Hey, if you don't know if they swap back, neither do I. :)
I think--given the way things end--they try not to show him other versions of his story, particularly the ending bits, though he probably inevitably checks out a few of them. Colin probably explains to him off the bat, as a precaution, that his is a really important story which has played out thousands of times, with all sorts of variations--so Arthur's own might be different again, there's just no knowing.
But I think a lot of the modern world would be so far beyond Arthur's ability to understand or process that he'd just be like "okay, sorcery-except-round-here-it's-called-science, got it." Cars, phones, planes, moving pictures, WHATEVER, it might be startling or a bit weird but he's just going to go with it.
No, what Arthur gets interested and then obsessed with is what he thinks he really needs to know: how to efficiently kill people in groups. Arthur gets obsessed with guns, explosives, all of that, figuring out how to be a more effective military leader when the time comes, even as he's less and less able to keep up any kind of training.
Uh, hopefully that's a stage that passes off eventually, like he works out guns and gunpowder, files it away for later, and then gets on with being Bradley, but I guess that depends on exactly how creepy I want to make Arthur. *g* (Alternately, he could have a weaponry phase and then go on to things like germ theory and modern agriculture and the printing press.)
And, omg, yes, he so desperately and helplessly adores Tony and wants Tony to like him and yet it's all pointless, because Uther is only a story here--EXCEPT, OMG, my brain just exploded, because when they get to the point where Uther is telling Bradley that he's doing well, that he'll be a fine king - Arthur is playing out that scene with Tony, and according to all Colin has told him, even though it's not the real Uther telling him that, it means that the real Uther said that, in the other world. (Only he said it to the him who's not him; so does that mean Uther is proud of him, or that Uther doesn't even realize he's got an imposter for a son-and-heir, or that, horribly, the imposter is better? It is possible that at this point Arthur finds it necessary to drink. Heavily. And shag Colin.)
ALSO. IDK if you are familiar at all with Stargate: Atlantis, but you may want to go join fic_of_doom and check out what they did over there, because I personally would be appropriating some of their cosmology wholesale. (In a nutshell: there's a symbiotic relationship between the story and the world it reflects, but no one knows if we tell the story that way because that's the way it's happening there, or if it's happening there because we tell the story that way.) (Also, that story is just awesome. And locked due to the RPF aspect relating to an author who is very, very much on the web and savvy enough to find it otherwise. And awesome.)
no subject
I think--given the way things end--they try not to show him other versions of his story, particularly the ending bits, though he probably inevitably checks out a few of them. Colin probably explains to him off the bat, as a precaution, that his is a really important story which has played out thousands of times, with all sorts of variations--so Arthur's own might be different again, there's just no knowing.
But I think a lot of the modern world would be so far beyond Arthur's ability to understand or process that he'd just be like "okay, sorcery-except-round-here-it's-called-science, got it." Cars, phones, planes, moving pictures, WHATEVER, it might be startling or a bit weird but he's just going to go with it.
No, what Arthur gets interested and then obsessed with is what he thinks he really needs to know: how to efficiently kill people in groups. Arthur gets obsessed with guns, explosives, all of that, figuring out how to be a more effective military leader when the time comes, even as he's less and less able to keep up any kind of training.
Uh, hopefully that's a stage that passes off eventually, like he works out guns and gunpowder, files it away for later, and then gets on with being Bradley, but I guess that depends on exactly how creepy I want to make Arthur. *g* (Alternately, he could have a weaponry phase and then go on to things like germ theory and modern agriculture and the printing press.)
And, omg, yes, he so desperately and helplessly adores Tony and wants Tony to like him and yet it's all pointless, because Uther is only a story here--EXCEPT, OMG, my brain just exploded, because when they get to the point where Uther is telling Bradley that he's doing well, that he'll be a fine king - Arthur is playing out that scene with Tony, and according to all Colin has told him, even though it's not the real Uther telling him that, it means that the real Uther said that, in the other world. (Only he said it to the him who's not him; so does that mean Uther is proud of him, or that Uther doesn't even realize he's got an imposter for a son-and-heir, or that, horribly, the imposter is better? It is possible that at this point Arthur finds it necessary to drink. Heavily. And shag Colin.)
ALSO. IDK if you are familiar at all with Stargate: Atlantis, but you may want to go join
ETA: now posted in the right thread and all!