I just saw a really interesting comment online. The reel was making fun of “the dirt-poor FMC in a billionaire romance who won’t spend his money” and the comment was “well she doesn’t know what kind of book she’s in or whether that guy is a creep”
It made me smile but also think – do most protagonists know what kind of book they’re in? They kind of have to, no? Maybe I’m just bored but this has blown my mind a bit haha
What would books be like if the protagonist didn’t know what kind of book they were in? Like a “trapped on an island with a killer” book where the MC thinks she’s on a dating show 😂
by Proper_Emu_2296
2 Comments
It would be interesting to have a character cheerfully navigating a post-apocalyptic landscape under the blissful delusion that they are the charming lead in a cozy small-town romance novel.
The Scum Villian’s Self-Saving System is kind of like this. The protagonist gets transported into the world of the novel he’d been reading, so he expects everything to turn out like it originally did. But it takes him a while to realize that his presence has thrown the storyline off and everything has changed now.
The central conceit of the plot is that he is as dense as a brick and insisting on holding on to a version of reality that no longer exists. He completely fundamentally misunderstands his own intentions, everyone else’s intentions, and everything that is happening in the story until like 2/3rds of the way through. Ah, Shen Yuan, my idiotic fave.