I wanted to say that, you know, for me, it's about access--like, the first vids *I* understood were vids that were multifandom trash can vids with really clear theses - like "Hair" or "What I Like About You" (TS, Sentinel, Wiseguy; you can imagine). It took me a while to get more subtle character vids or even relationship vids if I didn't know the show, and I remember my first VVC being a bit of a downer because I didn't relate to every vid the way I related to vids in fandoms I knew. (I remember Kass having the same problem, and others. It's like the first year blahs of the inexperienced vidwatcher.) And then you become a better vidwatcher, and that passes, and you can love a vid like Haunted.

But the thing is, I've shown vids to people who I thought understood my arguments about vids and then watched as they turned away from the vid to talk to me while it was playing and I was like NO NO NO NO YOU'RE MISSING IT!--and it turns out not to be so OK to grab someone's face and turn them back to face the screen. :D But having seen intelligent people look away from a vid they've never seen while it's playing, it's made me realize that MOST people don't know how to watch a vid. And so for me, I've had to choose vids with more explicit arguments rather than less explicit arguments, and that's not necessarily for me about meta vs. ship: "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" is a romantic vid that's also an argument vid, for instance. And like, we just saw with GK and the DMCA that people who were prepared to grant that "It Depends On What You Pay" made an argument about rape, rape, raaaaaaaaape saw Der Kommissar as a bunch of promo clips!

So, um; in summary. tl;dr: canons are also teaching tools, and teaching= converting. :D