The 18 Genres of Impossible Numbers · 7:04pm Sep 1st, 2020
Blog Number 90: "Let Me See Your Range" Edition
One of the tests of an adaptable writer, or so it seems to me, is the range of genres they can (and do) cater for. Specialists and niche artists exist, of course! Nothing wrong with that. What I want to get at here is just part of my much broader fascination with art in general: its near-infinite diversity.
Basically, I see it, and I want in.
So, as a way of looking back on what I've done so far - partly to see what sticks out, partly to get a good view of future territories going forwards - I'm going to pick the genres from the list provided on-site and see how prolific I've been, what seems to draw me to some genres rather than others, and - in some odd cases - what the hell I was playing at.
I mean, it helps I've got a lot of fics out by now. Over a hundred, and frankly I'm surprised I got this far. If nothing else, there's no shortage of samples to study...
For September 2020, I give you: the 18 genres of Impossible Numbers!
The 18 Genres of Impossible Numbers
Something of particular interest to me is the range of genres available on-site. A quick recap: though there are more than the 18 listed, some genres I'm ignoring completely, because frankly I don't care about them.
Still, that gives us a healthy 18 to focus on, so here we go! Of the given genres, we have:
- Adventure
- Anthology
- AU (Alternate Universe)
- Comedy
- Crossover
- Dark
- Drama
- Equestria Girls
- Horror
- Human
- Mystery
- Random
- Romance
- Sad
- Sci-Fi
- Slice of Life
- Thriller
- Tragedy
I won't be following these in any particular order - certainly not alphabetically, and not necessarily from most-to-least used, though that latter criterion will sort of be dimly visible if you step back a bit and squint. Some will lead naturally into others, but each has been given its own subsection and subtitle, to make navigating the blog that little bit easier. Neither can I promise I'll have much to say about some of these, nor that a lot of this won't just be crackpot theory dressed up in highfalutin'.
With that said, let's go!
Slice of Life: The Show Standard
My most frequently used genre, surprise surprise, is Slice of Life (with a whopping 60 entries, that's over half my output). Any surprise the vast majority of my fics are rated "Everyone" too? See a pattern here?
As you can easily guess, a large part of it is that I generally try and hew close to the show in tone. Family-friendly animation is my go-to entertainment. At bottom, I'm just a family-friendly kind of person who likes a bit of colourful fantasy in my life. Ha! See? I'm really not a complicated person, now am I?
Of course, quite apart from the difference between a literary medium and a visual medium, I have my own quirks, but the appeal of Slice of Life is obvious for me. It's pleasant. It's like a warming cup of hot chocolate. When I think of MLP:FiM, I think of Ponyville, and I think of my favourite aspect of the show (just hanging out with a psychologically interesting, quirky cast in personal, sometimes emotional shenanigans).
I love the show. I love expanding on it. What more do you want?
It really is generally the easygoing, everyday side of the setting (at least, "everyday" insofar as a fantasy setting has an "everyday") that I like, rather than the more adventurous aspects. Plus, it's much easier to come up with simpler plots for SoL, or even to just eschew plots and dive right into other aspects such as characterization and psychology, than to wrangle out some complex of idiosyncratic genre conventions out of the blue.
So the Drama
Then there's Drama (50), which is in a similar ballpark in that it usually focuses on characterization during difficult times (i.e. conflict, the main focus of most stories).
In fact, it's arguably my own personal "core" genre, reliably co-occurring across a wide cross-section of genres in turn.
(I also have to admit I use it as a sort of wastepaper basket whenever a fic doesn't slot neatly into any of the other categories).
Comedy is Pain
And to complete our trifecta of show-inspired obviousness, Comedy garners a respectable 27.
Wait, only 27?
Well, here we get our first major break.
Much as the show's gentler comedy fits in neatly with my more general interest in laughing at others, I have to admit, though, that "Comedy" tends to be one of those genres I find a bit gruelling to write. It's one thing to chuck in a funny observation in a generally more sedate Slice of Life story, but quite another to promise my readers I'll make them laugh every other line.
