Most of y’all, I am sure, know of Bob Heinlein’s World as Myth idea; it’s the notion that, among hte countless alternate universes, every story that has ever been told actually exists, and that new worlds are created by storytellers. One of Heinlein’s characters – the polymath Jubal Harshaw – resolves to no longer write anything but light comedies after he learns this, since his composing any decent tragedy or adventure story involves creating people who suffer due to his imagination.
Which brings me to the thread question. What fictional characters, if transported to the same world as their authors and apprised of WaM, would be most likely (or most justified) to punch, kick, or otherwise assault their creators?
Bonus points for explaining why, of course.
And please, nobody say "Me, if I met the Christian God. Okay? This isn’t the Pit and anyway he doesn’t have a nose.
Honor Harrington has a few beefs to settle. I quit reading the series when they started to get really bloated, but Weber really did seem to enjoy torturing her to no end - killed all her friends, blew up all her ships, etc. Eventually I learned not to get too attached to anybody in those books whose name wasn’t on the cover.
Do you mean they’d want to hit their creators because of the Awful Things they put them through? or because of fundamental differences between their creator’s philosophy/lifestyle/point of view and their own?
If the former, Lovecraft’s heroes would form a long line of people after their creator (“Eldritch horror, my eye! Get back here!”)
In the latter case, I think Sherlock Holmes would want to slap some sense into that fairy-believing, gullible creator of his.
Flashman would certainly like to give George MacDonald Fraser a sound thrashing, I think. And not without cause - Elphinstone’s retreat from Afghanistan and the Indian Mutiny alone would merit it. (Hell, the Indian Mutiny was sufficiently horrible that it provoked Flashman to feelings of horrified empathy, compassion, and mercy. That’s pretty bad.)
But old Flashy would only dish it out once Fraser had gotten up there in years. He’s not one for a fair fight, after all.
That’s “Fictional characters who give their creator a pop in the schnozz on a regular basis.”
For characters who’d beat up the author for making their lives miserable:
-Rincewind
-pretty much anyone from “A Song of Ice and Fire”
-possibly Harry Dresden, because Jim Butcher actually admits in Side Jobs that he starts out with “How can I make Harry miserable today?” Harry’s not really the beat-up-your-writer type, but we’ve got an actual written confession in a book here. It’s not like you can discreetly pretend not to notice.
Jean Valjean would probably like to spend a few hours with Victor Hugo, in a dark room, if he ever learned that Hugo was the guy responsible for all the shit he has to waddle through.
You seem to be running low on Cs, so I am shipping you a dozen gross.
ETA: As I think on it, Zeb, Deety, & Jake–the protagonists of the book in which WaM is first mentioned–would all pop Heinlein a good one. The author is implicitly the villain in Number of the Beast. Hilda wouldn’t HIT Bob, but that’s because (a) she’s tiny and (b) she’d simply murder him.
I was going to mention Pearls before Swine, too. But if we’re just talking about characters who’ve gone through Hell, I’ll nominate Turin Turambar. Except of course, he’d accidentally kill Tolkien when he punched him, and then live wracked with guilt over it ever afterwards.
