@OldBrushNewPaper I figure they're just gonna be a really good fiction author someday. Took me years to learn to love tormenting characters! 😼

@OldBrushNewPaper @zebratron2084 If it helps any, according to a book I read about imaginary friends, most likely not. A shocking number of imaginary friends get killed along the way, often violently. It *seems* like it's something people go through in learning how to tell stories and imagine other people's mental states?

It's still rrrrreally creepy to see as an adult though.

@Austin_Dern @OldBrushNewPaper Huh. Now I feel like such a wuss. O:) All mine got pretty well-treated. Granted, part of that might be because most of them were "born" AFTER I entered adolescence, was supposed to be done with that stuff, and had already developed my first glimmers of empathy...

I mean, how the frick do you kill a friendly pink unicorn? ;__;

@Austin_Dern @OldBrushNewPaper (Although now that I peek through the memory vault... Noelle *did* actually manage to snuff it a couple of times, mostly by volunteering herself to take the hit for me in times of great ego damage. It's just like her really, I did NOT approve, and I would never had let her do it if she didn't reincarnate. >_< )

@zebratron2084 @OldBrushNewPaper Yeah; I don't remember doing anything too nasty to my (admittedly few) childhood imaginary friends. But I was always a sensitive type. (And early childhood memories are *such* flaky things who even truly knows?)

In adulthood I'm having a hard time coping with this character created for a SpinDizzy plot being weeks away from "well, he's back to his home planet and we'll have no good reason to ever see him again". And he's fine, just going back to his own life.

@Austin_Dern I'm working so hard to not make a Poochie joke. >:D

@zebratron2084 It was in my mind too! There's just no fairer way to describe what happens when the cities have finished their business and should be going on their separate ways again.

(It's temptingly easy to rationalize why we'd see them again, though. Maybe too easy.)

@Austin_Dern @zebratron2084 What's weird is I don't remember having imaginary friends... only after I encountered t.v. I enjoyed watching (in a life that was actually stable enough to follow programs) did I have a sort of "head-canon". But not an imaginary friend.

There is, from the folklore studies people, the psychology of some of those fairy tales, being that they were vehicles for children to work out some of their inner conflicts safely.

@OldBrushNewPaper @zebratron2084 Yeah; I'm not positive I could name a clear coherent imaginary friend I'd had. Maybe it is that I never felt I had serious inner conflicts needing exploration. Maybe I've just always been *that* introverted. Or it may be that I've just forgotten any details past thinking how nice it would be to know/transform-into the Loch Ness Monster.

@Austin_Dern @zebratron2084 There's always Calvin and Hobbes, I suppose...

@OldBrushNewPaper @zebratron2084 For the younglings anyway. I'm old enough we had to make do with ... I dunno, I guess Pete's Dragon? I kind of remember seeing it but not that it left any impression on me, which is hard to reconcile with who I am now.

@Austin_Dern @zebratron2084 Hear you, there.

@Balina Maybe they fell in love and TF-merged, and the kid's too young to know about such things. ^____^

@zebratron2084 Oh, that's even better. The kid will grow up much more wonderfully weird that way.