Relatively recently I came across a concept that was pretty mindbending to me. For a long time, I've felt somewhat in a minority when it comes to how I feel about fiction and about powerscaling. However, what I didn't know was there was a term for the way I viewed fiction.
There exists two opposite philosophical positions called Fictional Realism and Fictional Anti-Realism. Fictional Realists believe that Fiction essentially has a reality of its own, that is to say, you can state actual true things about fictional entities and they are correct. Fictional Anti-Realists on the other hand believe that fiction does not have any underlying reality and as such you can't state anything that's actually true. A way to illustrate both sides and their point:
Imagine if I asked you "Do vampires drink blood?" Presumably, you'd say yes. When discussing vampires it does seem like we're referring to something that has actual traits that can be identified. That's the Philosophical Realist position. However, let's say I showed you the Count from Sesame Street who is stated to be a "numerical vampire with an unquenchable thirst for numbers." If I asked you if he was a vampire you'd presumably say yes and if I asked you "does the Count drink blood?" you'd presumably say no. Because any individual trait of a vampire can be changed or removed it does seem that "vampire" doesn't refer to any underlying reality with any actual universal traits. That's the Fictional Anti-Realist Position.
I am, I suppose, a Fictional Anti-Realist. However, I wanna say that I am one not because I listened to the philosophical arguments and decided it was correct, but because temperamentally speaking Fictional Anti-Realism was so intuitive to me that for the vast majority of my life I hadn't even considered the opposite perspective or realized it existed. When I consume fiction, it never REALLY leaves my brain that what I'm seeing isn't real. I can enjoy characters for being entertaining or as a vessel to express themes, but I have never been attached to a character like a real person. Thinking of my favorite characters being very sad doesn't make me particularly sad because it feels equally (un)real to imagine them being very happy. I can totally get behind the notion that fiction expresses metaphorical truth, or can be a communication tool to express things about the real world. That's what I like in fiction. But things in fiction that have no reference to real life leave me emotionally distant. In short, if you ask me "Do vampires drink blood" the long form answer I feel is "Vampires don't drink anything because they don't exist. However, ;vampire' is used as a shorthand for a hypothetical monster with some traits of a list of traits, one of which is drinking blood. " which just for ease of communication I shorten to "Yes."
I feel like this explains a lot to me about why people react strangely towards fiction to me as well as their perspective on powerscaling. Let me ask a powerscaling question, can Spider-Man move faster than the speed of sound? The two broad camps of powerscaling thing entirely different on this with one group saying "well yeah, he has feats and scaling faster then sound and way faster than sound" and the other group saying "No, that's totally against his narrative and his usual depictions." And very often people seem to get rather angry ay the other group. My speculation is the people who get angriest on the topic are people who are temperamental Fictional Realists. That is to say, they're people who feel like Spider-Man does genuinely have an actual speed.
If you asked me "Can Spider-Man move faster than the speed of sound?" the question I'm hearing is "If Spider-Man and his exploits were real, based on what he has done, would he be able to move faster than speed of sound?" Well one comic very explicitly depicts Spider-Man moving "two miles" in "five seconds" Were this event to be real this would mean moving over 3,200 meters in five seconds which is in fact faster than sound. " So I would answer yes under the notion that if he were real this would mean Spider-Man moved a distance faster then sound would have. However, I don't have any emotional attachment to the notion because I don't view Spider-Man as actually having a speed. If you ask me "How fast IS Spider-Man really?" it would be akin in my eyes to asking me "What do Unicorns eat?" Unicorns are fictional so they don't eat anything. Spider-Man is fictional so he doesn't actually move at any speed. I can only powerscale under the notion that we're talking about a hypothetical where the characters and what they've done are real in which case it's simply a matter of saying "in order for the things they've done to actually happen, they would have needed this minimum level of power or speed"
It's hard for me to comment on how the Fictional Realist views powerscaling because Fictional Anti-Realism is so immediately intuitive to me. On some level I imagine it must be most intuitive because they must have a sense that the characters have actual genuine capabilities. But on the other hand, I don't know how Fictional Realists account for significant inconsistencies in depiction. For me, it's simply a matter of saying "Well different authors or the same author at different points wants to emphasize or express different things. If we're imagining they're real we take the minimum level it would require for all these things to happen." If you feel like there's an actual answer to how fast Spider-Man is then I don't know how you reconcile the inconsistencies in his speed.
This is also why the idea of R>F Transcendence, another common powerscaling point doesn't make sense to me. The notion is that if a character views another character as fiction that means they are beyond infinitely stronger then them because the later doesn't even exist in comparison. That to me doesn't really make sense. If you're asking who's stronger between two characters, my assumption is again to say "well if these two characters and their stories were both things that really happened, who's would require the highest minimum level of power to do things they are purported to have done?" In other words, they would both be "real" and neither "fictional" for the purposes of the hypothetical. I don't intuitively understand how a character being real gives them an advantage against a fictional opponent. If you ask me who's stronger between me and Superman, I would of course say Superman because if Superman was real he would beat me without trying obviously. But if you ask me who's stronger between me and Superman the fictional character without him being real...I wouldn't understand the question. Superman is fiction so he can't effect me nor I him.
