(Author's Notes Chapter)

I hereby coin the phrase "silvering the fourth wall". Silvering the fourth wall occurs when characters read the story they are a part of. They admit to it being a good narration of current events, but still believe themselves to be real – thus the standard "fourth wall" is not broken.

For a long list of examples I refer you to the Harry Potter section of . You can find easily several hundred stories of varying quality, where HP characters read some or all of the HP series. Of course, what with magic and time travel being well established, they just believe the books to be a particular re-telling of their lives.

This sub-(sub-sub-etc.)-genre can be very entertaining if pulled off well. Go read any of the good silvering-the-fourth-wall HP examples if you don't believe me. This begs a question: why does it seem like only Harry Potter has a lock on the genre? I have found virtually no other examples of characters reading their own books (not 0, I did find a very few). I feel the time has come to rectify this in part.

Another question is: does silvering the fourth wall have to stick to books? Why cannot a character watch their own movie? Play their own game? Read their own comic? Hum along to their own musical?

But seriously, besides printed media, probably the next best thing is an episodic television show. True, for fanfiction purposes, we have to type the transcript of the show as viewing it is impractical, but we already do that in fanfiction, so this is not a crippling problem. Episodes correspond to chapters for organization purposes, working nicely.

So: Phineas and Ferb. I was introduced to the show quite recently, but am already a big fan. It does have a couple of problems that I had to work on before silvering the fourth wall, which I shall list below.

First, no way can the entire show fit into one 104-day-long summer vacation. As a matter of fact, sticking to just the first 2 seasons plus the movie (which is my plan), still means a few episodes have to occur on the same day. This is just barely possible given the nature of a few particular episodes. And it does require some iffy logic – for example a 1-day-long Hawaiian Vacation.

Second, the order the episodes were shown in absolutely does not match with the order they happened over the summer. For example: 1.11 (Jerk de Soleil) and 1.19 (Mom's Birthday) both explicitly say the boys have already time-travelled, despite this not happening until It's About Time: 1.21. The biggest constraint is Summer Belongs to You – given that it would occur on 6/21 going into 6/22, and given that the first day of summer vacation was 6/3 as per the opening credits, only 18ish episodes can occur before it. Pretty much all of these are predetermined given how many episodes are referenced directly in Summer Belongs to You.

And strictly speaking even seasons 1 and 2 cannot occur in the same summer. 1.22 (Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together) explicitly falls on Thursday, June 15, which would make July 15 a Saturday. But 2.43 (Hip Hip Parade) explicitly falls on Tuesday, July 15. 1.7 (Candace Loses Her Head) falls on Friday, July 11, which is consistent with Hip Hip Parade. Thus I am assuming Dude We're Getting the Band Back Together to be a goof and in fact fall on Sunday.

I have painstakingly assembled a master list of how exactly all 112 episodes from season 1 and 2 plus the movie could happen in one summer with very few continuity errors (the more I go back and watch, the more I find, though they are all small). This list bears only passing resemblance to the order in which the episodes were aired. It will also not necessarily have any resemblance to a third list, which would be the order in which episodes are viewed in my fanfic.

As to the mechanics of how I shall silver the fourth wall, that will be made clear in the main story, next chapter.

I'll just make one plea for reviews right here, because I know how annoying it is to pop up in the middle of the fic.

And finally I shall also only make one DISCLAIMER: I do not in any way shape or form own any legal rights to the Phineas and Ferb series. Disney Channel/Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh take all the credit. I do take credit for transcribing the episodes from cartoon form to text form for the purposes of this fanfiction story. These transcriptions are NOT official, and should not be considered as such.