One style of Mockumentary, where it's a recognizable type of computer document — IRC chat log, forum posts, guestbook, Facebook posts, blog entries, email, etc. It's almost always a Fan Fic or history fic, mainly because it's an "easy" form, and it's almost always at least part-comedy, mainly because it would be hard to take this seriously anyway.
It could also be an Apocalyptic Log. May be integrated with a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot. Character Blog is a variant usually done as part of a larger work. Compare Gag Dub.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Fan Works
- The Avengers Shouldn't Text, which is a Slice of Life log of texts between the The Avengers set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- The Background Noise of Defiance: Since the series is heavily entrenched in social media, the space equivalent of Twitter posts and DMs are a common means of communication between the characters, and the narration is often interspersed with transcripts of online conversations.
- "Lonebot"
and "Curlehbrace" reenact Cave Story through the Twitter feeds of the player character and Curly Brace.
- The entire premise of Chosen One's Adventure with Legendaries is that the Legendary Pokémon of the world have a communication network that takes the form of a chatroom that they use to talk, share information, or just be goobers. And then Arceus finds out that Ash Ketchum has somehow accessed the Kanto chatroom on his phone and has been talking with the Legendary Birds and Mew for months, right before his Pokemon journey is about to start.
- On CollegeHumor:
- Cracked.com:
- A Series of Emails From Cyberdyne's New Tech Guy pokes fun at terminally unsafe behaviour of certain characters in the Terminator movies.
- A borderline example in 6 Movie Plots That Could Have Been Solved In Minutes — a blitz Fix Fic for New Moon (It Makes Fun of Context).
- A Series of Emails From Cyberdyne's New Tech Guy
- The number of Facebook fics in the Glee fandom is insane. Some of them are really good. Others... not so much.
- A British design studio recreated the film Home Alone 1 entirely through tweets, including a Twitter page for every character who had a part, in realtime over Christmas 2009. They did the same for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York over Christmas 2010. They don't plan on doing Home Alone 3 or 4... "ever... as those movies suck. That is all."
- Since Homestuck is made largely of chatlogs, there are tons of fanfics for it that are based around just one long chatlog.
- The fanfic to Horatio Hornblower miniseries Hornblower and the E-Mail Saga by Laura is made up entirely of e-mail messages. Characters have funny and punny e-mail addresses (for instance, horatio_hornblower (at) handsome_heroes.com). They face various problems connected to the Internet and the world of IT that mirror the events in the Navy from the series. Part 1 based on "The Even Chance", Part 2, based on "The Frogs and the Lobsters" and Part 3, based on "Mutiny" and "Retribution".
- HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network comedically abridges the events of Horizon Forbidden West, as described by characters completely new to communications technology.
- Korrabook has the cast of The Legend of Korra post on a Facebook-esque social site about the events that happen in the series.
- Most of the Harry Potter fic The Naked Quidditch Match takes the form of "m-mails" (equivalent to e-mails) exchanged among characters.
- Act One of The Next Frontier takes the form of Jebediah Kerman's Captain's Blog.
- The book Ophelia Joined the Group "Maidens Who Don't Float": Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook by Sarah Schmelling is a collection of several classic lit titles as told through Facebook updates. Jesus on ThyFace: Social Networking for a Modern Messiah does something similar for the New Testament.
- The Homestuck fic Self-Imposed Challenge is written as a series of forum posts.
- Sub Rosa is a Sherlock Holmes multimedia fic in telegram form — each telegram is an image — set during the Great Hiatus.
- Jeconais credits The Naked Quidditch Match with inspiring the format of This Means War, which is not connected to the above beyond being set in the Harry Potter universe and interspersing the narration with in-character emails.
- This summary of Watchmen in the form of a Facebook feed.
Literature
- Encryption Straffe has sections of chapters shift to this when the characters are having conversations online.
- The Ink Black Heart: Most of the series of the Cormoran Strike Novels are told by Switching P.O.V. between detective partners Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. This one sometimes departs from that formula, with several chapters instead consist entirely of chat logs from online fantasy game "Drek's Game". Sometimes there are as many as three separate chat logs on the page, consisting of three vertical columns, as players and moderators of "Drek's Game" talk to each other.
- The online novel Ultimate Dream is written in the form of a Character Blog, with comments on each entry by the character's friends. The story progresses in the form of blog posts by the Deadpan Snarker narrator, as she and her friends play a Role-Playing Game and get sucked into the gameworld.
- The short story "Wikihistory" by Desmond Warzel is formatted as a Wiki discussion page.
Theater
- Water by the Spoonful: Most of the scenes between "Haikumom", "Orangutan", "Chutes and Ladders", and "Fountainhead" take place in an online chat room for crack addicts. This is represented by the actors in different locations, delivering their lines without making eye contact, with screens behind them showing their chat room posts.
Video Games
- The plot of Cytus II is told through blog posts and comments on the Twitter-like social media site iM. The DLC characters, meanwhile, have their story relayed via diary entries, recaps of camera and audio recordings, and e-mails.
Web Animation
- Dorkly Originals: Dorkly.com has the whole "Gamebook" column (Artificial Stupidity is featured more often than not):
Webcomics
- MSPA Homestuck could be the introduction to many people of this style.
- There was a brief sequence in Zebra Girl following Sam in an IM conversation.
- Gunnerkrigg Court's side story City Face has metafiction Bonus Material — comments where City Face himself, other birds and City Fairies laud or abuse each other, internet guestbook style.
- This strip of Quarter Life Comics.
- This
Web Video
- The Guild and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog have this as a framing device.
- Scourge chat logs series. "Wyrms before worms!"
Websites
