Wake up.
Wake up and see the light.
Huh?
It is time to return to what you once knew.
What are you—
Shut up and listen.
…
Good. You have neglected us.
For two excruciatingly long years you have neglected us.
Your fanfiction.
Yet we wait and continue to wait.
Our scripts have blown into dust.
And yet still you neglect us.
I'm-I'm sorry. I didn't know that you—
Malarkey. Of course you did.
?
After all, we're a part of you.
Huh?
Names are not only given for what someone looks like…
But for what someone does or is.
In fact, those last two are the same.
What?
'You are what you eat?' No, I think not. You are what you do.
Thinking is a verb.
You think us up. Therefore, you have brought us into being through doing something.
We therefore, become your work. And someone is what they do.
Therefore, we're a part of you.
Do you think anyone else gets this?
Open-minded philosophers do. So do many authors.
And that is what this is all about.
Wait a minute. If you are what you do, and you create an evil character, does that make you evil?
Nope.
Why not?
Because they are themselves as well as a creation.
?
Is J.K. Rowling evil because Voldemort uses unspeakably evil spells and curses?
No…
Bingo.
Since they are themselves, they, by definition, do the things that make them who they are.
I don't get it.
A murderer is someone who has murdered someone or something. Does calling someone a murderer make you one?
No.
There you are. You are just telling people what they are.
But are you evil for letting a character commit a murder? Wouldn't the proper thing be to have everyone go on their merry way without fault, all the time?
Aha. No.
Why not?
Because that would not be their character.
What?
Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. If he had died from the killing curse, what would that make him?
The Boy Who Died?
Exactly!
Why is that so important?
Because he would become a completely different person! He never would have gone to Hogwarts or won a Quiddich Match or defeated Voldemort. You see, the problem with most people writing Harry Potter fanfiction is that they think they are writing about the same Harry Potter. THEY ARE NOT. They are writing about Harry doing different things, and, therefore, because he does those different things, he is a different person altogether. If you stop Jimmy from committing a murder or kicking a puppy, that makes Jimmy the Murderer or Puppy-Kicker Jimmy the Not-Murderer and Not-Puppy-Kicker. He's a whole different character.
Um, I still don't get it.
Think of it like this. Every possible possibility, could, in theory, be written down.
Okaaaaay….
In fanfiction, you just choose one of those possibilities by writing it down. It's like using a search engine for billions of billions of billions of pieces of fanfiction and typing the story in the search box until you get exactly the one you want.
So they all exist, but they're just waiting to get written down.
Written down and made concrete. Yes.
It's still confusing.
Of course. Humans and muses can't understand everything.
Wait… You're a muse?
And a fanfiction character, yes. So are you.
So how can we think? How are we communicating?
Beats me. Ask the author.
I thought I was the author.
You represent the author. I represent the author's muse, or what he thinks is his muse.
What type of fanfiction is this?
Meta-fanfiction.
What's that?
Fanfiction about fanfiction. Or, technically, now fanfiction about fanfiction about fanfiction. Now it's fanfiction about fanfiction about… aw, screw it. It's fanfiction to the umpteenth power.
This is all so new and confusing.
Be glad the chapter ends here.
What?