There is a not uncommon misapphrension amongst the Who fandom that NuWho's, "Journal of Impossible Things" is our equiviliant of the Indina Jones Grail Diary. This is bunkum for the following three reasons:
1.Unlike the Grail Diary we have the full context, (stories) referenced.
2.Unlike the Grail Diary fully accurate replicas were commercially available not pieced together by the fandom almost from scratch, (adding to it's mystic and creatring a sense of ownership).
3.Unlike the Grail Diary it is not an epistolary text but a series of disorgnaised images with no real connecting throughline.
The closet we have is Faction Paradox's, "The Book of the War" which presents itself as being an inuinverse text but as it is that franchise's foundational text alot of it's context has been subsequently developed. Is a true Grail Diary style equiviliant possible in the Whoverse? Probably not as the fandom isn't primed to allow for such a development, however a finished adventure journal or Dracula style novel is possible and I hope someone seriously attempts one at some point, (maybe a group project?).
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As it's relevant here:
For the purposes of this post I will refer to the Grail Diary as, "the artifact" for a reason that will become clear.
People have created and maintain numerous detailed records regarding the artifact.
People continuously hunt for and debate the, "validity" of the possible contents of the artifact.
People research real history to see how it would relate to the artifact.
People have devoted huge chunks of their lives to understanding and recreating the artifact.
All this has been going on for decades and it will never likely stop as our understanding and resources are constantly developing.
Sound familar?
The kicker?
The artifact never truely existed, it was a simple prop plot device consisting of a few pages with images, (those needed for the story and some for verisimilitude) that were barely seen onscreen.
It was never intended to be fleshed out in detail. Yet now even cheap replicas are 300+ pages long.
It was all uninentional, it was never planned, we the fandom did it to ourselves.
I have an ambitious idea for a multi-media project
Long: details under cut
Preface:
Adam Savage is known for making meticulous replicas of the Grail Diary from Indiana Jones 3; they're printed on authentic onionskin paper, stitched together and bound with leather like a real old journal would be, stuffed with inserts like folded up drawings, maps, post cards, letters, wax rubbings, tickets from ships and blimps, receipts, to-do lists, photos made to look like they were taken with late 19th/early 20th century cameras, an old silver certificate dollar, Hitler's autograph, you name it. The ten dollar word of the day is "verisimilitude." These super high fidelity replicas are more than just props, they're meant to feel like a real lived-in historical document kept by a globetrotting adventurer from the 1890s to 1930s.
Gravity Falls Journal 3 wanted to be like this, but it's mass market, printed on glossy paper with fake weathering and fonts that look like handwriting. If Adam Savage made a Journal 3 replica, it would look and feel like a real field journal from the 1970s; it would have crinkly yellow pages with mold/water damage, the cover would have brass or gold foil inlays, each entry would be handwritten (and you would be able to tell it wasn't just a font because every letter would have realistic variability in shape and size, there would be a different number of lines per page, the margins would drift, it would be sloppy and illegible in parts)
JJ Abrams published a book that came close to this aesthetic, a nice midway point between the Grail Diary and Journal 3 in terms of quality. A collab with Doug Dorst, the book is sold under the title "S." but once you take it out of its slipcover it's a meta-fictional artifact made to look like an old cloth-bond library copy of a (fictional) novel from the 1940s called The Ship of Theseus by VM Straka. The text of the novel is inconsequential, a dry story about a sailor being Shanghaid onto a pirate crew (it's actually pretty authentic, evoking the feeling of being forced to read an overrated novel for high school English class), but the book is full of faux-handwritten notes in the margins with multiple characters trading it back and forth (with different colored pens used to show the passage of time), telling a whole new story about their attempts to crack the case of the author's mysterious disappearance/death and an academic conspiracy trying to stop them. It is VERY dense. VERY confusing. You have to work out the timeline yourself because each character has annotated the book from start to finish over multiple passes; you'll be flipping back and forth like a choose-your-own-adventure. And the icing on the cake is that there are dozens of inserts stuffed throughout the pages; newspaper clippings, posts cards, a napkin from a fictional university restaurant, old telegrams, folded notes written on loose leaf college-ruled paper, a cipher wheel, etc. It is mass market like Journal 3, but with a much closer attention to detail like Adam Savage's Grail Journals. The inserts are impressive as part of the meta-narrative, but they don't hold up to as much scrutiny. Owning the book is more interesting than the book itself.
My idea
I want to create a boxset for Dracula in which the story is separated out into its constituent parts; Jonathan Harker's illegible shorthand journal, piles and piles of letters between Mina and Lucy and Van Helsing and the suitors (each with their own recognizable handwriting), real playable wax cyllinders with Dr. Sewards voice recordings, the water-damaged journal from the captain of the Demeter, newspaper clippings about the horrible storm and the large dog and "bloofer lady" sightings, and then a big stack of typewriter carbon paper where Mina painstakingly collated it all into the manuscript for the novel itself. The novel claims to be stitched together from a hundred different sources, and this boxset would actually BE the original sources! There would be old 1890s kodak photography, Jonathan's train tickets from across the continent, maps showing the exact paths of the Demeter and Dracula's dirt shipments and the suitors' chase along the rivers back to Transylvania. Lucy and her mother's wills, stationary with Lord Godalming's letterhead, an old rosary, a crucifix, some garlic flowers, lots and lots of communion wafers, Dracula's book of train schedules, and MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL the paprika hendl recipe!
Dracula Daily allows us to experience the story chronologically, but I would like to experience it the way the characters themselves would have, piecing together all the disparate clues over the course of 6 months. It would be an enormous and unweidly boxset, like the special edition of a video game.
The framing narrative would be that the box itself used to belong to Bram Stoker. He was a close friend to the Harkers, and they gave him all their first-hand documents so he could eventually publish their story.
So this inktober I’m going for the full Grail Diary from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I’m using BIC ballpen because I don’t think the journal I had will support something stronger. Here are the first pages.
