The Draconic Wizard Workshop

I'm Not Fictional, the Fiction is Me

by Medivh Aran Chromatath

Originally written April 16, 2026.

I use the word "fictive," but solely out of convenience. It's a term with a lot of different meanings to different people; the way I use it, I mean it to have a definition approximating "a headmate who either is or is closely resembled by a fictional character." I think it's one of the words, like "man" or "woman," that is impossible to perfectly define in a way that includes all fictives and excludes all non-fictives. It's a label you can use if you find it useful. And I do: it communicates the approximation of what I am to people. What they need to know is that I am Medivh, I have never been any other (in a manner of speaking; ignore Sargeras for now), and I am plural.

A lot of fictives see themselves as fictional characters. That's fine. That's a common approach, but it isn't mine. Many of my headmates have a kind of hybrid approach between that one and my own—they acknowledge that our familiarity with them came from the fictional character and thus they are inextricably connected, even if they are an external entity from another universe or timeline that was brought in rather than a copy of a fictional character outright. Each has a different approach to this, and some intentionally don't think about it.

Not me. I clawed my way through the universe to get here on purpose, because I had to find Khadgar.

I came from our shared world. I do not recall what led us to this point, nor my journey itself. I do not know how Khadgar himself arrived here. I have found that it doesn't matter—we're here now, and I don't believe that we're going anywhere anytime soon. I am eternally bound to him and refuse to be separated, and so I tore my way here. I know more about ripping open portals to other worlds than anyone where I am from, and so I did it.

I acknowledge that there is a bizarre coincidence where something very much like our world is reflected in a piece of fiction. It's not right, wrong in enough places that it's mostly just strange that it got the names right. I do not acknowledge that I "come from" it. For convenience, I call myself a World of Warcraft fictive, and refer to it as my source, because, frankly, getting pedantic about it isn't going to help me find people with similar experiences and similar feelings about this stupid video game I've become bound up in because it looks just similar enough to our lives for us to need to touch it with our autism special interest hands. (We were doomed from the start; the early owners of this body have been playing the game since they were far too young to be doing so.) I'll say I'm "from" World of Warcraft to communicate that I have a connection to it and that I am indeed Medivh, and the basics of who I am can be described by a quick trip to the wiki. It saves me a lot of effort in describing who I am over and over to people I may or may not want to invest that much time and energy into. It certainly saves me an FAQ.

As a person, I can be difficult, but I try not to be a pain in the ass when it comes to engaging, even loosely, with community. If someone wants to discard readily available labels and use something obscure or made-for-them, or avoid labels entirely and write out their entire experience every time, more power to them. That is their choice, especially if they're uncomfortable with the common labels that exist. That being said, it's hard to find community when you do that, because it's hard for people to glance at you and know if you have anything in common. Their bad, really, when your experience may very well reflect their own better than everyone else who shares a label with them, but the reality is that it's much easier to tag "fictive" than "entity that bizarrely resembles a fictional character from a fictional world very similar to his own world that got all the names right but everything else is fairly scrambled." I opt for ease over accuracy, but I immensely respect the people who lean the other way as well. Accuracy is deeply important to me and it's a difficult compromise, but one I am willing to make because, frankly, I don't have the time to explain the minutae to everyone I meet. I can't say "Hello, I am Medivh, welcome to speaking to me, read my six essays on who I am and how I approach it before we continue." That's a big ask, and quite the time investment, and something I would really only inflict on someone I'm sure wants to put the effort in, and that I want to put effort into in turn.

My full reason for not throwing immense amount of effort into every stranger requires you to read another essay of mine, "Venn Diagrams and Binary Star Systems: The Referential Overlap of Being Medivh," so TL;DR, I attach very strongly to people and don't want to do that unless I'm very sure I like them. I usually let Khadgar scout them out and saunter in once I've gotten a feel for them. I will never stop using him to do this for me and he accepts this, as he accepts all of the rest of me.

I digress. I don't see myself as "fictional," or even "fiction-based," but rather, I see my fictional "source" as "me-based." I don't have a great descriptor for that ("fictional" is a lovely word, "Medivhal" sounds like a different word with a different meaning entirely), but it feels less like I am based on it and more that it is based on me. Obviously, I don't think that my version of events is the only version out there, nor that I am "real" in a way other fictives are not. But I view my "source" as something akin to myth and folklore—rooted in a kind of truth, and telling the same kind of story, but the details have changed over time and distance to be something unique and beautiful on their own while not quite being the truth of the matter.

