#genre analysis

[artbyblastweave]

I have a soft-spot for the original Age of Apocalypse maxiseries from the 90s. One beat that's stuck with me is that after the X-Men in the bad timeline learn that their current apocalyptically-bad situation is the result of time travelers fucking everything up, they belatedly realize that this explains Apocalypse's regime's apparent unspoken policy of murdering any mutant who exhibits time travel powers- he's fully aware of how he himself was able to come to power, and he's pulling up the ladder behind him. News to us, but for the X-Men it's a known pattern about their world abruptly being contextualized.

This, in turn, reminds me of the noted-in-universe quirks of Worm's power system- no kitchen-sink psychics in the classic mold, no healing that isn't the byproduct of something else, everything having some combat application no matter what- and the creeping reveal that although none of the speculation as to why all of these limits on the impossible exist is totally accurate, absolutely none of it is an accident and none of it means anything good. And to an extent I'm thinking about something I still enjoy about the Mistborn series all these years later, where a significant chunk of the unrevealed magic system feels at least somewhat predictable as an inverse or mirror of what's shown to exist from the word go- suppresed by the powers that be for the sake of keeping the wheels on the tyranny wagon.

Overall I'm thinking about the use of quietly absent powersets to characterize a setting, and I guess an interesting follow-up question to that is how aggressively you can draw attention to what's considered "absent" in-universe. If you telegraph too hard that something is thought impossible, then yeah, you're telegraphing that it probably is possible and we're gonna find out about it later. In AoA there's no build-up to the reveal that all the time-travelling characters have been eliminated even though that's somewhat known already in-universe- It's just something mentioned in the course of planning, closing off a fast way to resolve the entire plot with ease. I'm wondering if you could run a kitchen-sink pastiche setting for just long enough for it to become clear that some obvious expected element of the genre arbitrarily doesn't seem to be there, or if that kind of thing would simply take too much runtime to establish purely through negation.

[crooked-wasteland]

Stolitz was the BEST Part of Helluva Boss

(In Theory)

While many critics of Vivienne Medrano and her show Helluva Boss often bemoan the change in genre when the series shifted its focus towards a romantic narrative, I think the transition to a melodramatic romantic dark comedy was actually a huge improvement on the story from the pilot.

The fundamental issues I have is what has actually taken place in the show, or rather what has NOT taken place in it. The actual meat and potatoes of the story which would have made the show an actual romantic dark comedy are not in the show. They are implied, referenced off screen, entirely absent, or simply the worst choice anyone could have made for the story this show clearly wanted to tell.

Like one of the biggest issues of the show is that you never see Stolas actually fall in Love with Blitz. He doesn't have a moment where he starts to see Blitz as a person. Doesn't form any kind of respect for Blitz BEFORE he is begging Blitz to "Choose him". And the reason why is because of The Circus. By having the childhood friends, Medrano actively chose a plot beat that removed the need to do any character development for Stolas. When people clamor that Stolas liked Blitz because he was funny, the actual visual story on screen is Love At First Sight.

Which has huge character implications in a melodramatic romantic dark comedy simply due to GENRE rules. You have to satisfy the structure of a genre in order to tell that story. In a romance you need the Meet-Cute, you need the moment where the characters get "Stuck" together, you need the messy but earnest equalizing of dynamics to match the flavor or romantic relationship you are going for (which is the majority of the plot) and then you have them cemented as a relationship. All of those are necessary to a romantic genre story. If you don't have these elements, you don't have a romantic genre story.

If you don't have any genre conventions, you don't have any story.

And by making Stolas love Blitz at first sight 25+ years before the show even begins telling the story, Medrano literally removed the entire plot of her narrative out of the show.

But wait, there is more.

Then, by having Stolas still behave condescendingly, overbearingly, ignoring boundaries, and projecting his emotions heavily onto Blitz you now have a story where your main character is actually in a really abusive, toxic dynamic with the love interest. And that could also be a great story! The reason the relationship reads and is deeply abusive isn't because what Stolas is doing is abuse. Stolas being abusive is not the problem. It just takes the narrative need for justifying the pursuit of the relationship from "Why does Stolas love Blitz" to "Can Stolas love Blitz without destroying them both."

That's the story now. And you can still hit all the genre markers with bat kind of narrative! And you can still make it funny without the tonal dissonance of using the abuse as a joke one moment and then begging people to take it seriously the next (the way to get through that is to actually allow the audience to experience the slow wearing down of the joke like the characters do like the "Shut up Todd" bit in Bojack where the joke never changes. The context never changes. But you feel the joke becoming less and less funny and more and more sad as time goes on).

I would even say it could be a more mature narrative of watching Stolas love Blitz but realize Stolas has no idea HOW to love. That love is not just a feeling but an action that you express to the other person. And then we would see Stolas work on himself so that Blitz can actually experience Stolas loving him through change as Stolas learns to be more considerate and empathetic while realizing where Stolas is less a victim of his circumstances and a product of his environment.

That is also a beautiful story with a slightly more challenging structure to fulfill!