Possibly not coincidentally, there are no pure comedies whatsoever among my fics: it always co-occurs with at least one other genre tag, usually "Slice of Life" or "Drama". That's probably why, despite chiming with one of my favourite aspects of the show (similar to how "Slice of Life" does), it doesn't appear nearly as often as that genre tag.
Not Adventurous Enough for Adventure?
Another break (of a sort) from the show-tone dominance is in this category.
Adventure comes close with 24. Usually, this is less to do with the show's adventure aspects in and of themselves. If anything, I tend to find, say, the adventure two-parters very hit-and-miss, with far more misses and clipped edges than outright hits.
This is where other franchises start showing their strongest influence on my writing, as it's usually from my oldest and most consistent inspiration for writing (hey, I had a life before pony, you know).
For instance, Hive Versus Hive and Sunset in the Otherworld owe a lot more to elven/fey mythology - and, in the former case, to The Hobbit - whereas both Lure of the Flower and Everyland and Nothingland have some Coraline DNA in them somewhere, and Guard Flutter has some Batman casting a shadow over chunks of its storyline.
Unfortunately, this is also where my unfinished works have a massive effect on the count, as 9 of those 24 are in a state of suspended animation (Guard Flutter, for instance, is still incomplete).
See, back when I had more ambition than perspective, I was very keen on starting big, bold, and complex adventure stories like the ones I grew up on, the ones I enjoyed reading or watching and was inspired by. Unfortunately, it became apparent over time that they weren't going to be easy to commit to, especially not whenever I crashed and felt more confident just starting back at square one with another project.
Ah well, maybe someday...
There is an Alternative...
Now we're getting into more "out there" genres, it's only fitting we lead off with AU.
Despite not appearing much (7 entries only), Alternate Universe is a genre I find quite easy in some ways. For one thing, it's liberating. Detached from canon, the urge to put my fingerprints on everything from the ground up proves irresistible, especially when I've got my greasy paws on a big pile of "did you know?" trivia and "oh my gosh I gotta use that!" factoids.
Oddly, this was how I came to appreciate Sunset Shimmer as a character more: using alternate universes to pick-and-mix from what little I knew about her and her movies, and then use them for my own experiments.
Back then, and with no prior attachment to the Equestria Girls franchise (as of the time of writing those fics; I've since seen the movies and a few specials), I was thus free to separate her character from that baggage and figure out what made her tick in a vacuum.
Romance: (Friend)Shipping is Magic
Weirder still, Sunset Shimmer so far also remains my most clearly dominant subject for Romance (4 out of my 5 entries feature her as a major partner).
To look at the rest of my preoccupations and my work, this is odd to say the least: I otherwise have neither interest nor experience in writing the genre. "Shipping" - or basically amateur matchmaking - has little to no sway over me, and frankly I find its massive - often heated - popularity completely baffling, to say nothing of the hypersensitive radars people seem to be using to justify it. Not forgetting that some people's idea of what constitutes romance - over and above friendship, assuming they're not actually blurring or confusing the two - much less their idea of a healthy romance, is, to be frank, plumb loco. If not kind of worrying...
Even the Sunset fics I produced were more obviously focused on the other genre tags (e.g. "AU" and "Adventure") rather than on any actual "Romance". It's scarce exaggeration to say you could swap "friendshipping" for "shipping" in all of these and the stories would remain almost entirely unchanged.
Given all that, how the hell I ended up writing any romance fics is a mystery to me. The first one was for a background character, and was one I included for no higher purpose than to give them some character in the first place.
The only explanation I can think of for these anomalies is that they started out when I was in a desperately bad way, back in August 2017. A combination of awful personal trauma and writing woes left me grasping at straws, and one of those straws was the heavily publicized Sunset Shimmer Shipping Contest.
