Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''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.''|'''[[Banjo-Kazooie|L.O.G.]]''''s [http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=6269&uid=33513137116 Facebook Q&A]}}

 

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

 

* [[Mockumentary|Mockumentaries]] and the like: There are cameramen who the actors acknowledge, but [[This Is Reality]] still holds sway.

 

* 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]]/[[Aside Comment|Comment]]

 

* A [[Narrator]] (but not a [[Audience Surrogate|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.

* [[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.

* 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.

 

* [[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.

 

 

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** In [[1/0]], [[Medium Awareness]] '''is''' the main plot, and the characters themselves acknowledge and debate their possible fictionality/nonexistence.

*** Both are examples of full [[No Fourth Wall]], but [[1/0]] clearly has a less solid Fourth Wall than [[Bob and George]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]

[[Category:Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness]]