Borrowing known forms of media into personal projects?

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Something that I have seen people with AS do (I did this myself when little and two girls on the spectrum that I mentor do this) is take aspects of the real world and incorporate them into their imaginary worlds and creative endeavours.

I had imaginary friends when i was little, but they were characters from the TV show "Madeline" and the movie "Once Upon a Forest" and in their interactions I would use scenarios and dialogue from TV shows and movies that I watched: often word for word. In my school journals, I would write about scenarios with my imaginary friends using dialogue and settings from things I had seen before. One page entails Abigail from Once upon a Forest going to the grocery store: but with the artwork and dialogue copied directly from another book on grocery store shopping that I liked.

Using another example, I was interested in this programming guide for a local recreation centre and would often picture myself participating in the programs. So in my school journal, I would write about the Madeline characters participating in Gym and Swim, Little Chefs, and various other programs for kids.

With one girl that I mentor, her special interest is this rock band which is made up of five of her high school friends. She will write stories about this band, but will use jokes and dialogue from Hannah Montana, Disney shows, and comedy routines instead of creating her own.

With the other girl (who would be considered "lower functioning") she will create artwork based on things she has seen in media, often drawing variations of the same thing repeatedly. When she first met me, she gave me several "Best Friend" gifts: some being detailed reproductions of a love note seen in the movie "Shark Tale" which was her obsession at the time. Recently, she has created a notebook full of dress designs, which are variations of a certain style using different patterns and colors. Later on, she showed me a website of doll dress designs, and I recognized a few of the dresses she drew: she loved them so much that she just copied them down into her notebook and made variations of them.

Another girl with AS (who I'm kind of studying from afar as she doesn't know me) has created a fascinating parallel universe with these humanlike creatures called "Niggies". But instead of making up celebrities, bands and public figures of her own for this universe, she uses ones that already exists that she enjoys, such as "Niggi Green Day" and draws some of her favorite celebrities as niggies.

I figure the reason we have done this is because of our fear of the unknown, and because of our intense preoccupations with certain things. In a sense, we are still being creative, but within the scope of the logical, rigid world of Asperger's.

Can anyone relate to this at all? Does anyone have any alternate takes or thoughts?

My fantasy world as a child was Lion King. I write myself into my Lion King fan fics all the time. If I ever get rich, I'm buying the rights to Lion King and Titan A.E. and I can use the characters however I want and not get sued.

Yes, I can relate to that. I used to be obsessed with Rupert the Bear and my imaginary friend was Bill Badger from the stories. I was also obsessed with the Mysterious Cities of Gold and Dogtanian and similar Japanese cartoons of the 80s and I did use scenarios from the shows as the basis for my games.

I used to read alot of Enid Blyton books and some of my games revolved around them. I remember being in pre-school and saying "can we play the Far Away Tree?" I also made up my own character called Chip the Squirrel and wrote Braer Rabbit type stories.

When i was older I discovered Garfield and copied the cartoons out on paper. I did start to draw my own cartoons based on a cat. I copied pictures of disney characters and the Tiny Toons. I think it was a good way to learn to draw, from there I drew my own characters based on my stuffed animal collection and wrote stories about them. I wished I'd kept the stories. I've always wanted to write a children's book about them.

I had my own planet when I was little, it was a weird place where everyone had the same customs as me so no one was an outcast, and it was full of my obsessions.

I also have original Niggi stars and Niggies too as well. But yes there many counterparts.

I did those types of things, with Austin Powers and Flushed Away. I used to imagine that my friends were Roddy, Rita and Sid and that we would go on evening adventures down town, every night of the week.

I call it, improvement on the original.

My senses experience the concrete
feels stimulated-connected
then takes the concrete, the part connected to some real thing
and then enters the world of my imagination

it is easier for me to build on what is established, what I can see-feel-touch...a grounding to return to, a foundation to construct my additions

I always imagined people as giants or as shrunken people. The real world was my imaginary world, to some extent.

I've been doing this ever since I was a kid. It would take me forever to go through all of the imaginary worlds and imaginary friends I've had over the years, so I will just tell you about the current ones.

Currently my imaginary world and imaginary friends are derived from the works of Tim Burton since that is my special interest right now. Some of the dialogue and scenarios I imagine are taken from various other forms of media such as music, the Internet and television. For example, I imagined a storyline involving Alice from Alice in Wonderland and me being twin sisters and having to live out the roles of a tomboyish "prince" and a helpless "princess/damsel in distress" (respectively) because it was our "destiny". (This was partially inspired by the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena.) The reason why it was our "destiny" was because we were the reincarnations of two star-crossed lovers in a past life who committed suicide together. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that there's a Japanese myth that states if two lovers commit suicide, they will be reincarnated as twins, which Alice and I are in my imagination.)

Even though there are are "official" couples in most of Burton's films (Jack/Sally in Nightmare Before Christmas for example), I have more fun coming up with my own pairings such as putting Jack with Victor from Corpse Bride. Anyway, I imagined that Jack and Victor had a son together by growing him inside of a pumpkin (like the Cabbage Patch Kids). Their son himself isn't an original character, but the central character from one of Tim Burton's short films, a 6-minute piece called Vincent.

As another example, I imagined Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter having two daughters in a similar fashion (though using candy instead of pumpkins). Their older daughter, Wilma, looks almost exactly like Trucy Wright from the videogame Apollo Justice, but with green eyes instead of blue and candy-themed clothes instead of a magician's. Their younger daughter Willow looks and acts similar to Mikuru from Haruhi Suzumiya, but her hair is a brighter shade of orange and is wavy instead of straight, and she has purple eyes instead of brown. There are a lot more couples and children but I won't get into that now. Anyway all of the children attend elementary school with characters from Tim Burton's book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy.

I make up stories in my head (that last for years) and I borrow actors from TV and movies to play characters in the story. I'm never in the stories myself, it's more like creating a movie. The situations are more or less realistic, and don't have elements of fantasy or sci fi. Does anyone else have made up worlds in which they themselves are not a participant?

I don't see how this could possibly be unique to AS or Autism.

We all build the imaginary from what we hear and observe. Everything from imagination is just a reworking of things we already have learned or know.

What makes our own imagination unique isn't what we use for the "parts," it's how we take them apart and reorganize them.

There could be something unique in the way Autistics reorganize known things into previously unknown things, but I know of no studies that have explored this.