Feeling I had nothing to lose, I just threw myself at what was then an arbitrary self-imposed challenge and winged it, doing it again when my first fic turned out to be too long for the contest requirements. It did enough to revive my spirits that, in 2018 and 2019, I simply repeated what had thus become a yearly tradition.
Tradition is a persistent thing. I have thought about doing another one for 2020, despite the contests having long since ended. Who knows? This year hasn't exactly been the same as prior ones, but neither is there any particularly compelling reason why I couldn't try writing another one, just for the sake of, well, tradition.
Sad: It's Enough to Make Me Cry
We get back into big numbers with the much-maligned Sad (15), and a quick glance at my fics for this one suggests I might be quite liberal with it, as many of them strike me as bittersweet (or of merely having sad elements) rather than being full-bloodedly sad in and of themselves.
I think part of it is that I don't see the genre as particularly compelling. You can only wallow in life's miseries for so long before it starts to look self-indulgent or pointless. (Plus I cottoned on pretty quick that A) a lot of users look down on "sad" for being manipulative and shallow, and B) people generally prefer something more positive or uplifting).
That in mind, it's simultaneously odd yet understandable how I have so many. Odd, because writing tearjerkers isn't a major priority of mine, but understandable, because some fics have sad or depressing elements in them, and it's a necessary source of drama (or at least a reliable source). I think the "sad" tag covers that slightly better than the more well-rounded "drama" tag does.
And sometimes, you just love a character enough to want to cry with them. Ironically, doing nasty things to a fictional person's life makes you appreciate them all the more, like the fragile cherry blossom that symbolizes the beautiful fragility of life itself.
Odds are I'm waffling, but this is my best guess.
The Horror! The Horror!
An especially bizarre tag (for me, at least) is Horror (6 entries), because I have to remind myself that to a lot of people, I'm going to be remembered for nothing else.
That's because the one fic of mine that ended up featured in a once-in-a-lifetime deal by the Royal Canterlot Library was a horror fic. Although I was thrilled just to be featured at all at the time (this was back in 2016, way before my own personal renaissance in 2017-2018), since then I have to confess to a little regret that this is the fic with the special exposure, because it's completely atypical of my work.
It's not that I'm averse to horror. On the original PlayStation, some of my favourite games are either survival horror (Resident Evil 2, for instance) or games with some horrific elements (arguably the original Metal Gear Solid, which can be surprisingly creepy or shocking in places). And a good horror story can reach down to depths other genres don't really tap into, and there's something strangely attractive, even addictive, about that twisted pleasure. It's like cheating death makes you feel alive.
Only, when it comes to writing ponyfic, it's definitely a lot trickier to justify ponies running around with slashers, psychic terrorists, and zombie viruses. The world isn't an automatic slam-dunk fit for such a supremely threatening situation. At least, not without feeling like you're missing a crucial point somewhere. Even when I do delve into horror, it's usually more for the psychological tension than for anything murderous or gory.
It's sort of like the Pumpkin King and Santa Claus: both are great, but usually they're best kept separate.
Nonetheless, I remain hopeful we can make it come alive in some way.
Experiments are continuing...
I'm A Little In The Dark About This Next One
Things look a bit more interesting when we flip over to Dark, "Horror's" brooding cousin. 15 entries for this one, probably because it's easier to integrate disturbing concepts into a show which actually has quite a few if you think too deeply about it.
Quite apart from there being more "Dark" than "Horror" in my line-up, it's much easier to see at a glance why any particular tagged story of mine warrants said tag. One story involves a Running-Man-esque fighting tournament (Magical Deathmatch), one involves a parasitic plant growing out of Fluttershy's back (Petalback), and at least two are specifically about villainous characters (Diminished and Queen of Assassins are both changeling stories told from the POV of Changeling Queens who are not above killing their own kind).
Then again. I can see a few cases where it seems like it was treated much like "Sad": on stories that have dark elements to them but which aren't "dark" in and of themselves.
