You ever stop and think about what the world would be like if God didn’t know what he was doing? Bad things happen all the time, but is that the fault of the creator or the creation? Your world isn’t perfect by any means, but overall I’d say he didn’t do so badly for his first crack at the universe. Hell, he could have made others for all I know. Maybe he worked out most of the kinks in a prototype. The point is, have you ever just stopped and wondered if God was a massive idiot?
Well I don’t have to wonder, I know. My god has severe mental defects. My god is a lazy 12-year-old.
My name is Billy, and I’m a fictional character. Nothing more than the product of some sick, deranged child’s imagination. I’m a resident of a world that was never finished.
See, you might have complaints about the world you live in, but at the very least, your god finished it. My world? It exists only as notes, lines of dialogue, outlines. My creator couldn’t be assed to do something with us. The foundation of a world was there, the genesis of a story, but he abandoned us. He grew up beyond our childish fantasy world of y67tuhhtfgvbhnj and started writing dark stories of unrequited love and apocalyptic plagues. And yes, that’s seriously what my world is called. I still have no idea how to pronounce it. My baboon of a creator clearly just smashed his face on the keyboard when it was time to name his setting.
At any rate, that left only us. We had to make our own laws, our own religions, and our own society. We had to create our world because our talentless hack of a god didn’t care to flesh out his fantasy.
So how did I figure all this out, you may ask? Well, like all religious questions, I can’t say that I know anything for certain, but there sure are a lot of clues. For one, five years have passed since my earliest memory and yet I haven’t aged a day beyond 12. That was my first clue that something wasn’t right.
I don’t remember anything. Not even the important events of my life. Oh, I’m aware of the broad strokes of my backstory. I was born in a little hut in the forest, my parents were murdered by some mysterious stranger, and soon after that happened I met a weird little dinosaur in the woods who called himself Rocky. But here’s the thing, I don’t remember actually being around for any of that. Ask me to recall a specific memory, or even a detail about my father, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything.
And no, I don’t just have amnesia. This isn’t an issue specific to me. One day I asked Rocky to recount a single memory he had before he met me. He couldn’t do it. I asked Raven the same thing, and he failed my test as well. I guess their backstories weren’t as important to the plot as mine was.
The reason I don’t have any memory is because five years ago, some stupid middle school kid had an idea for a generic fantasy story about a kid with a sword and his trusty dinosaur companion. I don’t remember my father because I have no father. My “parents” are non-entities, plot devices, motivations for my inevitable heroic acts. I was not born, but willed into existence.
What, is that not enough proof for you? Fine. I have more evidence. My backstory plays out like every horrible fantasy/sci-fi/anime cliché in the book. I am a child with long black hair and inexplicable sword skills. My parents are dead. I have a cute animal sidekick. I live in a shack in the forest. It might be a little arrogant for me to say, but I’m so obviously the protagonist it hurts.
If things happened like they were supposed to, then this story would be finished. There would be a plot, everything would make sense, and I wouldn’t even be aware of the nature of my existence. A villain would appear, I would save the day, there would be a happy ending, and then my consciousness would end. Maybe I’d be revived for a sequel. I doubt it because whoever wrote me is clearly a dumbass and nobody would want to read it. But either way, I would still only be words on a page or a group of ones and zeros (I’m not sure what we were supposed to be. A book? A video game maybe?)
Is all of this making sense to you? Of course not. You probably still have hundreds of questions that I simply cannot answer. I do not know all of the details of my existence. The only thing I know is that I’m a fictional character in an unfinished story. I have some theories I guess. Perhaps he subconsciously kept developing us, unaware that we carried on in the deep recesses of his mind without his influence. Maybe we’re actually AI in a video game. Maybe I’m just crazy and this is reality after all.
But if this is reality, what’s with all the plot holes, the inconsistencies? It was when I noticed the little flaws in the construction of my universe that I lost most of the doubt in my mind. I am 12 years old, and yet I spend the majority of my time navel gazing and contemplating the nature of the universe. You wanna know what most 12-year-old boys think about? Boobs. Lots and lots of boobs. Why am I able to leap into the air and swing my sword like a damn ninja? Why am I a socially functioning human being, despite the fact that I grew up in a forest shack? By regular logic, I should be some sort of Neanderthal. Why is my last name, which is a secret I will carry to the grave, a pop culture reference? And not a pop culture reference to anything I would be familiar with, but a reference to a movie in your world? Why am I aware of your world anyway? How am I talking to you right now?
There are only two suitable explanations. The first is that I’m a rambling lunatic, and the second is that my writer is terrible at his job.
