So You've Discovered That You're a Fictional Character
Realizing you're a character in a work of fiction can be startling. At the moment, you probably feel like you're trapped in an elevator that's in freefall, and your mind has somehow hit the ground before the rest of your body.
Are you actually in an elevator? You might be in a Shyamalan movie.
What you're going through is completely natural for someone in your uniquely regrettable situation. Believe it or not there's a lighter side to be found in all the existential blackness you're feeling at the moment.
I'm finding that extremely difficult to believe.
Sure you are. We haven't even figured out what you're trapped in, yet. Look around for clues. Are a bunch of women gossiping about the latest scandal involving a "landed gentleman?" Are you having a difficult time caring about any of it? You're probably in a Jane Austen novel. Explore the area around you- are things "dreary" and "dismal?" You're in crappy poetry. It could be anything, really, just take in your surroundings a bit.
I'm in a Room That Would be Dark but for a Single Lightbulb Dangling in the Center. I'm Wearing Handcuffs and My Jaw is Sore, Like I'd Been Punched Recently
All-one-word on "light bulb," huh? The structure's familiar, it sounds like you're in some kind of academic Creative Writing assignment. Real quick, could you describe yourself to me, to the best of your abilities?
I'm a 6'2" Man with Pale Eyes and Radish Hair
Fine. Whatever.
You are in the very poorly-constructed piece of fiction of a middle-aged Creative Writing student at an Adult Night School. He most likely meant "reddish," which, as a sidebar, is just a terrible adjective on its own.
Really Awful
Right? There's no reason to be unsure in your own fiction-writing. You're the creator of the world, you know?
Sure, I Guess
Like, is it red or isn't it? Reddish and what else? Is it a dark red? Closer to strawberry blond? I mean, these are the questions I'd be asking.
If either your hair or eyes changes color, you might be a Mary Sue.
I Feel Like We're Straying a Bit
Sorry, I've just seen stuff like this before and it really bugs me. You're probably full of questions.
That "Radish Hair" Thing Seemed Like a Pretty Glaring Mistake; Is It Safe to Assume He Didn't Proofread This? I Feel Like There are a Lot of Typos In...my life
It is reasonable to conclude he has not read over this, yes, but at the same time, you are a slave to the world your master created. So, if he says your hair is radish, or you dress in blue genes, then that's what you have to work with.
I Drive a 1998 Ford Tourist
Sure. Find a creative place to stick your keys and try to avoid potholes.
What About Plotholes?
Zing!
Yeah
But in all seriousness, there will likely be plenty of both. Creative Writing assignments are usually pretty boring and basic. Here, it looks like your "writer" was tasked with creating a piece that builds mystery and intrigue. Nothing says "mystery" like waking up handcuffed in a poorly lit basement. The problem is that when a student gets an assignment like this, he ignores everything that isn't directly related to mood and atmosphere. So you'll have a lot of detailed intrigue surrounding your dank basement, but absolutely no creative attention will be paid to anything else.
Okay, yeah. Dark. We get it.
I'm Pretty Sure I Don't Have a Name
Yeah, name's don't get A's on homework assignments about mystery. Your author isn't even trying.
Hey, Wait, I Just Said "And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?" I Mean, That Isn't Bad, Right? Maybe He's Improving
I was afraid of this. That's actually a Jonathan Franzen quote.
Get Outta Town
It's from "The Corrections," so your author is both a bad writer and a plagiarist. Not even a very interesting one at that. A middle-aged white guy who wants to be the next Franzen? Can you be any more cliche?
"It's not like anyone else has read this book!"
I Don't Know. I'm Fictional
Right. I forgot you have no understanding of literature or American history because you're basically a husk of a person. No flesh, no memories, no complexities. Even if you were capable of love, it would only mean that your creator made you so. Your free will, limited and hole-filled though it may be, is a fragile illusion.
Thanks?
Also you probably don't have a soul.
You Said Something About a Lighter Side ...
No hell!
Oh, sure. For one thing, your writer is in charge, so you can't technically be blamed for anything you do so, really, go to town.
Yeah?
Yeah, go nuts. If your story goes off the rails, it's him who will be blamed, not you.
I Just Drove My Tourist Into a Ravine
See? Now, where did that ravine even come from? Not your responsibility. I'm sure his rent-a-professor will have questions like "what ravine" and "how did they get out of the basement," but that's none of your concern.
Awesome
Totes. Also, since I'm not talking to anyone else, I imagine you're the protagonist of this particular story.
I Do Have a Fairly Strong Jaw and a Sound Moral Center
Cigarettes determine whether or not you are an anti-hero.
Perfect. You're the protagonist, you're man of the house. Unless this is some piece of experimental fiction, (or if you're unfortunate to have a particularly depressed student author), you are going to win no matter what situation you're stuck in. Tell me, do you see any women around you?
There's a Plucky, Attractive Scientist With Curly Brown Hair and a Sweet Smile. Seems Pretty Unrealistic That She'd Even Exist, Let Alone Be Interested in a Guy Like Me...
Bam, she's yours.
No
Yeah, brother.
But if you are an anti-hero, she probably dies.
