Talk:Breaking the Fourth Wall
Needed: a variety of interesting, higher profile examples of fans and/or press purposely putting TPTB on the spot regarding fanworks -- asking actors and such about slash and RPF, showing or sending fanworks to TPTB, making actors read fanworks aloud in public. In other words, purposely putting TPTB on the spot in order to get a public response or to force an issue, create controversy and visibility. The focus of this page wouldn't be benign instances of fans offering and sharing fanworks with TPTB, but the more wankish, in-your-face practices. If folks have examples, would they add them to this page, or links here on the talk page to pertinent things? --MPH (talk) 02:09, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Is this the correct template? --MPH (talk) 02:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Name Change
I'd like to propose a title change for this page. Perhaps something more along the line of "Crossing the Fourth Wall." "Violate" is a bit loaded. --MPH (talk) 00:51, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
- Stumbling across this years later, and wanted to second your suggestion...Perhaps "Breaking the Fourth Wall," which reflects typical usage? "Crossing" also works! - Fandomgeographies (talk) 01:10, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- Going to give it a couple days, but barring any objections, I'm going to go ahead and rename the page! - Fandomgeographies (talk) 21:53, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
- Took me a bit longer than "a couple days," but...moved! - Fandomgeographies (talk) 16:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Update Intro/Split the Page
The intro mentions that "breaking the fourth wall" might refer to either the meta trope (when characters acknowledge/reference that they're in a story) or to the fandom concept of revealing fandom/fanworks to the creators of the source material. These are two pretty much unrelated concepts. This page has a lot of good content, but it's entirely focussed on the latter meaning of the term. It makes sense to me that these concepts be split up so that they both have their own page. I propose that a page be created for each concept (something like "Breaking the Fourth Wall (fiction) or (trope)" and "Breaking the Fourth Wall (fandom slang)", thank you User:Hoopla for the suggestions!), the intro to this page be changed to specify that it's about the fandom concept not the story/meta one, and then the contents of this page be moved to the new disambigged page so that this page can be used as a disambiguation page for both concepts. Also pinging User:JKFAN and User:Caessius since JKFAN noticed the issue and Caessius mentioned it in the Unofficial Fanlore Discord. I hope other people weigh in! -GoldenFalls (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- I agree there should be split pages. On the Fourth Wall (glossary term) page the majority of the content is related to the fictional concept of the fourth wall appearing in canon and fanworks, and very little on the irl fandom 4th wall. I suggest the "Breaking the Fourth Wall (fiction) or (trope)" page would include all uses of the 4th wall in which, keeping with the original concept, at least one side of the interaction is fictional. This includes breaking the 4th wall in canon, in fanworks (like Metafic), and [Fourth Wall (glossary term)#Breaking the (Fannish) Fourth Wall in Media|Breaking the (Fannish) Fourth Wall in Media]. The page for "Breaking the Fourth Wall (fandom slang)" (or maybe "The Fandom Fourth Wall" to help distinguish them) that would be info related to interactions between non-fictional parties, e.g. between fans and creators. –caes (talk) 02:55, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
Relation to Fourth Wall (glossary term)?
It seems kind of redundant to me for there to be a page explaining what the fourth wall is as well as one about breaking it, since the former only really becomes relevant when the latter happens. At least in the literary/story sense (that page also has the issue of combining the two into one page). After this page is sorted out a bit, how would people think about merging that page into the "Breaking the Fourth Wall" pages? I might start a discussion on that article's talk page. -GoldenFalls (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
Confronting the Subject of Fanworks with a Fanwork About Them
This part and the two items below it should be on another page. Breaking the Fourth Wall can only take part in the context of a work. TV Tropes addresses this on the pages Oh Crap, There Are Fanfics Of Us and Broken Pedestal. JKFAN (talk) 02:50, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
- Those parts look like they fit on this page to me. They're about the fannish fourth wall being broken i.e. the separation between fans and non-fans/creators being intentionally pierced. This is something that can happen in conversations or any other situation of interaction, and I don't see how it's limited to the context of a work. -GoldenFalls (talk) 04:46, 27 April 2019 (UTC)