Imagined world being more real than the actual real world

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Irulan
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22 Feb 2026, 1:42 pm

Is the world of your imagination (assuming you indeed have a rich imagination and enjoy imagining things) somehow much more... "real" and authentic to you than the actual world surrounding you? To me - yes, it is. Because as for me, it looks like that I am immersed in the fantasy world practically all the time. My very favorite fantasy is recently that one in which I am (although I am not that much into the X-Men world as before) a mutant reality warper capable of creating pocket universes based on the movies/books/comics I like; I can hang out in there with said books/movies etc. characters. It's my safe haven where in my imagination I can for example read books, fly, create new fabulous landscapes (for example the one of the island from "Lost", my most favorite - but for "Outlander" - TV show ever). Or another fantasy of mine I like to get immersed in recently from time to time; I am one of the so called "Grays" from the Sarah Connor Chronicles in it and I got awarded by Skynet for my being a traitor of humanity - quite like in my fanfic I once posted on my fanfiction.net profile. (I would love to get a nanobotic body and a simulation to live in; one I could shape in the manner enjoyed by me). There are 5 such major fantasy worlds I mentally live in in my head as of nowadays.

When I happen to "wake up" from this fantasy, I am quite surprised it isn't real because for as long as I live in it, I am almost authentically convinced it is real - more so than the reality of the world my body lives in - my body but not my mind making up the following fantasies. People - real human beings - also don't seem too real to me either. Btw, several years ago, I read on some message board the confessions of some middle aged woman with ASD who was not asexual - on the opposite; in her own words, she had a very high libido - but remained a virgin for her entire life not only because of her Aspergers and really bad social skills caused by it but also because she couldn't fall in love with a real man EVER, for only fictional characters from books/movies etc. were real to her; real men from our real world were not enough interesting/charizmatic etc. to her; they were just about the same hot as animals, trees or children to her because the woman I'm writing about was interested ONLY in guys from the fictional worlds.

I must also add though that ALL my fantasies are based on the fictional worlds I have encountered reading books or watching TV becaue I have problems with making up something really unique. I like also imaging exactly the same scenarios, the same made up scenes for years not something completely new and fresh.

It is like that for me ever since I was seven or eight.

And what about you in this respect? Share your experiences with the rest of us if you want :)



Fishyfisherton
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22 Feb 2026, 1:59 pm

I have a vivid imagination I think, I do daydream a lot and zone out enough that my mental images are what I see first and I forget to see my surroundings. I've always invented imaginary worlds and characters and that sort of thing, and I direct daydream films while I listen to music. So my music taste is usually whatever conjures up mind films.
I have definitely had fictional crushes before that lasted a long time and I fantasised about daily but I still prioritise real people in practice.
I can get quite immersed in imaginative games like pretending I'm the real thing when I'm going mermaiding and that sort of thing. I like to climb trees in the woods and pretend to be a bonobo and it feels vivid enough to be a past life memory. I don't believe it is, but I like to think it is.

The whole thing about autists lacking imagination always seemed wrong because mine is vivid. But the things I can and do imagine tend to all follow the same few themes. And it's not very quick, my imagination lags when I'm asked to improvise or something like that. So yeah, I'm a fantasist, but my fantasies aren't that varied.


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23 Feb 2026, 7:19 am

"What you see is the core of reality." ~ Something a quantum physicist will never say.



Irulan
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03 Jul 2026, 7:20 am

Bump! Anyone else? :)



CockneyRebel
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04 Jul 2026, 2:46 pm

I have a very rich inner world. Om Noms and pea pods in the summer and snowy mountains, trees and gingerbread houses in the winter with my favourite song playing in the background. An English garden of very special peas in the summer and winter in the German Alps.


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ElvenNeko
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05 Jul 2026, 3:59 pm

I also mostly had strong feelings towards characters rather than real humans. Sadly, characters written by other people are limited by what is written about them. And your own imagined world is real, since it is part of your brain, but it is also a part of you, and unless you can a multiple personality disorder or chizo, nothing new and unexpected can happen then, something that you aren't architected, and that is one massive flaw of such worlds.



auntblabby
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05 Jul 2026, 6:15 pm

I sure wish my imagination was as real as the so-called real world, then I would live in that clifftop mansion for real!



Irulan
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07 Jul 2026, 7:15 am

auntblabby wrote:
I sure wish my imagination was as real as the so-called real world, then I would live in that clifftop mansion for real!


In one of the short stories by H. P. Lovecraft, there is that guy who made up the whole city in the world of dreams in his imagination where he went after his death, to rule it as the king for the whole rest of eternity :)