#genre literacy

[fiannalover]

What's that bro? You began interacting with a media from a different country than yours and/or was made in time period different than the recent present day? Haha that's sick bro! Keep expanding your horizons bro! You're remembering to take into account that sociocultural norms, gender roles and genre expectations are different from what you are used to and meeting the story halfway, instead of forcibly superimposing your ideals into the story, right bro? Right? Right?

[inkfire-scribe]

Let me preface this with the fact that while I do in fact have a degree in creative writing and spend a lot of my spare time writing and reading fiction, I am not a published author (much to my own disappointment). I am, however, a lover of books, and this is my possibly incorrect, extremely simplified impression of What The Genres Are (in general).

ROMANCE- As stayed above, a book only qualifies as a romance if the primary focus of the story is the relationship between the characters. Some may add caveats like "must have a happy ending," but there is no unanimous consent on this.

MYSTERY- These books focus first and foremost on the activity of attempting to solve a mystery. There are a cluster of subgenres here that indicate the flavor of the mystery in question and what side of the mystery we're on: hardboiled vs sherlockesque vs cozy mystery vs a caper. Again, there is no internal consensus on the finer caveats like whether or not the dénouement is a defining trait.

FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION- I'm gonna make people mad with this, but both fantasy and sci-fi are what I call "setting genres," and you can drop a lot of apocalyptic or dystopian stories in here too. The driving force behind a fantasy or sci-fi novel is worldbuilding, as each is a flavor of speculative fiction, exploring what the world and particularly human society might be like if the specifics were different. What if identity politics, but in space? What if racism + magic? What if robots are people? The primary difference between fantasy and sci-fi is not tech vs magic, as you might guess, but rather our world vs a fictional one. If the universe looks like ours or like what our future could be, it's sci-fi. If the world is completely fictional (looking at you, Middle Earth) then it's fantasy.

HORROR- When the driving force of the narrative is the fear experienced by the reader, it's horror. I have little to no experience with this genre, so I'll let someone else get into the weeds of horror vs thriller vs "is it really horror if the monster isn't an allegory tho?"

ACTION/ADVENTURE- What it says on the tin. These stories are propelled forward by the characters' attempts to achieve a specific goal, generally following the Hero's Journey roadmap. These stories play nicely with almost every conceivable subplot, but if the primary focus isn't on achieving that goal, then it's not an adventure.

HISTORICAL FICTION- This genre asks the question "what if X but in the past?" This can be as simple as placing a character in a historical context to see how they behave or as sweeping as introducing domesticated dragons to important historical wars to see how they would have turned out differently. Again, this genre soaks up subplots like a sponge, which is why "historical fantasy," "historical romance," and "historical mystery" are all popular subgenres. Authors often sink months or even years of their lives into researching the period of history they specialize in. Historical fiction without actual history is just set dressing.

Before you bitch about how authors are marketing their books, do this one thing:

Shut the fuck up unless you are volunteering to do all the labor required to market a book, because it's really fucking hard, people don't pay attention to posts about original content 90% of the fucking time, and giving a short, pithy teaser is how book marketing fucking works. Click the links and read the full book description if you want to know more.

Seriously, shut the fuck up.

[starbylers]

Finn Wolfhard being #1 M*leven anti for the 9483716 time he’s so me

Listen to this man’s voice he sounds so bored when he mentions the letter and as soon as the girl’s like oh you mean the fake letter? where she’s pretending? he’s instantly going “yeah yeah yeah exactly yes yes yeah” verbatim and starts making fun of Mike’s disconnect with El 😭 I just know he was thinking thank god there are people who get the letters weren’t a cute romantic thing and he doesn’t have to go along with any fawning

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

supernatural was truly just. a fifteen year long experimental study looking into an audience's ability to empathise with the Narrative Scapegoat. the results? most people are still filled with the medieval urge to throw rotten fruit at the resident Freak in the town square.

