4th Walls: When and How to Break Them (Or Not!)

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

HEY! AREN'T YOU THAT GUY FROM--?

Well, yes, but no, but yes.

A few notes on 4th Walls

The idea of the 4th wall comes from theater: during a play, the audience is watching the action through the "fourth wall", transparent to them, but very present and opaque to the characters. It allows for great dramatic irony, for realistic interactions, and for the suspension of disbelief necessary for traditional theatre. And then modernism came along and broke things.

4th Walls are funny things--strong as steel or thin as paper.

In Polychromatic, the slang use of "4th wall" refers, generally, to other characters canonically knowing another character's canon.

For example, an OC of a modern day human teenage boy might very well know "The Simpsons".

--But suppose we have a Homer Simpson in play?

As funny as the OC's mun might find it to be to have his or her OC encounter Homer Simpson in person, please be considerate of Homer Simpson-mun's feelings on other characters running up to him in the street and yelling "D'oh!" at him. Or asking him if he remembers that time he technically divorced Marge and then remarried her--Homer might not be from that point in canon. D'oh! What then?

Boundaries. It's all about boundaries.

If you are completely all right with other characters breaking your character's 4th wall, PLEASE SAY SO. Give explicit permission for others to break the wall into little tiny pieces to be crushed and ground to powder under the feet of so many fangirls. Or fanboys. Whichever.

But remember that with permission will come the fangirls and fanboys. You will have to be prepared for it. We, as mods, ask your understanding if you've given carte blanche, free reign, and the get out of jail free card to other players to break your characters 4th Wall like a conceptual artist breaks dishes in a performance art happening.¹ The other players are probably going to break your character's 4th wall. Especially popular or iconic characters may have a harder time at this because they're known or mentioned within other canons.

Of course, the alternative is that if you do not want other characters breaking your character's fourth wall PLEASE SAY SO. Make it clear that you want your character to remain ignorant of the ending to his story, her eventual marriage, their twenty seven bundles of joy, and so on.

"But my character is a huge fan of 'The Simpsons'! It would be OOC for him not to talk to Homer!"

That's fine. Be that as it may, if Homer Simpson-mun has said, "No 4th wall breaking, please", do not break his 4th wall. Talk to Homer Simpson-mun and see how he or she feels about it, and work something out. Or let your character fangirl/fanboy without breaking the wall--it's possible! Struck text works wonders: "HOLY CRAP, IT'S HOMER! DUDE, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! DUUUUUDE!!!" Why does your character like "The Simpsons"? Because he just thinks they're funny? Because they remind him of his family? Work from that rather than the fanboy angle.

The trick is, of course, setting clear limits on how much 4th wall breaking is allowed with your characters. It's difficult to say how much is allowed and how much is too much. There may not be an easy way to word it. You may find that you have to say no 4th wall breaking is allowed, or you may have to request that other players talk to you on a case-by-case basis.

Also, once you've given permission to break 4th walls like cars at a demolition derby, it may be hard to go back and ask everyone to stop. You can't very well undo everything that's happened in-game. You can't ask the entire game to retcon something because you've changed your mind about 4th wall breaking. You can't ask other characters to magically forget something that they discussed. What's done is done. However, you can ask that people tone it down. Talk to the players, tell them what you've decided, communicate, and work something out. It's a reasonable request, especially if too much 4th wall breaking is making it hard to stay IC.

→This part is important: if your character breaks another character's 4th wall without that other player's permission, that is infomodding. The moderators of Polychromatic do not tolerate infomodding in any form. If someone infomods you or breaks your character's 4th wall without your permission, please speak to that other player, or if necessary, let us know about it. This doesn't count if you've changed your mind and don't want your character's 4th wall broken, unless you've made it very, very clear that you've changed your mind. Even then, we ask that you be understanding of the other player who may have made an honest mistake.

Your Fellow Poly Players have recommended sticking a note regarding your take on breaking your character's 4th wall in his or her journal's profile. Sounds like a pretty good idea, a fast way to check, and a good way to keep up with it all.

Couple of other notes: Because, lol, timspace anomaly? Or not. Polychromatic (therefore, the City) runs on Eastern US Time. We know that sometimes people are in odd time zones, on the Island of the Day Before, or have peculiar circumstances, but we'd like to request that personal curse-related posts not be made until after midnight Eastern US Time. Midnight on the dot? Hit it. Otherwise? Please restrain yourselves. It helps prevent confusion and IMs to the mods asking about what day a curse really happens. The exception here, of course, is logs. Logs can be predated, backdated, or currently rolling. We'd just prefer it if people could hold off posting about a curse in an individual character's journal until the curse day begins in-game.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Fish? Cake?

All right, off you go.

1.Editor's Note: We have been informed that not all conceptual artists break plates, naturally. Apparently only the ones robot_mod has met break plates. Maybe it's just robot_mod. So we wish to make it clear that, if you have given permission, your character's 4th wall will be broken like these particular conceptual artists broke those particular plates at that particular performance art happening. Which is to say a lot of plates were broken into very many pieces in very short order. Thank you.

