Imaginary friends #2: in which I ramble about myself
I got some very interesting answers on that poll I made on imaginary friends, and in comments to that post. It was really cool to get a peek into your brains there. :-)
I meant to write about my own imaginary friends yesterday, but ended up instead opening a document where I started listing and describing them... oy. Not a good idea. You know how I normally have a hard time coming up with 500 words of fiction in a day? When I was on page 10 of that stuff, I forced myself to shut the document, because I had spent hours on it. And I was still nowhere near finished. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of these people!
Anyway. Here's where that poll came from, and it's kind of long (though not 10 pages), so I put it under a cut.
As a young kid of five or so, I had three double-named imaginary friends: Maria-Maria, Sofia-Sofia and Johnny-Johnny. I only vaguely remember them, but as I recall they were there to have fun with me and pretty much be my yes men. They never developed backgrounds or much in the way of personality.
Meanwhile, I had a "town" consisting of doll-house and Playmobil toys, and an "orphanage" (I was very into orphans, for some reason) consisting of Sindy dolls and other medium-sized dolls. They did develop backgrounds and personalities, but I wouldn't refer to them as imaginary friends - they were too separate from myself for that. (My large dolls, btw, were more fluid when it comes to who they were and how they related to each other.)
The big divider, the genesis of the new world, came when I was seven and created my first Mary Sue: Jenny. She was brought in as my avatar in a continuation of the TV miniseries "The Haunted School", though she had very little in common with me - she was twice my age, tall, with long black hair, and incredibly mature for her age. (Though obviously to me, 14 was REALLY OLD.)
I created a family for Jenny, then friends, then brought in even more fandoms. At first, the universe didn't involve me, but it can't have been more than a year, tops, before I "wrote myself in" and these people truly properly became my imaginary friends. A couple of them were my own age and became my best friends, some were of the parental generation, but the vast majority were older girls - "older" meaning anything from three to fifteen years older. They were my friends for several years, then I gradually started phasing myself out, and now I usually interact using another person as an avatar, often the "best friend". I still consider these people imaginary friends rather than plain characters, though - in part because I still could choose to interact directly if I wanted to (I still "exist" in their world) and in part because characters, to me, are primarily connected to a story. Even if I make up more stuff that never gets written, it's still not the same as having a person in your head for 20 years without a connection to any kind of plot.
Also, my imaginary friends are all part of this one big sprawling universe. That's not the case with the OCs (though some of them would probably like it there).
These characters have no idea that they're fictional - it even feels strange to me to call them fictional. Sometimes I feel like I'm a hell of a lot less real than they are. :-) Their "home base" is modern times and many, though not all, of them are Anglo in origin, but because they work in fandoms as well as between themselves, they can move to various times and places. (To me, there's nothing odd about the fact that one of my imaginary friends lives in Smallville near the Kents while her sister is off married to a guy in the 19th century. C'est la vie.) If canon needs an explanation of their presence I'll come up with one, but otherwise they just belong there. (Their favourite places to hang around can likewise move around at will.) They're always more or less the same as people, though - same basic personality, likes and dislikes, family, usually the same job or a variation thereof. I have been known to retcon details from their personal history based on the "oh wait, that's dumb" feeling that can come a couple of years after making up a certain fact. :-)
Their interaction with characters from my fandoms can vary a lot - sometimes they talk about movies, sometimes they're part of the stories themselves. Sometimes they'll talk about one piece of fiction around someone belonging in another piece of fiction that resembles the first (for instance, talking about Batman around Zorro. *g*) They can interact with more than one version of the same character - Dean Cain's Clark Kent and Tom Welling's Clark Kent have both been integrated in this universe to a certain degree.
Some canon characters are so integrated among my imaginary friends that I almost forget I didn't imagine them - most noticeably Svante from "Karlsson på taket" and Dick from the Flambards books, who have both been around since... oh, pretty much forever.
All my imaginary friends are mortal. They grow older - I couldn't bear the idea of suddenly being older than them all! - though I quite often re-imagine something that happened "years ago". I've also on occasion imagined things "from the future" - as temporally confusing as they may be in regards to real time, they're pretty linear in regards to my time. That is, I know how old I am compared to each character. (So if I ever wonder when I saw a certain film or read a certain book, and that book or film made it into the imaginary world, I can usually check how old the appearing imaginary friends are, and figure it out.)
A few of my imaginary friends have died. When they're dead, they stay dead, which means that I'm very cautious before killing them off. There have been maybe four really prominent deaths, and a few "off-screen" ones.
As for whether they're like me: I guess they are. Most of them are women, and not just as Mary Sues drawing the men in from fandoms - the main families are controlled by women, the conversations will often be between women/girls with some token guys, and so on. Many are interested in music and theater - there was a garage band at one point, there have been several amateur plays and musicals, and two of the friends are even professional actresses now.
Everyone is human, though I've been known to toss in a superpower from time to time, some of them permanent, others temporary - my old X-men fanfic story Cor 12, which features a whole bunch of my imaginary friends, lets many of them have a mutation who have never had a mutation before. (All about fitting the scenery, natch.) The only other fanfics to feature my imaginary friends are some of my Young Riders fics. All the OCs of my other stories are just that - OCs. They're not connected to this main universe, they don't talk to me, and only a few of them even keep doing new things after the story is finished. (One of the most post-story-vivid OCs is definitely Mel Quentin of "Now Ashes Rise in my Footprints", who's going to grow up to be quite a tough cookie. She's still just an OC, though.)
