Can I just say I love how someone was like, “Why don’t you have Diane be mayor?” And they’re just like, “Oh, okay!” Like they are so awesome holy crap back this project please please please
THEY HAVE HEARD OUR CALLS
I’m getting pretty emotional over this, but this really touched my heart. Yes this is kinda silly and doesn’t seem like a big deal, but doing this means they are listening to us and changing Wayward Guide a little from their original idea so that their fans enjoy it more.
Not only does that mean that this project is for the fans to enjoy and not for profit or publicity, but this means that they will listen to us should we bring up more serious concerns later. If we have a problem, we now know they will listen and respond to us, not ignore us as so many have done before.
Thank you Tin Can Brothers. This fun and silly little addition to your production has meant the world to me as a fan. You dorks are amazing and thoughtful people who care about your fans and it truly shows. So thank you, I can’t wait to see Wayward Guide.
I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be a fan in a Tiny Fandom™️. I’ve gone from mostly being a fan of biggish things to mostly being a fan of smallish things, where “smallish things” means things put together by people who are scraping together whatever resources they can and who definitely don’t have The Very Big Entertainment Corporation of America paying their bills. For those creators it’s a labor of love, a dream. So they sacrifice and make it happen. And especially when they use crowdfunding to do it there’s more of a feedback loop between creator and fan.
When (let’s say just for argument) a humongous mega-budget fantasy epic that has become a tentpole property for the biggest cable network makes some choices in adapting their source material that some fans find problematic, that discussion exists in the fandom, and informs my relationship to the creation. But it’s not like you can see any significant exchange going on between fandom and creator around that. Because the creators are a huge, highly professionalized juggernaut, and they’re going to protect their product and their bottom line, and yeah, the creation is still amazing, and when there are occasional sly winks or meta-commentary within the show, or maybe even a slow, ponderous change of course by the ocean liner to address some of those concerns, I dig that. But it’s just – the asymmetry between an individual fan and the creators is so great that I feel like my humanity gets lost. I’m part of an army so vast, and the decision makers are so distant, that it doesn’t feel like their decisions could ever reflect an awareness of me or my concerns.
Being part of a Tiny Fandom is different. There’s still an asymmetry to the relationship. It’s still in some sense an illusion of participation. But it’s a much truer version of the illusion than Big Fandom offers.
That didn’t used to matter to me as much. But it does now.
