From out there
Aug. 21st, 2019 05:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSomeone on tumblr mentioned the other day the idea
in a truly infinite multiverse everything that can happen does happen, just not necessarily here
therefor there is no fiction, just dispatches from alternity.
(They mentioned this in the context of being very bad for one's mental health and a dead end of an explanatory mechanism. Getting help and treatment way more useful than wondering which universe you secretly belong in.)
GURPS assumes the infinite worlds model, but has some mechanisms built in to the standard assumptions that make it more difficult to get to the really far out places, or the ones with different rules. Like, in GURPS it's perfectly possible for magic to work differently in each universe & have characters move between them, but it's very messy and deoptimises people every time. But still, easy enough to GURPS model up some fictional worlds and take a grand tour.
But I was wondering, if Gate magic, then who would you bring here?
I mean the portal fantasy where we go to visit is very personally satisfying but not a world changer until we get home, assuming we learned something really nifty.
Well if we could just bring them here, instant world changer.
If their stuff worked.
Like some of them would depend on alternate laws of physics, or elements doing things they should not?
And like, if someone from a toon world shows up here and continues to have cartoon laws of physics apply, there's movies about that. But if Xena shows up and Xena physics travel with her then that's somehow weirder? And if Tony Stark shows up and doesn't instantly die of tech fail then we've got some very personalised physics going on, but in stuff he can theoretically build, so would he be able to hand out game changers?
So it would be simplest and safest for people with like martial arts skills to visit... except no, really not, I just realised how many worlds are very very different on how much hitting it takes to kill people. You'd get heroes from out there who just knock someone down and are really upset at the subsequent hospital visit. And assuming they can shrug off bullets and having a really bad day. Last Action Hero style.
If I could borrow people from fiction I'd start with the medical ones.
Which would be the most dangerous by a long chalk, but potentially very rewarding.
... and then I'd need one of the super hackers to get everyone identity papers because otherwise they're just immigrants with interesting delusions, which works out poorly for everyone.
Just about everyone I could borrow would immediately decide they were the protagonist, take charge, and try and get home. Like, the obvious first step for them would be returning home, even when we've got the DVDs and all.
Soooo... borrow someone who knows he's a hologram?
But the tech level and energy supply required to sustain them would be A Lot.
I wouldn't want to bring someone here to be fragile and run out of battery.
... hologram Tony Stark. Like, he'd know he could be a copy, he'd be able to check the local internet to get oriented really fast, and he'd know how to build and repair himself.
... assuming he'd work at all here, he'd be a good start.
And rhen we bring some Star Trek people and work out how their holodecks work so everyone is fully interactive.
I don't know though, once you've got people from fiction you could do fiction sized things. Deciding which things would be Big.
... I'd kind of want to find a nice empty planet and only invite my friends there. Like the castle fantasy but bigger. If you invite a billion people it stops being isolationist, right?
... *sigh*
Fiction worlds seem appealing when their problems seem solvable.
... fiction people would assume our problems are solvable too.
in a truly infinite multiverse everything that can happen does happen, just not necessarily here
therefor there is no fiction, just dispatches from alternity.
(They mentioned this in the context of being very bad for one's mental health and a dead end of an explanatory mechanism. Getting help and treatment way more useful than wondering which universe you secretly belong in.)
GURPS assumes the infinite worlds model, but has some mechanisms built in to the standard assumptions that make it more difficult to get to the really far out places, or the ones with different rules. Like, in GURPS it's perfectly possible for magic to work differently in each universe & have characters move between them, but it's very messy and deoptimises people every time. But still, easy enough to GURPS model up some fictional worlds and take a grand tour.
But I was wondering, if Gate magic, then who would you bring here?
I mean the portal fantasy where we go to visit is very personally satisfying but not a world changer until we get home, assuming we learned something really nifty.
Well if we could just bring them here, instant world changer.
If their stuff worked.
Like some of them would depend on alternate laws of physics, or elements doing things they should not?
And like, if someone from a toon world shows up here and continues to have cartoon laws of physics apply, there's movies about that. But if Xena shows up and Xena physics travel with her then that's somehow weirder? And if Tony Stark shows up and doesn't instantly die of tech fail then we've got some very personalised physics going on, but in stuff he can theoretically build, so would he be able to hand out game changers?
So it would be simplest and safest for people with like martial arts skills to visit... except no, really not, I just realised how many worlds are very very different on how much hitting it takes to kill people. You'd get heroes from out there who just knock someone down and are really upset at the subsequent hospital visit. And assuming they can shrug off bullets and having a really bad day. Last Action Hero style.
If I could borrow people from fiction I'd start with the medical ones.
Which would be the most dangerous by a long chalk, but potentially very rewarding.
... and then I'd need one of the super hackers to get everyone identity papers because otherwise they're just immigrants with interesting delusions, which works out poorly for everyone.
Just about everyone I could borrow would immediately decide they were the protagonist, take charge, and try and get home. Like, the obvious first step for them would be returning home, even when we've got the DVDs and all.
Soooo... borrow someone who knows he's a hologram?
But the tech level and energy supply required to sustain them would be A Lot.
I wouldn't want to bring someone here to be fragile and run out of battery.
... hologram Tony Stark. Like, he'd know he could be a copy, he'd be able to check the local internet to get oriented really fast, and he'd know how to build and repair himself.
... assuming he'd work at all here, he'd be a good start.
And rhen we bring some Star Trek people and work out how their holodecks work so everyone is fully interactive.
I don't know though, once you've got people from fiction you could do fiction sized things. Deciding which things would be Big.
... I'd kind of want to find a nice empty planet and only invite my friends there. Like the castle fantasy but bigger. If you invite a billion people it stops being isolationist, right?
... *sigh*
Fiction worlds seem appealing when their problems seem solvable.
... fiction people would assume our problems are solvable too.