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nightbird at 11:06pm on 09/07/2009 under singer can be among songs
nightbird at 11:06pm on 09/07/2009 under singer can be among songsHmm -- interesting comment left on a post at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fantasy, about what constitutes fantasy as a genre:
fantasy, about what constitutes fantasy as a genre:It's a common conversation, and maybe it's not an assessment I find too much fault with, on the surface. (I would think that someone's personal belief about the supernatural and also human capability would throw considerable wrenches into the uniformity or universality of any such definition... but, I am sleepy now and cannot properly brain.)
Mundane contemporary fiction: things that could be happening now
Mundane historical fiction: things that could have happened back then
Science fiction: things that haven't happened yet, but maybe (as far as the author's awareness of science goes) could happen in the future
Fantasy: things that couldn't happen in the world that we know at any period of time
sleepy
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(no subject)
Certainly the supernatural is by definition fictive (as far as most of us can tell), but it is neither scientific nor is it particularly fantastic. Possibly this is because I generally associate "fantasy" with the likes of Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. I suppose you could categorize shows/movies/books like Supernatural (or Twilight or Frankenstein, even) as "urban fantasy": things that couldn't happen in the world that we know despite the fact that they are set in a world that we can recognize as our own.
(P.S. This is theladyscribe from LJ, btw.)
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It's a little bit... deconstructive, is that the word I want? If everything else in a world is real, why wouldn't the supernatural elements be, if they're logical within the framework of the story? That sort of thing.
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Good point. But would you then classify Supernatural as fantasy or as contemporary fiction, since the supernatural is logical (or as logical as it can be) in the story?
That is where my personal definitions of fiction and fantasy start to fail me: where do you draw that line between what could be real and what couldn't be real? And once you've figured out that line, what do you call it? After all, to us, The Odyssey is essentially historical fantasy, whereas to many of the original listeners, it was probably historical fiction.
And perhaps I should modify/clarify my definition of urban fantasy to this: a story with fantastical elements set in a world we can recognize as our own. Does that make more sense?
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a story with fantastical elements set in a world we can recognize as our own
It does make sense, but I still think it's very important that it's not our world, and there's always something jarring or chilling about that. (I think personally I get stuck on the word urban, since I'm kind of insistent on the importance of rural environments as setting.)
(no subject)
And I understand why you get stuck on "urban." I was meaning it more in the urban legend sense than in the urban city sense.
I wouldn't call it contemporary fiction either, but nontraditional fantasy bothers me, too. There needs to be a happy medium word that connotes a modern (or perhaps industrialized? or post-feudal?) world with fantastical elements. Something that would encompass Frankenstein's monster and the Impala and the Sandman and be very clear that those are all included under this definition.
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