OOC - Genre!

[sythyry]

OOC: I have a genre!

Well, a subsubsubgenre, at least. I'd be surprised if it gets as big as animutation, say.

Sythyry isn't the first fictional journal, not even the first fictional LiveJournal. I'm not aware of many others that are set in the authors' original worlds and intended as literature for a broad audience: cowboy_r's long-completed project of Tails of the City is the only one I can think of.

But that was last month. Now there are jareth_atian and, as of this morning, bartolomi. Welcome to both!

I am far from mighty at English Lit. (My mother is an English professor -- and yes, I was named after Shakespeare, and didn't choose the name "Bard" myself like a good little pagan and/or gamer -- so I generally avoided English courses.)

But I'm beginning to see some subsubsubgenre conventions, already. Both bartolomi and I start out by actually getting the physical journal, from a relative who is a maker of magical devices. The journal exists within the journal. I imagine that the right Magisters of LitCrit could probably have a field day with that -- but of course the characters seem to take it as a fairly routine matter.

Schools are also popular: college, in particular. Actually byackley has for the last year or two (or more?) been producing a nifty webcomic set in a magic academy, Spellshocked, and I am a card-carrying member of Academics Anonymous, so it probably comes naturally. In any case, I don't see much of Hogwarts in either Spellshocked or Sythyry.

Next comes ... genre identity disorder, maybe, when I start consciously breaking the conventions of the form?

Comments

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

"genre identity disorder, maybe, when I start consciously breaking the conventions of the form?"

It is your right... nay, duty!... as an author to break down the conventions of any form as soon as it becomes a standard. Rediscover what makes the form so compelling by extrapolating back to its routes and re-imagining another take on it before cliche sets in!

For instance, one might bring another narrator in who translates Sythyry's journal for the LJ, and also translate's Sythyry's
commentary on the translation, compelling Sythyry to play games in zir journal. Or incorporate Sythyry's letters to specific people in the journal, so it becomes more than just reflections on one's own life.

Myself, for the elusive "second novel", I'm playing with the William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" form by having a story broken down into self-contained storylets scattered out of chronological order by organized thematically.

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

:) For some reason, I assumed this was more common. I suppose I was mistaken

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It may be! There are a fair number of fictional LJ's, but mostly from the viewpoints of characters in Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or such as that. That'd be in the same subsubgenre (fictional journals). The subsubsubgenre is fictional journals in original settings.

(And I'm giving myself undue credit there -- the World Tree setting is a RPG, but beetiger and I wrote it, so I can pretend it's an original setting and generally get away with it.)

If there are others, I'd love to see 'em!

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

There's scii, but that's not been updated very much since the comic it's partially tied to has been on hiatus. Bad, bad lazy mungo!


-Alexandra

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

I'll keep an eye out for original-world ones. I guess I never counted the 'fanfic' journals, though I do enjoy a bit of the Very Secret Diaries now and again.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the journal itself to possess sentience, and make its own comments...

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I would consider Tails of the City (which, by the bye, is no longer available online, so your link is broken) to be a journal... it was more a piece of fiction that I couldn't find a conventional publisher for.

The fact that it was serial was just... coincidental.