SPN 4.18, The Monster at the End of This Book

[gnatkip]

If, like me, you didn't get the title reference, this might be relevant to your interests.

Comments

[la_fono]

That is indeed relevant to my interests.

[gnatkip]

Really? I would never have guessed you had a thing for furry blue boys.

*confused*

[la_fono]

Potentially out of context appreciation of Muppets might have been out of context to SPN. There were blue furry boys? :D

INARTICULATE ARMS, sorry.

[gnatkip]

There were no furry blue boys in the show. Only in the book.

But I'll tell you what the show DID have! It had out-loud references to fandom. To fic. To slash fic. To incestuous slash fic OH GOD FONO THE SQUICK IT WILL NEVER END.

Dean: There's Sam Girls and Dean Girls and...What's a slash fan?
Sam: As in Sam slash Dean together.
Dean: Like together, together? They do know we are brothers right?
Sam: Doesn't seem to matter.
Dean: Well that's just sick!

They got fandom in my canon. These are two great tastes that do not taste great together.

[counteragent]

Heh. Yeah. What you implied.

[gnatkip]

Too much meta? That's unpossible!

(But... TOO MUCH META, counteragent, too much meta.)

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I would have very much liked for the fourth wall to stay intact. It's not that I thought the people involved in the show didn't know that fans write porn on the internet, incest and otherwise, after all they use google like the rest of us, but I don't enjoy fiction about fictional characters becoming aware they are written and such. I like to pretend the fiction is "real" while I watch to immerse myself in the story, and meta intrusions collapse that fantasy. It doesn't matter whether they are good natured, or funny, or digs at fans (and as far as that goes I thought these were quite okay compared to how other shows, say West Wing, did this), they all make the fictional universe less real to me.

[gnatkip]

Yes, EXACTLY, everything you said.

I don't want to know what TPTB think about what we do; I don't want to know what the characters think about what we do. I mean, that last is a concern that never even occurred to me before this. I have a RPF squick, so I'm not in the habit of thinking about our objects' reactions to fandom, and having to incorporate it or fanwank it or, whatever -- to negotiate it in some way. And this recursive thing they've set up now, canon to fandom to canon... ew, forced intimacy, do not want.

I don't even know what I think about whether it was good natured or spiteful or what. I can't even form an opinion because there's this huge blinking SQUICK SQUICK SQUICK standing in my way! But most of fandom seems to think it was gentle, so I'm willing to buy that. :D

I'm so glad I wasn't in West Wing at that time. I mean, I've never watched the show, even now, but to be invested in it and to be slapped around like that, that would be so unpleasant.

[ratcreature]

I never expected having to deal with the "what if the characters find slash about themselves?" question in canon either. I hate that trope in fanfic a lot, and now this bizarre situation is *canon* in the show. Gah.