This is a great post;I'm glad someone like you, from the beginning of online fandom, is keeping up with the comments and discussions. You've been part of one big fandom change, and real visibility and new technology is certainly causing another. The Fourth Wall has been gone for a while, and any attempts to get it back or adhere to its rules, based on preserving the Fourth Wall, are doomed to failure.
What we wanted from that place was to be able to act as fans and writing fans without interference from people who did not understand what we were doing- to be left alone to play as we wanted. Now that is just not possible; to maintain our world is now a public issue, and fan attitudes are so often driven by approval or disapproval from the old TPTB, and by writing fans who hope to gain from fandom commercialization and try to protect their relationship with commercial sources at the expense of fandom as a whole. I've not followed much of the dissuasion or arguments around these issues but I know they are there. I think you are right that fandom has to refuse to kowtow to these notions; OTW is doing good work on the legal front and fan meta talk needs to include a response to commercial activity by some of fandom participants that lets fandom keep right on doing what it does best - reacting and adapting and reworking and commenting on human storytelling.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-24 01:44 pm (UTC)What we wanted from that place was to be able to act as fans and writing fans without interference from people who did not understand what we were doing- to be left alone to play as we wanted. Now that is just not possible; to maintain our world is now a public issue, and fan attitudes are so often driven by approval or disapproval from the old TPTB, and by writing fans who hope to gain from fandom commercialization and try to protect their relationship with commercial sources at the expense of fandom as a whole. I've not followed much of the dissuasion or arguments around these issues but I know they are there. I think you are right that fandom has to refuse to kowtow to these notions; OTW is doing good work on the legal front and fan meta talk needs to include a response to commercial activity by some of fandom participants that lets fandom keep right on doing what it does best - reacting and adapting and reworking and commenting on human storytelling.