Infinite Fiction theory.

[jeshi]

So because this theory is played upon in the comic I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread dedicated to it.

So the idea is that all the fiction in our world is it's own world. And that our world is itself the fiction of another world. With an Author writing the whole thing. Now don't think about whose the main character or whatever because that will give you bad self-esteem. And then the world where the Author of our world lives is in fact also a fiction of another world, and so on and so on.

Now because every aspect of this world is written by the Author, it would be impossible to travel between the fiction realms because doing so would be giving an Author control of the reality of their own universe, which could only happen if the Author of their universe wrote it as such. Which would end up making the two fiction realms collide into each other as they would become the same work of fiction.

Now if this theory is true, then it destroys the purpose for religion, as when you put your hands together and pray to god, the author is writing "Willfred put his hands together and prayed to me that I give him 10 gallons of orange soda." And if he was writing that he probably already knew if you would be getting it. And just needed a plot device.

Unless of course the Author writes a god, but they wouldn't be the true god because their actions be controlled by the Author writing what they did.

So it's better to live in the story and try and get stuff done and advance the plot rather then angst around, although the only reason you're probably doing it is either of character development or because the editor said the novel needs to be 100 pages longer and the Author needed some padding.


So let's discuss all aspects of this theory. Even ones I haven't touched Canon and Fanfiction and undeveloped ideas and whether or not characters in television shows look exactly like the actor portraying them in their realm. Let the debates begin!

[Mastercougar]

Hurray! Jeshi's back!

This is interesting stuff you're speculating about. Kinda reminds me of what Helios was going on about in his thread.

To some degree this is accurate in Reporterz, although the main thing there is that in Reporterz we're assuming our universe was one of the ones created directly by God, which solves a few of the logistical problems. You can also have cases where your universe was created by an Author but with an Author-made deity bringing the world into being. (Hyrule, Middle-Earth, and many others.) As you mention.

But all this is still very relevant to Reporterz, especially the question of free will and how you deal with the ambiguities. It'll come up later.

~MC

[Blivsey]

If you think about it, this theory applies to real life, albeit in a more metaphysical sense. Most people believe that they were "written" or created by a higher power, and within the confines of our own imaginations, we give birth to new concepts that can be called worlds, and more often than not characters are involved in those worlds. Within the confines of these own characters' minds, they are likely to be self-aware and give birth to their own thoughts, etc. This holds in with a similar theory that has been developed that humanity is the 'waking dream' of someone else in itself.

You could start to get really recursive with this. Then again, the symbolism there was fairly obvious from the beginning, which methinks might negate the purpose of the previous paragraph.

The logically concluding question, though, is who's sitting up at the top of the "Infinite Fiction" chain, and how was he/she/it "written"?

[jeshi]

Feb 16, 2010 14:43:02 GMT -5 Blivsey said:

If you think about it, this theory applies to real life, albeit in a more metaphysical sense. Most people believe that they were "written" or created by a higher power, and within the confines of our own imaginations, we give birth to new concepts that can be called worlds, and more often than not characters are involved in those worlds. Within the confines of these own characters' minds, they are likely to be self-aware and give birth to their own thoughts, etc. This holds in with a similar theory that has been developed that humanity is the 'waking dream' of someone else in itself.

You could start to get really recursive with this. Then again, the symbolism there was fairly obvious from the beginning, which methinks might negate the purpose of the previous paragraph.

The logically concluding question, though, is who's sitting up at the top of the "Infinite Fiction" chain, and how was he/she/it "written"?

It's called the "Infinite fiction" theory because it goes on for infinity. There isn't anybody at the top.

[Mastercougar]

In Reporterz, I randomly decided there is someone at the top (Finite Fiction Theory), but that doesn't necessarily have to affect the theory discussed here, of course.

It's quite a fascinating idea, come to think of it. So you've met your god. Who's his god? So-and-so. Okay, you know of three individuals involved. A<B<C. Continue forever.Somewhere along the line, though, someone's going to be looking down without looking up, so to speak.

Perhaps Person G only knows of his God, H, on a theoretical level, which could be said to be our situation in this world if this theory were true. Or he doesn't know H exists at all. Furthermore, does G know ALL his "characters?" Does he know A-F? Or does he just know F without knowing that F imagines E? Does he only know F and E? And how much does A know? Does A know B-C-D? Just B?

And does it go in the other direction? Is there a "storyteller," what Reporterz would call an "Author" in each world? If A has z, and z has y, while B has A, so that the rungs of the ladder go on forever? If so, nobody knows what the whole thing looks like, being infinite. They'd have to only be able to perceive parts of it.

...It's fascinating, really. I'd love to play with the concept in another story, sometime.

PS: Jeshi, want me to take you off the FanStuff logo, or do you particularly care?

[jeshi]

Aug 11, 2010 21:47:12 GMT -5 Mastercougar said:

In Reporterz, I randomly decided there is someone at the top (Finite Fiction Theory), but that doesn't necessarily have to affect the theory discussed here, of course.

It's quite a fascinating idea, come to think of it. So you've met your god. Who's his god? So-and-so. Okay, you know of three individuals involved. A<B<C. Continue forever.Somewhere along the line, though, someone's going to be looking down without looking up, so to speak.

