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fandom is like found art
Nov. 27th, 2014 12:41 amFandom is like found art.
Found art works kind of like this: wandering about your every day life, you find a thing. Maybe it's a piece of worn wood, twisted in interesting directions. Maybe it's a rusted bolt, age and damage giving it texture and character. Maybe it's a rock, split with cracks but holding together somehow. Whatever it is, it's compelling. Something about the shape or the color or the texture of it makes you stop and pick it up, thinking, "Huh, I could do something with this..."
So you do. You suspend the ancient bolt among its newer brethren or wrap the wood in twisted wire or carefully, carefully pull the rock apart to see what's inside. Maybe you put the bolt through the wood or trace the rock's cracks in neon paint. But you emphasize rather than disguise - sure, you /could/ sand the wood clean, or clean the rust off the bolt, or glue the rock back together, but then, what's the point? Take away the flaws and uniqueness, and then whatever you found so fascinating isn't there anymore. You want to champion the interesting features, not erase them.
Fandom - fanfiction and fanart - are a bit like that. Only with stories, or characters, or relationships, or settings. You come across a story, something compelling somehow, and you want to make something new out of it. You want to see what a character is like in a different setting, or zoom in a particular figure in the background, or move a couple of people around because they clearly belong next to each other. You take what you find and make into something new and interesting.
It's art. And it's pretty cool.
Found art works kind of like this: wandering about your every day life, you find a thing. Maybe it's a piece of worn wood, twisted in interesting directions. Maybe it's a rusted bolt, age and damage giving it texture and character. Maybe it's a rock, split with cracks but holding together somehow. Whatever it is, it's compelling. Something about the shape or the color or the texture of it makes you stop and pick it up, thinking, "Huh, I could do something with this..."
So you do. You suspend the ancient bolt among its newer brethren or wrap the wood in twisted wire or carefully, carefully pull the rock apart to see what's inside. Maybe you put the bolt through the wood or trace the rock's cracks in neon paint. But you emphasize rather than disguise - sure, you /could/ sand the wood clean, or clean the rust off the bolt, or glue the rock back together, but then, what's the point? Take away the flaws and uniqueness, and then whatever you found so fascinating isn't there anymore. You want to champion the interesting features, not erase them.
Fandom - fanfiction and fanart - are a bit like that. Only with stories, or characters, or relationships, or settings. You come across a story, something compelling somehow, and you want to make something new out of it. You want to see what a character is like in a different setting, or zoom in a particular figure in the background, or move a couple of people around because they clearly belong next to each other. You take what you find and make into something new and interesting.
It's art. And it's pretty cool.
