Metafic

A metafic or metafiction is a work of fiction that explores the nature of fiction itself. Much like any mechanism, fiction can malfunction, creating misleading expectations in the mind of the reader. If one were to read nothing but romance stories that end happily, one might come to think that all romances, no matter how turbulent, will come out well in the end. Daria fanfiction can malfunction, too. Too many Daria/Trent shippers, and one might believe they are the perfect couple, blithely ignoring such important issues as Daria being underage or the two having nothing in common.

A metafic shows how the reader is being mislead by repeatedly drawing attention to the critical flaws in a certain category of writing. The effect can be jarring on the reader, causing one to wake up and break the flow of the narrative, but this is exactly the point.

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