

In the Inspector Lynley mysteries, I have adopted the actors who play Lynley and Havers, and see the book characters as in the films, main features are Lynley's black hair, and Havers and her lovely big round eyes  

Havers is overweight and scruffy in the book but I see the face of the lady who plays her.

I love Dickens for the drawings plus detailed descriptions of places etc.

 

Edited by itsmeagain
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  • 2 years later...

Like a few have mentioned I can not see a character very vividly. More of a blank canvas. Hair and body shape but not a full on facial features. Also if the author is describing a lay out of a house for example i can only imagine it so far. It's not really easy for me. 

 

Athena, it is interesting you say about having the way a character looks in your head only for the author to describe them later on and its completely different. I read a book a few years ago and the main character had brown curly hair (how I for whatever reason imagined her) then the author goes and mentions her blonde hair. I was like no her hair isnt blonde! My brain just could not change it. 

 

Another thing is if a character is driving. The driver always is sat on the right hand side. Currently reading shopaholic to the stars. Whenever Becky is driving of course she'll be sat on the left hand side as she is in LA but i will always picture her sitting on the other side. 

 

 

 

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Sometimes I do imagine a certain actor fitting the description of a character in the book, for example I only saw Nicole Kidman as Ada in Cold Mountain, maybe it was written with her in mind?   I never pictured Jude Law as Inman though.  Other times I do the same as Lau Lou, ie a sort of blurry image without definite features, except for maybe hair colour, I think I have a sort of generic idea of what a character would look like and then project that onto the written description.  I think once some books are filmed the authors do sometimes alter the characters in subsequent books to match the actor/s more, I think this happened with the later Inspector Morse books for example, and once I have a physical image of an actor then it's hard to shake that when I read a book featuring their character. Poldark was a difficult one - sometimes I can see Aiden Turner in the book, other times it's Robin Ellis, even though I've only seen a handful of the original episodes.

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[Bit of an epic brain-dump post - sorry if it rambles around a bit!]

 

I missed this thread the first time round, and have just read through it for the first time; very interesting!

 

12 hours ago, Madeleine said:

 

I think once some books are filmed the authors do sometimes alter the characters in subsequent books to match the actor/s more,

 

 

I read that and thought "Colin Dexter did that with Inspector Morse", and then I read:

 

Quote

 

I think this happened with the later Inspector Morse books for example...

 

 

Genius!

 

(You are on my wavelength, be concerned!)*

 

I don't know if I'm unusual - well, more than the obvious, anyway - but I have a very visual imagination and "see" books as I am reading them, like a mini movie is being projected on the inside of my tiny brain (the same happens when I listen to film/TV scores etc. I see the images that were on screen as I hear the music, but I digress...).

 

When I read a book, I "see" characters and places clearly, but in some cases there is a bit of an odd twist on this, because quite often the characters I see are a little "cartoonish" in nature.  It's hard to describe in words just what I'm seeing, but George Smiley, for example, I think is described by le Carré in one of his early books as being reminiscent of a frog (or possibly toad like?) and ever since I read that I've always imagined a slightly cartoonish frog/toad [human] wearing a raincoat, but at the same time I've also always associated Alec Guinness with the character as well, so throw in a bit of Obi Wan (actually, one of his Ealing characters would be better) and you have a bit of an odd mental mix (in more than one way...)**

 

Like willoyd, above, I don't like seeing film/TV adaptations of books I am interested in reading before I do read them.  I stopped watching Game of Thrones after the first series as the show - good though it was - didn't match the mental images I had of the characters and settings, so I stopped and will watch it after Georgie boy finally finishes his written saga (assuming he ever does...) and I have finished reading it (yeah, I know the ending of the TV series sucks!).  This is a bit of a double-edged sword, however, as I have a copy of The Martian I am pretty sure I will never read, but I cannot bring myself to watch the film without having read the book first!

 

There are some books I have read, that have been made into films, that - in my opinion - have got it pretty much bang on; The Lord of the Rings being front and foremost in that list.  I read The Fellowship of the Ring shortly before the film was released and it was like Peter Jackson had been inside my head (especially for Hobbiton and Rivendell etc).  

 

Back to the inside of my head (sorry) and there are mental images from books I have read that are still very strong in my mind, many years after I first read the passages that inspired them.  The planet of Echronedal and it's fire driven eco-cycle, as described by Iain M. Banks in The Player of Games; a Cockchafer droning over a hedge in HG Wells The War of the Worlds (and the Martian manoeuvrings that play out around that scene); a city on the edge of collapse, in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (along with the story of the Triffid's origins).  I could go on, and - obviously - all of these books are science fiction novels, which leads me to wonder whether vivid visual imagery is more easily conjured when the source material is more unworldly, although there are a lot of books I have strong visual imagery for that are contemporary and otherwise far more mundane (I developed a very strong and vivid mental image of the character Emma in David Nicholls novel One Day, for example, that is still with me many years after I read the book).

