spoof on a wonderful life, where it turns out the main character not existing is kind of a net neutral for everyone involved. just a lateral move.
at the very least, it’s more honest, right? people got on fine before you were born and they’ll get on fine after you die. if it’s not you doing those things, it’ll be some other asshole, y'know? we ain’t special.
interested to see if it can end without his suicide
I’d like to see one that actually addresses the fact that there’s not one single possible alternate timeline “where you don’t exist”
there’s countless millions of possible things that could have happened because of that (or in some way related to it)
and deciding whether these things are mostly good or bad, on balance, would be such a monumental task it’s definitely not worth it.
Closest thing to this idea, I think, was the 2011 “it’s a quantiful life” story arc from the Abby and Norma webcomic
the scope of such a story is so large, i worry it would less resemble it’s a wonderful life, and more just quickly turn into everything everywhere all at once.
Hehehe.
I liked that movie a lot. Even though the message I personally got out of it was not really either “you are important” or “you aren’t important,” but more like…. “existence is fuckin complicated and chaotic and exhausting, and who the hell can say if it has a point, and the closest thing to any sort of lesson you could learn from seeing alternate worlds is just something like… maybe try and figure out what you want (this you) and what’ll make you most happy, and make the people close to you happy, right now, at this stage of this life, in this world… and try and do that, as best you can, and hope it works out. Also sometimes life is so overwhelming that the greatest relief you can possibly imagine is to be a rock. Do whatever makes sense with that information i guess.”
…Really if there is any thing like a Wonderful Life remake that fits with my actual worldview, that’s it.