Genre Savvy / Fan Works

• Nine Days Down: Discussed. After becoming isolated, Twilight reflects on Celestia's comment that Tartarus enjoys playing out horror stories with Its captives by trying to think in terms of how horror narratives work. She runs into a few problems, such as the difficulty in working out whether someone is a protagonist or supporting character, and ultimately concludes that the problem with trying to be genre savvy is that it is impossible for a character to outsmart the story, since they aren't in control — only the author is.
• Spectacular Seven features this quite a bit with Moondancer.
  • Moondancer Thinks Like a Romance Novel due to partaking in high-class entertainment like operas, romance novels, classical music, and theater plays. As such, she thinks of herself and Twilight Sparkle as Star-Crossed Lovers in a Childhood Friend Romance, with Moondancer occasionally referring to herself as "the leading actress" in what she sees as a grand love story of two lovers driven apart by time and reunited by fate. They can finally be together, if only the wicked succubus Sunset Shimmer wasn't in their way, twisting Twilight's mind to make her think she loves Sunset Shimmer. Actually, Moondancer is a Yandere who wants Twilight to herself as an obsession, Twilight genuinely loves Sunset for who she is even in spite of Sunset's flaws, and Moondancer is a dark reflection of Sunset who acts out of jealousy and wanting what her rival has, gradually Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and ignoring pangs of conscience and guilt that she feels in her single-minded obsession.
  • Moondancer tries to invoke a Rescue Romance, thinking that she as the "leading actress" will win Twilight's heart when she tries it. Twilight doesn't buy it, knowing that's what Moondancer was trying to do thanks to her own love of Star Wars and nerdy culture.
• In the Mass Effect Self-Insert Fic Mass Vexations, Author Avatar Art goes through pretty much the entire fic noting the events of the game as they go on. He ends up lampshading just about everything he notices, including making an offhand comment about one of the game's Playing with Syringes examples.
• Doing It Right This Time: The people hiding together with Shinji in the shelter know how the “Humongous Mecha versus Robeast/Kaiju” thing works:
  "The military must've hit the Angel with something big," a man in NERV uniform replied. "Either an N2 mine or a fuel-air explosive."
  "Never works in the movies," a third voice muttered.
  There was another, longer vibration. "And that," the NERV employee continued with a proud grin, "is the secret anti-kaiju weapon that will work!"
• Several characters in Total Drama Battlegrounds, though Heather deserves special mention after seeing Rodney die in one of the virtual reality challenges:
  "But see, in every movie that's science-fiction or fantasy or the like, the kid always makes it. This time he didn't, and thus, this queen has broken the unwritten rule for such movies. Even an Asian martial artist cliché or the American commando cliché cannot defeat someone who is breaking the unwritten rules. But as I said, I didn't want to say this out loud, or I'd look weird."
• Luminosity: Bella realizes that her life is a Romance Novel. Relying on her status as the protagonist may be part of why she makes some risky decisions.
• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer's characters are frequently utilizing their knowledge of fiction tropes, although each character is savvy in only a few genres.
  • When McGonagall tells Harry what really happened to his parents (Harry had been raised by his aunt and her husband with no explanation), Harry starts asking her which plot hooks might be left dangling, frequently making analogies to The Lord of the Rings.
  • Hermione does frame events around her as if she were in a story (early on, she wants a romance between her and Harry), but she's more often seen trying to convince Harry that he isn't in a story, and that he should stop trying.
  • Draco likes to compare his own behaviour to the heroes in the opera/play performances that his father takes him to see.
  • Daphne Greengrass, like most of the girls, views events like a romance plot, and tries to invoke her own romance with Neville during one of the battles between the first-year armies.
  • Dumbledore likes to frame himself as the wizard Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, and conversations between him and students are often framed in "young heroes" and "mysterious old wizard" terms.
  • Quirrel and Harry often discuss the finer points of how to manipulate others, referencing stories and contrasting them with reality as they do so. "The role people play" is an element of Eliezer's writing that comes out frequently in this character.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has the titular duo, though in different ways: Calvin knows a lot about sci-fi movies.
• Elementals of Harmony: Sideboard of Harmony: "Fast, Fine, Fierce": Ditzy explains why she's not using paralyzing tentacles to restrain the villain:
  I've seen enough Kamigawan erotica to know that schoolgirls and tentacles don't mix. Er, never mind that last part.
