Years ago, I watched an anime called Re:CREATORS. This post may spoil some of its themes, but not its plot.

Anyways, Re:CREATORS is special to me. It was a show in which characters from fiction were brought into reality. Various anime, movies, and games characters came into existence outside their fiction. This was really important – that they came from fiction, rather than from another world, or a world within the fiction or what have you.

In the fiction in which they lived, they had a limited scope of knowledge and experiences. Only that which the author could communicate was what they could experience. One of the characters, Meteora, was a side NPC in an RPG, and she becomes enraptured by our world, where things have such taste and such depth that she couldn’t believe. All these characters see this, and they evolve beyond the bounds of their worlds. Magical Girls realizing what danger their attacks present, villains realizing that they would never take over the world.

I digress, what’s important here is how this show, and my other experiences with media, changed my perception of creation. “Creation,” the act of taking a world that doesn’t exist and presenting it in an interesting and coherent manner. When we piece together some disparate thoughts and a basic premise, and authors put their characters on an adventure wholly written by them.

Well… sort of.

Authors do get final say on what happens in their works, certainly, but it has to make sense. There needs to be a logical through-line to allow the reader to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves into the media. An author needs to abide by this otherwise those consuming the media just won’t believe it. The level of disbelief can vary.

For example* the anime Himouto! Umarchi-chan plays itself off like the titular character, Umaru, is just becoming a lazy little gremlin. The world’s non-magical of course, so she’s not literally a little gremlin-creature, but she does take that form-onscreen. The visual form is a pretty clear hyperbole to depict what that’s like. This is all well and good. It makes sense, though you do have to frame your mind around that logical leap. Several episodes in though, Umaru’s friends don’t recognize her as long as she’s in her hamster-like form. This… I mean I guess you can behave in such a way that people won’t recognize you? It’s a pretty big hyperbole still, but I can make sense of it.

Several more episodes in though, she starts changing her form to be able to hide in certain places she couldn’t, or change her weight. A clear disconnect from the existing belief this is hyperbole and allegory. It breaks belief and at that point, the story stopped really making sense. The character when it did this was difficult for me to accept, because it didn’t fit into the logic of the world.

So while Sankakuhead did make their own decision on how to write their story, because it didn’t fit the expectations, rules, and logic of the world, I, as a fan, simply cannot accept it as a part of the world. Their decision should have been constrained. You can see examples of this across all types of media, whether it be things literally not making sense, significant retcons taking place later into a series, or even mischaracterizations that break the audience’s immersion and belief in the world.

So, my perception of the creative medium is that, as an author, while you have complete creative freedom over your premise, and relative creative freedom over your world (wanna make a fish-girl who lives on a desert planet trying to find a golden shell? Go for it!), you do not have that much freedom when it comes to the journey your character goes on. You can throw in obstacles that make sense, to divert your character’s path to where you want them to go, but strictly speaking, it’s not written by you, but by your world’s logic and personal ability to make it make sense.

Anyways, this was long-winded but it’s something I think about a lot. I hope it resonates with someone else too.