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Fiction/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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** Fiction is a great art form with a lot of cultural significance. Humans are mythologically oriented beings. We like stories. Half of history is taking stuff that happened and trying to turn it into vaguely accurate stories. It's what we do. (And it's fun.)
* How is it possible for fictional characters to possess information that does not actually exist? To elaborate, [[
** If the author told you everything the characters know, every novel would be at least 10,000 pages long. Instead, the author has to carefully select every bit of information given to the reader and offer as little irrelevant detail as possible.
** The fictional characters don't exist either. That's why they're fictional. I don't really see the problem with them knowing something that the author hasn't thought of.
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**** Fictional characters don't exist within the confines of the story. They don't exist at all. A fictional story is just a really long string of words describing people that never existed and things that never happened. It can describe anything the writer wants it to, and it doesn't have to describe every single detail. If the story describes them knowing something that the writer hasn't though of, then there really isn't any contradiction. Yes, knowing information that doesn't exist is impossible, but fictional characters don't know anything. They don't even exist. That's what the word fictional means.
**** I'm fairly certain this is a what if sort of thing, what with the whole imagine word being used. Why are you here if all you're going to do is reduce everything to "it's fiction so it's not real" Every question and nitpick can be answered with that. So I object to that piece of your argument. However, since the character is the product of the author and created entirely by the author and has absolutely no life of their own besides what the author has given them, everything they are comes from the author and that goes all the way to the way the world works. And where do your actual memories come from anyway? What evidence do you have that they're real? The whole thing is a non-issue. Everything in a work of fiction exists within that work of fiction because the writer says so. Regardless of any inconsistencies or plot holes. End of Line.
**** I'm reminded of one of the classical arguments for the existance of God:<br />"Imagine a perfect deity. Non-existance can hardly be a property of a perfect deity. Therefore, God exists."<br />There are numerous flaws with this argument, many of which start with, "Imagine a perfect island..." The main problem with the argument for god and the question that started this discussion is a shifted perspective. All fictional characters are aware of things that only exist in the context of the story, namely, their own history. Hermoine is aware of the events of her fifth birthday (which never really happened), and this doesn't seem to be causing anyone any existential confusion. The theory of magic is no more or less non-existant than every other thing Hermoine knows that only exists within the context of the story. Harry has a lightning-shaped scar, which doesn't really exist, but he knows about it!<br />This does get tricky when characters should be acting on knowledge that they don't have because the author hasn't made it up yet. This is a real (er...) problem in RPGs, where the characters have existed in a world full of details that some players may know, but others may not. If it's a DM-created world, things can get out of hand really fast. As an example of what I'm talking about, I was in the mood to play a Paladin in one campaign, and there was one organized religion around, but the DM forgot to include in his summation of the setting he gave us that the church had some starkly evil properties (namely, hunting down and killing magic-users). As a result, the character I was trying to play couldn't logicly exist in the setting, and my behavior was constrained by facts I didn't know. Ugh. This is one reason why many campaign worlds aren't all that original. We all know what a [[Standard Fantasy Setting|medieval-fantasy-pastiche setting]] looks like, so we all come in with a common base, and there are fewer surprises hiding in the bushes ready to trip us. Ditto the [[Standard Sci Fi Setting]] <br />[[
** Having given this some thought, I believe I've come up with a construct. Fictional characters are not subject to the laws of thermodynamics. Real people live in a universe with finite entropy, where information is constantly changing form. The information in your life will persist for a length of time, but ultimately it will degrade until the content is no longer recognizable. Fictional characters have near-zero entropy; the information within their life is fixed and unchanging. Thus, a character cannot possess or display information until energy is added to the system (by the author and violating the First Law of Thermodynamics) and they ''actually do''. Moreover, if information that is added that contradicts previous information, ''both are ultimately valid'' within the system due to the complete lack of entropy, violating the third law. This is a complicated way of explaining, basically, of saying that fictional characters are not subject to the same physics as you or I.
** If the character needs to impart information that doesn't exist in the confines of the story, then the author will create the information and it will become known. All unkown information about the universe exists in the author's imagination potentially, to be created and written down as needed.
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** That's what we call [[Sturgeon's Law|Bad Writing.]]
* Why are kids in fiction either cartoonish little brats or- even worse, IMO- genii with ludicrously large
** Kids that aren't brats or... well, a super-genius is usually a brat anyway, just more obnoxious about it- Anyway, the kids that aren't annoying aren't memorable. And many kids are brats or talented, it's just that things tend to be increased in fiction at every level when the writer is trying to make a point of a kid genius (Brats, on the other hand, tend to be ''under-written'' in my experience, except for canon sociopaths).
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