Another Fic
Jun. 25th, 2006 01:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddogBackstory behind this:
Around Friday, I wrote a short fic over my lunch break that parodied the current state of Subreality. Writers in the multiverse were fighting over what Subreality was, often falling back to a box metaphor and writing long and detailed stories that were basically a version of themselves getting on a soapbox and making a statement. The original, Broken Rules, did have a point, but some of the follow-ups were flakey, too direct-to-the-point and dull.
What I came up with was kinda a very odd tongue in cheek piece about two fictives (characters from fiction, fan or otherwise) coming up with complex ideas of what the box really was. It's personally bothered me that the focus is always "Writers, writers WRITERS!", so I ended up using characters, the "common people" in Subreality, to make my point. In this context, it should be clear that I was mocking these soapbox fics.
This fic may or may not have backfired, as the people it's aimed at actually LIKED it. This confirms everyone's ideas that the discussions about novels in high school English class were bullcrap and probably nothing like what the author meant. Meh.
Now, with that in mind, here's the story:
You’re Interrogating This Box From The Wrong Perspective!
A Short Bout of Stupidity by Teddog
The shrinking population of Subreality had some unusual side effects on its existential fabric. Nobody could have had anticipated these quirks, nor could scientists predict the effect that they had on the world as a whole.
One of these changes was that increase in empty space now meant that sound carried. A lot. One writer complaining about hyperactive fangirls invading his or her fandom could be heard clear across town by another writer, hopefully not one of the fangirls in question. The pipeline for gossip had been opened wide, but it came with the cost; certain sections of the population who should remain in the dark suddenly weren’t.
Rick Smith was a fictive and a member of one of these uninformed groups. In the modern fanfic age of ego stroking, fictives often got lost in the shuffle. They weren’t writers, so they lacked a sense of power over the creative elements. They weren’t muses either and lacked the blinding amounts of pure inspiration that brought on random adventures through the countryside. Some had the luck of being avatars and original characters, a chance that allowed a writer to have a secondary outlet when the writer’s physical form was preoccupied. Compared to all these, Rick was actually what passed for normal in this world, despite his bizarre background as a pirate broadcaster trapped in space.
The somewhat hard-on-his-luck geek sat at an empty table in the Take The Plot Concept Too Seriously Club, scribbling down some notes with a pencil. Looking over his shoulder was an auburn haired woman who was taking a keen interest in what Rick was writing.
“So, how long until the SCPD arrests you for carelessly wielding a weapon?” The woman asked with a smirk.
Surprised, Rick’s hand jolted, snapping the pencil lead. Holding it up to examine the damage, it was clear to Rick that the point had broken clear off. The geek tossed out a sigh and looked up at the woman. “Great! You know, Nan-Cy, if I wanted to sharpen this thing, I have to go back home. Real pencil sharpeners don’t work with pencils from fictional worlds.”
Nan-Cy ruffled Rick’s salt and pepper hair. “I know, but you know that a fictional writing utensil and a real one look exactly the same unless you test them out. It’s like toy guns, in a way.” The woman slid her tall frame into the seat across from Rick, not wanting the man to look sad and pathetic sitting on his own. “Can’t you just imagine a fictive smuggling in a pencil from their world and sticking it out of their front pocket in a vague attempt to look cool and
tough?”
The notes on the paper were almost complete and Rick picked them up to read them over, keeping one eye on Nan-Cy. “It sounds like something you would do.”
“Eh. I don’t need a weapon to look cool.” She leaned against table. “So, what were you scribbling?”
Rick quickly flipped over the paper to show Nan-Cy, revealing a series of mathematical calculations. He flipped it back before she had a chance to take it all in. “Stuff. Have you heard the writers lately?”
Rubbing the side of her head, the woman groaned. “Ugh. I would like to *not* hear the writers for once. It’s all this complaining about boxes. You’d think that the so-called educated ones would notice by now that the world’s a sphere.” She paused for a moment, and then corrected herself. “Barring Discworld, Slayers, Halo and what was the one the Lord of the Rings fans liked to laugh at?”
“Ringworld?”
“Yeah, that one. But I have yet to discover a world that’s a box. It’s sure not this one.”
The geek nodded in agreement. “Yes, I think that the idea of Subreality being a cube is off the mark by a dimension.”
There was an awkward pause for a moment. Nance had known Rick to come up with complex scientific theories about fictives and their behavior, probably as a way for the physicist side of his brain to justify being a fictional character. These ideas had yet to break over to Subreality on a whole, though.
Taking the pause as an invitation to explain, Rick cleared his throat and began translating his notes into plain English. “Subreality is not a cube and I think this idea came about from the writers looking at the box from the wrong perspective. Rather, I personally believe that Subreality is a tesseract.”
This theory was acknowledged by Nan-Cy with a sharp slap to her forehead.
“You always have to make things more complicated, don’t you?” she complained in a grumble as she rested her head against the table. “I’m going to have this headache for weeks.”
“Haven’t you given the idea some thought, though?” Rick asked with a confused tone in his voice.
“It’s crossed my mind to compare Subreality to Escher’s Impossible Box, but that seemed almost stereotypical.” Nan-Cy lifted her head back up again, starting to crave some advil. “Think of it as a way to explain that things are not always what they appear to be, depending on how you look at it.”
“Perspective again?”
“Exactly.”
---
Disclaimer:
Subreality is Kielle’s.
TTPCTS Club is Bodger’s.
Rick and Nan-Cy used to belong to TVOntario/Ontario Educational Communications Authority, but probably got returned to their creators Mark Askwith, Rick Green and Daniel Richler. They’re better off with their fathers, anyway.
The title is a Fandom Wank reference.
The stupidity in this fic is mine alone, except for the idea of keeping a toy gun on your person to look tough. That came from an idiot on the subway.
