tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane: “For the record: I have never quoted fans without permission” please...

tomato-greens:

robinade:

thebkwyrm:

eleveninches:

robinade:

eleveninches:

I beg to disagree with you. It is not disrespectful to pursue that conversation because of the nature of tumblr––we don’t really reply to each other; we rather respond to the things that people have said and wait to see what happens. Now I have explicitly replied to you, robinade, but I have no way of knowing you’ll see this. I have no way of knowing anyone who will see this. That’s the nature of tumblr, and the problem, I think, is that we haven’t updated the way we think about fandom––we haven’t moved on from an LJ sensibility, from the sense of privacy that a seemingly enclosed community creates. Well, guess what––while I don’t think we were ever as private as we pretended we were (heyyyyy Henry Jenkins!), we’re no longer enclosed. 

Seriously, most of the internet is a public space. Since we’re speaking so condescendingly about choice here, when you choose to post content in an unlocked space––whatever that content may be––on the interwebz, you don’t get to choose who sees it, reblogs it, responds to it, reads it aloud to their friends, quotes it in an article, etc., etc. It may be more comfortable to pretend that no one can see it but the anonymous faces of fandom, especially if you’re like me (not high-profile, not particularly desirous of becoming very high-profile if it leads to being embroiled in dramarama), but that doesn’t mean that that conceit is a true one.

I personally love the fourth wall in every way there is to love it, from its literary theoretical implications to its practical application in my life as a fandom-dweller. But it is imperative to understand that the fourth wall is an illusion we’ve built and maintain for the sake of propriety and discretion, not an actual protective agent. You cannot retroactively want information you have released publicly to disappear into the private sphere, and you cannot track or control everyone who has access to that public information. It’s just the nature of the game. While pretending that fandom and RL is mutually exclusive is pretty much par for the course––it’s what I do!––the only thing that will protect your anonymity is what you choose or choose not to put publicly online. Once it’s out there, it’s fair game. Thinking the fourth wall is real is not only a fallacy, it’s foolhardy––the fourth wall has never existed. 

 I’ve never written RPF so I guess the stakes are lower for me, but I hung out in bandom for three years and I know how it works.  

For the record, I don’t know Aja except for the, like, three conversations we had while we were both hanging around Inceptionville, but she’s always struck me as a decent person. While I may not always agree with her (just like I may not always agree with ANYONE who posts their opinions for public perusal), she has never seemed to have it out for fandom or be deliberately malicious towards people, or anything like that. I don’t really know why so many people love to hate on her. 

DAMN THAT GOT LONG

Not really up for replying to all of that. I think the points I want to make are:

• it’s true that tumblr is a public forum and therefore you can’t expect privacy or anonymity, but every person deserves respect and consideration, whether online or in real life
• regardless of whether or not the fourth wall is real, most fandoms prefer a degree of separation between their fanworks and the inspiration for those fanworks. they’re entitled to try and preserve that separation and it’s rude (and in some cases genuinely traumatizing) to try and fuck with that
• i don’t think Aja is acting out of maliciousness. she has an honest belief that fandom shouldn’t or shouldn’t have to hide behind the fourth wall. i don’t actually disagree with her. it’s her actions that are pissing people off. forcing people out of the fandom closet before they’re ready to— it’s no wonder people are full of resentment. her being a fan and therefore ‘one of us’ doesn’t give her a pass on this.