• The Kim Possible fic Tunnel Vision in Chapter 6, Shego observes that something’s wrong simply because they’re at the point in Drakken’s plans when Kim should have shown up to stop him, so the fact that she hasn’t appeared is concerning (Kim and Ron are currently stuck in the past due to a time-travel experiment that went wrong):
  Shego stood and scanned the monitors again. "That's the point, Dr. D. The Princess and the buffoon should have shown up by now.
• Arcanus in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Whispers is stated in-universe to have become this by reading a lot. He demonstrates it by lampshading a case of Innocent Innuendo.
• Children of Time has Beth Lestrade is quite firmly One of Us, an obsessive Sherlockian and a geek for several more fandoms, with a habit of making Fandom Nods and inducing Holmes to deliver a few Take Thats.
• Captain Kanril Eleya of Bait and Switch and related Star Trek Online fics displays flashes of this on occasion. In the side story "An Anomalous Nightmare", she rapidly makes the connection between the strange behavior of her crew and the Negative Space Wedgie the USS Bajor is stuck in.
  "And the connection to that grav anomaly is?" Warragul gives me a funny look and I scoff at him. "Oh, come on, we all know that's where this is headed. Every time we or anyone else hit an unexplained anomaly like this in the past it's made something weird happen."
  • Part of the explanation is, she's a fan of Turn of the Millennium Earth science fiction (although not Star Trek because that would be silly). In The War of the Masters, Eleya is explicitly stated to borrow ideas from hard science fiction especially, such as powering down her ship and using gravity assists to aid in surprise attacks in lieu of a cloaking device.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Power Girl fan fic story Origin Story, Xander Harris was a comic book geek. Alexandra Harris has all of his memories. She is thus often able to predict what the various Marvel Comics heroes will do before they think of doing it.
• Due to his fondness for videogames (especially RPGs), Harry Potter is quick to spot important plot points in For Love of Magic, such as referring to Hagrid's mention of "You-Know-What in Vault 713" as being a "side quest note", correctly guessing there was a prophecy regarding himself and Voldemort, and figuring out Voldemort has a Soul Jar.
• Xander is the only one in The Power Of to find it highly suspicious that a new girl shows up with an obviously magical necklace and unusual manners in the middle of the semester. Since said girl is Anyanka, Patron Saint of Scorned Women, he's proven right by the end of the day. Notably, the reason he's suspicious is the same reason Willow isn't: the same thing happens with the Villain of the Week in anime all the time.
• The whole premise of Storybook Hero, in which Harry takes ridiculous risks because he knows he's the hero of the story and can't be killed by anything but the main villain.
• In Emerald Flight Book One: Union Harry, Hermione, Supergirl, Batgirl and Hawkgirl are attacked by an undead army in Egypt.
  "Whatever you do, don't split up!" yelled Hermione, having seen enough horror movies that she knew splitting up always ended badly.
• Some examples are seen in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines and its sidestories:
  • In the Gardenia Interlude, the titular Gym Leader has seen enough horror movies to know that splitting up in a Haunted House is a bad idea.
  • In the Frax & Velvet Interlude, the latter knows from watching TV that asking What Could Possibly Go Wrong? is a tantamount to make everything go wrong, and constantly chides her brother for doing so.
• In Won't Tell a Soul, Nino is stated to be this on the topic of superhero stories, even referring to himself as the "Alfred" to Ladybug's (and later Cat Noir's) "Batman."
• Harry Potter and the Quantum Leap:
  "I trust Severus Snape, Minerva. It just appears that he has a bit of a blind spot with young Potter. Severus needs to be here teaching." [Dumbledore] saw his deputy eye him with disdain in her eye. "Do not worry yourself, old friend. I am keeping an eye on him. With me in this school, nothing bad will happen to Harry Potter."
  Harry almost laughed at the statement. If there's ever a way to cause a problem, that's it. It's like saying "Hey, watch this!" or "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" I'm so screwed, it's not even funny.
• In the Invader Zim fanfic "Beware of What You Can't See," Dib finds a spell that gives him invisibility, but doesn't affect his clothes. He instantly realizes that this is a bad idea, though Gaz winds up using it with expected results.
