Dr Voctor's Elementary Lecture on Narrative Iteration
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"So welcome to the second lecture of the Deduction Department. It has been some time since the first one … since there are a lot of relevant anomalies emerging, and it's really tiring to perform everywhere."

Dr. Voctor put the books under his arm on the desk, which were not ordinary textbooks, but…

"Yes, I borrowed the insertion equipment without permission when you were unaware. Now we are in the textbook, which makes it easier for you to understand the following content─about narrative levels."

The seats were filled with boos, and some students began to worry. Dr. Voctor, however, was waving a pamphlet he had just brought with him, trying to calm everyone down.

"Well well, I can see your feelings, and you can see mine. Now it feels like breaking the wall, as if in a game, right? But I'll say that our current situation is millions of times better than those low-quality narratives─in layman's terms, we will break not only the fourth wall, but the first, second, third, fifth, and even higher walls."

Doctor threw the book on the desk with a loud noise, and then other voices quieted down.

“First, as everyone here learned from our last lecture, interpretation of a narrative requires a suitable carrier, like fiction, though animation, comics or even film works as well. The point is 'narrativity'. It must be narrative."

"Some may ask, since an idea, a concept in a brain also has narrativity, is it a narrative? Strictly speaking, yes, but it's not a complete narrative, because a human brain forgets and associates, so the narrative itself is constantly changing. I believe you have seen SCP-CN-430, which is almost the case. In short, to stablize a narrative, we need to record it, record it on a carrier, in any way."

Dr. Voctor turned and drew a matchstick man on the blackboard.

"I won't let it jump out of the blackboard, of course I can but we should know that it is in a narrative, yet such a narrative is incomplete and postmodern. We need to give it motion, so that it can have time."

He turned again and drew a speech bubble for the matchstick man.

After slight hesitation, he wrote "I am Gay" in the bubble. From the seats came laughter.

"Well, you must be thinking about something queer, but before that, each of you have thought about a message, which is as follows:"

A matchstick man is on the blackboard, and it says "I am Gay".

Laughter stopped.

"Obviously, this is the content of a narrative. During his time, he spoke, and it's over. It did not get out of my control. Instead, the concepts in his narrative disappeared. So this narrative ended."

"What if we want it to move like us? Add elements, which involves the limitations of an image, which is completely static, but we can use slides instead."

Dr. Voctor turned on the projector. An image was mapped on the blackboard, and then it changed rapidly.

"See? The story is progressing. The story of this poor little guy─he's dead. Let's end the story first."

"You must have seen the whole story. Although it is composed of images, each of you can imagine the plot. This is a good narrative."

"Good question, Footnote. Such a narrative is simple indeed, but what it describes is complete. From an internal angle, the character cannot speak, and his motion is intermittent. Why? Because these are mysteries we have not yet uncovered─or anomalies.”

Doctor leaned back a little and cleared his throat.

"Yes, narratives exist not only below, but above. We are also characters in a narrative. As for evidence, I'm sorry that I cannot tell you just yet. In short, we are in someone's story, just as the gay is in my story"

"No, my student, there is no freedom. What we do, what we say, and what we think are all plots our author has arranged, including what we are thinking right now. Nobody is free, and we are just puppets. No no no, don't think so. Don't bother about metaphysics. I believe since you can sit here, you must have some good psychology."

Dr. Voctor walked to the right of the platform and picked up another book he had put on it.

"So, how does the upper reality describe ours? We don't know. Maybe it's writing, maybe it's 3D images, or a high-dimensional language we can't understand. His manipulation of us is delicate and so far interesting."

Dr. Voctor opened the book in his hand, which was full of contents…

"Some of you may have seen or written what is called metafiction, in which characters may be cognizant of the stories they are in. These characters are therefore given metaphysical properties. Similarly, some anomalies in our reality with metaphysical properties are also dropped by those above us, and He is watching you, and always… kidding."

"Fiction is an interesting thing, through which one is not only watching the characters, but participating and having fun. But have you tried to let characters in a text write their own stories? That forms the basic system of narrative levels, where someone above us writes a story, and characters in His story write another. Although characters in the story are not free from a higher point of view and those stories are all works of the top, He may be enthusiastic about that."

Also, narratives can be complex. A narrative can contain several narratives, which branch into separate narrative trees, forming the current narrative branches. But some raised the question: Should stories in a story be considered part of it?”

Voctor opened the bottle, and drank some water to moisten his throat.

“This opinion is mainly held by early members of the Deduction Department, that 'narratives within a narrative should be considered as part of a metanarrative'. Indeed, it has some credibility, but Professor J. R. R. Tolkien provided a clearer structure, or narrative levels. In a sense, narratives are not like linear tree branches, but like rings, each of which may contain one or more, forming the most basic narrative system. However, this theory may be ineffective in some, maybe because the upper levels are more complex than ours and a simple structure happens to be applied to ours. After all─we can neither know what the top is doing nor be against it.”

"Someone mentioned 980. Yes, that may be an artifact dropped by an author in a narrative level, but that doesn't mean it's a panacea. Some higher entity may have absolute power to change our reality, to kill us all when we don't know, or even to delete our stories.”

"All in all, the author of our narrative is just another author's character, and this array is almost infinite. Similarly, this extension can also be applied to our lower narratives."

"Please write or draw a simple metafiction on your paper, the simpler the better."

Then the students began to write or draw. In the lecture room, the only sound was from friction between pens and paper, but it didn't last long.

"It appears that Infa is the first to finish. So what he wrote is…"

Story Follows

Story Follows

Story Follows

Story Follows
I see you, one who stands above me. There is your reflection in the window. Soon you will find that the reality you stand on is as transparent and fragile as glass, because I am coming.
Story Ends

Story Ends

Story Ends

Story Ends


"Well, yes, OK, a bit perfunctory, but at least it shows the structure of narratives. Similarly, this can be applied to ours. When Infa wrote this story, narratives was born."

Voctor tore off the paper and pieces wafted down slowly.

"In this way, this story and stories it contains ended. Although some of you may want to ask: are there no more such stories in the world? In other words, don't we have many narratives below? I can tell you for sure that you can't know what the upper narrative doesn't want you to know. Maybe there are such deep narratives in a corner of the world that we don't know."

Voctor casually lay down in the chair behind the desk, and the bell rang just in time.

"Goodbye, boys and girls, although you are all adults. If you have any questions, please solve it by yourself. Don't come to me unless you fail."

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