Thoughtforms Part 1.1

Everything being real has an interesting side effect; it turns out that some "fictional" characters are in certain ways more real than you or me.

Take Harry Potter for instance. Now, to you of course you're a lot more real; there's a lot more detail in your life. You read, you write, you go to the bathroom properly instead of just fighting trolls in there. But take a thousand rabid Harry Potter fans on the other side of the world. Actually, make that ten thousand; I'm sure there's at least that many, and probably a lot more. That's probably more than all the people you know, and that know you as real. If you're a famous celebrity disregard that, but otherwise it's fair. Now, Harry Potter is a heck of a lot more real to them than you are. They have no conception of your life, and plenty of his. So it would not be unfair to say that he is much more real to them than you are.

You can apply this further; even people who aren't rabid Harry Potter fans are likely to have heard of him, and thus he's still more real to them than you are.

Now, for the flaws in that.

• Reality is not a thing based on how famous you are. I know I exist, and Harry Potter doesn't.

Well, you always know you exist. But if you don't know of someone or something they do not actually exist in your worldsphere; and that's the only one we have, so it might as well be for all reality as applied to us.

• But Harry Potter has no self-awareness!

If we are in some sort of story, then perhaps it just picks some details and leaves the rest of the living to us. I often think that I might be a bit character in some teenager's story, and I wonder if my part has happened yet, and who it's happening to.