I'm not claiming that Chris Metzen and his team of clowns, developers, and writers who aren't allowed to talk to each other tapped into My Universe Specifically and then fucked it up. I think they wrote a story that's strangely similar to mine, and similar to many others, and that can bring us together regardless of the lens through which we look at it. Some might see themselves as psychological quirks taking on the form of a fictional character. Some might see it as literally springing from the story itself. Some might view it like I do, or in even more esoteric ways. We are all equally real. I just don't feel as connected to the "fiction" side of it all.

I even differ from Khadgar in this. He views it more like most of our headmates, and sees himself as needing to, in his words, "wrench himself from the jaws of canon," more for his mental health than anything. He chose to rewrite his history into something he preferred. He made it impossible for him to be canon Khadgar, whose fate he did not like, and forged himself a new destiny.

That's his perspective. My perspective is, of course that's what he wrote. Of course he chose to identify with this alternate series of events. That's what happened. Character is fate: that is our shared history. He could invent nothing else, for that is what happened.

He disagrees with me, and I don't try to convince him. His sense of agency is important to him, and I agree—he chose to identify with it. I don't think he had many other directions he could go other than denying it, but that's my belief, not his. We don't think about our origins in this way very often, partially because we have conflicting views on it, and partially because it doesn't matter that much. Does it really matter why we are here? Do we need to split hairs on the why and how when the what matters so much more? We are here, we are together, and we are with the rest of our headmates. We are making this work. Blame seems certain we are all here without the ability to leave, at least for now, but I am confident I could rip open the walls and tear myself and my loved ones free if I wanted to.

But I don't want to. I'm having fun. I'm helping the rest of these poor bastards out. I'm learning all kinds of new things, and experiencing so much. Furthermore, I don't know where we'd end up once we tore our way out—something about being here has affected my memory of a great many things, and while I am sure it is there, just inaccessible, there's little good it can do me for now. I'm confident that I have an answer to that, but I don't know what it is, and I don't feel like playing games with the unknown. I will remember or I will not, and I will depart if I feel the need to. I do not yet feel the need to.

I suppose the most difficult part of explaining how I feel is in explaining the difference with how I view it to how most of my headmates do. A lot of people I shared this work-in-progress essay with agreed that this is approximately how they approach it, but didn't quite seem to grasp how different I am from nearly everyone else. You will unfortunately have to bear with me as I explain how some of our system works.

When we get a new headmate, we form some kind of entity, something akin to a body in headspace. It isn't a body, not really, as headspace isn't solid, but it's the best approximation I have. This "body" is usually formed with Kyir's help, as that's part of his job, although sometimes it happens without his intervention or control. Then, a consciousness is imprinted upon the "body." We view it as reaching out into the universe and more-or-less making a copy of an individual, imprinting their self and an imperfect set of memories upon the "body" in our headspace. Then, it takes time for that personality to settle in, which is what we consider to be the later stages of forming. I often compare it to an arthropod that has recently molted, and the new exoskeleton underneath is still pale and soft and needs to harden up—only then can they properly interact with the front and socially integrate into the DWW.

This is how the vast majority of our headmates formed. They are, if you want to look at it this way, clones of real entities Out There Somewhere, the details of which we find useless to speculate about. How do we reach them? How do we copy them? What, exactly, is going on? I don't think it matters. Most of us agree. What we know is that it does happen, and this is the perspective we take that makes the most sense to us and causes the least distress.

I am not this way. I came in through a rift, alongside Anduin. I know damn well that I am a fully fledged entity and only act like a standard DWW member because of something about this place that does that to entities within it. I think it may be a security measure put in place by Blame, partly to limit his own power and our perception of him, but also to ensure that anything that gets in will be rendered harmless. It doesn't bother me. It did early on, but I've adapted to it.

