MISC: Do what extent do NON writer characters have free will?

[Tom Russell]

On Saturday, June 2, 2012 10:07:36 PM UTC-4, Martin Phipps wrote:

> I don't know why Wikiboy has to be the victim though.  Wikiboy knows
> he's fictional, right?  Every once in a while we should get to see
> Wikiboy getting back at anyone who has tormented him.  It is only
> fair.

It's funny-- I'm a big proponent of free will, and people defining themselves and making their own destiny, but WikiBoy, as originally conceived, is very much about someone who has no free will, because he has no self-definition.  He's the victim *because* it's not fair.  He is (not to get hoity-toity about my own stuff) something of an Absurdist hero, in that the world he resides in is a meaningless and amoral one[*]; to tip the scales the other way negates this.

[*-- And by "world" I don't mean the Earth of the Looniverse, but the Earth of the Looniverse in a WikiBoy story.  It's the WikiBoy "cake", to borrow the Kurt Busiek phraseology that's been making the rounds on the 'net lately.  Justice for WikiBoy ruins his cake.]

Or, to answer the overall question-- as much free will as is funny, and only when funny.

==Tom