We appear to be living in a world where the average consumer of popular media has developed a finely tuned sense of the hackneyed, clichéd, and otherwise overdone. I've listened to friends and acquaintances complain (at great length) about how much they hate rip-offs, remakes, and the derivative genre "crap" that the mainstream media has been churning out as of late. Some people seem to believe that mankind's last original idea was finally thought-up sometime in the 1980's, or whatever decade they spent the majority of their formative years in. The truth is that there are no new characters, only new characterizations; no new stories, only new storytellers.
Of course, this is only my take on the subject—and I assure you, it's not as pessimistic as it sounds. Acknowledging that the basic building blocks of human storytelling have existed for as long as humankind, itself, allows for the realization that true originality lies in the combination, recombination, presentation, and representation of these elements.
This brings us to the beauty of genre conventions. Narratives can borrow archetypes, plotlines, themes, settings and styles from as many genres as the storyteller wants. Genres can of course be broad (Drama, Comedy), narrow (Horror, Fantasy), or highly specialized. Ideally, a text should stay within the bounds of a genre enough to comfort the audience, while exploring outside the bounds just enough to excite them. [To read more about these topics, see my college essays linked at the end of this article.]
So what genre(s) will Starlight draw from? At the moment I'm getting most of my inspiration from Lovecraftian Horror and Fantasy Steampunk, though the latter hasn't shown itself in the artwork as of yet. I would love for later chapters to have a more Western or Victorian Steampunk feel to them.
There probably won't be any Nazis, though.
That's all for this week, folks. Next time on Gruedorf, I draw a bridge for McGrue!
For more, read:
"Lead and Lasers: Genre Hybridization in Firefly" (2005) and "The Steampunk Genre and Energy Concerns in the Japanese Popular Imagination" (2006)
This brings us to the beauty of genre conventions. Narratives can borrow archetypes, plotlines, themes, settings and styles from as many genres as the storyteller wants. Genres can of course be broad (Drama, Comedy), narrow (Horror, Fantasy), or highly specialized. Ideally, a text should stay within the bounds of a genre enough to comfort the audience, while exploring outside the bounds just enough to excite them. [To read more about these topics, see my college essays linked at the end of this article.]So what genre(s) will Starlight draw from? At the moment I'm getting most of my inspiration from Lovecraftian Horror and Fantasy Steampunk, though the latter hasn't shown itself in the artwork as of yet. I would love for later chapters to have a more Western or Victorian Steampunk feel to them.
There probably won't be any Nazis, though.
That's all for this week, folks. Next time on Gruedorf, I draw a bridge for McGrue!
For more, read:
"Lead and Lasers: Genre Hybridization in Firefly" (2005) and "The Steampunk Genre and Energy Concerns in the Japanese Popular Imagination" (2006)
Leave a comment