  Dib: Nope. No way. I've seen enough comedies to know how that works. Especially since my luck sucks at the best of times.
• The Twilight fanfic As Dreams Are Made On starts from the premise of a fictionalized version of the author landing in the body of Bella Swan on the day of her arrival in Forks. Having read the books (and supplementary material), and seen the films, she knows exactly what sort of story she's in, even if it's not precisely the one she knows. As she's also, generally, an SF/fantasy fangirl, she frequently draws on other books, comics, TV shows, etc. to explain things or provide a frame of reference.
• The Spider-Man fic "Jackpot" opens with Gwen Stacy being brought back to life in a post-Civil War (2006) timeline. While she soon decides to work on a means of giving herself and Mary Jane spider-powers so that they can fight alongside Peter and not be defenceless, she recalls such examples as Curt Connors and Michael Morbius and refuses to use the subsequent formula on either until all simulations turn up a 100% success rate, concerned that even a 1% margin of error could result in her or MJ basically becoming a new variation of the Man-Spider mutation.
• In Farce of the Three Kingdoms, everybody knows that they are in a book, who the hero and villain are, and they act accordingly. Cao Cao manages to take advantage of this anyway.
• The protagonist of the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? fan work My Trans Dimensional Overpowered Protagonist Harem Comedy Is Wrong, Hikigaya Hachiman, is an isekai hero who believes he's been transported into a badly written Light Novel. (He's completely correct, although "badly written" is just his opinion.) Not only does this enable him to avoid "tripping flags" (doing or saying things that usually have bad consequences in Light Novels) and recognize when other people do it or are in danger of doing it, it enables him to try to move the plot by acting in ways that are associated with certain Light Novel tropes. Of course, it only works when the author wants it to, but since that's a big part of the point of the work, it usually does.
• As a self-insert who knows he's in a superhero universe, the main character of Dial often uses his familiarity with the superhero genre to his advantage.
  • Having become used to famous actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson portraying important Marvel characters, on one mission, Dial immediately pings a HYDRA merc who looks like Michelle Rodriguez as someone important. He's right; in this universe, she's Titania.
  • While looking for a man-eating horror creature in the Graveyard, Dial thinks about where no-one looks. Then he looks up to find the Wendigo.
  • Ulysses Klaue thinks that today will be a good day, then instantly tenses up when he realises he just tempted fate. After nothing happens, he relaxes... a moment too early.
• As a fan of videogames, Ichigo in Game and Bleach immediately pegs the god awful Asauchi as being the weapon that starts off terrible but has no Level Cap and becomes a Game-Breaker over time. Sure enough, the Asauchi goes from doing less damage than a punch to hitting for thousands of points of damage.
• In Potter, Inverted Lina comments that Quirrell has Surprise Evil Dude written all over him, while Snape is more of a Blatantly Obvious Red Herring Evil Dude.
• Harbinger (Finmonster) (Danny Phantom, ParaNorman): Danny assumes that the key to understanding what's coming and how to stop it lies in Blithe Hollow's history, given how that tends to be the case in movies and the like. Unfortunately, as Tucker points out, Blithe Hollow, even excluding the whole witch mess, has a lot of dark history to go through.
• Fate/Gamers Only: Rikku applies knowledge from video games to figure out certain scenarios. The comic where Rikku accurately guesses that the explosion during the first Rayshift was sabotage just based off of the specific circumstances being so unnatural uses the trope name as its title.
• In The Loud House fanfiction What You Wish For, Lori calls Lucy stupid for playing with an ouija board as she's seen horror movies where this leads to bad things happening.
• Shadow Play: The Self-Insert in Shikamaru's body at one point comments that in a shonen series, the stronger the protagonist is, the less the supporting cast has to do. Therefore, he should make Naruto as strong as possible so he can just sit on the sidelines and talk about how strong Naruto is.
• In the My Hero Academia fanfic Know Your Meta, not only does Katsuki Bakugo recognizes that he is in a story, he identifies Izuku Midoriya as the main protagonist due to how weak he starts. He intentionally sets himself as The Rival to Izuku so he would be secure in the narrative. He and Shigaraki also get into a debate when the latter tries to recruit Bakugo, with Shigaraki arguing that if Bakugo becomes a villain he'll have a guaranteed win against Izuku to set himself as a threat, while Bakugo arguing that will not only lead to a guaranteed lost in the future, but end with him respecting Izuku, which he doesn't want.
