Nightmare Fuel / Redshirts

• The premise of the book is that this starship's crew is trapped in a Cosmic Horror Story: The laws of physics seem to warp themselves around the ship leading to nonsensical situations where lower-ranking crew members are obligated to die whether it makes any sense to or not. At first it seems like something the command staff is doing, but they seem to be utterly unaware that anything is going on. If anything, they seem to be weirded out as well but unable to actually latch onto there being a problem. What's worse, whatever is causing this will even supersede their own free will and make them do things that make no sense to them (and seems to be doing the same to their commanders). The only defense (and that's not even reliable) is to hide from the bridge crew and remain Beneath Notice. Eventually they figure out the reason: They're all fictional characters subjected to the will of a lackluster writer.
  • Eventually they confront the lead writer of their show responsible for all of their suffering, and we see the opposite side of this coin: this person discovers that they have been an Unwitting Instigator of Doom and that their slipshod work has led to countless horrifying deaths.