You know that episode of Doctor Who Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead? [If not, I'll wait. There's Netflix, YouTube or the Pirate Bay for that.] When Donna Noble—oh shit. Sorry.

Spoilers*.

Don't worry. Spoiler-free zone here. But Donna starts to notice that time isn't happening. That her life is far too sequential. That every line of dialogue, every scene change, every cut that we're so used to seeing in movies and film becomes real to her. Her reality is fragmented, and moments are simultaneous. She never breaks fourth wall, never delivers a Francis Underwood* style monologue to us through the camera, but it's still one of the best storytelling moments I've ever seen on screen. Donna Noble's character succeeds in getting us to question the fundamental way we tell—and perceive—visual stories.

Haven't you ever wondered if androids dream of electric sheep? The characters in our visual media, when and where do they go between scenes? Do they really cease to exist? Is there non-existence for them, or is their perception of time simultaneous? Or do they simply "Just. Stop."? When you put a book down, does the story end on that page, or does it keep going without you? Do these characters have full lives like ours that they live out, and do we only see the arbitrarily important bits and pieces, or are they only dependent projections of our own imaginations, nothing more?

[…Sorry to wax all existential on you. But I'm having a literal metaphysical crisis at the moment.]

After THE INCIDENT I began reading fanfic again in a desperate attempt to understand what the fuck was happening to me. I couldn't be the only one, right? In all of time and space, this couldn't've just happened to some junkie janitor from the Bronx. There had to be some sort of precedent, some protocol to follow. There were all these stories, these "Girl falls into Middle-earth" tales I kept hearing about, and surely, surely one of them must've been through something like this before. I mean, the Professor's bff writes a story about the Pevensie children falling "through a wardrobe/painting/train station" into another world…and then the Legs and Gimli show up here? It couldn't be completely fucking coincidental.

I went online. I dug. I did my research. I found a whole fucking archive. I was hoping for answers. A miracle. A Deus ex Machina or a fucking Giant Eagle…but what I really needed was information a la Isaac Asimov's Pate de Foie Gra: "Now the fanfic is done. I've read it, I approve, and I urge you all not to believe it. Please don't. Only—

"Any ideas?"

But the results were pretty depressing. No how-to-guide's detailing how to get home or where to take your Valinor-bound visitors in the meantime. No crash-courses in Westron. No logical explanations of dimension jumping or time-travel, or disguised classified documents detailing the use of the Hadron Collider to mend spacetime for fictional universes. No Dwarf Etiquette Manuals, no Traditional Cuisines of Durin's Heirs and How to Prepare Them, no How to Train Your Elf or Cultural Misunderstandings: It's Only Murder If They're Immortal and Other Fun Fallacies Among the Fair Folk. Even The Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth had nothing but humorous anecdotes. In short, I found the entire website Pretty. Fucking. Useless.

But a pattern did begin to emerge. Whether through a computer, a head-injury, trip to New Zealand or a night out drinking, somehow the walls between the worlds seem to converge around an OC. It's like alien abduction, where a bunch of crazies seek each other our on line all telling different yet colluded versions of the same story. Yeah. Goddamned creepy, that's what it is.

Stare too long into the depths of fanfic, wrote misscam, and the depths of fanfic stare back into you*.

Was I insane—?

…was I tripping?

"Oswin, we have a problem."

So I had to wonder—does it seem real to them? Those characters unceremoniously dumped into Middle-earth for their Long Expected Party, whose real life we never see, whose family and friends never miss them. All those jobless, loveless, bored and lonely women who fall instantly in love with the first male character they meet, who swear abruptly then swoon before the first chapter is even over—ask yourself, does it seem real to them?

Because it does to me.

Does it look real to you, Mary Sue? I asked her. Where you are right now. Does it seem real?

It is real, she said.

The time, Mary Sue. I told her. You said Middle-earth, and suddenly we're in the Shire. The time, Mary Sue. Where—where—did it all go to?

Mind you, she said, sometimes it feels like no time at all…

[Meanwhile in a parallel universe…

"It's a dream, Harry," the social worker Hagrid told him. " You dreamed up Hogwarts for yourself after the horrific abuse you suffered at the Dursley's because the truth was just too terrible. The unexplained and strange injuries you kept suffering, the wilder and wilder tales of your escapades to get them…the loving family who accepted you, the Quidditch Cup, the inescapable destiny…it was a dream, Harry. Nothing more."

"Then it is a good dream," said Harry, and went back to sleep.

All was well.]

I thought it was a dream. I hoped it was a dream. I fucking begged, prayed, pleaded, cursed for it not to be real. I wanted to be insane. Wanted to throw myself off the top of the Winter Quay and wake up in a world where Prerna was here and there were no Weeping Angels, Amoral Elves, or Aging Dwarves to torment me.

I am Ida Anderson.

…I am Human. This is not a fanfic.


*Too soon?

*House of Cards: Netflix's Game of Thrones AU written by Petyr Baelish, about Petyr Baelish, for Petyr Baelish.

*Or Friedrich Nietzsche. I've heard it both ways.