zjofierose:

agentotter:

iwritesometimes:

thewinterotter:

You might want to ask @zjofierose, the author of that essay this question too, because their answers might be different and/or more insightful, but personally I think that part of the reason why the 4th wall is still such a thing is because fandom is desperate to keep it up. Especially for those of us who are older and came up in a different sort of fandom on different platforms, there are a lot of unspoken rules about what you do and don’t discuss or socially allow.

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i love you, fandom, and i think this entire conversation is vitally important and i’m glad we’re having it in earnest, but fhew, i have never before read such excellent essays and come to the exact opposite conclusions from the authors’. destroying the fourth wall is just so intensely not the answer to this problem; if there were any way to re-erect it and then station jaegers around it to guard it from the kaiju outside, i would have it done. fandom has way WAY too much of its own shit to sort out before we can ever engage with the mainstream on any issue of import (lgbt+ media representation, feminist media criticism, representation of PoC and the differently-abled); if there is any prayer of us actually making a change for the better, as an entity - as capital-f Fandom - we need to spend the next couple years disengaging entirely from exploitative media representatives and bloodsucking entertainment creators and unify our goddamn message. why do you think there’s so much internal policing of what’s okay to talk about and what isn’t, if not intense and virulent homophobia and misogyny within our own community? and we should tear down the only thing that ever kept any of us safe from total exploitation by the money-hungry opportunists who run the entertainment business and let them use our own terrible messaging against us?

in short, 0/10 COURSE OF ACTION, WOULD NOT RECOMMEND.

I have such conflicted feelings about this and this is such an awesome conversation that I’m not sure I’m smart enough to be having. :D To address the things I do actually have semi-intelligent thoughts on, though… as far as the fourth wall protecting us from exploitation, as @zjofierose already said, it’s no longer doing that anyway. All anybody — actor, “journalist,” talent management, whomever — has to do to find out what fandom is up to and what we’re passionate about and what we’re shipping is pull out their smartphone. Is there anybody in the world at this point who doesn’t know what slash is? Who hasn’t seen it used as a never-ending punchline on Graham Norton or dragged out again and again at junkets to try to make actors squirm about how weeeeeeird their fans are? You’re in Teen Wolf fandom, by this point don’t you just feel exploited by default? Does Teen Wolf even have a marketing strategy at this point that doesn’t involve “EXPLOIT FANS” written in bold letters at the top of the page? Recognizing that that IS what’s happening, and creating backlash against it — which involves not being ashamed of what we’re into — is part of ensuring that it doesn’t go down in everybody’s books as the most successful strategy ever.

Your Pacific Rim analogy is really apt, tbh, because that giant wall we’ve spent so much time and blood building? It’s not keeping out shit.

And as far as the homophobia and misogyny in our community, I feel like I might be missing part of your point here so please feel free to correct me or elaborate or whatever, but how exactly do we address that at all without doing what I’m suggesting we do, which is speak up about it and stop treating it all like a secret. There are a ton of people in fandom who are producers of slash-type fanworks who are contributing to that policing of discussions because a lot of us grew up on the “what happens on the Internet stays on the Internet” model of life, but the Internet is a different beast now, and while what we do on the Internet might very well stay on the Internet, these days the Internet is literally in everybody’s pocket. I feel like all we’re doing these days by holding on to this sort of “if we don’t discuss it nobody will know” attitude is broadcasting the sort of shame that everybody seems to think we should feel.

IDEK, man. Thoughts, how do you do them.

I’m gonna agree with @agentotter again, but with a couple of additions:

1) The fourth wall is already compromised, and not just a little bit. We can prop it up, in places, and as I said in my original post, some folks have entirely valid reasons for doing so. I am down with people who need to protect themselves taking the appropriate actions to do so. However, for fandom, the wall is simply keeping us in, while allowing those who want to make money off of or sensationalize us to have free access. If we start to tear it down, then it comes down on our terms, and we get to help control the discussion, rather than if we wait for those who would come after us.

2) “Fandom” doesn’t exist as an actual entity, and is thus never going to actually sort its shit out. There is no UN of Fandom, there’s no Geneva Convention. There are more and less widely accepted ways of behaving, sure, and working to change those from within is absolutely something we should be doing. But trying to put our fingers in the dike until we can get fandom all shiny and clean before going public is never going to work.

3) We can’t wait. Waiting gives the non-fans who want to shame us and take our money more power. Change is not instantaneous by any means- it ebbs and flows and pushes back and forth. But it comes, and the way to shape what the end result looks like is to be out in front of the wave, not sitting on the beach making sure your flippers are on right.