Stockades and Skeletons – Page 24

Well, I guess it’s only natural that things start fraying a bit at the end of such a long chapter.

As you can see, Gregory is still completely in-universe, while Mopey already resides firmly in the meta. She’s always had a more tender* relationship with the fourth wall than the others, for which I blame the Professor.

From his in-universe standpoint, Gregory raises a number of very valid concerns. He’s never attempted this type of magic before, he’s hardly ever succeeded at any type of magic on the first try, nobody really knows how anything about the dimension-jumping effect they’re trying to recreate actually works in the first place…and the possible consequences of failure are endless, including a considerable number of decidedly unpleasant outcomes. Hard to argue with that, at least in-universe.

Mopey, of course has mentally already moved beyond the confines of the fictional universe, so she doesn’t find it hard to argue with Gregory’s line of reasoning at all. A simple page-count reveals that none of the terrible complications that dance through Gregory’s mind have any chance of becoming their reality – since there’s simply not enough pages left in the script. Usually, I should not let her get away with such a blatantly meta line of argument…but, yeah, it’s been a long chapter, and we’re all tired. >_> And, what’s more important, it wouldn’t make any difference, anyway – had Mopey stayed in-universe, she wouldn’t have had any good arguments to counter Gregory…but that would have achieved nothing but to force her to use bad arguments instead. And her bad arguments would still have carried the day, simply because the plot couldn’t have continued without Gregory’s concerns getting brushed aside summarily. So, yeah…on balance, better to do that with a good meta argument than a stupid in-universe one. It’s been a long chapter, and we’re all tired…