Talking about my Genre-ation!
Examining Genre
Well, I was intending to talk about Batman this week--what is "sticky" to the characterization of Batman for comic book readers/television viewers/movie viewers/etc. But with the World's Finest Awards coming up, a different topic presented itself--in a more pressing fashion. What exactly are the genres that we talk about in fanfic? What is fluff? What is angst? What is romance? One problem is that these genres don't always translate well outside of fanfic--or they change a great deal in the world of pro-fic.
Perhaps some of you are thinking about submitting a story, but you aren't quite sure where your story fits... I know I am. So, let's start with the WFA list of genres and see what we can figure out (leaving out the newbie category). Let me hasten to add that I am not running the contest--these are just some ideas to help spur us on to submission, think about what these genres really mean... and help me figure out where my unsubmitted story should go.
AU (Alternate Universe): At first glance, everything in fanfic (well, almost everything) would seem to be an alternate universe. Batman and Superman may be sharing a room on a cruise in canon but they aren't actually kissing or dating... In the first talking meta post, Whither Canon , I argued that in an AU story we can "forget and forgo the constraints of canon and just imagine the characters in whatever new universe/new setting we want." What does that mean, though? If everything is an AU then the category has no meaning. I would argue that the real test of AU is the universe itself, rather than the main characters in it. In practical terms, if the story attempts to reconcile itself with the canon (Integration, Event Insertion, Counterfactual, and some POV and Backdrop stories) it would not be AU for me. If you "fundamentally" alter the universe (There was no Joker, it is 17th Century Italy, etc) then I feel it would be an AU.
Angst: Ah angst. That feeling of dread. That sense of anxiety. To me, angst stories are stories where the main characters deal with their senses of failure, remorse, inadequacy, regret, pain, etc. What is Bruce thinking in Hereafter when he is holding Superman's cape? That he failed him? That Superman gave his life to save Bruce? Why is he working so hard? Because he can't live in a world where that has happened? If the answer is yes, I feel that you are looking at an angsty story. Angst can be on what I consider the wallow side--detailed meditations on self-worth, repentance, value, etc--or they can be on the sparse side--Hemingway-esque snapshots of suffering. Angst doesn't always end badly--in fact, I think it often ends "well" in the sense that things work out somehow. Angst is the grinder from which we get nice spice for our characters.
Crossover: This relatively simple category gets very confusing when you stare at it for any length of time. Is Superman and Batman a crossover? How about Smallville Superman with Adam West's Batman? In general, again, we have the problem of universes. In the olden days, this was easy. A crossover was any time characters from one book interacted with characters from another. However, in the day and age of multiple X-men titles or multiple Superman books, it is a real difficulty. Crossovers, in the comics themselves, are events--the story line crosses between different titles (or in a special title). I suppose that we might simply say that crossovers are for different universes--so that long awaited Batman vs Punisher and Superman vs ... uh... Iron Man ('cause Tony needs to get beat down. Right Now)--that is easily a crossover. Anything inside the DCU would probably not be a crossover. DCU to DCAU? That would be interesting. How would the DCAU Batman deal with the DCU Batman? DCAU Robin meets DCU Nightwing and Robin! Hrmm.... Hold on, I need to write these ideas down. Anyway, I think that DCU to DCAU would minimally count as a crossover--if the author were careful to keep the characters straight.
Dark: Dark. Characters reveal their darker sides--or pick up their darker sides. In my mind, this goes to motivation. In some ways, Dark and Angst are related, but Angst is about the concerns a character has about their actions while Dark is about the actions themselves. I usually think of the difference between Dark and Angst this way: Angst is the way Jay Garrick (Flash I) feels when his teammate Ted Grant (Wildcat I) tells him to kill him. Jay literally has to stick his hand into Ted's heart and stop it from beating. That is angst. Dark is Harley continuing to love Joker while he tries to kill her. Joker telling Harley how proud he is of her while shoving her off a rooftop... Dark. Dark is Absolute Power Superman strangling Wonder Woman with her own lasso. Dark. To me, Dark usually seems to end badly--or rather, usually seems to end either grimly or angstily. It may even end well (for the characters), but we may not be cheering for them... are we?