It's a matter of interest to me what the major distinction between "Dark" and "Horror" is, since there's so much overlap. Both are interested in making the scenario seem hopeless to the reader, both delve readily into the cruel and disturbing, and both would be just as happy with a basic "do not die" condition as with anything deeper or more interesting motivating the plot.
I think the major one is that with "Dark", the situation can be more grim or openly poor without necessarily being terrifying. Characters pretty much know from the get-go that bad things are happening, and the story proceeds from there.
Whereas with "Horror", a lot of it is based more on subtlety and stealth. There's a greater emphasis on shock tactics and catching people off-guard, and the story could keep the very nature of the terror a secret right up until the final act (or even, in particularly unnerving cases, right up to the end and beyond).
Honestly, though, I can't say for sure. They're probably more checkpoints on a larger continuum than two distinct boxes.
Anthology of Not Very Much Interest
Ignoring the embarrassing dumpster fire of my first entry, Anthology (9) consists purely of either former Writeoff entries or Flashfic contestants. Given how haphazard the collections are, there's not a lot I can say for these fics. They're pretty much side dishes to the main course.
Equestria Girls: It's Like California Girls, But In Equestria! Get It!?
And now we get to some really niche (and, as a likely consequence, really rare) genres:
Given what I said earlier about Sunset Shimmer, it shouldn't come as a surprise to note that I have only 3 entries for the Equestria Girls tag.
Nor is it surprising that all of them are for the villains of the show: the Dazzlings should go without saying, and the Shadowbolts (EqG version) are fantastic (if obvious) concepts on paper that just never got their dues in the show itself.
I intend to tackle such a promising cast more often, though not necessarily in the Equestria Girls universe, so don't expect much of an increase for this tag. My interest still lies largely with the main show.
Mystery? Whodunnit? Howdunnit? And Whatyadun Anyway?
Mystery (4) barely registers, and again I think it largely falls under the category of genres that tend to co-occur with others instead of standing on their own.
Part of that is just because "Mystery" on its own has never been a particularly treasured genre of mine on its own terms (certainly not compared with the more character-oriented "Slice of Life", the more richly tempting "Dark/Horror", or the more open-world and grandly exploratory "Adventure").
Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels, for instance, are arguably among my favourite mystery stories, and it's almost entirely because they're so whack-a-doodle crazy (yet kind of intelligent and thoughtfully engaging, if you see them as science and philosophy digs at the same time) that "Mystery" is the least they're peddling. Heck, you could argue they're not very good mysteries, anyway. They break some fair play rules, in that they break practically any rule you can think of.
Still, there is something about piecing together clues and throwing dead-ends and red herrings around that means I would like to give this genre a fair shot of my own. There might be more of these to come: I've often considered turning my hand to a "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" or "Rarity Investigates!" of my own. But don't expect a pure mystery fic.
Impossible's Adventures in Randomland
With Random (8), it's pretty damn obvious I have no clue how to apply it.
For some genres, I solve any confusion by invoking an exemplar ("Dark", for instance, could be served by 1984, which isn't a "Horror" in the same way that, say, Hallowe'en would be). That helps a lot to demystify or open up ideas for particularly niche genres.
Yet the most fitting exemplar for "Random" seems to be something like Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. Unless I have a hankering for a Discord-dominated storyline, I don't see those as good fits for the MLP:FiM universe, which tends to be more grounded and traditional in its narrative rules.
More broadly, it seems like anything clearly random enough to qualify as "Random" would - because it breaks too many familiar narrative rules and standards - actually be too random for me to write for! Basically, it raises a fundamental question: "What's the bloody point?"
That said, I do like Alice in Wonderland, so maybe I might make a fic in its style at some point. Generally, though, I've never felt an overwhelming urge to emulate it. This might remain a rare curiosity at best.
Sci-Fi: Reach for the Stars
Sci-Fi (3) is clearly and almost purely a mandatory AU for me (the only exception I got in largely because it had a science and technology focus, but it was still a bit of a bizarre fit for MLP:FiM in its own right).
