One of the core principles of our setting is that fictional characters are actually coming from alternate realities. Fiction describes another world in the many-worlds theory. Mostly, we've thought about it in one direction, about people coming in. But I now ask a question that somehow I've never really asked in a decade:
Who in our own world is likely to be the subject of a fictional story in another universe? I'd love the forum goers to shout out some names.
I suspect there are three kinds of them. First, the people who are somewhat obviously ta'veren (i.e. protagonists), like George Washington, who led a very unlikely life. He may or may not have fired the first shot in the Seven Years War, but he certainly ordered it. Oh, and he became the first leader of the world's most powerful empire. It's like a heroic myth that just happens to be true; I could see someone "inventing him" as a national myth if he wasn't true.
The next kind is the sort of person who finds themselves in a situation where one might make a movie about them, someone who found themselves at a crossroads of fate and seized the day. People like Stanislav Petrov, without whom you and I would not be alive today, nor anyone we know. Being the man who made the decision not to launch sounds like a great social commentary on the risk of nuclear war, very dramatic, and he also exists. Or perhaps someone made a survival film about going to the Antarctic, and how to get out alive, and named his blorbo Ernest Shackleton.
The third type is going to be people mostly unknown to history. Someone had a brilliant love affair, someone else pulled off the perfect murder. The kind of stuff that shows up in lit fic, just ordinary life that's a little bit extraordinary. I don't expect to find any of those, but Andy Weir in our setting is kind of close.
Any other ideas of who's real life might as well be a story?
Who in our own world is likely to be the subject of a fictional story in another universe? I'd love the forum goers to shout out some names.
I suspect there are three kinds of them. First, the people who are somewhat obviously ta'veren (i.e. protagonists), like George Washington, who led a very unlikely life. He may or may not have fired the first shot in the Seven Years War, but he certainly ordered it. Oh, and he became the first leader of the world's most powerful empire. It's like a heroic myth that just happens to be true; I could see someone "inventing him" as a national myth if he wasn't true.
The next kind is the sort of person who finds themselves in a situation where one might make a movie about them, someone who found themselves at a crossroads of fate and seized the day. People like Stanislav Petrov, without whom you and I would not be alive today, nor anyone we know. Being the man who made the decision not to launch sounds like a great social commentary on the risk of nuclear war, very dramatic, and he also exists. Or perhaps someone made a survival film about going to the Antarctic, and how to get out alive, and named his blorbo Ernest Shackleton.
The third type is going to be people mostly unknown to history. Someone had a brilliant love affair, someone else pulled off the perfect murder. The kind of stuff that shows up in lit fic, just ordinary life that's a little bit extraordinary. I don't expect to find any of those, but Andy Weir in our setting is kind of close.
Any other ideas of who's real life might as well be a story?
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