[nat20dyke]

some dimension 20 fans behave as if they would get mad at looney toons for their lack of nuance in depicting animal cruelty

[max-nolastname]

types of story that different black sails characters think they're in:

jack: typical underdog overcoming unbeatable odds story; he is the main character and the show is 100% about him and his joseph campbell hero's journey. he is like achilles seeking eternal glory. he is also like gilgamesh, seeking immortality because he's afraid of death

flint: one of those fairytale retelling stories from the villain's pov; he is the fire-breathing dragon/big bad wolf/wicked witch that his village has ostracized, chased out of his home with pitchforks and torches because they feared him and what he is and what he stands for. he knows that in another show, a more popular show, the story would be told from the pov of the villagers about the dangers that lie beyond the village walls and into the forest...but this is HIS show and in HIS show HE is the one that survived the villagers not the other way around and HE is the one that has been wronged and he WILL see them pay for it

miranda: at first she thinks she is the witty and cunning heroine of a regency period romance novel. she is critical of high society and it's archaic and sexist traditions, turns her nose up at the institution of marriage and yet against all odds finds a true partner in thomas. she thinks herself happier and smarter than her peers, for finding a way to explore her sexuality freely and still keep her high status. she is caught in a whirlwind romance with a handsome naval officer and well....then her story turns into a tragedy and a decade caught in lifeless loveless joyless limbo where she is sidelined into the background of someone else's story

max: overly aware that she is in A Story and that she is Not The Main Character; the spotlight is never on her, she will never take centre stage. in fact, she is in the wings, or perhaps watching the show from the back of the theatre as the stage manager, setting the scene and directing others to pull ropes, shine lights, open and close the curtains so that other actors can strut and fret their way around the stage

billy: revenge quest story! thinks he is the good guy, there to protect his friends and get revenge on the tyrant who killed his father. gains some genre awareness and realizes that he is not, in fact, the main character, but rather a side character caught in a romance between his captain and quartermaster and if he really wants to survive he's really gotta break them up

madi: a story of hope told around a campfire, passed on from generation to generation so people don't forget about the time that an island of maroons stood up to a seemingly eternal and unbeatable empire. some days, it's a cautionary tale, on how volatile solidarity can be with divisions like class, race and gender .... or how revolution necessitates violence that people who are comfortable in their oppression rather not pay... but no empire lasts forever and nothing is inevitable. the story sticks in the hearts and minds of future revolutionaries and someday someone somewhere will pick up the torch and continue the fight

season 1 walrus crew: workplace comedy

silver: [redacted]

[houkagokappa]

Bless Mokumokuren for outright stating that the genre tags for Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu have never changed, i.e. the official site never dropped the "BL" tag from the series as it got more popular to reach a wider audience. It's been a persistent rumor in the fandom, and one I'm afraid will start circulating again once the anime starts airing.

If you mainly follow English language sources, please remember that whatever tags different anime and manga sites, databases, aggregators etc., either add or leave out don't always reflect the author's intent and the official sources, and should NOT be used to argue for what genre or demographic a certain work belongs to. It can just be random people claiming whatever they want based on their own interpretations and I've seen plenty of errors and real time changes to them based on new chapter developments, that might help catch the attention of some people, but don't suddenly change the genre of the work itself.

Not having BL as a genre tag also doesn't mean that a work can't include any boys loving. The queer themes have always been present in HGSN, and if you're up to date with the manga, they've been outright stated. Having queer characters or a queer story line doesn't automatically mean that a work is BL or yuri, and not including those tags doesn't mean that it's just "baiting". This gets brought up so much I think Mokumokuren's gotten tired of it, because the other day they clearly spelled it out for everyone, assuring that the story is queer, although it's not tagged as BL or focused on romance.

Here's what they shared on their Bluesky account:

The genre tag and advertising direction on the official website have never changed since the beginning of serialization. From the beginning, it has been consistently promoted as a "coming-of-age horror" within the official reach. (It's also true that the official reach is very limited…) Whatever the genre tag is, and even if this story isn't a romance, as the author, I guarantee that it is a queer story. There seems to be a persistent false rumor going around that "the author suddenly removed the BL tag from the official website by the 3rd volume," but the truth is that there was never an official BL tag from the beginning. (This is not to deny any queerness.)

And further back:

My opinion that the genre of The Summer Hikaru Died is something that the readers are free to think about on their own remains unchanged, but I view it as a story that sympathizes with those who have been left out of stories about love and sex, so I describe it as "coming-of-age horror." I think the key is the fear of not being “normal” and not having a place to belong, which is common for all kinds of people regardless of their attributes. I think it's fine for queer stories that aren't romances to exist. That's why I've been careful not to position it as a love story from the start.

Let's stop obsessing over tags and allow queer stories to exist and thrive, even when they lack a clear romantic plot or subplot and are more subdued.

