i am so so unbelievably excited for this quest!!!! @strawberrymilk you are MAGIC

i had this eye-opening discussion with some friends some time ago and finishing a book today prompted me to think about it again.

i'm someone who is a very visual person in general and have a strong (perhaps even over-active) imagination. whenever i read a book, i tend to visualize the setting/action/characters/etc. which is why i tend to prefer books that have very imagery/atmosphere-forward prose.

however, apparently there are people out there who do NOT visualize what they read as they read it and instead just see words on the page and nothing else. there's no image in their head that the words create.

i would love to know which one of these everyone identifies with! if you are in the latter camp, please tell me more! i still have a hard time wrapping my head around what that kind of reading experience is like.

Also, if anyone has any scientific/neurological insights on this, i would love to hear them.

”It’s precarious to stake your livelihood on wares that are amateur at best, so I sell foreign traditions and materials instead … When the concepts are exotic, even rudimentary work has value.”

very good points here on foreignness as an arbitrary/relative concept, the exoticisation of the “other” and how the perceived value of creation changes depending on authorship/origin. selling a product is explicitly equated with selling a tradition. everything’s a metaphor in this book, so this could also apply to selling intangible products like ideas.