Nice Job Snowcloning It, Hero (Alt Title crowner 2/28/12): Painting The Medium

Obviously it can overlap with Breaking the Fourth Wall if a character has Medium Awareness (since that is already a form of BT4W), but I agree that the "Fourth Wall" part of the name is a distraction and possibly a factor for the misuse.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:06:08 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Agree that the name should not include the words "fourth" or "wall", that adds little cohesion and much confusion.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

IT IS ABOUT THE FOURTH WALL.

What people need to realize is that just because the fourth wall is mentioned doesn't mean the character in story knows about it. SEE, SPEAKING IN ALL CAPS GIVES THE ILLUSION OF YELLING. But characters in the story itself don't know that someone is speaking in all caps, the punctuation is for the benefit of those behind the fourth wall, the readers. They don't know the demon speaks in red or the psychic in italics, that's all flavor for the reader.

That is why this is a fourth wall trope.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

No, "fourth wall" doesn't mean "done for the audience's benefit."

You may as well say that everything that the characters see is a "fourth wall trope" because it occurs on their side of the fourth wall.

edited 19th Feb '12 9:58:27 PM by Routerie

The "fourth wall" is the invisible (usually) barrier between the viewer's world and the work's. This is about making changes to the viewer's world, maybe the "frame around the fourth wall", or the color of speech bubbles, to say something about the work's world. Not the wall itself.

The image is kind of confusing, too. Two tropes are depicted: Painting the Fourth Wall (the demon's black-and-red speech bubble), and Breaking the Fourth Wall (Elan whispering about it). IP thread.

edited 20th Feb '12 1:29:52 AM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Routerie, you're not even arguing against my point.

is not the same thing as

The fourth wall is the barrier between the story and the reader. This trope something used in the story that the characters don't actually view but still adds to the story on the reader's end. Usually in visual cues, thus painting the fourth wall. The title is accurate. If tropers are misusing it, remind them that its not the same thing as breaking the fourth wall. Changing the image is actually a good step. Renaming an accurate title on faulty reasoning is not.

edited 20th Feb '12 8:34:34 AM by Cider

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

The fourth wall is the barrier between the audience and the players. Fourth wall tropes concern the barrier. This trope does not concern the barrier.

As you say, this trope is "something used in the story that the characters don't actually view but still adds to the story on the reader's end. Usually in visual cues." That has nothing to do with the barrier. It involves things on one side of the fourth wall (people on our side see it but their side do not) but has nothing to do with the barrier itself.

edited 20th Feb '12 8:59:06 AM by Routerie

Yeah, those things, are specifically on the fourth wall. They are right there on the barrier between the characters and the reader. This is not some kind of Dramatic Irony that the characters could possibly know but don't, this isn't Unreliable Narrator or Tomato Surprise, where something behind the fourth wall knows something the audience could if the writer chose for them to, this is an effect of the fourth wall itself.

The characters don't see text, text boxes, text bubbles, written sound effects or anything of the sort. When Deadpool comments on the written sound effect being mispelled or that his text boxes are yellow while no one else's are, he is Breaking the Fourth Wall because those are completely unrelated to the story being told, they are simply telling the reader a story.

Now that his text boxes are yellow at all when everyone else's are white is a change in the fourth wall to make Deadpool more special. He knows this, hence breaking, now Chamber also has different colored text boxes(blue) but he doesn't know this because Chamber doesn't break the fourth wall. Yet the fourth wall is still changing in concern to Chamber, hence painting the fourth wall. The title is correct.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

No, not a change in the fourth wall. Just a change in the paratext.

I think I'm following your logic though:

1. Fourth wall = two dimensional surface between audience and characters
2. Page/screen = two dimensional surface between audience and characters
3. Therefore, anything delivered through the page/screen relates to the fourth wall.

To see why this is wrong, consider a 3D example - a play, which is where the term "fourth wall" originated in the first place. An example of "painting the fourth wall" in this case would be a colored spotlight on a particular character. The spotlight comes from directly above the character; it does not come from the fourth wall, or fall on the fourth wall, or cross the fourth wall. It is totally unconnected with the fourth wall.

Yes, that's breaking the fourth wall. Because he's commenting on being in a story. It would have also been breaking the fourth wall if he'd said "this story will end in one page." Yet the story ending in one page itself has nothing to do with the fourth wall, nor does the sound effect being misspelled.

edited 20th Feb '12 12:50:16 PM by Routerie

well put.

