had a fucked up dream i had a book that turned out could never be read again the same as the first time because each reread the characters became incrementally more aware that the events of the book had happened before and they were “reliving” it and i reread enough times that they became self aware, figured out they were in a book, acknowledged me as the reader, and some lost their minds or had existential crises, became violent to other characters or themselves, some begged me to never stop reading or they ceased to exist and others begged me to end it all stop reading and keeping them trapped in the endless loop of torment, and the literal only way to get the book back to its first run was to hand it off to someone else to read for the first time and for some reason i physically couldn’t tell anyone about it so i’d have to just hope whoever i gave it to would only read it once and i could never open the book again to check if they were okay and back to normal because i was terrified of fucking them all up again :(
i'm glad people are finding this fun as a concept and making references to stuff that this reminds them of but i really gotta express how bad of a nightmare this was for me. i had fallen in love with the original story and characters (though on waking i couldn't tell you the details), unintentionally warped their story beyond recognition, and found myself an unwitting god that could not provide mercy for some without doling torment to others. one of the characters started offing themselves every time i started another reread. stress dream doesn't even begin to cover it
