Meta-theory about Belkar

[Kish]

Yes, but who appoints them as protagonists? And how would they know in advance?

Unless you say that whenever you read a novel, see a movie, or consume any work of fiction, this amounts to saying "I find OotS breaking the fourth wall mightily confusing in ways which I'm going to misblame on it having a D&D basis."

You know who chose the protagonists of the story. The person who always does--the author. Rich could have written a D&D-based graphic novel with a solid fourth wall, in which none of the characters knew the concept, or a non-D&D-based graphic novel which involved breaking the fourth wall and having characters say "I'm a protagonist!"--more often than they do, that is.

(Now, Tarquin is a perfect illustration of the varying types of stories Grey Wolf refers to below: He knows he's an NPC, and he knows he's an antagonist, but he's misidentified his role as "main villain in a grim father vs. son epic.")