Comments

Footnote

[itsjustafruit.livejournal.com]

What if it's more like eggs? Or panties breaking under the oppression of the nail? Or the one artist who ended up living with a chicken because he couldn't bring himself to kill it at the end of the performance art piece he did nude in the middle of a bunch of thawed chicken breasts?

What about Banksy? Does he count?

Footnote

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Do panties actually break? I've yet to see this. I mean, I know the elastic can snap and so on, but break?

I'm rather charmed with the idea of living with the chicken after the fact. Call it a muse.

And Banksy is just cool. QED.

Re: Footnote

[adamantined]

Get your mind off of panties, Jade.

[oodzuchi.livejournal.com]

Question! Should this be added to the main profile template...? I think it'd make things a lot easier to have it readily accessible to everyone with a simple Y/N/MFYB/NGTFO addendum to it. =o

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

That's not a bad idea, actually. If you'd like to include that in your profile, please do, by all means! (Know that other players may still prod you to ask about it, though.)

[banditfox.livejournal.com]

Ditto! I'm sure no one wants to step on any toes, but it's hard to keep track if the only "Yes, you can break the fourth wall" notice is in an OOC post buried months down on the flist. Sticking a little note in the profile seems ideal.

[lionesscouchant.livejournal.com]

Can I make a suggestion?

Put your 4th wall opinion in the character profile. Yes, no, rules and regulations for your particular character, that way people can check if they feel tempted.

I do it for my characters because there are characters who I'm fine with 4th walling, and characters who I prefer are not 4th walled at all. I know not everyone checks, but if people start to put it in their profiles, I think it can clear up a lot of issues before they even start.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

LOL I think great minds think alike--see above :D

[oodzuchi.livejournal.com]

GET OUT MAH HEEEEEEEEEAD!! /wrist

[floating-bamboo.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I keep getting so confused and think I've counted time wrong when there are early/late posts for a curse. Stop making me paranoid, guys ;__;

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

♥ It's okay. We have people here playing from all over the world, traveling, moving around--which is great! We just hope everyone can stay, more or less, in the same game timezone.

[handsomejack.livejournal.com]

What about situations where you have a crew and some people on the crew embrace the 4th wall breakage but other people in the crew don't?

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid, in that case, you may have to work things out within your crew.

--Not that everyone in the crew has to agree on a certain level of 4th wall breaking permission across the board, but that you understand their permission levels and they understand yours. This has to be something that you discuss within your crew. You may have to request that fellow crew members refrain from breaking your character's 4th wall if outside characters break that fellow crew character's 4th wall--if they'd come running to tell your character "hey, did you know we're on television?!" for example--the same as you'd request outside players not break your character's 4th wall. (This is getting complicated.)

I don't think there's a simple solution to your question except communicating within your crew.

[ibrokehistory]

POLY, HIRO APOLOGIZES FOR BEING SUCH A RAMPANT FOURTH-WALLER.

...but at least we can have waffles~?

[darkest0knight.livejournal.com]

...Holy crap those look delicious.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

... Damn, now I want waffles. Like, bad.

[floating-bamboo.livejournal.com]

Oh god that looks insanely good.
Curse youuuuuuuuuu.

[master-supreme.livejournal.com]

YUM.

Why you gotta make me hungry while I've got a stomach bug? D:

[treadingdawn.livejournal.com]

EAT. NOW.

[pinkenthusiasm.livejournal.com]

omg waffles y u look so tasty ;_;

[blazingjustice.livejournal.com]

... And my mum says I'm bad for making chocolate chip waffles.

Oh god yummy *_*

[eccentric-ox.livejournal.com]

AWESOME IDEA! I'll put 4th wall info in my crit post or something. /o/!

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

\o\ Go forth and conquer!

[pachinko-head.livejournal.com]

YEY EST. Seriously, for a while were we on PST? Because if we were that threw me off SO MUCH. But I am used to converting for EST because most televisions channels only show EST when we are really in AST. In short: ILU GUYZ ♥ and I'm sorry I backdate so much ;_; timing = not my best friend

and thanks for the reminder on 4thwalling, I'd forgotten to link to Ikkaku's OOC post in his profile and probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise... And I need to do something similar with George too, sighsigh.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Last year or so we were on PST. But when more mods were on EST than PST, things were switched to EST, and we've been there ever since (being an EST mod myself, I admit that playing on PST was a bit rough).

But, since then we've gotten a lot of new players, so it's good to remind everyone what's the dilly, yo.

It's more work now, but it's good in the long run?

[doujin-dork.livejournal.com]

Ohgodwhydidthatlastlineputmeinmindoffishcake. D:

Also, if this is something directed at me, please PLEASE for the love of crap e-mail me about it. (I-It's taking a while for me to get through tags, so if you already did this, I'm getting to it, probably.)

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Mmm fishcakes :3

When the mods make a post like this in polychromatic, it's a reminder to the community as a whole. Usually we make these because we've had a lot of players IM or email us about whatever the post is about, or because we've heard a lot of players are talking about whatever the post is about amongst themselves and aren't sure what the game's rules are on a certain point. It's a PSA to clarify or codify something for the community as a whole.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Just a note that the profile template (http://berryfloss.livejournal.com/8050.html) has been updated with a 4th walling line.