The explanation in the op allows the characters to stay as sentient beings. Making the writers the beyonders doesn't.
The explanation in the op allows the characters to stay as sentient beings. Making the writers the beyonders doesn't.
I'm really hopeful this will turnout to be the case by the conclusion of Secret Wars
Mind
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Blown
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Interesting. Will have to check that movie out.
If that's the case, I hope the conclusion of Secret Wars is Doom and Reed (and some other super geniuses) transferring everything to a higher plane, where they are no longer a computer simulation.
I don't want it to end where everyone is aware they are a computer program,
It doesn't need to end with everyone being aware they are a computer program. Doom and Adult Franklin Richards may well be the only people aware they are living in a simulation. And they don't seem likely to share this fact with anyone when they reboot reality.
The ideas presented through out secret wars, such as the notion of defragmented remnants of different deleted realities being pieced back together into one world, eventually ending with doom and adult franklin richards rebooting all of reality in secret wars #8, the super powers that so many people have that defy all laws of physics, chemistry and biology (even basics ones like energy can't be created or destroyed), these things only make sense if the marvel multiverse itself was a simulation.
Fantasia Mickey Mouse beats the Beyonder at the end(JOKE SPOILER)
Beware of spies traveling through your multiverse especially if they wear a 4
Fun thread and great work ! I must say I like many things in your theory, Wikoogle - especially what you're pointing at in your latest post : that's definitively things I hope the whole story will deal with.
But i must admit that if the solution resides in a computer solution, I will find it really disappointing. Imho, it can't be a perfect solution because the place (real higher level universe..) where this computer will be running will need to much explanations to be fully consistent and conclusive. Also, the solution should deal with an history of Marvel starting in 1961 - far from a world full of this technology, imo. Another point : I'm not so sure a program could be sentient - unless if Hickman is able to challenge Matrix in only a few issues I don't see how he could manage this. And many writers would argue that characters are in a way independent from the one who write them - even from the one who created them. So the advantages of the program theory is not so obvious to me. I think we're gonna get a "system" - a word you and Hickman will be agree with - full of cosmic Sci-fi (meta-readable) elements, possibly working in a way close of what you're suggesting.
Based on the below preview of Secret Wars #4, it seems like Hickman is taking this story exactly where I think it's going.
secret-wars-04-06-7b1cc.jpg
I like this simulation theory. Not only does it explain the strange and unexplainable powers of the characters, but it even explains the sliding time scale Marvel employs to keep the programs "the characters" going despite the passage of time that would bring them to an end "death by old age".
Marvel has had many examples of sentient computer programs and robots and androids going waaay back before the Matrix movies, and the concept has a long and storied (literally) history in science fiction well before that. While whether true AI in the sense of having self-awareness and qualia being possible may be a major controversy and up for debate in the real world, it's been firmly settled in the affirmative in many, many fictional worlds for decades.