Self-Awareness and Genre Savviness
I have previously remarked that one way of preventing your characters from being stupid, is to ask yourself what you would do in their shoes.
What would be among your first thoughts, dear reader, on finding that you had been mysteriously transported into a magical world? ”Gosh,” you would think, “this sure does resemble a lot of other books I’ve read where the protagonist is mysteriously transported into a magical world one morning.” If you had read TV Tropes, you would think the phrase, ‘Portal Fantasy’.
HPMOR, Ch. 6:
“Well, for example, you mentioned that my parents were betrayed. Who betrayed them?”
“Sirius Black,” the witch said, almost hissing the name. “He’s in Azkaban. Wizarding prison.”
“How probable is it that Sirius Black will break out of prison and I’ll have to track him down and defeat him in some sort of spectacular duel, or better yet put a large bounty on his head and hide out in Australia while I wait for the results?”
Professor McGonagall blinked. Twice. “Not likely. No one has ever escaped from Azkaban, and I doubt that he will be the first.”
“All right then,” Harry said. “Sounds like it’s been nicely wrapped up.” He sighed, scrubbing his palm over his head. “Or maybe the Dark Lord didn’t really die that night. Not completely. His spirit lingers, whispering to people in nightmares that bleed over into the waking world, searching for a way back into the living lands he swore to destroy, and now, in accordance with the ancient prophecy, he and I are locked in a deadly duel where the winner shall lose and the loser shall win -”
TV Tropes observed, somewhere around the 30s of HPMOR, that every major character seemed to consider themselves to occupy a different genre: “Harry thinks it’s a science-fiction story or computer RPG, Dumbledore thinks they’re in an epic fantasy, and Hermione thinks it’s a romance novel. Somebody is mistaken about the genre they’re in, but it’s not quite clear who at this point. And Draco thinks he’s Light from Death Note, but he’s definitely wrong.”
I so adore tropes. They give me something to subvert.
Not in standard literary theory, but in actual literary practice, the trope of genuinely intelligent characters is heavily associated with the trope of Dangerously Genry Savvy or at least Genre Savvy. Because if you found yourself in what seemed like a horror movie, you damn well wouldn’t split up the group. You would say out loud “Don’t split up the group, you idiot!” or “This is exactly what gets people killed in horror movies!” if somebody tried it. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one excellent rendition of this interaction between Level 1 Intelligent characters and genre savviness - a pity the show ended after only three seasons.
You do not however want to associate this genre savviness with Breaking the Fourth Wall (unless you are deliberately writing crackfic); you do not want to write characters who pretend to be too cool for your story. What you want to do is put your characters into sufficiently interesting and original situations, unlike all the cliches you have already read, that intelligent characters do not solve them immediately, or even predict them successfully, just by virtue of having read the same books you have.
Therefore the Deconstruction, the Inverted Trope, the Averted Trope, and all the other forms of subversion, are inextricably associated with the genre of intelligent characters.
Intelligent characters would notice if the author was playing it straight.