Perhaps Person G only knows of his God, H, on a theoretical level, which could be said to be our situation in this world if this theory were true. Or he doesn't know H exists at all. Furthermore, does G know ALL his "characters?" Does he know A-F? Or does he just know F without knowing that F imagines E? Does he only know F and E? And how much does A know? Does A know B-C-D? Just B?

And does it go in the other direction? Is there a "storyteller," what Reporterz would call an "Author" in each world? If A has z, and z has y, while B has A, so that the rungs of the ladder go on forever? If so, nobody knows what the whole thing looks like, being infinite. They'd have to only be able to perceive parts of it.

...It's fascinating, really. I'd love to play with the concept in another story, sometime.

PS: Jeshi, want me to take you off the FanStuff logo, or do you particularly care?

(I don't really care, It's a good reminder of the past. I was trying for cynical humor in my avatar)

On topic:

I think that you can write a story where the universe is so vastly different from our own that the characters wouldn't be able to comprehend things that happen in our world. And that if you're really bad at writing, you might write really flat characters who don't have much depth or personality, theoretically this could translate to their mental capacity as well. They don't have depth, and can't comprehend have any more depth than they already do.

Therefore, You could theorize that as you go the chain of authors, whatever laws apply to their universe or however well they are written, may make it so keeping track of everything in their story isn't as hard as it would be if somebody on our level tried it.

If you write a story about a character writing a story, in order to remind people that the story within the story is a story. You would write it with less depth if at all. Or you would make it have common cliches known in your world but not your fiction's world. Therefore Authors could be intentionally making lower levels have less depth because it is a better storytelling element to the story one level above it. If it is involved in the story at all.

Plus, many times things are "Off-screened" or "Word-of-god canon" where it's canon, and it did happen. But it wasn't included in the main work of the story because it wasn't relevant to the plot. So by this logic, our entire universe could exist because a teenage girl is falling in love with some boy at her highschool, and the rest of the world only exist so that it has a setting to take place in. We would all be purposeless extras that exist because otherwise there world wouldn't be populated and it would take place in a void of nothingness.

Or maybe stories do take place in voids where nothing but mentioned locations exist, and the characters simply never acknowledge that there are large gaps in the world where nothing exists. Because they written to never think anything of it. It's perfectly normal and has no relevance to the oh my god these two boys I like both like me back omg what am I going to do!!! love triangle.

Maybe we see these blatant empty spaces and don't think anything of them ourselves, because they simply don't matter to us. Or maybe we do notice them but how we deal with them just aren't written down. Maybe Outer-space is actually where the rest of the world should be, but the locations that exist on planet earth are the only ones relevant to the story so nothing else exists.

And if you somehow saw into a level up in the chain of fiction(Even though that would be impossible because it would have to written that you did, and what you saw would be written, and therefore they would have to modify their own level of universe in order for it to be real not actually on the same level as you.) You would see that instead of outer space, there would huge chunks of the world. Places that exist to the author but not to us.

In Harry Potter's universe, We know that London exists in it. So in that universe there would be a London. But would Denver, Colorado exist? Harry never sees it or mentions it or acknowledges that there is a Denver, Colorado. So on his level perhaps it doesn't exist and nobody lives there and there is simply a void where it should be. Nobody mentions it, why should they?


Maybe when you go high enough in the chains, The authors are so smart and have no much mental capacity, writing a story where a million things are going on at once with a million tiny dramas and a million important events going on at the same time. Isn't actually very hard at all. And that every single action in our world is written and the reader's can comprehend everything. "Oh weird! The universe this story takes place in has people that can only keep track of 200 names and faces! And they have fleshy skin and a liquid running through them called blood! This is so out there! I wonder what drugs the author must of been on to think of this!"

What if our universe is low unpopular literature. "1 star, Planet Earth takes place in a world where even it's inhabitants don't understand how it works. There is a huge empty void surrounding the planet and no explanation is given as to why no other planets have life. Every gap of information is simply dismissed by saying 'The humans haven't figure it out yet' or 'It's impossible to see something more light years away than the age of the universe', How the humans know the age of their universe despite there not even being an explanation as to how it began is never touched upon. The political systems are all petty and there are many characters that simply have no character development at all. Magical properties such as heat and energy are never explained either. There are way too many sub-plots yet at the same time there is no overall plot to tie it all together. Even the characters often complain that there is no plot and they feel their life is purposeless. Even though the planet has water covering 85% of it's surface, most of the story takes place on land. The excuse is that humans, the name given to the fictional species that inhabit the story, can't breath under water. Which is obviously a weakness thrown in just to cripple the characters without adding any actual faults or depth. The Sun and Mars are particularly frustrating as they seem to have no given personality at all."


I wonder how many shifting perspectives there are and how many side-characters there are. This theory is great at making people sub-conscious because their friends have more drama than them. "What if Susan is the main character and I'm just comic relief! What if that person I bumped into on the sidewalk is the main character and I'm just here so there can be a line about how somebody bumped into them on the sidewalk!"


I'm rambling way too much. I'm also very tired. So I'm going to go to sleep now. Maybe I'll have a dream tonight that foreshadows something really obvious. But I won't notice it because the characters never notice foreshadowing. (Unless it's written that they do.)