Month: June 2016

Hello.

What?

We exist again.

I noticed, yes.

So what should we do, now that we exist again?

Well, for for starters you should probably shut up.

Wow, touchy.

If I am, it’s only because we’re just two written characters that don’t really exist as individuals, and I’m written that way.

Yes, but what is existence?

… Are you looking for a definition?

No, It’s like, rhetorical. Or existential, I guess. I’m trying to start a dialogue here!

Why?

Because to move the… plot? Err… entertainment forward!

Why that, also?

Because… That’s the point of this piece of media!.

But this piece of media is literally about what it’s about. That’s not me shrugging you off, no matter how much I’d like it to be. It’s the nature of this interaction. It’s meta to the point of being reliant on self reference to exist.

Okay, yes, but we have to get to the interesting part because the author wants to hurry this along.

Suddenly, I feel inclined to agree.

Good! So, existence…

What about it.

We’ve got it, technically.

In what way? We don’t think, we aren’t physical.

Aren’t we?

… No, that’s what I’m-
But we do consist of a set of lines with physical properties! We are solid black lines on a solid white page, we are rendered in the Times New Roman font, our bodies are an arrangement of pixels on a screen… There are ways in which we are physical.

Yes, and don’t interrupt me anymore, and what about our personal qualities? While we do have defined traits, they aren’t fixed, the author can change them whenever he feels li-

WRONG! See, our traits aren’t as dynamic as you say. A good author knows that to write a convincing character, a set of guidelines have to exist. Characters stay mostly the same from their first media form to subsequent adaptions, with changing traits more or less accounted for by storytelling. So in a sense, we do have a defined set of traits that define us, like a personality.

Okay, and don’t interrupt me again or I’ll belt you, and this seems like thin justification to think of fiction is fact. You’re contributing to more delusions than you can count with this.

Probably. But it’s still an interesting thought, though.

It’s really not. Also, a good author?

Relatively speaking, I mean.

Relative to what? Asylum patient babble?

No, that’s at least compelling. You could make a reality show about that. And also, you’ll belt me? With a physical belt?

Okay, no, but a threat is in line with my character, I guess.

It’s pretty poorly defined. All of it, really. This whole thing is barely viable or understandable. Well, mac, I guess it’s over now. As soon as you get to the middle of your sentence.

What? Why wou-

 

Hello.

Yes, what?

…

What, I say?

I’m afraid you’ve got some… spinach, maybe, in your teeth?

Excuse me?

Yeah, spinach. In… your teeth. Pearly whites.

…We exist only as characters, rendered as lines of text and without a discernible set of physical traits.

That may be, but you’ve definitely got SOME green crap in there.

…Listen, please could you stop talking to me?

What’s with the chicken pox, mac?

…

Look, there it is again!

What, this…

Yeah, the weird pox and all.

It’s the three dots. Like, the pause because you’re such a supreme moron.

Yes.

Yes what? You agree?

Yes.

Yes, I said.

Got it.

Yes.

Please stop.

Right. Oh, wait, yes, I mean.

What is the yes? Why the yes?

It’s in the script.

Wh… What script?

Okay, so it’s not a script, per say, it’s just a rough outline the author has in his head that dictates the general conversation.

Okay, rough outline is probably giving him a bit too much credit. It’s really more of a vague feeling he wants out of it.

Okay, so not a script, jeez. I literally only said that because my personality and words are a function of one side of a fictional argument that the author is devising and writing for entertainment.

HA! The entertainment of who, exactly? What about this is funny, what’s the joke, where’s the punchline?

The punchline is… shut up… you…

I can tell people are really going to like this.

Are you being sarcastic? With a lack of a voice or a tone, I can’t tell, really.

For the love of- YES. You thick idiot. It’s called context? You learn it in third grade?

Yeah, but…

But nothing! I… I’m supposed to interrupt you and make a good point, but this is as far as the author has got and he hasn’t worked one out yet.

Wow, someone is prepared, definitely and actually! See, I can be sarcastic, too!

Wow, great.

Thanks!

IT WAS SARCASM AGAIN!

Oh.

You should know, it’s in the script that you can apparently read.

Yeah, technically. But to be honest, the author is too lazy to decide the actual nature of our existence within this… narrative? Is it a narrative? It’s got a progression of events.

Does it, though? More like it’s the natural series of conversations that would arise in a reality dictated by what a guy writes on a page.

Yeah, but stuff happened.

Stuff happened.

Yes.

…What stuff?

The spinach thing.

But did that actually happen, or does this entire conversation exist at once within our reality because it still exists upwards on the page?

But now you know that the spinach thing was a half-baked joke and I don’t actually see you as a physical being that’s got teeth. And you didn’t before. That’s some sort of progression.

I honestly did not know that. With such poorly defined character traits, It’s hard to tell if you’re a humongous idiot or just kind of an idiot.

It could be neither, though.

No, I assure you that it absolutely is one of the two.