 

I don't know if others find this, but I often don't pay proper attention to descriptions at the beginning of books, and although authors may have clearly described what their characters look like it doesn't always sink in with me until later (and sometimes not until subsequent re-reads). 

 

Thinking about it, I would liken it to background noise.  Authors rarely jump straight into the action; description (obviously) is often used to set the set the scene, but although I read these sections, my mind seems to block some of it out whilst I'm waiting for the story proper to get started and I end up with characters in my head that possibly have little in common (certainly physically) with the characters as described by the author (but I still have my own, strong image, of what that character looks like).  These errors usually get corrected in my head in subsequent re-readings, but not always.

 

A couple of examples of my probably (and certainly) getting it wrong:

 

I've read a lot of Mike Gayle's novels.  For those that have not, these are contemporary novels that he started writing from the point of view of the male character in the story, and as someone who is roughly the same age as him the subjects he was talking about and the culture around them struck a chord with me (life post-university, relationships etc.)  More recently, his books - to my mind - have veered away from the male confessional genre (books in a similar ilk to High Fidelity and Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby) and more towards Chick-lit.  I can't say I've enjoyed his more recent books as much as his earlier ones - that were more relevant to myself - and they sometimes seem to be a little too far-fetched in the leaps the plots take, but they are generally enjoyable, life-affirming stories.  Anyway, back to the point, Mike Gayle is black, and for some reason, after seeing him being interviewed on the BBC program Bookworm - many, many moons ago - I have (for the most part) visualised his main characters as being all black as well - although I am pretty sure that isn't the case.  I don't really know how the visual part of my brain came to that conclusion.

 

The second example, and one that may surprise some - given how much I type about these books - is that it took me nearly half of Rivers of London to realise Peter Grant wasn't white (and once I realised that, it took a lot longer to realise his dad, in subsequent books, is).  It also took me several books to realise that the rivers themselves are almost all black as well.  Re-reading the books, I don't know how I missed it as it is clearly described from the start but, for the first reading of the first few books, I had a mental image of Fleet as being an upper class, elderly white woman, when she is anything but!  The only reason I can think to explain this is that I know Ben Aaronovitch is white, so I'm guessing that on some level my brain was thinking white author equals white characters...  My mental image of Peter now, btw, comes largely from the graphic novels.

 

*shrugs*

 

I sometimes wonder if the vivid images my mind conjures up are - in part - due to me being a relatively slow reader, and that gives my mind more time to fill in the detail (I have friends who can rip through a book in an afternoon, and remember nothing about it a month later other than they enjoyed it, whilst I can usually remember the plots and characters years after I have read them).

 

Now that I am typing this, and thinking about it in more depth, I'm also beginning to wonder if there is a link between the stories I enjoy the most and the ones I can see most clearly in my mind...

 

*Especially when you read what follows...

**Yeah, okay, I'm not sure this is going to give you, the reader, an accurate impression of what I actually see in my head space, but - hell - hopefully this is entertaining you, if nothing else!

 

Edited by Raven
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(You are on my wavelength, be concerned!)*

 

Be afraid, be very afraid...... or maybe great minds think alike?  You make some interesting points, fascinating to see how people visualise things in different ways.

 

Small point - I thought they got the Game of Thrones casting pretty spot on, and I agree with LoTR too, great casting (except maybe Liv Tyler as Arwen, who hardly appears in the books compared to the films), a shame another version is being made but t then it is now 20 years since the first film came out:eek:

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How nice to see a revival of this thread! I have learnt more about myself since I wrote that first original post, but first I will reply to the new posts.

 

 

On 14/01/2021 at 3:28 PM, Lau_Lou said:

Like a few have mentioned I can not see a character very vividly. More of a blank canvas. Hair and body shape but not a full on facial features. Also if the author is describing a lay out of a house for example i can only imagine it so far. It's not really easy for me. 

 

Athena, it is interesting you say about having the way a character looks in your head only for the author to describe them later on and its completely different. I read a book a few years ago and the main character had brown curly hair (how I for whatever reason imagined her) then the author goes and mentions her blonde hair. I was like no her hair isnt blonde! My brain just could not change it. 

