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Fantasy Genre Confusion

Morrigan

Entry posted by Morrigan

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After going through and updating suggested fandoms and genres there still seems to be confusion on why there is no "Fantasy" genre within the Directory and other locations on the site and I feel that we need to clear up this confusion as it appears to give pause to many people that are trying to select their "genre" and we want to try to mitigate this confusion as best as we can.

 

I'm sure all of you remember my post from over a year ago here:

http://morrigansmadness.com/2015/02/11/fantasy-has-no-genre/

 

The TL;DR version is that Fantasy has no genre. All things writing and roleplaying "unless they are real life accounts" are in essence "Fantasy". Not real life. As such it is our firm belief and desire to keep true to the word instead of the "assumption" that fantasy is automatically this "magic" genre. We imply that all genres are "Fantasy" so whether it's the Spy Genre, the Sci-Fi Genre, the Historical Genre or any of the others it is implied that they are all fantasies. EG Spy Fantasy Sci-Fi Fantasy, Historical Fantasy etc.

 

You are free to post questions or concerns here but this is something that we firmly believe in and will not change.

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Elena

Elena 546

Posted (edited)

I don;t think so. All are fiction, but not all are fantasy. There is historical fiction and historical fantasy. As long as I don't have mermaids, amazons and countries which don't exist on the map, it is not fantasy, but historical fiction.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy

 

Here also it is shown that fantasy is a subgenre of the fiction, but not all fiction is fantasy:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres#Genre_categories:_fiction_and_nonfiction

 

  • Fantasy – fiction with strange or otherworldly settings or characters; fiction which invites suspension of reality

 

So yes, as long as the reality is not suspended, it exists "real life" fiction...

Edited by Elena
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Morrigan
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The debate can go either way. Even if it "can happen" in real life it's still a fantasy, an imagining of "what could happen" therefore, "not real life". We exclusively made sure that the fantasy was changed out with "magical" and thus fitting the difference that you are pointing out.

 

In your example, if you were a Historical with Mermaids you would be a "Historical Magic" setting and not just a "Historical" setting. This is there as there is a real blur to Fantasy and it's meaning and it is thrown around too regularly to be clear. We're making a clarification on what it means here and why we do not use it in our listings.

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Elena

I am going with literature genres definitions, Morrigan. If you want to use something else, it is up to you.

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Morrigan
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Being that the confusion comes from people putting "fantasy" without any other delimiter is the problem and since multiple types of "fantasy" can fit under the umbrella we are nixing it as a used genre term. By removing it as a genre we are simply making a more focus based genre setting instead of allowing an all encompassing term.

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Guest Archaic Cyborg

Guest Archaic Cyborg

Posted

I go by literature definitions much like @Elena, because literature comes across as 'default' with regards to standards for each genre.  Anything can happen in any setting, true, but it's the individual elements that make sci-fi sci-fi, or historical fantasy, or atompunk, or dystopian. Dystopia shares some traits with post-apocalyptica, the same can be said for other genre groups (Fantasy), but there are certain elements that define it: and in turn make or break the deal for the reader, rper, film fan, whatever~.

 

Personally I prefer sorting things by the closest type; if someone wants Tolkien elves, dwarves or dragons, their first stop would be Fantasy or High Fantasy. If someone wants werewolves in New York and very little other magic or supernatural bits, they'd go to Supernatural or Urban Fantasy. A lot of people get put off or lost when aliens / futuristic sci-fi worlds are mixed with dragons and werewolves, because they're two very different settings. It'd be like going to see a MA rated action film set in modern day, and finding out that there's an outlandish plot involving outerspace invaders with censored violence. Not that it'd be impossible or very hard to tell what game offers what, given that looking at a pic =/= watching at least half a film, but the annoying thing with a lot of rpers is that it's very visual. If you can't tell what something is within 5 seconds, you've lost a potential applicant. >( And so having a dumbed-down categorsation system does more work for 'lazy' players.

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Morrigan
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@Blackjack Bart The separation is there, that is why you can select multiple genres that your site can fit into. If someone wants a Tolkien type site they would simply choose "Medieval Magic".

 

The way we have the genres is you can choose up to 3 categories that your site fits into and they are displayed so if they have a "Sci-Fi" with Aliens you choose "Sci-Fi" but they also have elves and what is defined as "fantasy" elements as you are describing they can also choose the era and magic so if it were a modern site it would be "Modern Magic" if someone filters by either they will get that site but they will also see that it's not just a Sci-Fi or a Modern Magic site but a combination. This is to help with exposure of sites that don't fit under a single genre we are just defining why the word Fantasy was replaced with Magic.

 

For me when I see "Sci-Fi Fantasy" I don't think elves and vampires. I think of technology, space and maybe aliens which still fits under the "Fantasy" aspect above described so when someone is looking for a "Fantasy" it's not descriptive when Fantasy spans so many genres in different aspects and can get really muddy as to it.

 

12 hours ago, Blackjack Bart said:

A lot of people get put off or lost when aliens / futuristic sci-fi worlds are mixed with dragons and werewolves, because they're two very different settings.

 

This is actually part of why we are doing it this way. While Sci-Fi can include Magic it's not 100% inclusive but a Sci-Fi can be a Fantasy (aka aliens and space colonies etc) but not include any magic. The broadness of the term can be crossed so easily it's nearly like saying "it's an RP" when it comes to defining a genre as "fantasy". We don't want that. We want the sites to be defined by what they have.

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Daenelia

Wow.

All book stores must be wrong. I will inform them immediately :P (j/k as I know people always think I am being serious). But yes: it is common to file fantasy under scifi, so if that's your take on it, I can live with that. You could make it easier on people to just rename scifi to scifi/fantasy, like we had in the book store. Never confused the customers we had. In fact, it made it easy form people to cross over from hardcore scifi to fantasy, because it does require the same mind set and suspension of belief. 

(But seriously: this would make a very very nice subject of study, for high school essays or even uni lit studies. Go! Write it!)

  

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