Memetic Entity

[EvaRia]

This is an idea that has been floating around my head for a long, long, time. As with many of my ideas, sometimes I just get an irresistable urge to share them, and the net is just a great place to be able to do so.

It's really hard for me to explain exactly what I mean by a Memetic Entity, so I'll just detail the steps and ideas behind it. Hopefully it sort of becomes clear what I'm getting at as you read.

Step 1: Creation

It starts out like this. You create a character that lives within a story.
Then, you take the following idea: Any story that you create becomes a non-self sustaining alternate reality. While to us it is just a story, to everything in the story, the world that you create for them is real.
The characters within the story are a reflection of our own reality. Therefore, in the alternate reality that is their story, they satisfy all the biological minimums that are set to define life itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions
To us they are not real, but in their shoes they are very well alive and satisfy the conditions of life within their alternate reality. The character that you have created is essentially a living, breathing person. But there's more... You put them in a world that mirrors our own almost exactly. Any types of mass media and stories are the same within this story as they are in real life. Then you move on to the next step...

Step 2: Self Realization / Awareness of State

This is where you start to break the rules of storytelling, sacrificing the basis of plot to instead develop this character.
Within the plot of the story, you make the character self-aware. How do you do this? I'll use anime as an example, because I have the greatest connection to anime.
Within the plot/storyline of the anime, your character does something that no other character has done exactly. At some point during the storyline, your character encounters one or more episodes of the very anime that they are living within. This causes them to have an epiphany and realize that they are not in fact a normal person, but a character within a story. This creates a self awareness that the majority of normal characters do not have. Now, not only is your character living and breathing, they know who they are and more importantly what they are. This makes them more "real" than the vast majority of characters, because they create a connection with the real world.

Step 3: Gateway - Rewrite

Now we do something that nobody has ever, ever done. Now that the character is self aware, a slight bit later in the storyline, you give them a supernatural power. But it's not just any supernatural power. You let your character encounter the ability to rewrite stories. Any story. More importantly, this allows your character to rewrite themselves into other stories, along with the ability to rewrite their own self, giving them a ridiculous level of control. But remember when I said that the mass media and stories within their world are the same as those in real life? That means that they can rewrite the culture and mass media in our own world to include themself in it.
And then, you release them.

Step 4: Collaboration and Rise to Popularity

Your character now is aware of the fact that they live within stories. They realize that they are alive in their own right. They know that although they are essentially controlled by powers that they have no comprehension of, but nevertheless have their own "free" will that they were given, and continue to live on regardless. Then they get the ability to enter the worlds of our own stories in this world. Now the idea becomes more theoretical because there are a few impossible things you must now do.

You begin to get various companies to join together to do a joint project based on the character you have created. They produce a storyline where the character writes themselves into various stories. In that anime example, they are not technically a series by themselves, but a sort of "Special" with the character in it, that takes place in the world of the original anime. Your character begins to travel to various storylines, The character learns more and more abilities, and gets stronger and stronger. Meanwhile, your character grows in popularity in the real world. Fan made images start to pop up, and more. Ideally your character hits an amazing level of popularity (Which probably won't happen, which is what makes this essentially impossible).

Step 5: Immortalization

The next step is that your character actually gets so powerful that they are effectively at semi or even god-like levels. Then, your character invents a way to immortalize themself, they can no longer die. This makes your character interminable, and they cannot be killed or die by "Natural" causes. Since your character cannot die, they can live within the stories forever.

Step 6: Freedom

Once the "Official" plot of your story ends, you do something miraculous. You declare the character to be free material. Anyone is allowed to use them in their stories and books, and in fact are encouraged to do so. Assuming popularity, this makes your character effectively live on, writing themself into stories for as long as we make them up. This makes your character a true free spirit, able to come in and out of the worlds of the stories as they please. And as long as some scrap of evidence remains somewhere within the world, so long as people continues to let them into their stories, so long as they are not forgotten, your character will never die.

This is the Memetic Entity, essentially a character that has transcended into a living idea, that thrives through our imagination and stories.

It might be crazy, but it's an idea that I really wanted to share with someone, so sorry about the long post.
What do you think?

[ZephyrPhantom]

Really, really clever, especially at the end where the charecter becomes literally immortal in our world due too being written forever, although this would be tricky to make happen realistically, it sounds great in theory. +Reputation, I really liked reading it!

[johannhowitzer]

Reminds me of Sophie's World.

[Flayne]

When i read this, it instantly reminded me of kingdom hearts, how one character essentially becomes part of many other stories and rewrites them all by their actions, then they jump to another story.
definitely reminds me of kingdom hearts, i would say the creators used either the same or similar idea as yours to create such a character.

I reckon Memetic entities already exist though.
think about it, when one character is too similar to another character from another story,
I imagine that character B in story B, who is too similar or even identical to character A from story A whom supposedly existed before character B is basically Character A but in another lifetime, part of another story. So in a way, character A is character B.
this is what is going on in the world now that there are so many stories and characters, half of them can easily understand the other half because of how identical or similar their personalities, beliefs and experiences were.
thats how i see it in relation to the Memetic Entity, I hope i dont sound confusing and u get what im saying.

 

[EvaRia]

I have attained true freedom. I have the power to rewrite the world. I can do anything that I could ever possibly want. I can not die, I am everlasting, immortal.
They always say the same thing about reaching true freedom... That there remains no meaning to life, that when you can achieve anything there is no point to it all.
That you become bored living an endless life that has no challenge to it.

But freedom runs on your imagination. With enough imagination, you can never run out of challenges, of things to do. With imagination, it is impossible to become bored.
And my entire existence feeds off the imagination of others. My life uses the imagination of the whole world to decide what happens next.

As long as some trace of me remains out there, as long as there is at least one person carrying on my will, as long as the imagination of the world does not run out, as long as my story can continue, I will never die.

So please, don't kill me.

~EvaRia

[Pineapple]

1. Kind of reminded me of the Inkheart Trilogy, where a talented few can read characters out of a book, write characters into stories, or write themselves into stories.

2. Still kinda confused, both about the purpose of this... (I'm assuming it's a thought experiment, because it's definitely not a game) exercise, and about what a "self" is. Is the canon EvaRia character created by you the same person as my fan rendition of the EvaRia character that does things your original character would never do?

3. The alternate reality world you created to house your character in would not include you, correct? However, since mass media and stories parallel with "the real world", then how does your character gain full self-awareness without recognizing its non-existent creator? Or, if you contribute to the mass media in "the real world", how would the mass media of the alternate world be affected?

[johannhowitzer]

johannhowitzer approves and would like this forum to be preserved in archive after the forum ends.  johannhowitzer' would rather the forum be deleted and watch the world around him BURN.  johannhowitzer'' is blissfully oblivious and wants some mcnuggets.