• The entire premise of the Miraculous Ladybug fanfic Nope: Marinette - the Incredibly Reluctant Protagonist is that her parents noticed at birth she had blue hair and so was the protagonist in some story, and made sure she was ready to deal with it while trying to delay as long as possible the start of the story (and foiling multiple attempts, such as the fairy kidnapping, a Childhood Marriage Promise and the many talking animals trying to give her gifts)... And stay alive her first year of life, as they knew a tragic backstory could get one of them killed before her first birthday.
• In All Mixed Up!, Mariana Mag picks up on Otto trying to stall for time while he comes up with a plan to stop her before he gets anagrammed. She then remarks how movies will always use the tactic of the hero distracting the villain by getting them to tell their life story before another hero lurking in the shadows will move in and attack them, and says that since Otto has no one who will come to his aid (with Oscar, the agent that came with him, already attacked and anagrammed by her), she might as well tell him her entire life story. What she doesn't take into account, however, is Otto's battle prowess and quick thinking skills.
• When Isabela in How Far Do These Roots Go Down? gets the vision on how Mirabel not getting a gift will affect the miracle and sees that it has two parts (one with Casita cracked and one with it still whole), she knows exactly which one Alma will focus on and it factors into her choice to shatter it.
• The Death Eaters' Disney World Trip:
  • Ali and Solar are fans of the Potterverse^note Which exists as both the magical world and the non-magical book/film series in this continuity, and thus know pretty much all there is to know about the magical world (as of 2010). They also take advantage of this not just to joke around about spoilers for the last book, but also to try to save Snape's life by telling him to "run like heck" if he encounters Nagini… though they would rather not "mess with the time stream" actively.
  • In the epilogue, Dumbledore's "omniscience" is attributed to him having read the Harry Potter novels beforehand.
• What the Cat Dragged In:
  • Adrien can immediately tell that Blanche Bissette is going to get akumatized after the poor woman's negative encounter with Chloé. Unfortunately, he's right.
    Adrien: Please tell me someone really did go after Blanche?
    Clint: Not that I saw.
    Adrien: [wincing] That's... not good.
  • According to Word of God, the reason Nick Fury was kicked out of Mayor Bourgeois' office is because the mayor immediately realized that a man named Fury was pretty much an akuma waiting to happen and didn't want to risk it.
  • When dealing with an akumatized Tony, Natasha is quick to realize that his fondness for the Evil Overlord List makes him this — e.g., he'll likely avert Conservation of Ninjutsu and send his entire army of robotic suits after the heroes.
• In Vow of the King, after an Internal Reveal where she learns what her brother is up to, Yuzu immediately pegs him as a Stock Shōnen Hero, before realizing that since shonen tends to have No Hugging, No Kissing along with Thou Shalt Not Kill and Ichigo has already had sex and killed an enemy, he's a seinen protagonist.
• Power:
  • Harry and his family move to Grimmauld Place for security reasons. Percy asks if the scenario feels familiar to anyone else.
    Percy: You know? The story of a family that moves into a new old creepy mansion and it turns out to be haunted and stuff?
  • The day after they arrive, DJ comments that he heard a heartbeat-like sound during the night and Nico asks if he followed it.
    Percy: Are you serious? You don't follow the creepy sound that no one else hears! That's like rule number 6 on the haunted house survival guide.
    DJ: What's rule number 1?
    Percy: Don't move into a haunted house.
• True Potential:
  • Deconstructed. Not being related to the clan head, Kanji Yamanaka realized that he's pretty much a Red Shirt, somebody who will probably never go past chūnin, will die during a mission or battle, and no one besides his immediate family will mourn or remember him. The reason for this line of thinking is that his older brother Fu Yamanaka disappeared one day many years ago on his way to the Academy, and Kanji felt that the clan did very little to find him, not helped by the fact that very few people went to the funeral.
  • On the other hand, both Onoki and Kurotsuchi suspect that Naruto has a connection to the Fourth Hokage due to his Hair Color Spoiler.

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