I like fan fiction because its like math. (I realize this is one of the most nonsensical statements I’ve ever made, especially because I hate math, but hear me out)
There’s a basic-ish concept in math that involves interval notation: the idea that -∞ and +∞ cannot be placed inside brackets [ ] because they cannot be fully captured; they’re concepts, right? infinity isn’t a number, its the idea that numbers go on forever, and we’ll never know the true extent of it. You can’t graph a concept, hence placing -∞ and +∞ inside parenthesizes ( ).
There’s also the concept that, within each rational number interval, there are an infinite number of other numbers. For example, between 0 and 1 there’s .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, .6, .7, .8, .9, but also .01, .02, .03, .04, and .001, and .1111111, and...you get the picture.
When we read books or comics or watch movies or TV shows, we’re getting glimpses into another world, possibly as infinite and varied as our. Those movies, those TV shows– they’re inside parenthesizes ( ) because their worlds are infinite and we can’t ever truly see the whole of them. And what fan fiction does is explore all those .1s and .001s and .9999999s, try to reach -∞ and +∞ through the limitless possibilities each new fictional world encompasses.
They’ll never be placed inside brackets [ ] because there’s no limit to the amount of stories we can come up with. An infinite number of infinities within infinity.
