[research] More on the term "genre" in doujin fandom

[unjapanologist]

For those who were interested in the different meanings of the word "genre" in doujin fandom a few months ago, I wrote a Fanlore article about it. Needs some polishing, but the basic info is all there.

Somehow, the hardest part about making Fanlore articles is the math captcha that you need to fill in to be allowed to create the page. It's not that the sums are difficult. You're just done with writing, you think you can switch your brain off now, and then SURPRISE MATH.

Comments

[lian]

That is an amazingly insightful & entertaining article. Thank you for writing it :D

[unjapanologist]

Thanks! I just wish I'd bought the anthropomorphic genre codes doujinshi. Dammit.

[foxinthestars]

Thank you for that article, very enlightening!

If you don't mind a couple of other questions that I've come up with in my Psychic Force doujinshi collecting (given, it's '90's-vintage stuff)...

If a doujinshi is labelled "only book", does that mean it contains material based on only one genre/fandom? Several of mine have that on them and I was idly curious what it meant.

Also re: Yorozu, I've seen web shops label individual doujinshi as "yorozu," and had gathered that that meant they contained material from more than one fandom/genre, but I'm wondering about the distinction of crossovers --- whether the genres in the "yorozu" doujinshi are in self-contained chunks or whether they interact together in a single work. Are those distinguished in terminology/labelling and practice, and if so, how? (Full disclosure, I'm asking this because I'd rather not buy the latter type, as well as for edification...)

Hope I'm not bugging you! ^_^;

[unjapanologist]

Going without context here, but "only book" may mean it's a doujinshi that focuses only on one particular character or pairing. Or one particular incarnation of a character, for instance the character as uke or as seme. Would that make sense for the doujinshi you're holding?

In the case of an "only event", it's actually noteworthy to mention that this is a convention that focuses on one fandom only, because a lot of conventions are multifandom. But the vast, vast majority of individual doujinshi are about one fandom only, so it would probably be superfluous to mention that fact on the cover too.

As for yorozu and crossovers: I'm not sure because I haven't actually read much yorozu dj, but I think yorozu is not used to indicate crossovers. There's クロスオーバー as a word for that, and I thiiiink there was also another word that I can't manage to remember right now. Will get back to you if I figure that out. You're not bugging me, I just don't know :D

[foxinthestars]

No, for the ones I'm holding, it almost has to be single-fandom; the ones labelled that way are in more of an all-cast vein. At first I had wondered if it meant a self-contained story rather than an installment in a series, but it seems like I'd seen one somewhere that contradicted that (although I can't find it now). All but one of the examples I have is from the same circle, tho, and I also have kind of a yorozu book of theirs (a collected reprint of works they had in commercial anthologies for several fighting game fandoms), and the last one I don't know anything about the circle except that one book. If the circle was known to work in multiple fandoms, it would make sense. Also these are from the period 1996-1999, so usage may have changed since then.

And thanks; the other yorozu books I've run across aren't ones that really pique my interest (mostly they're 18+ and I've been shying away from that, too; or else they're just not in a style that's to my taste), but I won't see the "yorozu" itself as such a barrier to trying them now.