Author’s Note: This piece was originally written for Dramabeans as a theme of a month but did not get selected for publishing. As every Beanie knows, we collect beans over the course of a year (one bean per drama) and then allocate those beans at the end of the year to demonstrate our love for certain dramas. While the piece would obviously make more sense on Dramabeans, I have decided to publish it here just for fun.
Lee Tennant’s Theory of Antibeans and the Continued Existence of the Drama Universe
There remains debate on the existence of antibeans: the negatively-charged partner of the beans collected by Beanies over the year. As of the 2019 drama year, many beans are observed each year, but no antibeans have yet been seen.
So how do we know that antibeans exist?
For each basic particle of matter, there exists an antiparticle with the same mass, but the opposite electric charge. The negatively-charged electron, for example, has a positively charged antiparticle called the positron.
Thus, particle physics tells us that for each bean produced when we complete a drama, some sort of negative equivalent must be produced. We call this negatively-charged drama bean an antibean.
This means that for each calendar year of drama watching, both beans and antibeans are produced.
As we all know, when a particle and its antiparticle come together they annihilate each other, transforming their mass into energy.
We’ve seen such explosions this year such as, for example, when Arthdal ended and people realised it was only season 1. The resulting internet meltdown was a direct result of the sheer volume of beans and antibeans produced colliding and resulting in the white hot energy of outrage (although some suspect that the rogue Netflix particle may have been involved as well).
The question then becomes: how does Dramaland exist at all without being transformed violently into energy from the production of beans and their associated antibeans?
Because if each drama produced both one bean and one antibean then Dramaland would ultimately cease to exist.
The answer must be that the quality of a drama determines the number of antibeans created for each bean generated. Since each drama completed by a person in each annual period produces one bean then the amount of antibeans produced must be a proportion of the bean produced.
For example, one could posit that a show like the Crowned Clown, where I enjoyed 8 episodes out of 16, would result in the production of one bean and one half of an antibean. Or a brilliant but slightly flawed show like Graceful Family would produce one bean and a very small number of antibeans, such as 0.1 (10%) or 0.2 (20%), (mostly for the transgender plotline we’d rather forget).
Thus the number of antibeans produced within an annual period by each viewer would be a fraction of the beans produced. If a person produces 20 beans then the number of associated antibeans would be less than or equal to 20.
Thus while it’s not possible to produce more than one bean per completed drama per calendar year it is also not possible to produce more than one antibean.
But how do we estimate the number of antibeans produced by a drama when they can’t be detected?
As we all know, there’s a subjective nature to the observed reality of quantum mechanics. Schrodinger didn’t really put a cat in a box. As such, that subjectivity must be reflected in the antibean calculation. That is, the nature of observing a drama produces both beans and antibeans but also impacts the number of antibeans produced.
While any antibean calculation would merely be an estimate based on flawed observations, it is nonetheless one that can be justified mathematically. Good dramas produce beans but not antibeans. Bad dramas produce beans and a certain amount of antibeans, proportionate to the bean and the level of enjoyment of the drama.
It is possible therefore for a drama such as Sky Castle, Children of Nobody or Be Melodramatic to produce no antibeans but also for one such as Vagabond to produce both a bean and nearly a full associated antibean. This means that Vagabond both exists and yet doesn’t exist at the same time. Which, frankly, explains a lot.
The theory of antibeans therefore states that antibeans are produced along with beans during the act of watching (and completely finishing) a drama. Since a bean is not produced until a drama is satisfactorily completed then it stands to reason that the proportionate production of antibeans also doesn’t occur.
1 completed drama = 1 bean = 1/n antibeans
with the antibean production being related to the subjective perception of the drama by the observer.
This at least was the accepted theory of antibeans until this year when we observed that Bell’s Theorem appears to apply also to Dramaland. For the first time, we’ve observed that the act of not watching or not completing a drama can still produce antibeans even without the associated bean. This has only been observed in dramas judged collectively by observers to have few redeeming qualities.
This kind of ‘spooky action at a distance’ has meant that Dramaland’s collective awareness of the existence of a drama such as Melting Me Softly or Abyss is sufficient to generate antibeans (although the volume of ones produced under these circumstances is so far incalculable).
We can only conclude that Dramaland is quantum entangled and that any increase in the production of bad dramas could ultimately lead to the destruction of the drama universe itself.
However, for now, the state of the universe remains in balance with more beans than antibeans produced each year.
How may antibeans did you generate this year?
