Research note

Fictional realism: terrain as continuant, erosion as prehistory

Fictional realism and the terrain’s prehistory — extends the game-ontology sketch #993FRM

Core move: adopt transparency/fictional realism about the game ontology. Within the fiction there IS a terrain; the D8 lattice and bundle sections are its representation, not the thing. The terrain itself is the substantial continuant; geological/hydrological erosion is a process (occurrent) constituting the world’s prehistory from the game’s perspective.

Consequences:

  1. Transparency is a commitment: the flat toroidal topology becomes fictional geography (no poles, wraparound drainage), not an artifact to be excused.

  2. Geomorphology’s native epistemology supports the framing: “all sediment results from past processes” #T39G28 legacy sediments are “an inheritance from times past” #UCAG4Q #K82AS7 anthropogenic fingerprints read landscapes as records of vanished process particulars #2284QZ Landform = frozen occurrent history inhering in a continuant. This satisfies Smith’s demand that categories come from extralogical domain science #6BUB8K

  3. Modal status of the prehistory: analytical stream-power solutions make time a function parameter, “a slider that controls the aging of the input terrain” #T295H3 #HRH4UV #DWXKYQ The diegetic deep past is real-in-the-fiction but never executed; its truthmakers are wholly present (current terrain shape + generative law). Presentism-with-laws: the world is its own geological record. This also answers Smith’s time-insensitivity charge #6664AF without storing history: the process ontology is encoded in the law, not a log.

  4. Ontological homogeneity across t=0: the same process universals continue at game time on a faster clock with new participants — walkers eroding trails #UYLTYJ player earthworks = legacy sediment in the making. Game start is a SNAP snapshot through one continuous SPAN history (Grenon & Smith, cited at #86A97P before t=0 participants are tectonic/fluvial, after t=0 they include intentional agents.

  5. Bridge to Alexander: structure-preserving transformation #ZU8GZV is the norm that gameplay-era processes continue the world’s unfolding rather than overwrite it — the ethical/aesthetic face of the same ontological continuity.

Sextet placement (per #8MW8B5 terrain = substantial particular; erosion/incision/routing = process universals whose prehistoric particulars no longer exist; present qualities (altitude, sediment cover, wetness) = quality particulars that are residues of those processes.