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jenni_robinsonI confess, I hate it when people don't listen to me. If certain parties had only considered what I had to say last December...
I know, I know, nobody wants to hear the meta stuff, but let me have this one.
Dear everyone:
Please stop thinking of reality as a binary system. It is not a dichotomy of "real" and "not real." There are degrees of reality. There are conditions of reality. It's a fine broad spectrum in Technicolor. If you're still seeing it in black-and-white, please update your system.
Look, people can get hurt over this stuff. You try telling a fanfic character he's less real than you are, and someone is going to walk away from the exchange not feeling so hot. Possibly you, if he's the violent type, but I digress. We live in a multiverse where writing has a god-like power of creation. If that guy over there can be born of writing, who's to say you and I can't also have similar origins?
This does not mean we are not real.
Being real does not mean we are not fictional.
Let's take a look at the canons for a second. Everybody here knows some canon universes come from books, or games, or TV shows, right? Everybody here's also been to at least one in the flesh, right? There you go: real and fictional, both at once. It just depends on where you're standing.
Ontology is not a dichotomy, folks. These conditions are not mutually exclusive. Please, please stop treating them as such. People can and do get hurt.
Love,
Someone Who Knows
I know, I know, nobody wants to hear the meta stuff, but let me have this one.
Dear everyone:
Please stop thinking of reality as a binary system. It is not a dichotomy of "real" and "not real." There are degrees of reality. There are conditions of reality. It's a fine broad spectrum in Technicolor. If you're still seeing it in black-and-white, please update your system.
Look, people can get hurt over this stuff. You try telling a fanfic character he's less real than you are, and someone is going to walk away from the exchange not feeling so hot. Possibly you, if he's the violent type, but I digress. We live in a multiverse where writing has a god-like power of creation. If that guy over there can be born of writing, who's to say you and I can't also have similar origins?
This does not mean we are not real.
Being real does not mean we are not fictional.
Let's take a look at the canons for a second. Everybody here knows some canon universes come from books, or games, or TV shows, right? Everybody here's also been to at least one in the flesh, right? There you go: real and fictional, both at once. It just depends on where you're standing.
Ontology is not a dichotomy, folks. These conditions are not mutually exclusive. Please, please stop treating them as such. People can and do get hurt.
Love,
Someone Who Knows
