meta-reference as define above. Examples While every medium has the potential for meta-reference, some media can transport meta-reference more easily than others. Media that can easily realise its meta-referential potential includes, for instance, literature, painting, and film. Although music can be meta-referential even outside the confines of lyrics, meta-reference in music is much harder to create or detect. Music, therefore, would be a less typical medium for the occurrence of meta-reference. Nöth argues in this context that although non-verbal media can be the home of meta-reference, the contained meta-reference can only be implicit because non-verbal media can only show similarities, but never point directly (or explicitly) to meta-referential elements. Others, however, argue that meta-reference is explicit as long as it is clear. Literature John Fowles begins chapter 13 of his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman with the wordsThis story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters' mind and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in [...] a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God. [emphases added]This is an example of explicit meta-reference because the text draws attention to the fact that the novel the recipient is reading is merely a fiction created by the author. It also foregrounds the convention that readers of realist fiction accept the presence of an all-knowing narrator, and breaks it by allowing the narrator to take centre stage which invites meta-reflections by the recipient. In American comic books published by Marvel Comics, the character Deadpool is aware that he is a fictional comic book character. He commonly breaks the fourth wall, to humorous effect. To other non-aware characters in the story, Deadpool's self-awareness as a comic book character appears to be a form of psychosis. When other characters question whether Deadpool's real name is even Wade Wilson, he jokes that his true identity depends on which writer the reader prefers. Film The Truman Show is a movie that contains a high degree of meta-reference. Truman, the protagonist, is unaware that he is part of a reality TV show, but the audience knows about the artificiality of both Truman's life and, by extension, the movie that is being watched. This is underscored by putting emphasis on the production process of the fictional reality TV show, which