Third Thesis | [Written]

[intangible_girl]

[Ingrid is at that stage of recovery where she is feeling well enough to be bored, but not well enough to do much of anything about it. So she has a question for you, Luceti:]

Have you ever met someone here who was a fictional character in your world?

[Almost as an afterthought, she signs her name. This is hardly as official as last time, but she

Comments

[ written ]

[charmingdoe]

I can't say I've met anyone quite like that. [ She didn't even think it possible. ] Though...I take it you have?

[ written ]

[intangible_girl]

I don't know if you've ever heard of My Little Pony. But I met one the other day. And there's a boy I know who says he knows Captain Hook and Mickey Mouse.

I admit I'm not sure what to think about all this.

[ written ]

[charmingdoe]

My Little Pony? Er--Well I haven't heard of that, but it's strange all the same.

Though, I suppose...I shouldn't really be surprised, considering how impossible Luceti should be.

[ written ]

[intangible_girl]

Still, that begs the question: how is this happening? Are they manifestations of our fiction? Or is our fiction manifestations of real people?

[written]

[poorneedyand]

Twice. One of them belongs to a friend of mine.

[written]

[intangible_girl]

"Belongs to"?

[written]

[poorneedyand]

Well, 'belongs' is the wrong term for flesh-and-blood people, but - only place he exists in my world is a bunch of stories by a friend of mine.

How about you? Met anyone you recognize?

[written]

[intangible_girl]

Several. Frodo Baggins was the first, and the other day I met a real, live, My Little Pony.

I had one of the figurines when I was a kid. Cupcake. She was... pink, I think.

[written]

[seventeensir]

I cannot say that I have, Miss.

[He's guessing by her name that 'Miss' is at least fairly close to correct.]

[written]

[intangible_girl]

I have. Several of them. It was quite strange.

['Miss', is, in fact, spot on.]

[written]

[seventeensir]

How curious.

This place is quite strange, I find.

[written]

[intangible_girl]

It is.

If you don't mind my asking, where and when are you from? People seem to come from all sorts of places around here.

[Written]

[semper_cogitans]

I have not met a fictional character from my world, but I have met an individual named Oswald whom is very literally a living cartoon, at least in terms of how he described himself to me.

Oswald told me that in his world, all cartoons are alive in some sense, though he has no real knowledge of how this occurs other than the fact that this certain studio drew him. (It is quite amazing how he is aware of this fact himself.)

[Robert actually really wants to do analysis on Oswald if Oswald won't mind. Of course it would be up to the rabbit whether he was comfortable with it or not, but Robert is beyond fascinated by the possibilities of looking at Oswald under PET or fMRI.]

I find this extremely fascinating. Perhaps it has something to do with this phenomenon?

[Written]

[intangible_girl]

A... living cartoon? Aware of this fact?

[That's up there with the weirdest thing she's heard today.]

[Written]

[semper_cogitans]

Yes, quite aware of it. He was also very aware of the fact that he was watched by other people, and even owns his own cartoons here in Luceti.

[It strikes Robert as incredibly interesting, and certainly goes some way towards this fictional-characters-somehow-being-real thing.]

You don't suppose that this could be a manifestation of multiversal theory? Perhaps, in some multiverse, we are fictional ourselves.

I am not certain how this would work, though.

[Written]

[intangible_girl]

He wouldn't happen to be a Disney character, would he? [Because the inspiration for this question came from a boy who apparently knew such characters.]

I suppose it's not impossible. Though how exactly we are observed by the writers in other worlds remains beyond me.

[voice]

[sacrificemyself]

No. I reckon that if you can meet them here, then they're not really fictional, right? You just... don't know about 'em. Like with magic. A lot of people think it's fiction, even the Muggles where I'm from, but it exists all right; they've just never seen it.

[voice]

[intangible_girl]

That's an interesting way of looking at it. But it begs the question, how does a real person from another world end up in a story in a different world?

[voice]

[sacrificemyself]

The same way a fictional character gets turned into a story: somebody who knows about that person writes it down on a piece of paper and it gets famous. Hell, my friend Harry's in a ton of history books already; I wouldn't be surprised if people from other worlds have heard of him somehow and think he's make-believe.

[voice]

[intangible_girl]

That would assume some sort of communication through worlds, that somehow writers are seeing or meeting people from other worlds and writing down their stories all the time.