The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I wanted to live with this comment for a day or two before replying. I've had a look at the columns you linked to (and read all of Kelly's, which was excellent and well-reasoned); some of those ideas have filtered my way, particularly through Joss Whedon fandom, which now gives me a link into comics and superheroes fandoms.

I'd never heard of the scrapbooking brouhaha, but it sounds amazingly similar to fandom brouhahas, where trollish concerns over the morality of copyright disguise envy, discomfort with the new, and just plain pearl-clutching. It's the crazy side of devotion, and the line gets pretty hazy at times.

You cater to the fans too much, put in too many Easter Eggs or fanservice moments, and you usually kill the golden goose.

This is an interesting area. I'm old-fashioned enough that I like my fourth wall. Don't mind me, playing over here in porny fanfic, and I'll just mind my business and watch your show, you know? On the other hand, I Twitter-follow just about everyone involved in all the properties I enjoy, and when you know which airport so-and-so is at and see Vines of this one and that one goofing around like reg'lr folks--and sometimes they reply directly to you--well, that fourth wall is coming down, brick by brick.

Now and then (and increasingly often) I skitter back into hiding, when the tumblr crowd gets a bit too noisy. One showrunner I follow abruptly deleted his Twitter account when fandom turned threatening over some nuance of a relationship in the show he writes.

So, in short, I'm of two minds about the fourth wall and fanservice. The line between creator and audience is disappearing fast, and I doubt there's much anyone can do to redraw it. Publishers and networks and studios still claim the best talent because they can still pay, but they no longer have the monopoly on the media of creation and distribution, and they're polar bears on shrinking ice, desperately deploying their 20th century tools of homogenization, and lowest-common-denominator mass appeal.

This...is not as cohesive a set of thoughts as I'd like, but hey. Comments. What the hell.