It's weird to me that "nonexistant physiology" aka a character being nonexistent is considered a power that you need to be able to effect nonexistent things specifically in order to hit, yet being real and your opponent fiction is supposed to be a massive advantage for you when to me those seem like identical situations. Maybe those seem different if you are a Fictional Realist but even granting Fictional Realism as granted I don't understand why being Real is somehow "better." To me it would seem to be more akin to being in two separate universes where neither can affect the other.
Anyway I mostly wanted to share this to express on how Fictional Realism or Anti-Realism effects powerscaling as for the longest time I didn't have a term to explain the difference in how I viewed fiction from others.
That's an interesting thing to discuss. Now that I think about it I was never actually too bothered with the "this is all a dream" type of ending, because I already knew, at least in the back of my mind, that what I was seeing was already not real. Like addinng anither level of unrealism doesn't really change how I feel, at most I can think that it's kinda of a lazy plot twist that most of the time doesn't add a lot to the story. Yet for most people this really ruin the whole experience. I was a bit weirded out when one time a series revealed that everything was fiction (it was an attempt at metacommentary) and some people got really mad, like a lot, because the idea that this was fake ruined the entire series for them. Yet I didn't feel that way. If anything, I thought this was the best thing the series ever did. It's very dependent on how we want to view art, I suppose
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd agree. I think for people who are temperamentally Fictional Realists the "it was all a dream" makes them feel like "what was the point of that?" because they want the fiction to be "real" for them. Ironically it being a dream actually forces them to see the fiction as we Fictional Anti-Realists see it normally, that if it doesn't mean anything to real like then it's just wasting time.
DeleteThe it was just a dream trope can be annoying for me but only in so far as anything that seems arbitrary does as it feels like it's just wasting time. It hypothetically can be done well I think if it has a point as it sounds like the example you have in mind did.
This is a pretty interesting discussion. I actually have seen some debaters consider the narrative of a character more so than their feats, such as ClassicManD saying that Saitama should win against Goku, because Goku still does have limits whereas Saitama does not.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I am a Fictional Realist myself, but I can't say for sure, and it's more in the sense that since I care more about Fiction than Non-Fiction, I look into it a lot more and figure out laws and rules of the Fictional world, rather than just saying "It's fiction, it can be whatever the writers decide" like an Anti-Realist... and I mean no offense to Anti-Realists if my tone sounded condescending there.
While I don't normally consider the Narrative when analyzing characters, I do consider it for characters that use Toon Force, because Toon Force as an ability is determined by comedy rather than consistency, and a character can be portrayed as incredibly weak or strong depending on the joke.
If you ask me "Do vampires drink blood?" I would say, "Generally yes, as we see drinking blood as a trait some of the most recognizable vampires have, however it is possible to have a Vampire that doesn't drink blood."
If you ask me "Is Spider-Man faster than sound?" I would say "Yes, he does have definitive feats that showcase speeds higher than the speed of sound."
If you ask me "What do Unicorns Eat?" I would say "Mostly likely Grass and/or Hay, considering they are very similar to horses, who do eat that stuff."
If you ask me "Can Spongebob destroy a Galaxy?" I would say "No, while there are Galaxy level feats within the series, these are not taken seriously by the narrative of the show or episode, and therefore I don't think should be taken seriously by the narrative."
I understand how and why that is not a popular opinion, and I don't really get angry at the people who do say otherwise though. I don't agree that the Flying Dutchman would stomp the Darkstalkers Verse, but I still do love the idea because I love Dutchy as a character, and my relationship with ThorGundersen isn't affected in the slightest, just because of differing opinions like that.
Moving on to Reality and Fiction transcendence, I can see where the idea comes from, in the sense that fictional characters can't do anything to harm a real person, it implies they would be far stronger than them, any they could still affect them by creation something fictional themselves, though I don't think it really matters in a debate, since usually both the fictional reality and real reality would have separate laws of physics.
If you were to ask me "Can you beat Superman?" I would say "No, Superman has shown feats far above anything I can do."
Similarly, if you were to ask me "Who would win between the Second Coming in the Fictional World and Alan from the Real World?" (Both of which from Animator VS Animation BTW) I would say "The Second Coming, because Alan doesn't have feats anywhere near as impressive as the Second Coming."
Yeah I do think at some point it does just become a question of axioms where there isn't really a correct answer. If you ask me to scale a toonforce user the way I approach the question is "alright assuming the character and the events they are depicted as going through happened in reality, how strong/fast would they have to be at minimum to perform them. " I'm really no expert at all in Spongebob scaling but from my limited understanding I would use Spongebob's feats under the notion that if Spongebob was real he would have to be x strong to perform the feats he does. I recognize this however as an axiomatic difference in what question we're answering. I don't think of Spongebob having any actual level of power or speed because he's not real. If you are instead trying to understand the "reality" of Spongebob and his physical capabilities... I mean I don't understand necessarily as a Fictional Anti-Realist but I recognize it's a different question you're trying to answer. Answer different questions, even similar questions, and you can get very different answers.
DeleteI do think it's a pretty interesting question and ideally I'd like if powerscalers could be more explicit in their assumptions and what exactly they are trying to answer when powerscaling. I have absolutely nothing against Fictional Realists in or out of powerscaling. Likewise, I have nothing against people who scale differently to me. All I really ask of people is that they are consistent in their thinking and maybe that they are explicit about their rules. On a broadscale level I think Fictional Realists are good at getting people invested in powerscaling and Fictional Anti-Realists are good at reminding people that disagreement can be friendly and non-toxic.