The show does have magic-equivalent tech, especially after the first season, but one look at the setting and you'd be forgiven for being utterly convinced it doesn't look anything like a promising avenue for Sci-Fi. Not without some major retooling.
And not forgetting that it hits a similar problem to Alternate Universes, in that it almost always demands a rebuild from the ground-up, which usually makes it a bad avenue for shorter, easier stories.
It's a shame because I actually wouldn't mind delving more deeply into Science Fiction Pony. "Sci-Fi" as a genre speaks to my love of science, and it also owns a lot of shows, games, and books I adore to bits, so some kind of tribute to that is all but guaranteed, in spirit if not in substance yet.
A Non-Stop Thrill Ride!!! (Please Note: You Must Be This Awesome To Ride)
Thriller (3)... well, really there's only one of those in my mind warrants the "Thriller" treatment, and that's the one where "Assassins" is right there in the title.
Given my bias towards slower and more quotidian stories, non-stop Matrix/Bourne/Die Hard stories aren't overwhelmingly likely, especially since they're an extra challenge tying into the more optimistic MLP:FiM universe.
However, the overlap with "Adventure" means I do have a vested interest in exploring this genre more often, partly because I've had my own ideas for how secret agencies (now canon as of "Slice of Life") might operate in a land like Equestria. Partly because "Die Hard with ponies" sounds awesome. But especially since that "Assassins" story of mine was a heck of a lot of fun to write, and I'd love to do it again.
Might have to go AU with this one for the best effect, though. We'll see.
TRAGEDY! When the Outcome's Blue, and You Got No Clue, it's TRAGEDY!
For the longest time, the Tragedy genre (6) was a bit of a poser for me personally.
I've had a literary education (and seen Educating Rita too!), so I've long been well aware of the difference between "tragic" and "tragedy" (for one thing, tragedies can even feel earned if the main character is arrogant or reckless enough, which means they're not "tragic" figures, just jerks and incompetents).
The tricky part is grafting the error-leads-to-downfall aspect onto a sunny world like Equestria, where the ponies who spiral out of favour are usually the ones that clearly deserved it ages ago.
More to the point, I restrict myself to those cases where a character's own "fatal flaw" was a major factor in their fall from grace. That sounds redundant, but actually, in classical literature, a tragedy didn't need the main character to have a "fatal flaw" like pride or greed. It just required them to make an error, which is then overwhelmingly (sort of) punished.
But these days - and for me especially - there's a lot more psychological mileage to be had out of the "fatal flaw" approach.
I think what really made this tag click for me was revisiting the old Batman: The Animated Series a way back. There are more obviously "tragic" characters there, of course (Mr. Freeze being the pinnacle of that category), but it's a good example of the more traditional "tragedy" too, at least from the POV of its villains. When it comes to reforming them.
See, there's a very common plotline in the show wherein a villain of the week may want to reform, may genuinely be reforming, but some error or personal compulsion trips them up and sends them back into the rogues gallery.
Here's just one example: one of the Riddler's episodes was chiefly about him finding a perfectly lucrative and legal way to put his genius to good use. At first, he's thriving: selling puzzle toys, using his brand image for commercials, being a big hit at parties.
Eventually, however, his old habits come creeping back in. The Riddler just can't resist testing the Batman with subtle and hidden crimes, despite it undermining his legal successes. He even catches himself at it, and tries to stop his own slippery slide into his former mind games against Batman by killing the Batman himself, thus removing the temptation.
And Batman, of course, takes him down. Sure enough, the Riddler ends up back in Arkham Asylum, furious that his attempts to outwit Batman ended up backfiring (for extra cruelty, Batman doesn't even tell him how he outwitted him, leaving him to go mad trying to figure it out).
In the end, despite what a good life he was leading and could still have led, the Riddler destroys himself. His inability to let go - to refrain from trying to prove how smart he was - was ultimately what led to his downfall.