I'll say it again, this trope has exactly as much to do with the fourth wall as subtitles do. They're a way to give the audience information about the story without it being a part of the story.

And since calling subtitles "text on the fourth wall" would just be insanely confusing, the same should apply here.

edited 20th Feb '12 1:14:35 PM by abk0100

I agree. The Fourth Wall is an intangible separation — you can easily identify whether an element is on one side or the other, but it can't be "on" the wall itself.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

So, what else originates in a play? Deus ex Machina? If the character in the play openly acknowledged the machine that dropped in Heracles to save him, would that not be breaking the fourth wall? Then two, would not be a character in a play demanding a technician shine a spot light on him? If, like the text boxes, my idea on breaking the fourth wall is correct then why would giving the devil a red spotlight while everyone else gets a white one not be painting the fourth wall? Unless it is a musical, wouldn't the guys in the play not acknowledge the sound track, making the devil's sinister leitmotif painting the fourth wall too?

Fourth wall intangible, sure, the viewer can't go and change a show's plot that's already been written but invisible? I disagree, coloring what only affects the audience to better illuminate what only affects the characters sounds enough like a fourth wall trope and its use is objective, so misuse should not be hard to identify.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

I'd be a lot more comfortable with renaming if we actually had a good name to change it to. But so far there aren't any good suggestions, and I can't come up with anything.

This is hard because it's a very broad supertrope that covers a lot of things, and there aren't a lot of key words that can sum it up concisely.

edited 20th Feb '12 3:04:08 PM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

If a character acknowledges the machine that dropped a deus ex machina, that would break the fourth wall. If a character demands a spotlight, that too would break the fourth wall.

But this trope isn't about that acknowledgement.

This trope is about the spotlight itself. The spotlight has nothing to do with the fourth wall. It is no more a fourth wall trope than deus ex machina. Do you think deus ex machina is a fourth wall trope?

The problem is that the only time the phrase "Fourth Wall" is ever used (besides in this trope) is when someone is breaking it. No one calls a spotlight "shining a light through the forth wall." That would just confuse people, just like this trope's name.

@37: Medium Awareness is in fact a Sub-Trope to Breaking the Fourth Wall because a character within the Fourth Wall is interacting with elements that reside outside of it.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

I've noticed a number of people have used the term "Paratext". Might that be used as part of a new name?

Also, I'm thinking that the creative use of typography and fonts has so many examples of the page that it would be worth splitting off a new sub-trope just for that.

edited 20th Feb '12 3:59:38 PM by Catbert

This trope has always been confusing for me. Strata was right to correct the Apollo Justice example. I'm the one that put it on there, and I honestly couldn't tell if it was Painting or Medium Awareness (I basically flipped a coin after thinking both over).

It wasn't until the image picking thread suggested an example from The Boondocks. Granddad was going through a montage of sorts of various women who he meets on Myspace and dates in real life. When they show up at his front door, a side by side comparison is made between the woman and her profile pic, with none of them looking anything like the picture. Finally, he meets one woman who actually does look like her pic, and she notices the profile picture that she's being compared to, and strikes a similar pose to match it just to reconfirm it's actually her.

It was only then that I knew what Painting the Fourth Wall was actually describing, and I think it just needs a rename in retrospec.

edited 20th Feb '12 4:45:20 PM by DRCEQ

The Boondocks example is (I think) Painting the Fourth Wall combined with Medium Awareness.

If she hadn't noticed the picture it would just be Painting the Fourth Wall.

Is Fourth-Wall Portrait actually a subtrope? Isn't that Leaning on the Fourth Wall?

edited 20th Feb '12 4:56:06 PM by abk0100

I hate that name, "Leaning on the Fourth Wall". In fact, I share that opinion with just about every Fourth Wall-based title on this wiki.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Metatextual Speech Bubble, perhaps? The possibility of breaking the fourth wall should be mentioned in the description, not in the title, and is generally not present in non-subversive uses of the trope.

It is not limited to speech bubbles, that is just a common type. Another is changing the UI of a video game in some way (color scheme or etc).

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Visual Metatext?

Painting The Paratext?

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

It's not really paratext. It's usually in the text itself.

I'm not sure whaether it's metatext, but that's because I don't really know what "metatext" means.

Rhymes with "Protracted."