People always yell at me for reading comics slow, because I normally read books decently fast. I think they forgot there are pictures with a bunch of detail in the comics.

I'm the opposite.

For me, all fiction is about atmosphere and setting above anything. in visual media this is expressed quickly and requires little imagination on my part, what Austria looks like in The Sound of Music is not something left the imagination after all, things like comics require a bit more for dialogue and such, but they tend to be long running and you quickly develop an internal voice for each character that you don't really have to think about, so it doesn't slow down reading at all.

But in books, there is no sound, and there is no sight, there is only words, descriptions of things that I have no frame of reference for outside of my own imagination.

As a result I tend to read a lot slower, I don't ever fully stop reading, but my pace slows down significantly as I picture the environment described, the chill of snow and the smell of wood, the sun peaking out from behind the mountains and illuminating castle Winterfell. the emotions and expressions characters give as they react to the things going on around them, the pulse pounding panic as the hero runs away from a monster that is hot on their heels, the comfortable warmth of being home, the frustration and grumpiness that comes when they have been on the road for a long time.

Imagining all this is why I love reading above most other forms of media. because while a comic or a movie might express it's information so much more quickly, it misses out on a lot of that nuance, it gives you sight and sound but never touch, taste, or smell, it shows you characters reactions but never describes how they are feeling.

For me watching a movie or reading a comic means watching someone else do something, and if well made that is still very exciting, seeing action heroes jump off of buildings or beat of fifty mooks is very fun. But when reading a good book I don't just see the action, I feel as if i am a part of it, as if I am not looking in from the outside, but rather looking out from the inside.

The only forms of media that even come close to that same feeling for me are Music and Games. Music because it can simulate and express emotion in a way that even a full description can't truly grasp, it can express excitement or anger or sadness not through words we associate with them but through... I don't even know how to describe it, it is like taking emotion and forcing it out of your brain and into the world, it's great. and Games, while not nearly as immersive as books or music can be, is better than either in the aspect of control, even in the best books or songs you are still a tourist, a passenger along for a ride that you have no control over, like an amusement park ride, but in a game you take the reigns and you decide what happens to the characters, you decide when they win and you decide when they lose, and it's truly unique among mediums in that aspect.

I kind of went off on a tangent there, my apologies.