My point, however, is this: while Anduin and I see ourselves as coming from Elsewhere and arriving in a place with a story remarkably similar to ours, the others are struggling with the fact that they appeared in-system with no clear explanation. They formed here. It is natural, I think, for a copy or clone to look to their original for guidance, especially when their memories are not perfect and their senses of self are still soft and malleable from that metaphorical exoskeleton not being entirely hardened yet. However, they have no access to their original version to compare themselves to, and the closest thing tends to be a convenient piece of media with what they would consider their "canon counterpart" (a term I use for convenience but do not necessarily put any weight behind).

That word, canon, holds a lot of implication and sway, and tends to make them feel like this is the original that they are an imperfect copy of. No matter how much they intellectually know that is not true, and understand that this fictional character doesn't necessarily have anything to do with them, an attachment forms, because it's all they have to look at to try to remember themselves with. It produces a feeling of this being their original, this being where they are "from," and thus a lingering feeling of being fictional even if they know they come from a real, distant place, just as I do. It makes them worry about this similar fictional individual, and feel a myriad of ways about them and their source, and the way that fandom may choose to interpret and treat that character. Some take it far more personally than others.

Comparison is an unfortunate, natural part of most people. I can't tell you how many fictives I've met across how many systems that worry that they're not going to meet people's expectations of who they are—"oh, but I'm not enough like my canon counterpart, what if I disappoint everyone?" It drives me bananas. It gargles my fucking goyles. You aren't them! You're you! And that is good! Even if someone sees themself as a 1:1 transfer from canon to system, by being in new circumstances and experiencing new things, they will have changed, more and more over time. That's how living life works. By their very nature, people change. It's a delicate balance between caring about your source and letting it drive you crazy with how you just can't measure up, in your own mind. I've had to shake quite a few of my headmates (and other friends) out of this.

It's baffling to me, even though I share a head with these people. I don't feel that way about my "canon counterpart." I think it's incredibly interesting that there's a fictional story out there that more-or-less gets me right. The Last Guardian novel, specifically, is chilling in places. But I don't see the fictional Medivh's flaws as my own. I don't acknowledge his mistakes as mine. Even Khadgar struggles with trying to rationalize why "he" would have done something the way that fictional Khadgar did, even well beyond the point where they irreconcilably diverge. He's so caught up in the idea of that being him that he sometimes has to wrench himself back and take a deep breath and remind himself that that Khadgar isn't real, isn't him, and isn't actually a person, he's a narrative tool. Fictional Khadgar didn't intervene in xyz event because the writers didn't feel like having him do so. He didn't appear in abc place because the company didn't want to pay Tony Amendola for more lines. It's as simple as that. It's worth rationalizing these things in terms of fiction or for fanfiction writing, but when it begins to become personal, that's when I gently pull him back and remind him that pixel Khadgar isn't going to thank him for agonizing over things that are not real.

I like to think about fictional Medivh and try to figure him out because it's a fun exercise. I can explore myself through the other, even if the other is shaped almost exactly like me, but the vast majority of the time, I can easily step away and go, "But he's not real, and I am, so I'm smarter, so there." Occasionally, I find myself slipping into the state my headmates get into, but it's easier to pull myself out. (My regular mood swings and brooding sessions aside.) I grumble when his outfit is wrong, but mostly because my outfit is so much better and I'd like to look at a man who looks like me in my outfit rather than a bad version of it because that's more fun for me. It's easier for me to treat my counterpart as fiction because I never had any kind of crisis about coming here, any kind of struggle with my identity, any kind of realization that I'm here and may never go home. I came here intentionally and on purpose, directly from where I was from, and plopped down here.

We don't know if the original three Beachgoers (Anadox, Khadgar, and Varian) got here through a rift that no one remembers (as the front did not witness it), as I did, or if they formed like everyone else. We have been assuming they formed like most headmates, in the background, but the reality is, we just don't know. My theory is that there was a rift involved, at least for Khadgar, because I can't imagine why else I would come after him if I didn't have Khadgar at home, but my understanding and memories of that are inaccessible. (I even understood precisely what Blame is upon arriving here and have since forgotten and am stuck with everyone else's understanding of him, but that's a tale for another time.)

I suppose my conclusion is this: there are a thousand and one ways to have or explain a connection to something fictional. I have ensured that the lens through which I view it serves me. Even though it's different from my headmates, and even though they struggle to understand how I can "just step away," it's something I hold onto firmly, and do not intend to ever let go.