Implications of the existence of reality-fiction and fiction-fiction in a verse

[Charlys99]

Hi, I stumbled upon this wiki and am loving it so far, but I'm confused how tiers work when dealing with verse containing 4th wall breaking characters.

Fictional characters cannot interact with our world, only a fictional representation of the real world since they are just bits of data and/or images on our screen/paper. Therefore if a godly character see through his fictional reality and interact with what looks like our world, they're really only interacting with reality-fiction.

But that imply that his reality is fiction within fiction. All the dimensions inside are a mere game on a computer and that computer along with the humans using it are themselves a fiction inside our computers, for example. So doesn't that mean anyone without reality-fiction interaction in that verse(let's call it A) is tier 11 since they are lower-dimensional than the normal humans of reality-fiction?

After all, in verse without such interaction(calling it B), there is no superior "real world" reality above. The world all characters of verse B lives in IS "real" (aka reality-fiction); there are no extra layer of reality between them and us unlike in verse A. They are just fiction, not fiction of fiction. The characters of verse A are comparable to characters in a story people from verse B reads.

For example, an author avatar of a normal writer in a 3D pseudo "real world" drawing the characters in a verse be tier 10 and his characters tier 11, but an author avatar character of some kind of omnipotent being existing (in whatever number of dimensions there are in the verse) alongside the rest of the cast wouldn't affect the tiers by itself since that reality is still "real" (no pseudo "real world" above it).

Where did I go wrong with my understanding? Sorry if didn't explain well, all those layers gets confusing haha.

 

[Antvasima]

This is a good question. Azathoth and DarkLK can probably answer it better than myself, if you politely ask them to comment here.

We do have Reality - Fiction Interaction and Composite Hierarchies pages though, but the latter one in particular needs to be significantly expanded.

 

[Charlys99]

How do I do that? Not used with these wikis.

Yeah, I came from the Reality - Fiction Interaction page which led me to asking myself the questions above.

 

[Antvasima]

You can click the links that I provided, and then paste a link to this thread in polite request messages.

 

[Charlys99]

Could you answer it? It seems Azathoth and DarkLK are too busy for me.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, we usually only count characters who in-universe perceive a 4-D universe as fiction as 5-D, as Mister Mxyzptlk does, but for franchises like Umineko, the characters within it can see even 1-A characters as fictions many layers removed, so that will obviously be rated much higher.

In addition, we tend to rate virtual characters, such as Kirito, by their in-universe feats, but generally try to avoid giving real world author avatars excessive ratings.

That said, we do feature an exception with The Writer profile, although I personally think that it is inappropriate.

 

[Charlys99]

Isn't fiction different than simply dimensional layers? Like, being above 3-D, 420-D or whatever-D characters is nothing if those are fictious dimensions.

Imagine a verse A of normal everyday humans. In it, there's a popular comic book series about 2-A characters. Now imagine another verse B that is identical except with that the comic book series has 1-C characters.

Does that mean characters from verse B are far stronger than characters from verse A since their fiction has higher dimensional characters? That doesn't seems right to me.

Likewise, wouldn't a character from A or B's comic books be unquantifiably weaker no matter his tiering in his fictious verse than anyone "real" in A, B or any verse?

 

[Antvasima]

Again, I am the wrong person to ask, but we use Composite Hierarchies to gauge these things, and compare the strength of the characters perceiving the reality structure in question as fiction with the extent of the reality that they exceed, and considering that Grant Morrison and others treat that as perceiving reality like a flat comicbook format, a single dimensional level apparently seemed enough for lower reality verses.

 

[Charlys99]

I think we're not understanding each other.

To summarize my question as much a possible: why do a character's fiction influence his strenght? Where is the connection between the power of imaginated characters and characters that exist for "real"? Like, why does it matter whether someone dreamt about a simple cat or about a super 4-D reality warper?

Could you poke the right people for me, please? I was ignored when I tried.

 

[Antvasima]

There is a major difference between the rules of our actual reality, where these characters have no sentience or substance, and franchises such as Umineko, where they are real, but exceeded so much that they can be manipulated like fiction.

I am afraid that I cannot ask them at the moment. There is a bug that recurrently wipes out my notifications if I make new posts at message walls.

 

[Charlys99]

Oooh, I think I understand now. So some authors don't mean the actual definition of "fiction" when they use the word, instead using it to say "lower dimensional" (as opposed to "imaginated" or "not real")?

I'm going to try poking the correct people again for a confirmation, but I think that answer my question, thanks!


This is quite confusing, however, especially when there's also characters that use the real meaning (like The Writer ?) on the wiki. Perhaps choose a consistant usage and stick to it? (like how if an author use "dimension" to mean "universe", it would get translated to "universe" when writing on this wiki?)

 

[Antvasima]

Well, Umineko treats the difference between each reality-fiction layer as far greater than that between dimensions, but they contain much higher realities than simple 4D universes.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, I will ask Azathoth and DarkLK to comment here.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

This can probably be closed, given how this thread has addressed it.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes. I handled it.