Quantum variations
Oct. 22nd, 2005 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseJust a thought for the afternoon.
I’ve a tendency to talk in quantum variations of things, to suggest that there are several versions of things running parallel that are all equally valid variations of the same thing but still aren’t the same. It’s a pretty loose theory but a fairly interesting one. The idea that you can plug in all the variables and get a million and one slightly differing end results. I like the idea; it’s fairly wonderful in both its logic and illogic methodology.
And even with the endless possibilities, some are closer to each other than others. In a sense some are a slight variation while others are running on entirely different tracks that will never interconnect because of prior divergence. Like two looping circuits and anywhere along each circuit there will be a variation of a single person who isn’t so much removed from all the others along that line though the jump between tracks is impossible because they are just so completely incompatible. It’d be like trying to install an Athlon on a Pentium board, it just doesn’t fit though you could fit several different Pentium processors into that slot and make them work, though there will also be several others that will fit into the slot but won’t work at all because of the finer details of circuitry.
It’s easier to figure out which make of processor goes in the slot and understand that they’re incompatible than it is to figure out which processor of the same make will actually make the board functional. But you can look it up, search through a list of versions and find out and make it all work.
Take quantum variations of fictional characters even. You can plug several different versions of a character into a slot in your text but they most likely do all have to be of a similar make and format otherwise your text has to reshuffle around them and becomes something different. But if you absolutely don’t want to change the text then you have to limit the range of characters that you can plug in.
I tend to get bogged down in quantum variations of characters when I write. I run several versions parallel and worry about bleed-in. It’s like fitting shapes into a box; you can only pack so many in, in a finite number of ways. But mostly it’s a fairly redundant worry because the versions I keep aren’t really in parallel if they’re on the same track, they tend to be in tandem and the ones that are parallel are enough steps away from each other that I don’t tend to get mixed up over which version goes in which slot. They all stay relatively separate and functional within their own quantum worlds, no matter how far that might be from the canonical point of origin.
So am I trying to justify ‘It’s fiction, I can write what I like!’? Not particularly because within writing what you want to write the way you feel that you should write it, you still have to fit the processing unit into its slot, you still have to make sure that you have the right variation for the story and it’s final, logical outcome.
Though sometimes a healthy amount of strategic projection is fun too; plug character X into scenario Y and speculate on just how dire the fallout would be. But beyond that particular game it’s a matter of fitting the quantum variation into the quantum world. Bespoke engineering, if you’ll forgive what I always feel is a misappropriated term when I use it, unless you’re crafting a world around a character which is something that I’m not entirely sure I could manage. Because where then would you set your defined limits?
Perhaps original fiction would count as crafting a world around a character in some sense of it but even then the processor, the driving force for the scenario, has to fit into the slot and make things work. The same thing works for inserting original characters into already crafted worlds. It must be tempered to fill a vacant slot and if you have to create a slot for them where there is no need of one, they probably weren’t needed in the first place. Original characters can be fitted into pre-made worlds of course must mostly there needs to be a reason why they’re there and normally that’s to act as a cipher to drive things forward, so that the pre-existing characters can carry on forward on their way.
In essence, things either fit or they don’t. The feel of it might not be the easiest thing to describe but it’s definitely there, that sensation of the mind that tells you ‘yes, this fits, this is valid’. It might not be the easiest idea to hold on to in daily life certainly but in cliques and predicted demographics it’s still the same thing: it fits or it doesn’t. Though perhaps there is some leeway because being the central character of your own story, every action and every decision of yours shapes the quantum world that you exist in, not necessarily by huge amounts but by enough to differentiate you from every other quantum variation of the same.
The sun is casting shadows
an afternoon is fading
I ask, but no one knows
the answer to the question
My life is like an island
where does this ocean go?
- Yoko Kanno/Troy “Where does the Ocean go?”
I’ve a tendency to talk in quantum variations of things, to suggest that there are several versions of things running parallel that are all equally valid variations of the same thing but still aren’t the same. It’s a pretty loose theory but a fairly interesting one. The idea that you can plug in all the variables and get a million and one slightly differing end results. I like the idea; it’s fairly wonderful in both its logic and illogic methodology.
And even with the endless possibilities, some are closer to each other than others. In a sense some are a slight variation while others are running on entirely different tracks that will never interconnect because of prior divergence. Like two looping circuits and anywhere along each circuit there will be a variation of a single person who isn’t so much removed from all the others along that line though the jump between tracks is impossible because they are just so completely incompatible. It’d be like trying to install an Athlon on a Pentium board, it just doesn’t fit though you could fit several different Pentium processors into that slot and make them work, though there will also be several others that will fit into the slot but won’t work at all because of the finer details of circuitry.
It’s easier to figure out which make of processor goes in the slot and understand that they’re incompatible than it is to figure out which processor of the same make will actually make the board functional. But you can look it up, search through a list of versions and find out and make it all work.
Take quantum variations of fictional characters even. You can plug several different versions of a character into a slot in your text but they most likely do all have to be of a similar make and format otherwise your text has to reshuffle around them and becomes something different. But if you absolutely don’t want to change the text then you have to limit the range of characters that you can plug in.
I tend to get bogged down in quantum variations of characters when I write. I run several versions parallel and worry about bleed-in. It’s like fitting shapes into a box; you can only pack so many in, in a finite number of ways. But mostly it’s a fairly redundant worry because the versions I keep aren’t really in parallel if they’re on the same track, they tend to be in tandem and the ones that are parallel are enough steps away from each other that I don’t tend to get mixed up over which version goes in which slot. They all stay relatively separate and functional within their own quantum worlds, no matter how far that might be from the canonical point of origin.
So am I trying to justify ‘It’s fiction, I can write what I like!’? Not particularly because within writing what you want to write the way you feel that you should write it, you still have to fit the processing unit into its slot, you still have to make sure that you have the right variation for the story and it’s final, logical outcome.
Though sometimes a healthy amount of strategic projection is fun too; plug character X into scenario Y and speculate on just how dire the fallout would be. But beyond that particular game it’s a matter of fitting the quantum variation into the quantum world. Bespoke engineering, if you’ll forgive what I always feel is a misappropriated term when I use it, unless you’re crafting a world around a character which is something that I’m not entirely sure I could manage. Because where then would you set your defined limits?
Perhaps original fiction would count as crafting a world around a character in some sense of it but even then the processor, the driving force for the scenario, has to fit into the slot and make things work. The same thing works for inserting original characters into already crafted worlds. It must be tempered to fill a vacant slot and if you have to create a slot for them where there is no need of one, they probably weren’t needed in the first place. Original characters can be fitted into pre-made worlds of course must mostly there needs to be a reason why they’re there and normally that’s to act as a cipher to drive things forward, so that the pre-existing characters can carry on forward on their way.
In essence, things either fit or they don’t. The feel of it might not be the easiest thing to describe but it’s definitely there, that sensation of the mind that tells you ‘yes, this fits, this is valid’. It might not be the easiest idea to hold on to in daily life certainly but in cliques and predicted demographics it’s still the same thing: it fits or it doesn’t. Though perhaps there is some leeway because being the central character of your own story, every action and every decision of yours shapes the quantum world that you exist in, not necessarily by huge amounts but by enough to differentiate you from every other quantum variation of the same.
The sun is casting shadows
an afternoon is fading
I ask, but no one knows
the answer to the question
My life is like an island
where does this ocean go?
- Yoko Kanno/Troy “Where does the Ocean go?”
