Metaphysics of Identity for Fictional Characters

Earlier this week, I was studying Saul Kripke's Identity and Necessity, in which he sets out an argument as to precisely which relations of identity are metaphysically necessary. Briefly, he divides all names and descriptions into "rigid" and "non-rigid" designators: rigid designators, such as proper names and technical terms such as 'heat' refer to the same thing across different possible worlds; non-rigid designators, on the other hand, refer to different things across different possible worlds. (This is not to be confused with different worlds using different words to refer to the same thing - in Kripke's system, "Andrew" refers to me even in worlds where I am known as "Christopher" or "Timothy" or even "Jessica").

According to Kripke, any identity statement in which both objects are referred to by rigid designators is necessarily either true or false. So "Andrew is the son of Tim" is necessarily true for all worlds where I exist, and "Andrew is the brother of Chris" is necessarily true for all worlds where both my brother and I exist; however, "Tim is the editor of Overdrive" and "Andrew was the Chess captain 2010-12 at Camp Hill Boys" are merely contingently true - that is to say, there are possible worlds where they are not true.

As it happens, I do not agree with Kripke's view of personal identity - he relies on the assumption that there is something which is irreducibly "me", whereas I would tend towards viewing objects merely as the sum of their properties. However, suppose he is correct regarding identity of real-life people. Does this still hold for fictional characters?

One old trope of fanfiction is to change who one or more parents of a character is. This is mainly done for shipping purposes - for example, making Harry Potter the son of Snape in order to ship Snape/Lily, or removing the sibling relationship between Elsa and Anna so that "it isn't incest". Except that, under Kripke's theory of identity, it is incest and there's nothing you can do about it without making them two fundamentally different characters.

Under my preferred theory of identity, this is not the case since the characters in a fanfic cease to be the same characters as those of the original as soon as even the slightest difference appears between them. I'm still a bit concerned as to precisely why one would want to ship Elsanna, but I can sort-of allow that "it isn't incest". (Even if it was, that would be far from the worst relationship going on in fanfiction - that 'honour', within the bounds of what I've encountered, would be Harry/Fem!Harry fics...)

In Defence of Ron

By now you can hardly have avoided the announcement. J.K. Rowling thinks, in hindsight, that Ron and Hermione were wrong for each other and that perhaps Harry and Hermione would have been a better match.

I was even more disappointed by Eric Crampton's take, a polemic replete with HPMOR quotes and a determination to ignore the fact that we're talking about an 11-year-old. Yes, Ron inherited some silly ideas from his parents (and from the Wizarding World as a whole) but he also had a cool head under fire and an admirable willingness to put his interests aside to serve others. In the first book alone note that, apart from his heroic sacrifice in the chess game, it was he who had the sense to think of lighting a fire when confronted with Devil's Snare.

I'm not going to attempt to defend the Ron/Hermione relationship - if they managed to be friends for six years and Ron only developed an interest in Hermione when she suddenly morphed into the actress playing her then I'm happy to lump it in with most late-teenage you're-fit-let's-date relationships, albeit with considerably more intense shared experiences than most. Harry and Ginny at least had complementary personalities - Ron and Hermione would never have become friends without Harry's influence. (If we're brutally honest, it's doubtful that Hermione would have had friends at all for at least her first four years at Hogwarts were it not for the troll incident - at least, not among the Gryffindors. Maybe she'd have bonded with Neville over neither of them having anyone else to hang out with?).

I remember one fanfic I read suggested that, in an alternate universe with no Ginny  Harry would (being rich, famous, presumably good-looking) have had his choice of girls, and gone for the one who he found most interesting - Luna. I like this theory, and Luna would certainly be my favourite alternative to Ginny. I don't know that I'd say that Luna was the best girl for Harry, but I would definitely say that (of the characters appearing in the books) Harry would have been the best guy for Luna. He never mocks her, which puts him ahead of just about everyone else to begin with. Let's hope that Rolf Scamander was suitably eccentric.