hate

Post-Jordanism: noun- The artistic (cultural?) movement which began in late 2011. Works within this deal with themes of existential crisis, identity crisis, posttraumatic stress disorder, the state of being broken, intrusive thoughts of (non)existent(?) memory, the morbid preoccupation with suicide, grief, uncontrollable emotion, and darkness as a simple abstract concept. ex. 1: "Kill me."

Thursday, April 4, 2013

On Blog Classifications

For no reason besides organization, I have done my best to come up with a classification system for blogs by their lengths.

Blogpastas
These are those blogs that are extremely short while still being a self-contained story. Usually around 1-20 posts, a blogpasta is basically a creepypasta in the blog medium. Y'know, a short story. Doesn't even have to be horror; none of these classifications do.
Examples: alliterator's The Ripeness is All or And When the Sky Was Opened, The Visitor's Terrific, or my Harlequin Metropolis.

Blogellas
Like a blog novella, these are usually bigger than blogpasta and usually smaller than "proper" blogs. As a result, this is a pretty damn loose term, but according to my classification system, they can range between around 15-100 posts and offer more conflicts than a blogpasta but fewer than a "proper" blog. Yeah, apparently the difference between a novel and a novella is more than just length, and I like the idea of the blog equivalents being similar.
Now obviously, due to the nature of the blog medium, it's very common for a blog to be what this system would call a blogella. A novella has more focus on mood and a few complex characters rather than a complex plot like a novel, and since blogs lend themselves to a more personal first-person narrative, these are common! But as the Fear Mythos evolves, I think we're seeing a lot more experimentation in plot. But the point is that a blogella is the kind of short-ish blog that focuses more on the development of one or a few characters.
Examples: alliterator's Snowball in Hell or Ontological, TheSomnambulist's Urban Malefic, or my Testing in Progress or Built For Two.

Blogs
This is the equivalent of a novel, you could say. They're actually fairly rare, considering their size and effort required. They can range from around, like.. well, they can have as little or as many posts as you like. But they have to have a focus on plot or-- okay I don't even claim to know. But I think the common consensus is that they have to be longer and greater in scale than blogpastas and blogellas, with a considerable amount of conflicts or arcs. I guess it'd also make sense for, say, multiple companion blogellas to thematically join together to make a single "proper" blog "suite" "story" thing. Am I making sense? <:D
Examples: TheSomnambulist's The World Through These Eyeholes, collaboration blog A Realm of Emptiness, Shayde's Not To Touch The Earth, or my Jordan Eats Normally Now.

Epics
If you want to get technical, you could classify these as Blogs, as they tend to follow all the same classifications. But an epic is generally even longer, with even more conflicts or arcs. If you want to go to the real-world equivalent of epics in terms of the novel and film genre, an epic has a large scale (usually worldwide or larger) with far-reaching consequences that are often given much focus or impact. They're also sometimes called sagas and legacies, and they can either feature many protagonists or one hero whose exploits are detailed in (close to) full.
And above all else, an epic is almost always long. The blogosphere has some of these. You can probably see the examples coming from a mile away.
Examples: Omega's Mephi, TheSomnambulist's Amalgam Saga, CuteWithoutThe's collective Dying Man saga, alliterator and I's Topography Genera, and my OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING.

Do note that, in the end, you can call all of these "blogs." That's an appropriate blanket term.
As for how to refer to the "blog" classification, I generally say either "feature-length blog" or "proper blog." Though I suppose maybe capital-B Blog might work.

Thank you for your time!