But We Were Just Arguing a Little While Ago, She Called Me Shallow and Shelf-Obsessed
Probably was supposed to be "self" but I guess you're an attentive carpenter now. And at any rate, it doesn't matter. Sure, you're fighting now, but that's only because a contrived series of events haven't lined up to put you two together for an extended period of time during which you'll bond and swap secrets. You'll show her your softer side and do something to redeem yourself right around the climax and she'll see there's more to you than meets the eye.
Man, I Don't Even Have to Really Do Anything
That's life as a protagonist, buddy. Enjoy it, you'll be getting a lot of it.
How Do You Mean?
Oh, that's another thing: You're clearly a rough draft.
Hey, Man, Scre-
No no no, it's a good thing. It means that there will be revisions and revisions, so no matter what happens, no matter what goes down, you'll have the chance to do the whole thing over again, only you'll do it better, tighter, and cleaner. And spelled correctly. You know how you are right now?
Seriously, it's grody.
Vaguely. Sometimes My Eyes Are Blue, This Guy Could Really Benefit From Just a Cursory Glance at His Own Work
Right, well however you are, you know for a fact that, in the future, you will be a better version of yourself. Guaranteed. People in real life have to work out, eat better and endure self-discipline to actually improve on any level, and it'll happen for you naturally. By next week's class, you'll be more fleshed out, more realized, and with a backstory. You'll have better one-liners, a hotter ingenue, and a car that probably isn't even a person.
Kind of Sounds Better Than Your Life
Well, the soul thing.
...Still.
Okay, I think we've-
Also, Aren't You Sort of the Slave to the Way You Were Brought Up, Whether You Like It Or Not?
I don't think we-
And Hasn't Science Proved That Free Will is an Illusion?
It's slightly more complicated than-
You Don't Even Know That You Exist, You Could Just be a Brain in a Vat. Or the Construct of Some Other Creator's Imagination. You Can't Even Verify The Existence of the World in Which You Live.
...
Right?
Oh God.
And be sure to check out the lighter side of other unfortunate events.
Renee Descartes would be proud.
ReplyIs it bad that I think about this often?
ReplyRead At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O' Brien... it's basically the literary fiction version of this article and is fantastic (well, the bits that I understood and could follow anyway).
ReplyFantastic Article - I particularly liked the fashion in which it ended. A lot of food for thought there!
ReplyOh, nevermind.
ReplyMan, I want to punch myself for being a jerk.
Hi Plato, how's it kicking?
Replyor you could be Deadpool, and then everything will be fine
ReplyMAKE MORE OF THESE.
Replya question I've been asking myself.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesIs this world full of the living, or am I the only one alive and the others are just illusion/artifical beings?
Am I actually a protagonist in a game?
not worth worrying about, besides, thats kinda dumb because if this line of thinking were even true then I would in fact be the protagonist and you would be an illusion/spam bot writing comments on cracked just because its a better way to portray my life in a logical way.
funny how I thought that when I was younger. Of course now I realize that I'm a supersophisticated Terminator that were designed to end human civilization through Internet Trolling. Won't be much longer now..
YOu might just all be saying that and /I'm/ the protagonist.
No, YOU might just be saying that and I'm the protagonist.
No no no. I'm the real one, you're all figments of my imagination.
I disagree. But only because, as side character commenter, The Great Author requires me to do so. In reality, I was never even given a body because the only time I get to show up in the story is as a comment. *sigh* and as soon as I finish typing I will disapear.
Good bye cruel, non-existant, world!
I'm not real? Now what do I do?
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesfap, of course.
Quit the story. Best way to annoy writers. (*mumble, mumble* Arica*mumble*)
Walk into a room acting like you have a purpose, and then stand around doing nothing. Bugs the crap out of the person writing you.
VERY good article! "Do we exist? Maybe we don't exist..."
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesFrom our point of view, we exist. Probably.
A terrifying..."reality"?
Maybe I flushed the toilet, and maybe I didn't. What's it to you?
I have imagined sometimes that my creations are real to themselves - they're pretty real to me, and that God (or random chance, if you prefer to call him that) is an author in a 'real' universe. That would actually give me a better understanding of why He allows evil, since I care about all my characters, even the villains, but still have to allow bad sh*t to happen, or else there would be no story. Or am I just a really bad God?
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesBetter chance that you're just a shitty, hack writer who needs to come on this site and let people know that you deeply pontificate over the nature of God and evil while working in there that you're an "author".
No, I just thought it was interesting. You didn't have to read it and you don't have to read anything I write.
or you can just play Black and White..
Ha! I actually have a story like that. :) Well, story *idea*. It'd be dishonest to call it a full-fledged "story". One of those ideas that's fun to think about but I'm too lazy to get around to writing yet... and it's hard to convince myself to, with three other stories I've actually started writing, languishing in First Draft Hell for I don't even want to consider how long now...
But yeah, basically, it's something that would probably make most potential readers hate me, because it would build up all these complex character interactions and this big, mysterious battle between good and evil and eventually, it's all revealed to the characters that the the whole time they've been controlled - right down to who they're attracted to, right down to the masochistic tendencies, pretty much everything - by an entity they think is an ally. One that screwed with them because it was, basically, bored. And then it kills one of the characters who's about to bravely face up to it - a character intentionally built up to gradually take the spotlight from other characters with her Grand Story of Redemption, because "hmm, you're a bit of a Mary Sue lately. No. I think I'll start over on you..."
