The concept that things exist because people commonly believe it to be so.

A side note: personally, I think this is the only reason why things like "Monday Night Football" and "Hockey Night in Canada" not only exist, but completely overwhelm the networks during their respective seasons. There are far too many sports fans out there with only one thought (sports) in their heads, creating and perpetuating the need for such ridiculous hours and hours of broadcasting. Be that as it may, however, it's not the topic at hand.

It doesn't necessarily take masses of people to generate a consensual reality. Close friends, couples, families, do it all the time. Granted, the more people consenting to the reality, the stronger it becomes by quantity, but sometimes they can be stronger in quality when created by only a few people who believe very strongly.

Take, for example, any anime fandom. I think I'll start with GW (Gundam Wing), as that's the one we're most familiar with (via Tav's addiction). But it doesn't really matter, any fandom will do (most espescially those that have a sense of "otaku" or "uber-fandom").

The thing about these fandoms is, they generate a vast amount of energy around the particular anime/manga/cartoon/tv series/movie/whatever. I hesitate to call it a cult, but it becomes something like that. Something that feeds itself, develops its own rules and habits, and becomes a self-contained entity that can be completely baffling to a newcomer.

In particular, anime fandoms develop a "canon" that "true" fans adhere to (to some degree or another). In GW, it is almost canon that the yaoi pairings go 1x2, 4x3, and 13x6x5. That is, Heero tops Duo, Quatre tops Trowa, and Trieze tops Zechs and Wufei in rather a menage a trois. Never mind that if you watch the anime, you can make a decent case for just about any shonen ai pairing (the yaoi extension of it is entirely the fans' creation). Never mind that the reasons for the pairings stretch credulity, and have grown rather stale. They Are. And one must adhere, or be snubbed.

The ways of enforcing this canon can range from subtle (total lack of response to a 4x2 fanfic, when a 1x2 will recieve dozens of "loved it!" type messages, regardless of the fic's quality), to downright mean (flame wars have been the demise of more than one mailing list, and spurred the creation of others, sometimes over something so seemingly petty as "you wrote Trowa as a seme (top/dom)!!! how could you!?"). If you want your fanfics to get read, or your fanart to be appreciated, you better either stick to the canon, or not post it to lists that are (covertly or overtly) cannonical.

What does all that have to do with consensual reality? Well, they are creating one. "Canon" becomes the laws by which the consensual reality operates. And the force of the will of the masses is strong enough to drive out those who dare dream of creating a variation, an alternate reality.

Anime fandoms are microcosms, and just like the earth world, they can "kill" the dreamers, the revolutionaries, the ones who dare to think outside the box (unless they become millionaires in the process).

Why does it get so vicious? Why are they so close-knit, so distrustful of strangers? Because they have created their own world, and they don't want it disrupted. For many of them, consciously or not, GW (or whatever) is a Reality. The Gundams and their pilots, the United Earth Federation (or however you translate it), OZ, they all exist, somewhere, out there, just beyond the otaku's reach. If you asked them, flat out, maybe they would deny it. Maybe they still try and maintain the front (in real life anyway) that they have a grip on Earth world consensual reality, which says "it's only a cartoon." But unspoken, unquestioned, they Believe.

I know people who have gundams, who have adventures with the GW pilots. Or at least they dream, in full, 3D, technicolor, that they do.

Consensual reality. It exists because they believe in it.

But because believing fully -- letting go and stepping over into that world -- would be extremely detrimental to the comfortable Earth lives that most of them enjoy, the furthest they will go is to dream, to scheme, to write, to draw. They enrich the fandom, and their own "fantasy" lives.

And who knows; maybe it makes it just a little bit easier for them to get through each mundane day at school/work/home.

Is that so wrong?

~*~*~
Sept.15th, 2000
(by North American Earth standards, anyway ;)