Fluff: Fluff is one of those loaded words that can be misleading and problematic--what value could fluff have? Fluff usually means one of two things: uninformative filler (think "fluff piece" on the news) or unchallenging sweetness (like cotton candy). There is a good reason for that negativity--in comics, on television, in a newspaper, etc. In these cases, fluff is taking up space that might otherwise be of more value. If I want to know who won the election, do I really care about Britney Spears and that guy she dumped? If I want to know what is happening to the Teen Titans and Slade, I don't want to be interrupted by the adventures of Nosyarg Kcid... Still, in my opinion, fluff in fanfic is a somewhat different beast. Fluff is your chance to do slice of life moments. Fluff would seem to be that stuff which is not plot heavy and is not dark/angsty--but in fanfic, those can be fun and enjoyable in part because we don't get a lot of it in the comics. Comics should be fun, right? Some part of them, anyway. Fluff is part of that fun.
Humor: Teh funny! There are so many kinds of humor that it isn't funn--- erm, maybe I should skip that joke. But, at any rate, humor can take the form of parody, slapstick, wry humor, irony, wit, puns, etc. Bring the humor, bring the funny. Not all that begins dark will end that way. No less a light than Cicero said that you should combat humor with seriousness and seriousness with humor. Black humor also has its place, of course. Deadpool arguing with Slade while all those weapons and kitchen implements are sticking out of him? FUNNY!
PWP (Plot, What Plot?): Bruce answered the doorbell wearing only a towe.... oh, sorry... PWP is that category of smuttiness that doesn't really bother to set up the whys and wherefores. This is not to say that it is actually without a plot--as the characters are doing something to each other--and that should, in my estimation, be plotted! It would be more accurate to say that it lacks a meaningful plot beyond the smut. And, hey, some great characterization can come out of PWPs. Of course, sometimes a sex scene is just a sex scene, to paraphrase Mr. Freud.
Romance: Stop! Not Fabio. Not Fabio! OK. Throw Fabio in if you want. Romance, to me, is the story of the twisted path of relationships. That is to say, the plot is more about the characters coming together or falling apart than it is about Lex stealing a mother box. Sure Darcy is in town because of something something and his friend is upset over that one thing. And Elizabeth is fretting over her family's status and her kid sister running off with whatshisface. But the plot is these two characters finding, making or missing chances to come together. Romance can be no less intricately plotted than a mystery--and often is somewhat more carefully plotted (the mystery can always rely on the cheat of the detective knowing information the reader does not). The path to romance can be short, long, arduous, whatever, but if the plot centers on the characters growing into or out of a relationship, I would call it a romance.
This category seems the hardest to define, so I am editing this to tack on the following discussion from Debora Schwartz, a Professor of English at Cal Poly:
Like comedy, romance includes a love-intrigue and culminates in a happy ending. Like tragedy, romance has a serious plot-line (betrayals, tyrants, usurpers of thrones) and treats serious themes; it is darker in tone (more serious) than comedy. While tragedy emphasizes evil, and comedy minimizes it, romance acknowledges evil -- the reality of human suffering.
Romance is a natural step in describing human experience after tragedy. Tragedy involves irreversible choices made in a world where time leads inexorably to the tragic conclusion. In Romance, time seems to be "reversible"; there are second chances and fresh starts. As a result, categories such as cause and effect, beginning and end, are displaced by a sense of simultaneity and harmony. Tragedy is governed by a sense of Fate (Macbeth, Hamlet) or Fortune (King Lear); in Romance, the sense of destiny comes instead from Divine Providence. Tragedy depicts alienation and destruction, Romance, reconciliation and restoration. In tragedies, characters are destroyed as a result of their own actions and choices; in Romance, characters respond to situations and events rather than provoking them. Tragedy tends to be concerned with revenge, Romance with forgiveness. Plot structure in Romance moves beyond that of tragedy: an event with tragic potential leads not to tragedy but to a providential experience.
Whew. That is a lot of different types of stories! And some of them can mix. Dark/angst! Sure. Dark/PWP! Don't mind if I do. Romance/Crossover! You know you want to write that Cable/Cyborg/Engineer story... Or that Midnighter/Batman/Daredevil. C'mon.
So, these are the categories for the World's Finest Awards. What categories are missing? What do you think about these descriptions? Have I gotten Dark and Angst switched for you? Can there be a dark/fluff story? What do you like to write and read?