[seventeendeer]

the tf2 fandom on tumblr is in such dire straits, it wraps around from being annoying to being funny

no one knows anything about the time period it's set in. no one knows anything about the time period it was written in. no one knows the media genre it's parodying. no one knows how to write mostly-middleaged, mostly-white men who are intentionally and comedically a product of their time and individual cultures. no one seems to even realize each character is hugely informed by (the stereotyped version of) their culture. no one is comfortable engaging with the old war propaganda it's satirizing. no one knows anything about guns. some people actually think the sniper is 26

it's hard to watch, but then again the official comics post-2015 fall into every single one of these pitfalls too so like. maybe a lack of media literacy isn't just a fandom problem

[talesfromthecrypts]

Believe it or not, saying “Romeo and Juliet is just about horny teenagers ruining things” or “Beauty and the Beast is Stockholm syndrome” is also bad media literacy!

[positively--speculative]

Sorry to make this rant again, but there's more to the gothic genre than just "dark and twisted fucked up stuff." And I think the mindset that it is probably comes from being exposed to it at a time when you're not ready to consume it.

I had several friends and acquaintances in my late teens and early twenties who liked/loved Anne Rice. Only one of those friends recognized how fucked up some of her writing and approach to certain sensitive topics were. When I finally did read Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, I found myself waiting for some sort of moment where the writing would make it clear that many situations are, in fact, unsavory and awful...but they never are. Daniel doesn't interrupt Louis about the slavery. Nothing pushes back against Lestat or Gabrielle for the incest. It just happens and the reader just has to accept it. And when you have bright-eyed teens and early twenty-somethings wanting to delve into the subject of gothic literature and vampires without having been introduced to better-written gothic stories, they just kind of accept it and pat themselves on the backs for being able to enjoy something so "mature."

I know I've mentioned Crimson Peak before, but it's amazing how it just...does such a better job at not only including disturbing things but at framing them. No, it doesn't beat the audience over the head to explain why incest and seducing multiple wealthy women into marriage to murder them for their fortunes is horrific. We see things from Edith's point of view, so we are therefore able to fall in love with Thomas just as much as she does, and we can feel her horror when she finds out the truth about him and his sister. Their incest is never romanticized. And the disturbing part is knowing that Thomas has actually fallen in love with Edith--because it shows that someone who has done such horrible things can still have the ability to fall in love with someone and hurt them. Yes, Lucille was pulling most of the strings, but he was not blameless.

Anne Rice's writing, to me, talks down to readers who are, rightfully, disturbed by these kinds of things and it seems to reward apathy. It's like she was giving gold stars to readers who can just consume gross stuff and be unphased. And I kind of wish that her writing was treated as just shock porn rather than reading that challenges her readers intellectually because they really don't do anything to challenge her fans. I'm not begrudging her the "gothic" title, but I will say her gothic books are not really good at all aside from making some interesting characters. And it was because of her interesting characters that I was actually excited when the TV adaptation was announced, but I knew as soon as it was announced Louis would be Black that Rice's fans were going to be on their shit.

I think it says a lot that the show created a better gothic story than Rice ever did, and I think a lot of white fans resent it for that, because the show is asking them to think and be challenged in a way Rice never did. Even the ones who claim to like the show resent Black fans for "bringing race into everything" when one of the show's most central themes is race and racism. Maybe it's mean to keep saying they have the media literacy of a peanut, but there's no way to talk about this adaptation *without* bringing up race. But I really don't think they get that, because they're used to racism just happening (again, Louis was a racist slave owner in the book) without being made to pause and examine it.

[alpaca-clouds]

"But who cares if it is 'punk'?"

Whenever I am talking about the punkness of Cyberpunk and Solarpunk and what not (or the punkness of any of the Punkpunk genre, as I did last week), people will usually come and ask: "But why do you care? So what if it is just an aesthetic? Why not just have people have fun with the aesthetic?"

And I will fully admit to it: Yeah, I can see the point. The world sucks. People should be allowed to have fun with fiction. But I am also too autistic to not care about it. Not necessarily if it is "punk", but at least whether it a) has themes and b) these themes are included in the different stories.

See, one of my big issues in regards to media in general is, that people often do not engage with any themes there are to it. I kinda talked about this too when it comes to people complaining that Gundam - a franchise that inherently is anti-war and often anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist - got political in the moment it featured lesbians as main characters. Which is kinda silly. But the reason for that mindset is of course that people engange with media often on a very superficial level. And while folks on the left are quick at claiming that is a conservative problem... Let's be honest, it is an everyone problem.

