Fictional characters are, by their very definition, not ‘real’ in the traditional sense. However, depending on your point of view, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean much in the grand scheme of things. After all, they clearly have a voice, sometimes a physical appearance, care about their loved ones and are sometimes even aware of their status as fictional. Where these characters exist is a point of some contention, however. 

There are three popular ways of interpreting the life (and death) of the fictional. The first and most common is the textual. A character exists between the pages of the work that originally envisioned it, and beyond the words printed on those pages, is merely a collection of descriptions and speech patterns, repeated by the author. However, this view brings with it some issues. 

When a story ends and the author writes a new one with the same protagonist, is it the same protagonist, or a different one? The author has moved on somewhat with their life, their vocabulary has maybe increased, as has their mastery of prose. “Of course,” someone might say, “it is the same character. Created by the same person, put on the page by the same person, this is the same characters and their actions are,” (as they say), “canon.” But then, what of stories of the same character that are published by the same publisher and approved of by the same author? Or when an author writes part of a book only to have it finished by someone else, does the character stop and start, like the engine of a mishandled jalopy trying to painstakingly make its way through the slopes of the Ural mountains, stuttering in and out of existence? Are publishers the ultimate arbiters of the life of a fictional character, then? Obviously, it must be concluded, characters exist beyond the pages they were born on. 

The second view is exactly this. Characters exist within established canon. The characters from your favourite film or series exist throughout the spectrum of the various officially approved works. ”Yes,” this view says, “fictional characters exist on every officially published page and in a sort of nebulous possibility-space, depending on who has the rights.” Which is where we run into the next problem. Sometimes, rights run out. The character is yanked this way and that, and their very existence becomes a muddled soup of actors and writers, all of whom are interpreting these characters differently and, depending on who you ask, all of them are wrong.

Which is, of course, why the only correct conclusion is that fictional characters simply exist. They can talk, because when you read the page some people can hear them. They can act, because their actions have real impacts on the emotions of the people reading and sometimes even writing them. They are, in a sense, real. Sure, they might not be able to pick up the book you’re reading and smack you over the head with it (much as many authors sometimes like to daydream otherwise) but they have a real tangible impact, and, and this is the important bit, even when they exist in someone’s head. 

A character is no more or less real when it is imagined differently from the written text, it is just as strong when imagined by an octogenarian who desperately wants to be whisked away by a man in a blue box or a teenage girl who wants her favourite superhero to drop a forklift truck on Mister Henderson from second grade Maths. Characters, it has to be clear to us, exist, and all we can do is borrow them. Sometimes they will simply hang out in our heads and act out scenes we’d like to see, and sometimes we wrestle them onto a page and have them repeat those lines for everyone to see. 

All this said, the concept of fan-fiction is rubbish. All fiction is fan-fiction. There is no meaningful difference between an officially published work and one made by a fan after the fact other than chronology, and even that will become muddled by time. As such, fan-fiction occupies a strange place where everything is possible, and characters can change and be who they need to be to tell a certain story, adverse as it is to the work that spawned them. There is, quite possibly, no limit to the human imagination or, for that matter, for its ability to bring two characters together and ship them off holding hands forever after. 

In that very moment, Eliza had just discovered that it was very possible for people to have some very interesting interpretations about why she was who she was and was trying to wrestle with the possibility that, while they were wrong about her, they might not be wrong in general, and whether or not their truth was more or less important than her own. 

It was, she had decided, not. Not in the case of xXDem0nslayrXx, who had written quite a piece about how easily Eliza had been defeated, not by Daniel, but by himself, after he had, ridiculously, been killed in a traffic accident and fought his way to her castle. There, he’d killed her easily and then conquered the rest of the world for laughs. It was… insulting, and she was already typing a comment below it. At first she’d resisted the call of the comment section, but after a while she’d seen so many takes about her, what she was and could do, that she just had to say something. 

Her first few comments had been just as riddled with spelling- and grammar-flaws as the works she was commenting on -- typing wasn’t something she was exactly used to -- but as the hours ticked on, she found it easier and easier to have her fingers dance over the keys. First two, trying to find every letter, then four, until she looked up a guide online about how to type faster. Her fingers now rattled over the keyboard as she left an angry comment on chapter two hundred and fourteen of a story that wasn’t very good but that she couldn’t stop reading for some reason. 

A part of it was that it was bad, but in an engaging way, that made her want to see what the author did wrong next. Another was that she was simply engaged. She knew something about this. She’d lived it, after all. And her work was less than stimulating, day to day. While it was true that calling people up and ramming her personality through the phone until the person on the other end of the line promised to renew their subscription was something she wasn’t good at -- and she enjoyed being good at things -- but it rubbed her the wrong way and she wasn’t actually getting anything done. 

