Two or Three for the Price of One

[caroljane]

Are Daunce and Carol two different people in your mind? I don't mean, that I might have adopted a false persona online (though I have, mwahahaha). I mean, when you have that vague impression of the person you are reading or talking to, does that impression alter when you know both their real name and their online name? Since I have been on OL I find that it does for me. For example, "X-Ray" is a restless, seeking, remorselessly intellectual platinum-silver haired tall slender woman, whereas "Angela" is shorter , blonde with nice curves (Love the both of you, girlfriend!)

Ninth Doctor, discounting his avatars, is tall thin and dark, Dennis is medium build , brown hair.

Baal is tall with sandy hair, Bob Kolker is medium height, spare with spare dark hair. Wears glasses.

PDS is tall, dark and blocky, David Seyfert is medium height, slender, sandy hair, glasses.

William Scott Scherk and WSS both look like a typical Canadian man. They're all alike.

Adam Selene is completely bald, due to an excess of vowels, while Allen has a little hair.

Michael Stuart Kelly and MSK are both incredibly handsome.

And so on. I have a couple kinds of synaesthasia, this is the most interesting kind. It doesn't matter if I know what you actually look like, in some cases I do-- and of course we all know the Face of OL. Isn't it amazing how my synaesthesia corresponds with reality in this case?

We get impressions of fictional characters, even when the author does not describe them physically. What do we know about Darcy and Elizabeth, the most famous lovers in literary history after R&J? She had a brown skin and fine dark eyes. He was handsome and tall. That's all she wrote. And Jane Bennet the family beauty? We don't even know if she was blonde or brunette. Quite right too, because all that matters is that Austen assured that sweet Jane did not end up being "so beautiful for nothing."

Some writers (great writers among them) need to visualize every character before they can start writing about them, and they demand the readerto look at the character before they will start the action. I kind of resent this, and usually skip the proud chins and medium-sized foreheads. (Sorry, just came off a bad Trollope bender). Rand thought faces showed character (boy, did she ever), and you know I wonder, maybe she got it backwards? Character maybe showed her the face? Could it be, could it be,that Ayn Rand and your humble servant had something in common, Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady, sisters in synaesthesia?

[caroljane]

Sorry, Rudyard.

"For the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady/are sisters under the skin."

-Kipling