Metacharacters can help add a bit of surprise to your story and even some comedy but what is a meta-character? Metacharacters are characters that are very self-aware no matter what medium they are in. A big example of this is Deadpool. The character of Deadpool knows that he is in a film and that in turn adds a lot of comedic potential for the character and something audiences may have not seen before within a film. These characters can add a lot of surprise and suspense. This is something that has been fairly new within film and TV but has been around for quite a bit of time and has had time to grow within the gaming medium.
Examples of these types of characters in video games would be Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club. In this game, you play a guy that is persisted to join the school's literature club by his best friend Sayori. He meets three other girls called Natsuki, Yuri, and Monika. The game starts off being a romance visual novel but then slowly turns into a psychological horror game. Once this shift between the two genres happens you find out that Monika is self-aware.
A game that inspired Doki Doki Literature Was a game called Me and You And Her. The difference between this game and Doki Doki Literature Club was that the self-aware elements were a big part of the plot of You and Me And Her being that Aoi knows that she is part of the game and in You and Me And Her. In You and Me And Her, you meet two girls named Aoi and Miyuki. After finishing Miyuki’s storyline and you move on to Aoi’s storyline where it is revealed that Miyuki is self-aware as well.
Self-aware characters in games make the audience think differently about how they play that game in the examples of Me and You And Her and Doki Doki Literature Club Having these self-aware characters helps the audience build a deeper connection with the character that is self-aware because it makes the character feel more real. The breaking of that 4th wall makes the audience look at these characters in a different way. This trope works very well within the psychological horror genre because it makes the audience feel uncomfortable and makes them more intrigued to play more of the game. Having this trope helps keep the audience gripped by the story.
When writing self-aware characters you have to have an understanding of the genre and medium that you are writing in. Having a better understanding of that medium helps you plan the most effective way to bring in that self-aware character. With the example of Deadpool, the character is a good self-aware character because of the way the characters are written and the understanding that the writers had with the story, and the constraints, they had with writing a self-aware character in a film. Writing a self-aware character in a film and a TV show, as opposed to a videogame, gives you a lot more restrictions. You have to think of ways that you can either get around those restrictions or adapt them in a way that would work. When writing a self-aware character for a videogame you have a lot more freedom but the design of the game and the type of game makes a big impact on how you write your self-aware character.
With Doki Doki Literature Club and Me and You And Her, These games are able to use the restrictions they had to their advantage and they incorporated things outside of the game to make the audience feel more uneasy. With Doki Doki Literature Club as an example, the game uses game files within the gameplay to enhance the story. When the game changes into a psychological horror the player notices that the character files of Sayori disappear once she dies in the game. This also happens to Yuri and Natsuki Once the player finds out that Monika is self-aware.
Writing self-aware characters is a lot different in film and TV than it is in games. A big difference is that the audience is less immersed in a film and TV show than in a videogame. In video games, the player is controlling the main character whereas in the film the audience is watching the main character and has no control over them. Understanding the genre that you are writing in is very important because then you can understand how a self-aware character is going to interact with the audience as well as with the characters around them. For example, Deadpool uses the comedy element of its film to joke about the makers of the film but also joke about other superhero characters. If you’re writing a comedy you can use the self-aware character to joke about the other characters in the film or things that are going on outside of the film. It’s about how you can use those characters within the genre that you are writing in, in an effective way.
In conclusion, there are many ways that you can write these characters that can be very effective but it takes a lot of understanding of the genre and the medium that you are writing in to write these characters in the right way but when written in the right way It can make an effective twist to a story or make a story more interesting and suspenseful.
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