It can even be done comedically: Harley Quinn actually does reform in one episode, but a misunderstanding (an "error" of the old-fashioned kind) at a clothes shop escalates further and further until she winds up going full villain and finds herself back in Arkham Asylum, (albeit with a hopeful note at the end of that particular story that future episodes basically ignored).
That kind of thing, possibly watered down (e.g. change "villain" to "jerk" or make the compulsion something more realistic than "robbing banks and leaving smug clues boasting about it") might work astonishingly well in an Equestrian setting, where redemption and forgiveness are major concerns. And I for one would be keen to put the theory into practice.
Crossover: My Little Numbers: Friendship is Impossible
And then we get to tags that I have never used. I'm ignoring a few others I've never done, for reasons that should hopefully be apparent by now, but some of this uncharted territory genuinely does catch my interest.
First is the crossover.
Please don't boo me.
OK, so the Crossover (0) is a genre I have never, ever seriously attempted, and for plenty of reasons. For the longest time, I avoided the subject entirely out of some concern for the stigma crossovers often get (hint as to my naivety: when I started fan fiction, I thought I was daringly different for speculating on crossovers at all).
Even after I got used to a genre that was - it turned out - common as dirt, I avoided it... well, because it was as common as dirt. I think I'm just perversely contrarian at times, because popular things tend to be things I avoid unless I feel they're just so personally compelling. This is one reason why, among background ponies, I had a far easier time planning stories for the relatively obscure Amethyst Star and the Flower Trio than for the super-popular Derpy and Octavia.
Also because I struggled to think of a way of mashing two franchises together for a better reason than "because I like them both".
However, getting away from the AU-type crossover (wherein both franchises are their own universes and the fic has them interact like two countries with a border dispute), there is the more promising Fusion-type crossover (wherein everything's set in one universe but there's a clear blending of the two franchises, like a bizarre case of cultural appropriation).
It's this latter type which I think is more promising because, honestly, I've been doing something like it for a while now. Other franchises do influence how I write and how I think, and once you know I'm a massive Terry Pratchett fan, I doubt it's hard not to see me trying to copy or imitate his style here and there. And I've already mentioned how specific works often borrow from films or books or games I really like. The crossover would simply be a more openly overt version of that.
I've even had some ideas in that direction for a long time, but since most of them tend to be on the ambitious end of the scale, I've never felt confident enough to get them to a publishable stage.
One of my hopes for the next few years is to get my own take on the "Crossover" genre out and about in some fashion.
Stories About Ponies Are Stories Not About Humans
The other oddity is the Human genre (0).
The reason I have little to no interest in this one normally should be pretty damn obvious: it has all the disadvantages of the crossover, and none of the more blatant advantages ("Human", basically, is not a franchise I inherently want to see in my pony fiction).
At best, it'd be a rider to some other tag, such as "Crossover" (if I were much interested in the AU-type at all rather than the far more promising Fusion-type) or "Equestria Girls" (if I had much interest in that lore outside of the villains and Sunset).
There's just no overriding impulse to do it. Coupled with the even more notorious reputation this genre has, and it'd be hard to see where I'd want to stick my oar in.
That said... I have had a couple of ideas along these lines.
I don't want to reveal too much, because these are two fics still in the draft stage (and have been for a while, and in one case that's a "while" measured in years). This is very much still not a genre I'm going to invest in all that much, especially since the only two projects I do have in that direction are a far cry from the typical "self-insert" style more readily associated with it.
Heck, it'd be truer to say I'm trying other things, and the "Human" tag is a mere byproduct. They're both explicitly experimental challenges, for a start, in trying to do something unusual.
But... well, we'll see if ever I finish the stories. A live demo would be better than a lot of airy-fairy babbling.
A very brief conclusion to this mish-mash of observations, speculations, and (metaphorical) perambulations (a.k.a. stuff noticed, stuff wondered about, and stuff wandering off wherever it likes).
Overall, I think it's easy-peasy to see some larger trends in my work: a lot of focus on show-style writing, a few niche genres of rare interest, and a lot of highly specialized or gimmicky genres left behind (some for good reason).
