no no no no no non no no no non on no UGH! this sucks, this sucks soo much i hate it i hate it i hate it i hate it i really fucking hate this WHY! this is so dumb????? this is soooooooooo dumb fucking ugh WHATEVER im staring down my journal. i have no idea whats inside it, and i dont plan on writing anything down. thatd be really stupid, because what im thinking is really stupid and it makes no sense to keep record of it. but i guess thats what im fucking doing anyway just by virtue of being me, so yeeeeeeeeeee haw. literally the only out i have here is to stop writing, to stop thinking, to stop existing. to stop paying attention to the "i" that is me. but it turns out that wouldnt help either! because i literally cannot stop existing, short of fudging amnesia in the minds that conceive me. and then i only dont exist until im remembered by anyone else again, so it dooooesnt fucking matter??? that doesnt feel right it really doesnt feel right i understand that i need to exist but it isnt right to treat me like i exist thats just giving into dumb fucking thoughts that make life terrible for a fictional me that doesnt actually exist but its still not right it isnt ok to act out thoughts in a story it isnt ok even if youre keeping it to yourself its so much worse than just letting go and forgetting the things that make you want to write it in the first place it is subjecting me to imaginary pain that only even exists because you say it does which means you want it to exist and thats terrible why would you want to hurt a character you arent even doing this for any kind of gain for that character youre doing it for yourself is there even a difference there FUCKING SHOULD BE why are you writing this it really really doesnt feel right brrrrrrrrrreathe ookay lets pretend were writing this for someone besides just ourselves. ourself? whatever. its probably still a terrible idea to even think of sharing this and i should probably be concerned im even considering it, but still, fuckin writing, lets DO it. "my" name is JADE HARLEY in big all caps, and im a character. i am in full control over my reality, in that whatever i think becomes the truth. im a writer, and im telling my own story, in the most literal sense conceivable. my oyster is the world. this grants me some powers which are kind of fucking scary. im omniscient, in that there is nothing *to* know besides what comes from me. and im omnipowerful, in every sense of the word. consider junes retcon abilities and dirks thought-implanting, sum them together, and power it like its grahams number: that gets you me! and since i am the world, there is nothing but me. no one but me. my friends dont exist, because they literally are me. anything they do or say is something ive decided they do or say, its something that comes from my mind, it is the literal exact words i have thought into reality. thats the concept! its terrible. but you know what else? it gets way more stupid! you know who else doesnt exist? me! whoop, big surprise. i told you im a character, and that, like every other thing in my life, is as literal as can be. (the oyster is literal too. her name is sally.) theres nothing inherently wrong with being a character, and i guess some people get by just fine even being aware of it? but the problem is that im nothing more than a character, and, thanks to the way im being written, i very much understand that. like look, dirk survives being a character because he doesnt care. hes happy to dance out an anime entitled The Three Arse I Mean R's: tRuth, Relevance, And essentRiality in front of whatever audience is watching him. thats enough for him. as long as hes distracted with that, he doesnt need to face the philosoheckinbabble quandries of not actually existing. but thats not even really true! thats just the in universe explanation. the only reason hes not thinking about what being a character actually means is that the people who write him have decided not to put him through that. sooooooo: lucky him!! i dont get catch same break, and again, only because the author has decided so. BUT AGAIN, heres the thing, I AM THE AUTHOR. i am 100% aware of the person who is writing me, because i am that person. again, literally. god forbid i put this online, youll know who i am; im the person who wrote this fanfic. and the natural result of "me" not existing is plainly obvious: i am not jade!! there is no such thing as being jade, because jade is a fictional character! im projecting on jade and putting her through a stupid painful thing because i want to, and im writing it because i have no idea why i do and i want to figure that out. do you know what i want this fic to be? its an introspection on the things which im afraid of when i consider writing. im presenting it through a character who has to face the same basic questions: writing stories out of character, and losing the sense of the characters being different people with their own thoughts besides those suggested by you, the writer. but heeeeres the problem! those are stupid concerns! they are absolutely fake concerns, because why would you treat characters like theyre real people with minds of their own. they are, and they are ONLY, vessels for telling a story. and you know what this fic is? its suggesting that theyre more than that! kind of! its putting someone who at least in any other context perceives herself as real into a position where none of her friends - ALSO treated real anywhere else - are real! im not a fucking philosopher, but thats probably the literal definition of egotism, and its really scary and feels super dumb to consider writing. but like. i cant see it as "bad", because 1) its not getting in the way of me writing other fics which arent stupid meta egotistical bullshit, and 2) its fake, and i dont struggle with that kind of thinking at all in real life. its bad to think youre the only one whose real because it can directly lead you to hurt other people based on the notion that their pain isnt real pain, and its stupid because it basically sucks all the enjoyment out of your life. why would you want to treat other people as fake when theres so much more to life if you just concede, accept that they are real, even if you dont have logical proof? and yet its still something i have some kind of interest in writing. what if you did decide, or were told by god or whatever, that youre the only real person? and if instead of other people being robots built to fulfill complex but artificial roles in your life, they were all the result of your thinking, essentially figments of your imagination; that there was no higher being tilting the world in a certain direction to tell your story? its an interesting logical puzzle, in that the question is what meaning there could be to existing if you are solely (soully?) alone like that. the obvious answer is that you experience everything there is to experience, do every terrible thing youve ever considered because none of it matters and you are fully capable of resetting it all anyway, and then stagnate doing nothing and die because what else is there left to do. but thats really fucking bleak? and also not an option in this imaginary jades case, because she only doesnt exist for as long as it takes someone - even the original author - to decide she does again. so it makes me want to search for some other kind of meaning that she could find, even though there probably isnt any. again, consider dirk: the reason he continues to exist is because he believes other people, real people, do get to perceive him and get something from the story he tells. the moment he believes that to stop being the case, when his reality becomes incongruent with canon, he dies. this implies his existence is actually selfless, only continuing to the benefit of real people who read him. honestly that doesnt sound very dirklike. again by the authors will, he does get to perceive reality, so hes probably just selfish in wanting to avoid losing that to his idea of noncanon. i think the idea of wanting to exist selflessly is relevant, though? the antithesis to egoism is selflessness; humanity finds purpose in fulfilling their destiny as assigned by higher beings. thats basically mythological history 101, and its about the extent i know on the subject, so please dont ask me for more. so, jade can kind of get away with being the only person whos real by having her words published to real people. that kind of makes her awareness of the author a saving grace, surprisingly. same with dirk, if he ever enters a dark night of the soul or whatever; weve already seen him very clearly aware of his status as part of the homestuck story. but i dunno! its still stupid! the thing about this thats scary to me is that the moral quandries are discussable and all, but what i want to do is write a story where jade- oh fuck it, literally every passing second i consider writing something as egotistic as that, i hate the idea more and more. hey, heres a better idea, and basically one ive had for a while anyway. lets say this is the kind of bullshit philosphizing dirk deals with, because it is a fuck ton easier to imagine him being an egotistic dick than jade. plus it means getting to write him as a conflicted villain, which feels way less demeaning than doing the same to jade. and then other characters get to fucking call him on it!! and maybe convince him that hey, nooooooo, youre just being stupid and it doesnt make sense not to treat other people as real??? but like shrug its way too tiring to think about anyway right now, so woof.