 

Another thing is if a character is driving. The driver always is sat on the right hand side. Currently reading shopaholic to the stars. Whenever Becky is driving of course she'll be sat on the left hand side as she is in LA but i will always picture her sitting on the other side.

 

Oh wow that is really interesting about the driving! I'm trying to remember if I have that too, but then with the left hand side as that is how we drive here in NL. I'm trying to remember if I've read a book set in Britain in which a car was driven.. but I don't recall any right now.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 10:59 AM, Madeleine said:

Sometimes I do imagine a certain actor fitting the description of a character in the book, for example I only saw Nicole Kidman as Ada in Cold Mountain, maybe it was written with her in mind?   I never pictured Jude Law as Inman though.  Other times I do the same as Lau Lou, ie a sort of blurry image without definite features, except for maybe hair colour, I think I have a sort of generic idea of what a character would look like and then project that onto the written description.  I think once some books are filmed the authors do sometimes alter the characters in subsequent books to match the actor/s more, I think this happened with the later Inspector Morse books for example, and once I have a physical image of an actor then it's hard to shake that when I read a book featuring their character. Poldark was a difficult one - sometimes I can see Aiden Turner in the book, other times it's Robin Ellis, even though I've only seen a handful of the original episodes.

 

Yes I find it hard to imagine the book characters too if I've already seen the movie, I end up just picturing them as their movie / TV version. I usually prefer to read the book(s) first, though on occasion that ends up not being the case.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

I don't know if I'm unusual - well, more than the obvious, anyway - but I have a very visual imagination and "see" books as I am reading them, like a mini movie is being projected on the inside of my tiny brain (the same happens when I listen to film/TV scores etc. I see the images that were on screen as I hear the music, but I digress...).

 

When I read a book, I "see" characters and places clearly, but in some cases there is a bit of an odd twist on this, because quite often the characters I see are a little "cartoonish" in nature.  It's hard to describe in words just what I'm seeing, but George Smiley, for example, I think is described by le Carré in one of his early books as being reminiscent of a frog (or possibly toad like?) and ever since I read that I've always imagined a slightly cartoonish frog/toad [human] wearing a raincoat, but at the same time I've also always associated Alec Guinness with the character as well, so throw in a bit of Obi Wan (actually, one of his Ealing characters would be better) and you have a bit of an odd mental mix (in more than one way...)**

 

That sounds cool :).

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

Like willoyd, above, I don't like seeing film/TV adaptations of books I am interested in reading before I do read them.  I stopped watching Game of Thrones after the first series as the show - good though it was - didn't match the mental images I had of the characters and settings, so I stopped and will watch it after Georgie boy finally finishes his written saga (assuming he ever does...) and I have finished reading it (yeah, I know the ending of the TV series sucks!).  This is a bit of a double-edged sword, however, as I have a copy of The Martian I am pretty sure I will never read, but I cannot bring myself to watch the film without having read the book first!

 

I too am waiting for him to finally finish the series! I have seen the first four seasons of the TV series but not more than that (the books were still ahead, which I read first before watching). I lost interest in the TV show because our TV signal at the time was 'buggered' is maybe the British way of saying it, so it was impossible to watch season 5's episodes without lots of signal interruptions, sound loss and image loss. My boyfriend wants to see the rest of it after re-watching it all at some point, but I've kind of lost interest and tbh I prefer the books over the TV show. I read the books before I watched the show, well the ones that are out, the first 5 novels. Ugh I want the 6th and 7th book already.. it is taking so long.. I feel like he seems to (have) spend/spent more time on the TV show and other books (like the history one? Fire and Blood) rather than the actual novels. Of course, he's allowed to do whatever he wants, I just would like to read the last 2 books in the series and finish it.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

Back to the inside of my head (sorry) and there are mental images from books I have read that are still very strong in my mind, many years after I first read the passages that inspired them.  The planet of Echronedal and it's fire driven eco-cycle, as described by Iain M. Banks in The Player of Games; a Cockchafer droning over a hedge in HG Wells The War of the Worlds (and the Martian manoeuvrings that play out around that scene); a city on the edge of collapse, in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (along with the story of the Triffid's origins).  I could go on, and - obviously - all of these books are science fiction novels, which leads me to wonder whether vivid visual imagery is more easily conjured when the source material is more unworldly, although there are a lot of books I have strong visual imagery for that are contemporary and otherwise far more mundane (I developed a very strong and vivid mental image of the character Emma in David Nicholls novel One Day, for example, that is still with me many years after I read the book).

