Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33539696-20171104005058

Okay, I'm lost here. I posted this a couple days ago, and it was deleted for not being creepy. I have since read several pastas that I found touching, rather than creepy, and have come to the conclusion that creepiness is in the eye of the beholder.

I posted this pasta after an earlier version of it was lauded by another commenter on a message thread on a webcomic. About a month after I wrote it, and on finding and exploring this 'site a bit, I decided to see if others would enjoy it as well.

So I must ask you, does the concept that some day, between heartbeats, the universe might stop and not restart, disturb you?

A copy of my pasta, as posted. I've tried to recall the edits I came back and made after posting it. I was certain I'd fixed a homophone substitution after posting...but I'm not finding it now...

The side character.

Have you ever given much thought to that staple of storytelling that is the side character? The barista who mentions something in passing that gives the hero that desperately needed clue? The jerk in traffic who cuts off the hero, causing him to turn down an Avenue of Adventure he'd otherwise never undertake?

You haven't? You're not alone. Few do. But you should.

Their stories are rarely interesting to anyone but themselves. I should know, I'm a side character. So are you. And just who is The Hero of our story? Or The Villain? I haven't the slightest clue. Maybe one of them is the editor of this very message board. Or maybe he's merely another participant, quietly gleaning for clues to resolve the Great Quest.

(It needn't be an earth shattering Great Quest. We could be in a romance novel for all I know. Maybe we're background characters in a web comic.) But I'm fairly certain that our story, that is the heroes story, is taking quite a long time to write. The evidence is all around us. In the breakneck pace of development and the limited characterizations, almost caricatures, of our respective lives.

As I said before, we’re the side characters. We’re not fleshed out enough for our stories to be unique, or even all that coherent, but since you only see us within the story for a few minutes every decade or so (of real time, that is), you don’t notice.

That’s why technology is advancing so fast. In the Real World(r), the Pentium 4 was the best you could get for over a decade, and CD’s didn’t have a popularity shelf-life of only around three decades before the iPod started their death spiral.

But since we’re in Story Time, we get new toys every few months, sometimes weeks, rather than the years it takes R&D to develop them Out There.

Now, aren’t you happier knowing you’re merely Make Believe, and the last year of your life took a decade of the authors to write? An author who isn’t all that young, anymore?

An author who is maybe getting a little bored with this project, and probably hasn’t lined up anyone to continue telling the story when he or she dies or quits? 