Around Friday, I wrote a short fic over my lunch break that parodied the current state of Subreality. Writers in the multiverse were fighting over what Subreality was, often falling back to a box metaphor and writing long and detailed stories that were basically a version of themselves getting on a soapbox and making a statement. The original, Broken Rules, did have a point, but some of the follow-ups were flakey, too direct-to-the-point and dull.
What I came up with was kinda a very odd tongue in cheek piece about two fictives (characters from fiction, fan or otherwise) coming up with complex ideas of what the box really was. It's personally bothered me that the focus is always "Writers, writers WRITERS!", so I ended up using characters, the "common people" in Subreality, to make my point. In this context, it should be clear that I was mocking these soapbox fics.
This fic may or may not have backfired, as the people it's aimed at actually LIKED it. This confirms everyone's ideas that the discussions about novels in high school English class were bullcrap and probably nothing like what the author meant. Meh.
Now, with that in mind, here's the story:
You’re Interrogating This Box From The Wrong Perspective!
A Short Bout of Stupidity by Teddog
The shrinking population of Subreality had some unusual side effects on its existential fabric. Nobody could have had anticipated these quirks, nor could scientists predict the effect that they had on the world as a whole.
One of these changes was that increase in empty space now meant that sound carried. A lot. One writer complaining about hyperactive fangirls invading his or her fandom could be heard clear across town by another writer, hopefully not one of the fangirls in question. The pipeline for gossip had been opened wide, but it came with the cost; certain sections of the population who should remain in the dark suddenly weren’t.
Rick Smith was a fictive and a member of one of these uninformed groups. In the modern fanfic age of ego stroking, fictives often got lost in the shuffle. They weren’t writers, so they lacked a sense of power over the creative elements. They weren’t muses either and lacked the blinding amounts of pure inspiration that brought on random adventures through the countryside. Some had the luck of being avatars and original characters, a chance that allowed a writer to have a secondary outlet when the writer’s physical form was preoccupied. Compared to all these, Rick was actually what passed for normal in this world, despite his bizarre background as a pirate broadcaster trapped in space.
The somewhat hard-on-his-luck geek sat at an empty table in the Take The Plot Concept Too Seriously Club, scribbling down some notes with a pencil. Looking over his shoulder was an auburn haired woman who was taking a keen interest in what Rick was writing.
“So, how long until the SCPD arrests you for carelessly wielding a weapon?” The woman asked with a smirk.
Surprised, Rick’s hand jolted, snapping the pencil lead. Holding it up to examine the damage, it was clear to Rick that the point had broken clear off. The geek tossed out a sigh and looked up at the woman. “Great! You know, Nan-Cy, if I wanted to sharpen this thing, I have to go back home. Real pencil sharpeners don’t work with pencils from fictional worlds.”
Nan-Cy ruffled Rick’s salt and pepper hair. “I know, but you know that a fictional writing utensil and a real one look exactly the same unless you test them out. It’s like toy guns, in a way.” The woman slid her tall frame into the seat across from Rick, not wanting the man to look sad and pathetic sitting on his own. “Can’t you just imagine a fictive smuggling in a pencil from their world and sticking it out of their front pocket in a vague attempt to look cool and
tough?”
The notes on the paper were almost complete and Rick picked them up to read them over, keeping one eye on Nan-Cy. “It sounds like something you would do.”
“Eh. I don’t need a weapon to look cool.” She leaned against table. “So, what were you scribbling?”
Rick quickly flipped over the paper to show Nan-Cy, revealing a series of mathematical calculations. He flipped it back before she had a chance to take it all in. “Stuff. Have you heard the writers lately?”
Rubbing the side of her head, the woman groaned. “Ugh. I would like to *not* hear the writers for once. It’s all this complaining about boxes. You’d think that the so-called educated ones would notice by now that the world’s a sphere.” She paused for a moment, and then corrected herself. “Barring Discworld, Slayers, Halo and what was the one the Lord of the Rings fans liked to laugh at?”
“Ringworld?”
“Yeah, that one. But I have yet to discover a world that’s a box. It’s sure not this one.”
The geek nodded in agreement. “Yes, I think that the idea of Subreality being a cube is off the mark by a dimension.”
There was an awkward pause for a moment. Nance had known Rick to come up with complex scientific theories about fictives and their behavior, probably as a way for the physicist side of his brain to justify being a fictional character. These ideas had yet to break over to Subreality on a whole, though.
Taking the pause as an invitation to explain, Rick cleared his throat and began translating his notes into plain English. “Subreality is not a cube and I think this idea came about from the writers looking at the box from the wrong perspective. Rather, I personally believe that Subreality is a tesseract.”
This theory was acknowledged by Nan-Cy with a sharp slap to her forehead.
“You always have to make things more complicated, don’t you?” she complained in a grumble as she rested her head against the table. “I’m going to have this headache for weeks.”
“Haven’t you given the idea some thought, though?” Rick asked with a confused tone in his voice.
“It’s crossed my mind to compare Subreality to Escher’s Impossible Box, but that seemed almost stereotypical.” Nan-Cy lifted her head back up again, starting to crave some advil. “Think of it as a way to explain that things are not always what they appear to be, depending on how you look at it.”
“Perspective again?”
“Exactly.”
---
Disclaimer:
Subreality is Kielle’s.
TTPCTS Club is Bodger’s.
Rick and Nan-Cy used to belong to TVOntario/Ontario Educational Communications Authority, but probably got returned to their creators Mark Askwith, Rick Green and Daniel Richler. They’re better off with their fathers, anyway.
The title is a Fandom Wank reference.
The stupidity in this fic is mine alone, except for the idea of keeping a toy gun on your person to look tough. That came from an idiot on the subway.
