I have Thoughts about this one specific scene and the way it operates as both self-critique and an illustration of character motivation through the mechanics of storytelling
The scene in question in case you need a refresher
This scene in Fata Morgana is so insane because it's operating on so many different levels of intertwined metatext and character motivation, like Jesus fuck. It's also one of the ballsiest writing moves I've seen in a while because the efficacy of this scene depends entirely on if the quality of your writing supports the claims being made and properly signals to the reader that there's something off about the fourth door. Not to mention their usage of perspective shift and their usage of the role of narrator to illustrate character motivations.
The perspective shift is the easiest thing to talk about because it's only really two things. First, it's an indication of Michel’s reclamation of his identity and self. He is no longer an amnesiac unknowable drifting ghost, so instead of referring to himself in second person (detached from his identity) he refers to himself in first person (My body. My voice). At the same time this signifies a shift in the roles of the characters— the story’s gaze has now turned onto the narrators, and they must cast off that impersonal, detached nature in order to become full characters that have an impact on the story instead of just passively observing.
Michel and Giselle are both narrators in this story, and the way they react to the removal of their narrator role signifies their relationships with their past and their identity. Michel cherishes his past memories, so he casts off the narrator role without any hesitation. Giselle is afraid of her past, afraid of all of the pain and suffering she’s had to go through, and as a result fights desperately to cling onto the narrators role. The Maid is not a character. The Maid doesn't need to feel things. The Maid doesn't need to suffer through history, through traumatic events, through love and the resulting pain of losing it. She would rather throw away all of her past, even the stuff that made her happy, and live in a comfortable lie where she never had to love Michel in such a messy way, where she never actually loved anyone, never interacted with the world beyond her role as a passive observer. She wants to continue to be the narrator, because it means that she won't have to feel all of the pain that a regular character would.
Speaking of which, the thing that tips off Michel about the fourth door is that there “wasn't a sliver of humanity” in that story. It was idealized and stripped down. A fairy tale where characters had no obsessions that lead to ugly, terrifying conflict and simply loved each other until tragedy happened to them. In order for this to work, the first four doors need to be written with all of this in mind and at an extremely high quality, because what they are doing is essentially critiquing their own writing, laying out what they believe a good character is and writing both the epitome of their standards and something that falls short. The writers have to deliberately write something they consider mediocre and then write the rest of the stories well enough that the fourth door’s mediocrity becomes apparent while Still being compelling and not total complete trash. This is the really ballsy move I mentioned because if so much as one door doesn't convey its intended purpose, the whole moment falls flat. But it doesn't: doors one through three are all about characters that do terrible things and simultaneously have admirable motivations and desires. Mell is a coward who allows his sister to warp him into an idealized statue of himself but still cares deeply for everyone and wants Nellie to be happy. Yukimasa is a sadist with no remorse over massacring hordes of people and inflicting brutal torture, but regrets his inability to control this bloodlust and tries his absolute best to be a normal human and to suppress those urges. Jacopo is a man who trusts no one and runs away from his problems by furthering his toxic masculinity, but only does so because he reasons that it's the only way to survive and enact real societal change. These characters are all insane because they suck as people but are also good in some aspects. Beauty and Ugliness are mixed together in these characters, with their motivations and desires contributing to both and rounding them out. And then you reach the fourth door and all of that ugliness is schlorped out of the mixture so you get a fairy tale prince with trauma and a girl who dearly loves him and connects with him through that trauma. Compelling? Yes. As insane as the other three characters? No. And then imagine deliberately pointing that out in your story, using it as a key point of evidence that something is wrong, that the fourth door is a lie, that it's something that Morgana crafted for Michel and Giselle so they could be sedated instead of facing up to their past and reclaiming their identities.
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