Again, I get it. The world sucks. Most of us are overworked and overtired and when we engage with our media we just want to turn off and enjoy. I really, really do get it. I have also some of those just mindless action flicks I will put in and then turn my mind off. Like, who cares whether Tom Cruise is basically Space Jesus propagating a deeply abusive cult. Mission Impossible movies are fun. Who cares about some of their rather... problematic messaging?

But media literacy is important. And I think this is what this boils down to. Because no matter if we engage with it or not: The media we consume subtly influences us and our outlook. No, usually media will not turn a stonch anarchist into a Nazi, or a Nazi into an actual anarchist... But it for sure makes us more susceptible to certain other messaging.

Which is why we need to engage with the themes of any given media and try to understand what it is saying.

As written in that blog about G-Witch and such: There is no apolitical media. Even media that is not really concerned with politics will have a message - usually one along the lines of "The world is just fine as it is right now, do not worry about it!" or "Rugged individualism tots is the way to go!"

Which brings me back to the punk genre. While some were in fact invented as an aesthetic and even in some that primarily got made into genre there is not necessarily a lot of thoughts put into the themes... There are themes that will naturally arise from stuff like the historical context the punk genre is taken from and what not. And especially the "punk" kinda means that it has to challenge something. And be it just genre convention.

And usually, whenever those themes get lost... Well, stories tend to revert back to the exact opposite of that. "Everything is A-Okay - or at least it would be if the power structure was still there but the right people were in power!" And once more: "Rugged individualism WINS THE DAY!" The original themes getting lost, does not mean it gets replaced with emptiness. Just with the standard themes of the media of our times. And... Yeah, to be honest: I am not a fan of that.

The thing I value so much about the concept of the Punkpunk genre is the possibility of playing with counter cultural themes. So, yeah, I care if these themes get lost - or get not even included.

And that is without going into stuff like the non-white origin of Solarpunk kinda getting whitewashed...

[storywestistrash]

"I know The Fine Print is about the game Outer Worlds but i feel its a thinly veiled excuse to criticize capitalism" oh girl oh my you are never gonna believe what the game outer worlds is about

[theprestigegirly]

controversial post from me but like,,,

when did people start bashing the romance genre again as if reading romance means you’re less intelligent and to be a proper respected reader you have to read classics like???? isn’t it just good that people are still reading at all???? read what you like?????

it’s like you wouldn’t watch a tv show that bored you because it was “technically good” (and if u do like what are you doing with your precious hours it’s a bloody tv show) so why would you bash someone for not reading some long ass sad deep thinking book they don’t wanna read???

like i promise a whole generation is not losing language skills because they want to read a cute romance and not like,,,,, depressing miserable stuff

[caput-medusae]

i am actually looking forward to the live action atla, and i am not looking forward to muting everything about it on every single social media because of how insufferable people are going to be about it not being the perfect adaptation they imagined in their own heads

[mumblingsage]

I've also met multiple people in real life who regard reading books at all as a childish pastime, something you stop having time for when you grow up and get a job and have kids or whatever.

Puts the idea of being "shamed" for one's reading material in a new light, one must say.

[hasellia]

I sincerely hope people will have the reading comprehension to know that what I'm about to say isn't meant to be taken as a defence for TERFs or the media that encourages their hateful brain worms. Fuck fascists. TERFs get dewormed, please.

Harry Potter makes a lot more sense if it is read with the tone of a shitty Shounen manga.

Author with internalised misogyny

The main male character that is born in a marginalised position, vows to change the system. Becomes a reinforcer of said system after killing the person who epitomises all the harm & failings of said system. No meaningful changes are ever made.

A magic system that, albiet is soft in HP, goes from having rules, to no rules, to rules again before settling on no rules.

World building that works... okay, in a small fantastical setting, that utterly crumbles exponentially with each step taken to expand & realise it.

World building built from racism & stereotypes.

Every "evil" character is visually ugly according to the author's biases.

"Eveyone is just hurting, there are no evil people." Until there is & fuck the people who are hurting. They were just born like that & no intervention could've possibly helped them.

All the good stuff is made by the fans who took a more positive moral outlook from the work that clashes with the in-text theming.

Slavery is okay if the good guys partake in the system.

Murder is okay if the good guys do it to the bad guys.

Children are capable of being in the moral wrong for just existing in their upbringing & should be adequately punished for it, up to & including death.

Feel free to add or critique on what I'm sure will be a very warmly received opinion 🙂