Dewdrops

[knux400]

CW: UNREALITY

Have you ever heard a story? Sure you have. Everyone has. Have you ever imagined that that story might be real? That Superman or Captain Kirk or Harry Potter could be out there, somewhere? News flash- they are. You might even be able to meet them.

Imagine our universe- every planet, every star, every galaxy, even other dimensions- as a dewdrop on a spiderweb. A really, really big spiderweb. Probably infinite, and going in every direction at once somehow. The threads connect our dewdrop to other dewdrops, and those dewdrops to still others. So what's inside the other dewdrops, exactly? The answer is simple- fictional worlds. Books, movies, television shows, vague ideas scrawled on a soggy napkin.

Each story that we create requires a world for it to take place in, even if that world is not necessarily part of the story. In order for Luke Skywalker to embark on his journey to stop the evil Empire and discover his true power, the entire Empire needs to exist, as well as the millions of workers that presumably work there. Each of those workers needs a planet to grow up on, a set of parents, and years' worth of history. It would be impossible to actually describe, but it must exist nonetheless. Every work of fiction has an entire universe for it to take place in, and we only get to see a tiny shred of it through the thread connecting our dewdrops together.

Got all that? Because it's about to get weird. Imagine we could leave our dewdrop, and walk along the thread to visit the neighboring dewdrop. We'd literally be inside someone else's story. Not present for the actual events of the story, of course, but there somewhere in the background, unnoticed. We could sit in a house on Tattooine and watch the Millennium Falcon take off from our window. This is possible through a recent breakthrough in trans-dimensional technology known as a "fiction hopper". With it, we can see all the threads that are connected to our dewdrop and travel along them.

Types of Connections
We can't go everywhere all at once- just like we have to traverse a series of roads to reach a destination, we have to traverse a series of threads to reach a specific dewdrop. There are two basic kinds of connections to different realities: Origin Connections and Relativity Connections.

Origin Connections are formed when someone in one universe writes a story. The home universe of the writer and the universe the story takes place in are connected via an Origin Connection, the strength of which increases based on how much of the world has been written about.

Relativity Connections occur when the content of two realities is nearly identical, with only a few minor differences. Often times there will be large clusters of different realities, each with some events happening differently or different people falling in love.

Restricted Events
When traveling across fictional realities, sometimes travelers may find themselves unable to speak certain phrases, perform certain actions, or enter certain areas. This is due to a protective aura that emanates from "written events". When one comes across a particular event that is important to the story, they will be unable to say or do anything that would alter the way said event is written or described in other realities. It is currently impossible to alter the contents of a book or movie due to the way this aura works.

A clarification
Dewdrops are neither created nor destroyed- only the threads between them. The countless dewdrops that exist right now are all the dewdrops that have ever existed and ever will exist.



(feel free to reply with questions or comments!!!)

[Orange Juice Goose]

what happens when i make a story about someone talking/writing/etc. their own story, and further down into more levels of stories

[knux400]

what happens when i make a story about someone talking/writing/etc. their own story, and further down into more levels of stories

You would simply be creating a connection to a reality with a chain of existing connections.

[King-Clod]

If someone were to reuse a character in two different stories, would those stories' worlds be connected? Even if the world itself is completely different? Or are the connections different from person to person, character to character?

[knux400]

If someone were to reuse a character in two different stories, would those story world's be connected? Even if the world itself is completely different? Or are the connections different from person to person, character to character?

The two worlds would not necessarily be connected directly- the amount of similarities requires to form a Relativity Connection is much more than one person- most Relativity connections are formed between, say, one author's depiction of a universe and a fan's depiction of the same universe.

The two would, however, both be connected to the world the author is in, and thus be indirectly connected by way of two Origin Connections.

[King-Clod]

What about unfinished stories or worlds? Are there multiple dewdrops for each iteration of a story? Like concept art? Or a first draft of a story, and the drastically different final product? Does a story need to be known be anyone other than it's other to have a connection?

[knux400]

What about unfinished stories or worlds? Are there multiple dewdrops for each iteration of a story? Like concept art? Or a first draft of a story, and the drastically different final product? Does a story need to be known be anyone other than it's other to have a connection?

A story simply needs to exist in a person's mind for the connection to form. The connection then grows in strength the more concrete the idea is.

Concepts that change over time are sort of like bolts of plasma- they start out connected to one universe, then flicker over to another one nearby.

[King-Clod]

Is this thread meant to be a thought experiment, or the start of a story of its own?

[knux400]

More of a thought experiment. Or just a spot to dump my weird ideas.

[King-Clod]

That's a shame, it'd make an interesting quest.

Can threads ever really be severed? Let's say someone had a story idea, which created a thread to a story world. If that project was abandoned, scrapped, all copies burned/deleted, would the world remain? If it doesn't, do all the world's spawned from that world (say, a story from the story) disappear as well?

Also, do repetitions of common stories in stories become their own worlds, or does it just become a thread? Say, if a story had the main character read "Little Red Riding Hood," and it was the exact wording as another source.