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Acting as fictional characters?...

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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby Nerevar » Mon Feb 17, 2020 12:40 am

(I have a few schizotypal traits).
It happens to me, in some cases, when I identify with a character (it usually happens only with peculiar characters - I never identify to "normal" ones), but with this weird feeling I'd prefer to be that character than myself. Actually even as a child I fantasized about being someone else - in a "odd belief" kind of way, not really in a mimicry externally detectable way.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby poxalis » Fri May 15, 2020 10:37 pm

i don't know how to act without constructing some identity to put on as i emerge into public. well i mean when i'm in intimate contact with humans. if i'm just going to the grocery the standard blank personality works fine enough. there are quite a few fictional characters, stereotypes, and archetypal types i like and have mimicked.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby voidance » Sun Jul 05, 2020 12:37 am

In my theory, this divides into two parts:

I have been entranced in vivid fantasies about being someone else. Not so much in adulthood but vividly in my younger teenage years to the point where you could consider these fantasies to have their own circumstances and personalities that were notably different from my own. Most of the time this was having different parents and having a different life. I remember my year prior to high school being marked by a fantasy about being my brother's daughter (he is older than I) and how my life would have been different. All tactics to escape from what my actual childhood had been.

The second part is personality mimicking, this done mainly through my high school years by picking up mannerisms and traits that I found to have been admired. This was probably due to the lack of social interaction during childhood years. To this day, I struggle with social interaction. To my bottom core, my thinking and behavior is so markedly different from most people my age that I tend to put on a front. It's so learnt that as an adult I am able to sustain conversation with an array of people due to this shifting personality dynamic.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby justonemoreperson » Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:32 am

I used to do this a lot when I was younger. Finding it hard to understand others' subtleties, mimicking a character would help me role-play a situation to appear more normal.

The problem, of course, is that it confuses people when they find you behaving differently in different situations. So, I tried just adopting certain characteristics rather than the whole character and that works better.

It's ended up with me adopting characteristics that mirror my own thoughts but projected in a healthier way.

I also tend to resort to a character if I'm telling a story originating from that character. For example, if I tell a joke then I'll take on the character of the comedian when I tell it, including accent and word structure.

I once did a sales presentation to a room full of people as Ozzy Osbourne, because I'd been talking to one of the organisers and we'd got onto the subject of Ozzy and I started speaking like him and they asked me to do the whole thing as him.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby poxalis » Sun Jul 05, 2020 6:28 pm

justonemoreperson wrote:we'd got onto the subject of Ozzy and I started speaking like him


Purposely or accidentally? in the book Red Dragon (hannibal lector series), William Graham was a chameleon who found great success in being a detective because he could easily absorb other people's characteristics without effort or thought. Nothing like the show where he's some type of Asperger's savant.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby justonemoreperson » Mon Jul 06, 2020 6:34 am

poxalis wrote:
Purposely or accidentally? in the book Red Dragon (hannibal lector series), William Graham was a chameleon who found great success in being a detective because he could easily absorb other people's characteristics without effort or thought. Nothing like the show where he's some type of Asperger's savant.


I'd like to think mostly by choice, however I do find myself slipping into a character at times, especially when telling stories.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby IDeerInHeadlightsI » Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:20 am

voidance wrote:In my theory, this divides into two parts:

I have been entranced in vivid fantasies about being someone else. Not so much in adulthood but vividly in my younger teenage years to the point where you could consider these fantasies to have their own circumstances and personalities that were notably different from my own. Most of the time this was having different parents and having a different life. I remember my year prior to high school being marked by a fantasy about being my brother's daughter (he is older than I) and how my life would have been different. All tactics to escape from what my actual childhood had been.

The second part is personality mimicking, this done mainly through my high school years by picking up mannerisms and traits that I found to have been admired. This was probably due to the lack of social interaction during childhood years. To this day, I struggle with social interaction. To my bottom core, my thinking and behavior is so markedly different from most people my age that I tend to put on a front. It's so learnt that as an adult I am able to sustain conversation with an array of people due to this shifting personality dynamic.


I was about to rewrite this :oops:
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby Chell53 » Tue May 16, 2023 9:20 am

yes, have always done this, used to make up characters of my own and insert them into stories (from books or TV or movies or whatever) and then walk around with these elaborate fantasies that I was part of that world, sometimes at the same time as doing other stuff in the actual world and sometimes just privately and totally immersively. Music is one of things I would use privately, different songs would sort of become the backing track for different scenarios. I learned to certain accents so that I could "be" characters etc. I still do this sometimes but it's less pervasive now I'm older. Music has kind of become a functional tool because of it though, I find it really hard to just listen to a song and enjoy it because it all gets associated with fantasy, certain beats tap me into certain things, or certain needs for drama or aggression or very intense emotion and then different scenarios come into my head and I start fantasising again.

The thing about absorbing characters happens too, if I read a book or see a film or something and it has even a little bit of resonance with my own life then I can go away from it and kind of start using the frame or the POV that the story gave me and just start looking at everything in my own life with that slant, as if I'm the character in the book or the film, so I might remember things from my own life and suddenly get really angry and start talking about that memory or those events the way the character talked about their life and with the viewpoint that the thing I was reading or watching gave me, and then I'll come out of it after a few hours or a day and I'll think "wait where did that come from? because that's not really how I feel" and I'll realise what I've done. It can happen without me realising. I guess that's labile sense of self maybe? I temporarily take on definition from other people or whatever is around? It's definitely happened with real people too, I can be a total chameleon in social situations and only realise later that that's happened.
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Re: Acting as fictional characters?...

Postby Snaga » Sun May 21, 2023 2:01 am

Chell53 wrote:yes, have always done this, used to make up characters of my own and insert them into stories (from books or TV or movies or whatever) and then walk around with these elaborate fantasies that I was part of that world, sometimes at the same time as doing other stuff in the actual world and sometimes just privately and totally immersively.


Ah, so it's not just me, then. I have a long history of doing that.
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