And then another one kills it while it's distracted by that... but then don't know what the hell to do next. And that's exactly where it ends.
Really, it's a potentially hilarious concept, but assuming it were ever miraculously published, and ESPECIALLY if I had anything else published before that and had built up even the tiniest bit of respect/fanbase... I would get SO MUCH HATEMAIL. So much that probably the only publication date that would suffice would be April 1st. Because, come on... the entire appeal in wanting to write it is basically that it's literary trolling.
I also know what you mean about characters, assuming that's what you mean by "creations". I just call them characters, but after a certain point - different for each one - they kind of get weirdly solidified in my head. A dynamic kind of solidification though - as if they're a real person with entirely comprehensible though not necessarily predictable personality. Sometimes I think I know them better than I know myself, and I can sometimes plop them in a scene and it practically writes itself, because of course, "they" reveal how they'd react. And I can rationalize it all I want after the fact - explaining that "she falls for him quickly because she's lonely because of her crappy childhood" - but when it first happens, when it really flows easily in a first draft, it's completely unconscious; like I'm channeling somebody else, rather than making s**t up for a character. (Not to say it's readable, mind. That's what editing is for :P)
It's because of this that I totally have no trouble believing in Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called Multiple Personality) ... I mean, the only thing separating me from the very definition of DID is that I recognize the line between reality and what I make up. I even talked once to a random guy who claimed to be a "healthy multiple" - someone with multiple personalities who's mostly not dysfunctional - and it was like talking to a hardcore LARPer with multiple characters, except instead of playing vampires or cyberpunk hackers, he was playing a lawyer who edits Wikipedia.
I wouldn't assume all the cases were true, but hypothetically speaking, I could easily see someone who's gotten used to inventing/roleplaying characters, sort of "breaking" and taking them to be real. It's a special kind of crazy, but I don't think it's impossible.
Also: I second the suggestion to play Black and White. It's an awesome game. :D
I've never heard of Black and White: how do you play it?
I completely get what you mean about the characters being real people. I don't get to choose who they are or what they do; e.g. if I need to work out something for the story, like a name or where they're from, I don't say or think about deciding, I say I need to find out where they're from, and I can slip on the suit of any of them and it feels real - but I do remember that it's not. At least, not in this universe.
That story sounds /very/ intriguing, I hope you do write it. If you're a decent writer, there's no reason it shouldn't stand as much chance of getting published as any other book, it's not a rubbish idea. You'll only get hatemail from people with no concept of fiction - like the people who want to bad books like Harry Potter - and it's fun to laugh at them. I've got a couple of stories in the pipeline that will probably upset that crowd, and I'm actually (probably very bad of me) hoping it will.
JamieWhite, go play Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. It's kind of like that.
A world which just happens to be a video game controlled by bored, uncaring teenagers. Which is then destroyed, slowly and utterly, by someone who can not conceive of these programs as living, thinking creatures. Callously sending them to the recycle bin, you might say.
This might be my favorite non-numbrered article :D Hilarious and awesome!
ReplyProps on the Doc Savage pic.
ReplyThe shopped a cig in his mouth. Dr. Savage would never light up.
Fate is the result of Free Will, with the least amount of Will applied.
ReplyDude...
When I read through the comments that talked about free will, I thought they had misspelled 'Free Willy.' I'm starting to think that the aliens stole my brain, and maybe my kidney as well.
ReplyI believe we just found the...*Puts on sunglasses*...Narritive. (YEEAAAAHHHH!!!)
ReplyWHAT!? No Twilight References?! Wow, you held back.
ReplyNo my Immortal refrences abou the horrors of Mary Sues either.
I find the issue of Free Will irrelevant. Even if we are bound to a certain path by endless continuous chain of events, in order to predict the future given that path we would need a computer as large as the universe itself, tracking every infinitely tiny particle and every variable, because even a slight difference might make all the difference in the world. Since such a computer isn't really possible to construct within the universe, we cannot construct an accurate vision of the future, and the decisions we make might as well be free.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAs for existence, I subscribe to subjective existence. Even if something does not exist anywhere but in my own mind, which I accept to exist by Descartes' "I think, therefore I am", so long as it affects the way I think and the emotions I feel it exists to a sufficient, significant extent. Whether it was real, I might never know, but whether I felt it to be so I do know.
it is theoretically possible to construct such a computer, but possibly only at the omega point.
theoretical physicist michio kaku says that science points to evidence that one day in a very, very, very distant future that if mankind is still around, we will obtain the technology to use the universe itself as a computer, and gain the ability to control time and physics themselves. if you want, you should read his books and check out his show. it's all really actually very cool to think about.
Use the universe as a computer? am I the only one who read that comment that automaticaly went to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? One day we will fufill our purpose and find the ultimate question.
just to continue this dialogue, this was awesome...thanks, because i have a feeling the thanks are what this job is about.
Reply