List of suggested fic types (no chance these will appear in a later "Talking Meta"... nope. None whatsoever.):
Series
Song Fic
Episodic/Episode Related
Drama
Well, I was intending to talk about Batman this week--what is "sticky" to the characterization of Batman for comic book readers/television viewers/movie viewers/etc. But with the World's Finest Awards coming up, a different topic presented itself--in a more pressing fashion. What exactly are the genres that we talk about in fanfic? What is fluff? What is angst? What is romance? One problem is that these genres don't always translate well outside of fanfic--or they change a great deal in the world of pro-fic.
Perhaps some of you are thinking about submitting a story, but you aren't quite sure where your story fits... I know I am. So, let's start with the WFA list of genres and see what we can figure out (leaving out the newbie category). Let me hasten to add that I am not running the contest--these are just some ideas to help spur us on to submission, think about what these genres really mean... and help me figure out where my unsubmitted story should go.
AU (Alternate Universe): At first glance, everything in fanfic (well, almost everything) would seem to be an alternate universe. Batman and Superman may be sharing a room on a cruise in canon but they aren't actually kissing or dating... In the first talking meta post, Whither Canon , I argued that in an AU story we can "forget and forgo the constraints of canon and just imagine the characters in whatever new universe/new setting we want." What does that mean, though? If everything is an AU then the category has no meaning. I would argue that the real test of AU is the universe itself, rather than the main characters in it. In practical terms, if the story attempts to reconcile itself with the canon (Integration, Event Insertion, Counterfactual, and some POV and Backdrop stories) it would not be AU for me. If you "fundamentally" alter the universe (There was no Joker, it is 17th Century Italy, etc) then I feel it would be an AU.
Angst: Ah angst. That feeling of dread. That sense of anxiety. To me, angst stories are stories where the main characters deal with their senses of failure, remorse, inadequacy, regret, pain, etc. What is Bruce thinking in Hereafter when he is holding Superman's cape? That he failed him? That Superman gave his life to save Bruce? Why is he working so hard? Because he can't live in a world where that has happened? If the answer is yes, I feel that you are looking at an angsty story. Angst can be on what I consider the wallow side--detailed meditations on self-worth, repentance, value, etc--or they can be on the sparse side--Hemingway-esque snapshots of suffering. Angst doesn't always end badly--in fact, I think it often ends "well" in the sense that things work out somehow. Angst is the grinder from which we get nice spice for our characters.
Crossover: This relatively simple category gets very confusing when you stare at it for any length of time. Is Superman and Batman a crossover? How about Smallville Superman with Adam West's Batman? In general, again, we have the problem of universes. In the olden days, this was easy. A crossover was any time characters from one book interacted with characters from another. However, in the day and age of multiple X-men titles or multiple Superman books, it is a real difficulty. Crossovers, in the comics themselves, are events--the story line crosses between different titles (or in a special title). I suppose that we might simply say that crossovers are for different universes--so that long awaited Batman vs Punisher and Superman vs ... uh... Iron Man ('cause Tony needs to get beat down. Right Now)--that is easily a crossover. Anything inside the DCU would probably not be a crossover. DCU to DCAU? That would be interesting. How would the DCAU Batman deal with the DCU Batman? DCAU Robin meets DCU Nightwing and Robin! Hrmm.... Hold on, I need to write these ideas down. Anyway, I think that DCU to DCAU would minimally count as a crossover--if the author were careful to keep the characters straight.
Dark: Dark. Characters reveal their darker sides--or pick up their darker sides. In my mind, this goes to motivation. In some ways, Dark and Angst are related, but Angst is about the concerns a character has about their actions while Dark is about the actions themselves. I usually think of the difference between Dark and Angst this way: Angst is the way Jay Garrick (Flash I) feels when his teammate Ted Grant (Wildcat I) tells him to kill him. Jay literally has to stick his hand into Ted's heart and stop it from beating. That is angst. Dark is Harley continuing to love Joker while he tries to kill her. Joker telling Harley how proud he is of her while shoving her off a rooftop... Dark. Dark is Absolute Power Superman strangling Wonder Woman with her own lasso. Dark. To me, Dark usually seems to end badly--or rather, usually seems to end either grimly or angstily. It may even end well (for the characters), but we may not be cheering for them... are we?
