What's weird?

Beedo at Dreams in the Lich House asked what weird is, and I've read some of the insightful responses, including the usual good thought from Von, here, at the new GAME OVER.

My own interest is less in weird as a genre than the idea of weirdness itself. For me it's not so much combining elements - which is common, and even simple in the struggle to make fresh things - but more a suggestion of hidden depths and reframings.

Weirdness in this understanding becomes the creation of a new space in which existing knowledge is reduced in value or needs to be synthesised anew - and still comes up short - where presumed fundamentals are undermined or replaced and where the observer is challenged to engage to a high degree, quite possibly at a more intuitive level, at least initially. It's clear this is relative and depends very much on the observer.

It's also a greater task for the creator too, but potentially very valuable. It's rather like the change we make in our world when learning a new language, in that a language is less a naming system than an alternative set of interpretative tools which can show spaces we hadn't imagined exist; the whole a process in which we find more than we might expect.

The value is in intimations of something as yet unknown waiting, an encouragement to explore. Weird takes those intimations and runs with them, and the further, the better.
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