Story-Within-A-Story Standards

[Agnaa]

I recently finished If on a winter's night a traveler. It involves the Reader (you) trying to read various books, being unable to continue due to some various circumstances, and accidentally stumbling upon another even more gripping book when trying to track down the original. So a large part of it involves you reading the text of these stories within this story.

While most of it isn't worthy of discussion for indexing, one of the stories-within-the-story involves a character and an organization capable of erasing most of the universe from existence, and able to recreate it, as well as being immune to the EE of others with the power. How would profiles for this be treated, and could they be made?

A handful of relevant facts:

• The greater narrative doesn't have much notable for indexing. It has an athletic human with martial arts training, and a sage who knows all of the world's stories, but nothing more than that, and just that wouldn't be enough.
• The story that's being read isn't an existent lower realm, like in some other series we index here. It's just a piece of fiction that the protagonist reads with no corresponding realm.
• The story-within-a-story in question is only 9 pages long, Out of the 260-page book, that's 3.5% of the greater novel's content.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[QuasiYuri]

Following

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I recall some case by case guidelines about fiction within fiction works.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Not a staff member so my opinion is probably irrelevant, but I think such profiles should be allowed, even if explained in a note in the end of the profile, noting that the profile in question is fictional even within the universe and that the profile is based purely on the fictional account. If I'm not mistaken there are some profiles around here that come from series where it is very ambiguous, if not outright confirmed that they indeed are, if they are fictional within the universe or not.

 

[Andytrenom]

This is just a case of frame narratives, where the story is presented through in-universe characters narrating it. The stories being narrated is still the main point so profiles should be acceptable

 

[Agnaa]

Okay so the profiles seem acceptable. In that case, how exactly do they function? i.e. how does Reality Equalization apply to them? Would they be in the 10-B or the 11-A range?

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Ovy7]

I'm not an expert on this, but maybe do it like it's done for SAO? Like having a key for the "base reality" and one for the in-story one (ex: 10A (base reality) | 3-A (in the story)).

Just my $0.02.

 

[Agnaa]

@Ovy7 I don't think SAO gives tier 11 for the "base reality" perspective, at least from what I remember of the profiles.

 

[Ovy7]

By "base reality" I meant the normal world, where Kirito (to continue with the SAO example) is just a normal teen playing a video game. From his perspective, the Kirito in SAO, GGO, etc., are all Tier 11, but in the wiki they are reality equalized so they end up at Tier 8 (and whatever else).

 

[Agnaa]

Sure, but as far as I'm aware that just has one key, as SAO is reality equalized. They have keys for being in the games, but they don't have a key where their game-selves are 11-A.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[First_Witch]

Sure, but as far as I'm aware that just has one key, as SAO is reality equalized. They have keys for being in the games, but they don't have a key where their game-selves are 11-A.

But heres the thing, why do the profiles need a "base reality" key in the first place? Thats like adding a 11-a on Azathoth for being a part of a real life book. In my opinion, as long as the verse itself treats fiction within itself as nothing more than fiction than we should treat it as such too, like any other fiction on our site. Its another thing when it is a actual lower reality within the verse

 

[DontTalkDT]

As long as the fiction within the fiction is self-contained you can just treat it like a fiction. So you can just list the universe destroying guys as universe level by the reality equalization principle.

That it is only 9 pages long in the work itself is no problem either. We have characters based on a single comic page in a 2415 pages long comic series.

 

[Agnaa]

Ahh okay, that all makes sense, thanks for the input everyone.