 

I too have certain images in my mind from specific books that I recall. It's cool you have that too! I really liked The Player of Games (I can kind of see parts of the 'game' in my mind as I imagined them back then) and The War of the Worlds.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

I've read a lot of Mike Gayle's novels.  For those that have not, these are contemporary novels that he started writing from the point of view of the male character in the story, and as someone who is roughly the same age as him the subjects he was talking about and the culture around them struck a chord with me (life post-university, relationships etc.)  More recently, his books - to my mind - have veered away from the male confessional genre (books in a similar ilk to High Fidelity and Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby) and more towards Chick-lit.  I can't say I've enjoyed his more recent books as much as his earlier ones - that were more relevant to myself - and they sometimes seem to be a little too far-fetched in the leaps the plots take, but they are generally enjoyable, life-affirming stories.  Anyway, back to the point, Mike Gayle is black, and for some reason, after seeing him being interviewed on the BBC program Bookworm - many, many moons ago - I have (for the most part) visualised his main characters as being all black as well - although I am pretty sure that isn't the case.  I don't really know how the visual part of my brain came to that conclusion.

 

The second example, and one that may surprise some - given how much I type about these books - is that it took me nearly half of Rivers of London to realise Peter Grant wasn't white (and once I realised that, it took a lot longer to realise his dad, in subsequent books, is).  It also took me several books to realise that the rivers themselves are almost all black as well.  Re-reading the books, I don't know how I missed it as it is clearly described from the start but, for the first reading of the first few books, I had a mental image of Fleet as being an upper class, elderly white woman, when she is anything but!  The only reason I can think to explain this is that I know Ben Aaronovitch is white, so I'm guessing that on some level my brain was thinking white author equals white characters...  My mental image of Peter now, btw, comes largely from the graphic novels.

 

I didn't know Mike Gayle is Black, nice to know! I know nothing about him, I won one of his books in a giveaway many years ago. I haven't read it yet, nor any of the otehr books by him that I bought after winning the giveaway one, whenever I saw them on a sale or saw them cheap. Yes I find that if skin colour is not described at all, often white authors write white main characters. Definitely not always, but often. And many older books written by white authors, don't mention skin colour until a character of colour appears in the story, and then their skin colour is described, but not the skin colour of any of the main (presumed white) characters. I call this  'white-as-default'.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

I sometimes wonder if the vivid images my mind conjures up are - in part - due to me being a relatively slow reader, and that gives my mind more time to fill in the detail (I have friends who can rip through a book in an afternoon, and remember nothing about it a month later other than they enjoyed it, whilst I can usually remember the plots and characters years after I have read them).

 

I know now how it works for me (see below), but it is totally possible that for you it has to do with being a slow reader and therefore your mind having more time to fill in the details.

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

Now that I am typing this, and thinking about it in more depth, I'm also beginning to wonder if there is a link between the stories I enjoy the most and the ones I can see most clearly in my mind...

 

It's not 100% the case for me, but I can certainly see that it could be hte case for someone else!

 

On 15/01/2021 at 11:44 PM, Raven said:

*Especially when you read what follows...

**Yeah, okay, I'm not sure this is going to give you, the reader, an accurate impression of what I actually see in my head space, but - hell - hopefully this is entertaining you, if nothing else!

 

It was definitely entertaining!

 

3 hours ago, Madeleine said:

Be afraid, be very afraid...... or maybe great minds think alike?  You make some interesting points, fascinating to see how people visualise things in different ways.

 

Small point - I thought they got the Game of Thrones casting pretty spot on, and I agree with LoTR too, great casting (except maybe Liv Tyler as Arwen, who hardly appears in the books compared to the films), a shame another version is being made but t then it is now 20 years since the first film came out:eek:

 

20 years!! Wow. I liked the LoTR films. I was not a fan of The Hobbit films. I have not read the LoTR books but I have read The Hobbit (and prior to seeing the films). In the case of The Hobbit, I much prefer the book. By making one book (and not a huge one at that) into three separate movies, they added stuff.. I felt the actual plot that is in the book, was drawn out in places. I haven't read the LoTR books but the films are very good (and better than The Hobbit ones imo, shrug). When I watched the first LoTR movie, before the others were out, I was unaware it was going to be a trilogy, and I didn't know much about the original books. So I was kind of disappointed that after a long movie it ended on a cliffhanger / open ending rather than end properly (going to add a spoiler here just in case):

 

Spoiler

(basically I was waiting for the characters to get to Sauron's place where they should put the ring in the vulcano thingy?)

