Sunday, April 28, 2013

Fandom

Fandom emerges when there is love of a story, of art, of music, of any form of expression. That love will change, shift, and become its own creature over time, deviating from its origin. It is then that fascinations begin. These fascinations start out slowly and creep their way into the logic of the fandom.

It is so easy to justify the small things. "I love this character," becomes more important than a plot point. Well, that's okay, there are lots of other plot points. "This band is so popular I love them, though I haven't listened to the music yet," the words pang against your inner senses but you bend a bit to allow it. At least they might start listening to the songs now that they like the band.

Then it turns dark. "I love this character so much, he's such a helpless baby!" The fandom cries about the megalomaniac who heartlessly terrorizes the innocent. "Oh my god, this song is so cute, I made a pony remix of it!" And that grunge metal song then had a pony remix. "Look at this art, it's so amazing I'm going to invert the colors and put a cat in it." Then Picasso had a cat, I guess.

Soon the story, music, art, or whatever else is irrelevant. The fandom is an incestuous pit of ideas loosely torn from these concepts, eaten up, regurgitated, and then feasted upon again. It has reached the point where there is virtually no connection to the source material any more.

Unfortunately your logic is still distorted from before. You accept a lot of material that you would otherwise question. The fandom accepts a lot of material that it should otherwise detest. Your standards have lowered.

The only question then is do you stay in this mess of a community and join into the cesspool or do you go back to the source material that you loved? It's a bit of a loaded question, I admit, but it's an honest to goodness question. There is no right answer, merely going where you will be happier. Sometimes the story was just the start, as the end of the book likes to tell you. You should probably avoid those who don't agree with your answer though, to save each other both a lot of headache.

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