Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness

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    I didn't feel the need to appear before now, because I knew I'd face big shouty demands like this as soon as I broke the fourth wall. I think I might have to retcon everyone and go back to nice peaceful anonymity.

    In fiction, Web Comics in particular, the Fourth Wall is sometimes nonexistent; sometimes it is so solid that you can lean on it. This is a sliding scale of how solid the Fourth Wall is.

    From most solid/hardest, to least solid/softest (Note that promos and the like do not count for this scale):

    Completely Solid Fourth Wall

    Visible Fourth Wall

    • Soliloquies, Asides, and the like, as long as the audience is not directly acknowledged. The characters behave as if they were characters in a story, but they don't know who might be watching. (You talk to the audience in a soliloquy, yes, but only because the conventions of the theater say that doing so means that you're actually just thinking out loud at the audience.)
    • Leaning on the Fourth Wall
    • Aside Glance/Comment

    Semipermeable Fourth Wall

    • A Narrator (but not a Viewpoint Character) who speaks directly to the audience, but whom the characters do not know about; but only if the narrator's announcements amount to more than "Meanwhile", "see Issue #7", or other scene setting.
    • Fourth Wall Mail Slot: where, outside of the plot, the characters respond, in character, to reader mail or reader content—if it is the only break in the fourth wall.
    • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: a segment of the show where characters often lecture directly to the audience, sometimes acknowledging the unrealism of that episode's events.
    • From Beyond the Fourth Wall: The creator of a work, the audience, or you, personally, interact with characters (in a way that isn't Audience Participation). Such as by lending the characters a boat, or money. Can happen in reverse too.
    • Fourth Wall Observer: One character has full Medium Awareness, and the others write it off has him being insane.
    • In a video game, the characters are aware of the context of the game just enough to explain a concept of the game to the player, but do so within the context of the story. Common in Justified Tutorials.
    • Clear Breaking the Fourth Wall happens, but at other times, everything works as if the characters are not aware of being fictional; the breakages are basically implied not to be Canon, even though they may happen in the middle of the normal action.

    Nonexistent Fourth Wall

    • Medium Awareness: the characters may directly acknowledge the mechanics of their medium and/or that this is just a show, but these acknowledgments don't actually affect the plot and/or the characters never acknowledge their fictionality.
    • Full No Fourth Wall: The characters acknowledge their fictionality directly.
    • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Things inside the story, we are warned, can attack the reader.

    Beyond No Fourth Wall

    • Mind Screws sometimes goes beyond No Fourth Wall, to imply such things as the viewer being a fictional character, so this entry is for them.

    No examples; there are plenty of subtropes for them.

    • Well, maybe a brief comparison of Bob and George and 1/0, to explain how the scale works:
      • The characters of Bob and George know they're in a Web Comic, but it only sometimes directly impacts the plot, and the characters' actual existence is never in question.
      • In 1/0, Medium Awareness is the main plot, and the characters themselves acknowledge and debate their possible fictionality/nonexistence.
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