 

And I was disappointed when that did not happen in the first movie. My sister and also my brother loved all the movies. Some years later.. when I watched all of the LoTR movies, they were the extended versions that my parents have on Blu-ray, and.. I'm never doing that again..! I find it hard enough nowadays to concentrate on a 25- or 45-min episode in a TV show. Watching a film that is 4 hours long, times 3.. nope. At the time we divided each LoTR film into 2, so we'd watch 2 hours at a time. I haven't seen a movie in some time, most days I don't have the energy nor the concentration for a movie, and nowadays most movies are 2 or 2 1/2 hours long and not 1h 30 mins anymore.

 

I watched the 3 Hobbit films on 3 separate times, I think as the Blu-rays came out after each film was released and my dad bought them / was gifted them. I can imagine if you love the universe of LoTR that you like the movies, but I don't, so.. shrug. I know it is one of the most quintessential fantasy stories, and one that was super important to the beginning of the genre. Yet it was always my sister's, and to a lesser extent my brother's thing, when I was a teenager, not my thing. At some point as a teenager I started reading adult fantasy, and it was those books I loved, not LoTR. My sister tried to read LoTR when she was a teenager, but she said the Dutch translation (that my parents had at the time) used a lot of unfamilair words so she gave up.

 

I know I've gone off topic, but one of my favourite elements of fantasy (epic high adult fantasy is my favourite) is magic, particularly when the main characters / the heroes / the good characters have magic and that it is not just an evil thing.

 

---

Okay now onto the bit of information I referred to in the beginning of my post.

 

I have since writing that first post, learned that I have (self-diagnosed) partial faceblindness, or prosopagnosia. I have trouble remembering and identifying faces. I mostly recognise people by their hair and skintone, and I do not take in the details of their face much. It is easier with people that I see very often, but with people I see less often it can be hard. It happens sometimes that I'm watching a TV show or movie and have to ask my boyfriend, is this a new character or am I supposed to recognise him? I remember once my boyfriend was watching a movie and I tried to see part of it after I got downstairs or whatever, but there were 2 main characters who had a similar hairstyle and haircolour, and I just could not tell them apart. My boyfriend did not have such issues and he could follow his film allright.

 

I feel the fact that I have trouble with faces in real life, definitely has something to do with how I imagine characters in my head.

 

And recently, I 'met' someone online who said in a video, she has something similar, I don't recall the name now but she can't imagine much at all, no images are in her mind when she reads (I'm trying to remember). And she thought it was because of that, that she read faster and read more books in a year than most other people she knew in the book community. Because she didn't spend time imagining the book because she can't (which can be difficult with other areas in your life, and feel isolating, I can imagine).

 

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10 hours ago, Madeleine said:

 

Small point - I thought they got the Game of Thrones casting pretty spot on, and I agree with LoTR too, great casting (except maybe Liv Tyler as Arwen, who hardly appears in the books compared to the films), a shame another version is being made but t then it is now 20 years since the first film came out:eek:

 

 

Good though he is in the role, Peter Dinklage didn't look anything like Tyrion as described in the books (a deformed, hunch-backed dwarf with eyes of different colours, if I remember correctly, and - after the Battle of the Blackwater - no nose!).  That's just one example; I didn't dislike the first series, but I had such a strong mental image from the books in my head at the time - and I was still reading them at that point - that I stopped watching.  I suppose I could watch it now, as it's been so long since I finished the last book and it's not like I'll be reading another any time soon!

 

The new Lord of the Rings film isn't a remake, btw, it's a prequel from way before the Hobbit/LotRs etc. centred on a character called Morgoth. 

 

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Maybe they didn't want him to look too horrific, plus the  time taken to put on the prosthetic makeup needed, and keep it in place for continuity etc, would have been impractical, so maybe that was why they changed him from the book, could have done the different coloured eyes easily enough though with contact lenses! Jorah Mormont is also quite different, physically, in the books, but some of the other actors were pretty much spot on.

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10 hours ago, Madeleine said:

 

Maybe they didn't want him to look too horrific, plus the  time taken to put on the prosthetic makeup needed, and keep it in place for continuity etc, would have been impractical, so maybe that was why they changed him from the book, could have done the different coloured eyes easily enough though with contact lenses! Jorah Mormont is also quite different, physically, in the books, but some of the other actors were pretty much spot on.

 

 

Dinklage was just too pretty. 

 

Make up isn't an issue these days; look at shows like Star Trek where actors like Doug Jones have the same prosthetics applied each week, making someone up isn't a problem and on shows and films with a big enough budget, CGI is now commonly used as well.  

 

I think, in this case, it was just the choice they went with.

 

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And they didn't have the big budget at  the beginning either! Those baby dragons looked like they were flying along on strings, it was only after it took off that they started to get the mega budgets.

Edited by Madeleine
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