And instead we get split second background assets that carry huge story implications that COULD satisfy genre expectations but they never actually happen in the script. They never actually play out on screen. We never see the work taking place, we don't see the characters' emotional relationship actually driving the plot of this ROMANTIC comedy. Instead it is constantly used as a means of conflict without forward motion while external entities in the narrative are what force these two together.

It isn't an organic or natural progression to Stolitz. It's fanfiction that captures snapshots of their lives without ever taking the time to claim ownership of the story for its own purposes. The inability to truly own the narrative and not just the emotional crescendo of the story is the ultimate, and systemic failure of the series.

[mad-scientist-council]

ok. I’m like. Maybe going to sound a little bit insane here but. Is anyone else ever a little disappointed that steampunk is so… beige coloured?

Like. I see why. Cogs, bronze, tin and other various metal mechanisms, worn, engine grease stained fabrics, leached of their colour by constant exposure to steam. Like. I can see why this is a part of it all.

But i just feel, especially from a genre that started out as a critique of empire and a lampooning of edisonades and stuff, that maybe more colour should be drawn into all of this?

There is so, so much World to the world (as there ever is) and time that this genre draws from, why limit yourself to design within a fraction of it? Why only create beige english aristocratic inventors? Where is the rest of the whole entire world in this steampunk vision?

The world is filled with a humanity that has striven to create the most bright, vibrant and varied fabrics across every continent. The world stands with its nigh on infinitely different styles of dress and unique garments and accessories and decorations and hairstyles, and youse are all designing?? the exact same??? beige male english aristocratic inventors???? Every single time??

I just. I feel like ppl have forgotten that they’re supposed to be. Lampooning. The Industrial Revolution. You know. The period in which mechanisation entrenched the oppression of the working classes by centralising formerly independent trades, where hungry machines were fed by raw materials grown and harvested in a frenzy of cultural erasure, colonisation, and bloodshed all in the name of capital. Like this is the point in time where samuel rat bastard smiles wrote a stupid fucking book that basically made capitalism become part of society what it is today and the point in time where the british empire wrought the sickest vilest bullshit across the entire fucking world for queen and country.

Like you all know the whole point of the genre is to like say hey. What if. We, the people of the world, could make fantastical clockwork inventions that furthered our own freedom, right? Like you all know that the genre is about diametrically opposing what the Industrial Revolution established, while repurposing its imagery in a way that crystallises what this freedom is supposed to mean, right? These mechanisms can be remade in this context anew to represent how things could have been to inform how things could go on.

right? So. Why do people keep making. The. Exact. Same. Beige. Male. English. Aristocratic. Inventors.

ok super ineloquent clumsy rant over I’m going to sleep please don’t perform a bad faith reading of this btw I am not anti fun or anti sticking cogs to hats and goggles and stuff and painting things metallic colours that stuffs fun it’s the other stuff I don’t like

[maxdibert]

Ginny is groomed by the teenager ghost of the Final Antagonist and then the narrative proceeds to sideline her forever and ever. The only way she could have been more pointless is if she had gotten fridged for Male Tears ©.

It's incredible how pointless she is to the great plot, I hate to say it, but the only meaningful thing she does is have the protag's babies. How do you underuse a character like that so badly?????

Because all the male characters, even the side characters, are a hundred times more developed than their female counterparts. Take Ron and Hermione, for example. They’re both equally Harry’s friends, equally the two characters we get to know the most throughout the series. Hermione is also the most developed female character in the entire saga, but even then, what do we actually know about her? That her parents are dentists? Seven whole books, and they’re still just “Mr. and Mrs. Granger.” We don’t know where they live; we don’t see anything about her day-to-day life. Hermione literally avoids her parents to spend holidays at Hogwarts or summers at the Weasleys’ house. Like, what? She spends the entire school year away from home and then doesn’t want to spend time with her parents?

Meanwhile, we know absolutely everything about Ron. Not just his parents’ names, they’re part of the story, they’re active characters. We know where he lives, what his house is called, random details about distant relatives, the names of all his siblings, and all his siblings play significant roles in the cast of secondary characters. We know everything about Ron, but we know nothing about Hermione. And it’s the same with all the female characters. Every single woman is reduced to an archetype, while the men are given full lives and fleshed-out universes.

Harry Potter is a prime example of how just because a woman writes a book or creates a saga, that doesn’t mean it will escape patriarchal standards and stereotypes. It’s a profoundly patriarchal saga, a saga that could just as easily have been written by a man.

[benignhumor]

[sunder-the-gold]

A Weapon to Destroy a God

[ginataang-kangkong]

is there a paper abt genre analysis of comments that has a common theme (or idea)

[luz-wittebane]

i don't know how to say how significant ''you kids shouldn't have to do that'' followed up by bringing Camila to the demon realm was. most kids shows construct circumstances in which kids are totally on their own, the owl house constructs circumstances in which they have both great freedom for autonomy, and pretty much always a loving and supportive adult to fall back on. and the ones that don't, that's treated like the devastating problem that it is.