Fluff: Fluff is one of those loaded words that can be misleading and problematic--what value could fluff have? Fluff usually means one of two things: uninformative filler (think "fluff piece" on the news) or unchallenging sweetness (like cotton candy). There is a good reason for that negativity--in comics, on television, in a newspaper, etc. In these cases, fluff is taking up space that might otherwise be of more value. If I want to know who won the election, do I really care about Britney Spears and that guy she dumped? If I want to know what is happening to the Teen Titans and Slade, I don't want to be interrupted by the adventures of Nosyarg Kcid... Still, in my opinion, fluff in fanfic is a somewhat different beast. Fluff is your chance to do slice of life moments. Fluff would seem to be that stuff which is not plot heavy and is not dark/angsty--but in fanfic, those can be fun and enjoyable in part because we don't get a lot of it in the comics. Comics should be fun, right? Some part of them, anyway. Fluff is part of that fun.
Humor: Teh funny! There are so many kinds of humor that it isn't funn--- erm, maybe I should skip that joke. But, at any rate, humor can take the form of parody, slapstick, wry humor, irony, wit, puns, etc. Bring the humor, bring the funny. Not all that begins dark will end that way. No less a light than Cicero said that you should combat humor with seriousness and seriousness with humor. Black humor also has its place, of course. Deadpool arguing with Slade while all those weapons and kitchen implements are sticking out of him? FUNNY!
PWP (Plot, What Plot?): Bruce answered the doorbell wearing only a towe.... oh, sorry... PWP is that category of smuttiness that doesn't really bother to set up the whys and wherefores. This is not to say that it is actually without a plot--as the characters are doing something to each other--and that should, in my estimation, be plotted! It would be more accurate to say that it lacks a meaningful plot beyond the smut. And, hey, some great characterization can come out of PWPs. Of course, sometimes a sex scene is just a sex scene, to paraphrase Mr. Freud.
Romance: Stop! Not Fabio. Not Fabio! OK. Throw Fabio in if you want. Romance, to me, is the story of the twisted path of relationships. That is to say, the plot is more about the characters coming together or falling apart than it is about Lex stealing a mother box. Sure Darcy is in town because of something something and his friend is upset over that one thing. And Elizabeth is fretting over her family's status and her kid sister running off with whatshisface. But the plot is these two characters finding, making or missing chances to come together. Romance can be no less intricately plotted than a mystery--and often is somewhat more carefully plotted (the mystery can always rely on the cheat of the detective knowing information the reader does not). The path to romance can be short, long, arduous, whatever, but if the plot centers on the characters growing into or out of a relationship, I would call it a romance.
This category seems the hardest to define, so I am editing this to tack on the following discussion from Debora Schwartz, a Professor of English at Cal Poly:
Like comedy, romance includes a love-intrigue and culminates in a happy ending. Like tragedy, romance has a serious plot-line (betrayals, tyrants, usurpers of thrones) and treats serious themes; it is darker in tone (more serious) than comedy. While tragedy emphasizes evil, and comedy minimizes it, romance acknowledges evil -- the reality of human suffering.
Romance is a natural step in describing human experience after tragedy. Tragedy involves irreversible choices made in a world where time leads inexorably to the tragic conclusion. In Romance, time seems to be "reversible"; there are second chances and fresh starts. As a result, categories such as cause and effect, beginning and end, are displaced by a sense of simultaneity and harmony. Tragedy is governed by a sense of Fate (Macbeth, Hamlet) or Fortune (King Lear); in Romance, the sense of destiny comes instead from Divine Providence. Tragedy depicts alienation and destruction, Romance, reconciliation and restoration. In tragedies, characters are destroyed as a result of their own actions and choices; in Romance, characters respond to situations and events rather than provoking them. Tragedy tends to be concerned with revenge, Romance with forgiveness. Plot structure in Romance moves beyond that of tragedy: an event with tragic potential leads not to tragedy but to a providential experience.
Whew. That is a lot of different types of stories! And some of them can mix. Dark/angst! Sure. Dark/PWP! Don't mind if I do. Romance/Crossover! You know you want to write that Cable/Cyborg/Engineer story... Or that Midnighter/Batman/Daredevil. C'mon.
So, these are the categories for the World's Finest Awards. What categories are missing? What do you think about these descriptions? Have I gotten Dark and Angst switched for you? Can there be a dark/fluff story? What do you like to write and read?
List of suggested fic types (no chance these will appear in a later "Talking Meta"... nope. None whatsoever.):
Series
Song Fic
Episodic/Episode Related
Drama