This, though… this felt like something she could maybe steer in the right direction. So she finished off another comment with a flourish of exclamation marks to prove her point, hit send, and then clicked ‘next chapter’ and continued. Her eyes were beginning to strain a bit, but it felt silly to stop now. Besides, it was a Sunday tomorrow, she didn’t have to work, so she could afford to stay up a bit longer, even if Daniel had gone to bed already. He’d taken the bed, so he wouldn’t be bothered by the monitor’s light shining through the living room like a lighthouse beacon. 

Behind her, Daniel cleared his throat, and Eliza, the Demon Dragon Queen, let out an uncharacteristic squeak and nearly fell off her chair. She turned around with an indignant huff, only to be confronted by Daniel, who was trying very hard not to laugh, holding a steaming cup of morning. Light creeped in through the windows. 

“Get up,” Daniel said softly. It wasn’t quite a command, but Eliza felt compelled to do as she was told anyway. Still, she wasn’t going to just do it cause he told her so. That would be giving in. 

“This is important, Daniel. There might still be something important here. If we miss it, I wouldn’t forgive myself, and neither would y--”

“I’m not telling you to stop, Eliza. I’m telling you to get some rest.” Eliza blinked a few times. She had been up for some twenty-four hours. Getting some rest would be good. She sighed in resignation and stood up, her entire body -- in this case, mostly her head, eyes and joints -- protested at this sudden change of position, and she groaned softly. 

“Fine,” she said, took a few steps and threw herself onto the couch. “There. Are you satisfied now?” Daniel looked at her as he sat down in the office chair. She felt oddly… looked at. Not that she felt she had to hide herself or cover herself up, but still somehow vulnerable, when he looked at her with mild concern like that.

“You know, the bed is free now.” He took a sip of the mystery morning hot drink. Eliza pulled the blankets over herself and shrugged. 

“This is fine. What will you be doing?”

“Well, as riveting as your current reading material is,” Daniel said, glancing at the screen, “I think I’ll continue reading through the actual game’s story. I’ve already seen some minor discrepancies between it and my actual life, and from what I’ve read, it’s the fifth installment in the series, so I can’t help but be curious. Are they all about me? Were they based on me or do I and it just coexist? It’s… I’m afraid I don’t understand a lot of it, but I’d still like to find out more. Besides, I don’t have to work for a few days, so I figured I could get some reading in while you rest.” He turned to the screen, and Eliza noticed that he minimized the screen she’d been on, rather than closing it. Good boy. 

“‘Sfine,” Eliza said. “Have fun.” Daniel nodded and, after shooting her another one of those glances that made her feel a little bit like her old self, in a good way, he turned back to the screen. She felt her eyes get heavy and she did the little shuffle on the couch, the little ritual some people do when they know they’ve been comfortable in that spot before, if they can just find the right angle, position, temperature and possibly phase of the moon. It didn’t take her too long to find it, despite her usual discomfort with how big and clunky this body was, and her mind went off to wander while her body took a well-needed rest. 

Sleep was dreamless, and she occasionally drifted in and out of wakefulness. She was sure she saw Daniel glance at her at least once and cover her up with the blanket a bit more. She was going to have to make fun of his soft-heartedness for that later. Maybe. Sure, it would risk the possibility of that never happening again… and maybe that risk wasn’t worth it. Someone being concerned about her comfort was a nice feeling, she realized as sleep overtook her again. 

Several hours had to have passed when she woke up again. The afternoon sun shone quietly through the little sliver between the curtains -- had those been closed before? -- and she felt her stomach rumbling. She slowly sat up. Daniel wasn’t at the computer anymore, and she did a quick-but-subtle check of the room. She didn’t want to look desperate, in case he was standing behind her or something. But no, a slight rattle from the kitchen indicated where Daniel had been hiding, and she relaxed a bit, wrapping the blankets around her until she was a cocoon of warmth, the cobwebs of sleep still clinging to her mind slightly. This was nice. If she could stay home like this more often, if she wasn’t as tired after work like she usually was, she felt she’d be… happier, which had never really been a concern before. After a little while, Daniel came in with two plates and smiled warmly at her as he offered it to her. 

“How did you--”

“You’d been rustling for a little while. I figured you’d be awake soon, and hungry at that.” Eliza gratefully took the plate and put it on the little coffee table. Eggs. The way she liked them. She might have mentioned it. Once. A few weeks ago. 

“Thank you,” she said softly and tried not to smile or look at him as she had breakfast at three in the afternoon.

Elamimax

They've found a rabbithole, and it goes DEEP

A reminder that this story is practically finished and has over ten chapters that have yet to be released on scribblehub, and that you can already read all of them through my Patreon, and you get a whole bunch of added benefits! On top of that, it keeps my lights on and even lets me eat! Patrons get a ton of benefits, like access to new stories, sometimes weeks or even months in advance, as well as cheaper commission rates, exclusive discord roles, and access to private polls about future projects. 

Regardless, I hope you like this, and I'll see you all soon!