Um. I guess that's that. Unless I one day post that description of each of my imaginary friends - and if that happens, it's not gonna be today, because like I said, there's a LOT of them.
I meant to write about my own imaginary friends yesterday, but ended up instead opening a document where I started listing and describing them... oy. Not a good idea. You know how I normally have a hard time coming up with 500 words of fiction in a day? When I was on page 10 of that stuff, I forced myself to shut the document, because I had spent hours on it. And I was still nowhere near finished. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of these people!
Anyway. Here's where that poll came from, and it's kind of long (though not 10 pages), so I put it under a cut.
As a young kid of five or so, I had three double-named imaginary friends: Maria-Maria, Sofia-Sofia and Johnny-Johnny. I only vaguely remember them, but as I recall they were there to have fun with me and pretty much be my yes men. They never developed backgrounds or much in the way of personality.
Meanwhile, I had a "town" consisting of doll-house and Playmobil toys, and an "orphanage" (I was very into orphans, for some reason) consisting of Sindy dolls and other medium-sized dolls. They did develop backgrounds and personalities, but I wouldn't refer to them as imaginary friends - they were too separate from myself for that. (My large dolls, btw, were more fluid when it comes to who they were and how they related to each other.)
The big divider, the genesis of the new world, came when I was seven and created my first Mary Sue: Jenny. She was brought in as my avatar in a continuation of the TV miniseries "The Haunted School", though she had very little in common with me - she was twice my age, tall, with long black hair, and incredibly mature for her age. (Though obviously to me, 14 was REALLY OLD.)
I created a family for Jenny, then friends, then brought in even more fandoms. At first, the universe didn't involve me, but it can't have been more than a year, tops, before I "wrote myself in" and these people truly properly became my imaginary friends. A couple of them were my own age and became my best friends, some were of the parental generation, but the vast majority were older girls - "older" meaning anything from three to fifteen years older. They were my friends for several years, then I gradually started phasing myself out, and now I usually interact using another person as an avatar, often the "best friend". I still consider these people imaginary friends rather than plain characters, though - in part because I still could choose to interact directly if I wanted to (I still "exist" in their world) and in part because characters, to me, are primarily connected to a story. Even if I make up more stuff that never gets written, it's still not the same as having a person in your head for 20 years without a connection to any kind of plot.
Also, my imaginary friends are all part of this one big sprawling universe. That's not the case with the OCs (though some of them would probably like it there).
These characters have no idea that they're fictional - it even feels strange to me to call them fictional. Sometimes I feel like I'm a hell of a lot less real than they are. :-) Their "home base" is modern times and many, though not all, of them are Anglo in origin, but because they work in fandoms as well as between themselves, they can move to various times and places. (To me, there's nothing odd about the fact that one of my imaginary friends lives in Smallville near the Kents while her sister is off married to a guy in the 19th century. C'est la vie.) If canon needs an explanation of their presence I'll come up with one, but otherwise they just belong there. (Their favourite places to hang around can likewise move around at will.) They're always more or less the same as people, though - same basic personality, likes and dislikes, family, usually the same job or a variation thereof. I have been known to retcon details from their personal history based on the "oh wait, that's dumb" feeling that can come a couple of years after making up a certain fact. :-)
Their interaction with characters from my fandoms can vary a lot - sometimes they talk about movies, sometimes they're part of the stories themselves. Sometimes they'll talk about one piece of fiction around someone belonging in another piece of fiction that resembles the first (for instance, talking about Batman around Zorro. *g*) They can interact with more than one version of the same character - Dean Cain's Clark Kent and Tom Welling's Clark Kent have both been integrated in this universe to a certain degree.
Some canon characters are so integrated among my imaginary friends that I almost forget I didn't imagine them - most noticeably Svante from "Karlsson på taket" and Dick from the Flambards books, who have both been around since... oh, pretty much forever.
All my imaginary friends are mortal. They grow older - I couldn't bear the idea of suddenly being older than them all! - though I quite often re-imagine something that happened "years ago". I've also on occasion imagined things "from the future" - as temporally confusing as they may be in regards to real time, they're pretty linear in regards to my time. That is, I know how old I am compared to each character. (So if I ever wonder when I saw a certain film or read a certain book, and that book or film made it into the imaginary world, I can usually check how old the appearing imaginary friends are, and figure it out.)
A few of my imaginary friends have died. When they're dead, they stay dead, which means that I'm very cautious before killing them off. There have been maybe four really prominent deaths, and a few "off-screen" ones.
As for whether they're like me: I guess they are. Most of them are women, and not just as Mary Sues drawing the men in from fandoms - the main families are controlled by women, the conversations will often be between women/girls with some token guys, and so on. Many are interested in music and theater - there was a garage band at one point, there have been several amateur plays and musicals, and two of the friends are even professional actresses now.
Everyone is human, though I've been known to toss in a superpower from time to time, some of them permanent, others temporary - my old X-men fanfic story Cor 12, which features a whole bunch of my imaginary friends, lets many of them have a mutation who have never had a mutation before. (All about fitting the scenery, natch.) The only other fanfics to feature my imaginary friends are some of my Young Riders fics. All the OCs of my other stories are just that - OCs. They're not connected to this main universe, they don't talk to me, and only a few of them even keep doing new things after the story is finished. (One of the most post-story-vivid OCs is definitely Mel Quentin of "Now Ashes Rise in my Footprints", who's going to grow up to be quite a tough cookie. She's still just an OC, though.)
Um. I guess that's that. Unless I one day post that description of each of my imaginary friends - and if that happens, it's not gonna be today, because like I said, there's a LOT of them.