As you may or may not know, our universe is just one of many in an expansive multiverse. But that multiverse is just one of many multiverses which are all part of an Omniverse.
Now for the trippy part.
This Omniverse is not the first. There have been 41 previous omniverses. Each died making way for another. With each new reality the inhabitants are reborn into the newest omniverse. Their souls/lifeforce from the previous reality are carried over (since you cannot destroy or create matter and energy). The soul you have now is an amalgam of the 41 previous yous which includes all their parallel counterparts. Hopefully with each new version, you will learn from previous mistakes (or regrets) and progress towards completeness (sometimes known as perfection).
But, something went wrong this last time. The First Protagonist, the foundation that created the protagonist archetype, was not reborn. Somehow it went missing. Without the First Protagonist, no other protagonists were born/inspired by this "hero." And without one you can't have the other, so antagonists were also not created.
However, the dark and savage impulses of mankind were still created. The Dark Web of Realms (or Web of Dark Realms) contains the worst of mankind. Antagonists are created as foils to the protagonist; but in the Dark Realms, the beings are truly monstrous. They are creatures of Fear, Shadow, Destruction, and Disorder which have bubbled up from the pits of Life. They are unholy beasts that appear in your worst nightmares and born of the primal sludge of Creation.
Think Cthulhu. Think mind numbing horror.
But don't worry, they are safely contained behind the Wall of Censorship. Without some censorship, the brutal darkness of mankind will ooze out across the Realms of Light and once again cause the destruction of the Omniverse.
And so with no "heroes" or "villains," the Prime Reality became one of no magic, no superheroes, nor any of that. It became what many know as "the Real World."
But remember: matter and energy cannot be destroyed or created. The inhabitants of Omniverse 42 still remember their "past lives," though on a more subconscious level. Many feel that they have a "story within them that they must get out," so they began to write, draw, code, invent, sing, and so on. Each story/creation is a memory either experienced by the maker or as something they once were told by someone they knew.
In the other omniverses, the protagonists and antagonists simply existed. In this new reality they didn't; adaptation was needed—there needed to be an evolution. This adaption was the power of imagination—the power to create worlds through will, belief, and imagination. However, a single believer wasn't enough to sustain a world indefinitely; but with Fans, a universe could remain.
Over time the Prime Earth did as it was supposed to from the beginning and branch out into a new Omniverse. This time, however, the parallel worlds were both fictional—being based on the mix of memories from the previous 41 realities—and non-fictional—being based on the choices made or not made by the inhabitants of the Omniverse. So, the "characters" across the Omniverse, like you, are both fictional and not. You are both a collection of subconscious memories and of new memories and new choices.
*static*
One-one-one-one d-d-d-day-ay-ay we will f-f-find the missing...miss-miss-missing Alpha Protagonist and fi-fi-fix what went wrong. Then-then the Prime Reality will be re-restored to its proper-proper...proper glory.
*static*
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