If ever I perform another genre-check like this again, assuming I build up another hundred or so stories at some point, then I wouldn't mind discovering I have more to talk about re: the rarely-used genres. But something tells me they're not going to overtake "Slice of Life" or "Drama". What to make of this, I have no idea.
Well, it's tough making predictions, especially about the future. I can almost never successfully predict how any one month will go, to say nothing of the next few years. I shall have to resort to cliche:
Only time will tell.
And Now For Something Completely Different
Lastly, a minor update for the start of September regarding my August output. I was hoping to do a lot better than I did in July, and indeed I did, but was it good enough to rival the months prior? Do we have another NaNoWriMo-worthy success story? Well, see for yourself:
Total number of words produced during May: 74,697.
Total number of words produced during June: 50,291.
Total number of words produced during July: 12,666.
Total number of words produced during August: 44,665.
No, basically.
Ooh! Close, but no cigar.
At least I'm getting back into shape, so to speak, but still not quite at peak performance yet. I'm hoping to reach 50,000 words this month, a standard I aim to maintain thereafter for as long as possible.
Only time will tell. (Hey, it's a cliche for a reason).
Until next time!
Impossible Numbers, out.
What a neat way to look back at one's work. You have me curious about my own genre breakdown...
Comedy: 47. I write to entertain myself and others. Small surprise that many of the ideas that actually see publication are the ones that make me smile.
Slice of Life: 43. As you noted, this is a series designed for fun slices of life.
Equestria Girls: 38. I happen to quite like the universe next door. Fingers and higher tech levels are useful for telling some stories. Creating an AU set primarily in that world didn't hurt either.
AU: 24. My love of alternate timelines doesn't end at EqG. The Oversaturated World definitely gets representation here, along with crossovers, what-ifs, and a foray into one of the Glimmer-spawned worldlines.
Adventure: 23. A fair chunk of the Oversaturated World, a variety of Writeoff and other contest entries... and some old works that haven't been updated since the first half of the 2010s.
Drama: 23. The world isn't all fun and games (though, full disclosure, I do have four Comedy/Drama stories.) I can write more emotionally heavy content when the plot calls for it.
Random: 20. Reserved for the really ridiculous stuff as an advance warning. "The really ridiculous stuff" apparently makes up over a sixth of my work here. Sounds about right.
Crossover: 17. And they're not all Magic: the Gathering! Just, you know, most of them. Others range from Corn & Peg to Doom. Ponies are almost as fun to fit in where they don't belong as card games.
Anthology: 8. Several never-complete-by-design idea piles, some collections of stuff I wrote on typewriters at Bronycons, and MtG-inspired fic-a-day challenges.
Romance: 8. I actually quite like romance. I just worry that I'm not good enough at it to make the emotions come across genuinely. Plus, I don't want to shove my preferred pairings down everyone's throats.
Dark: 6. Haven't touched the stuff since 2015, with what is definitely my most contentious story. It's just not my genre of choice.
Horror: 3. I can write horror. I just find it hard to get into a horrifying mindset. I like the characters too much, to say nothing of trying quash the bits of my brain that make jokes out of everything.
Human: 3. A crossover, a "ponies in the real world" story, and a self-insert I did as a contest entry. I may enjoy the local flavor of humanoids, but normal people are boring.
Sad: 3. Not my preferred emotional state. I'd really rather focus on something enjoyable.
Sci-Fi: 2. I'm in the same boat as you. I love sci-fi, but this is not an IP amenable to it. Both stories are AUs, one Oversaturated, the other a DC crossover.
Mystery: 1. It's not that I don't like writing mysteries—setting clues and watching people try to figure out what was happening was a lot of fun—I just don't usually write long enough stories to make mystery plots seem worth it. (And I like exposition and world building too much to be good at hiding information.)
Tragedy: 1. I like happy endings too much. Aside from one use of predestination, I try to put them in everything.
Thriller: 0. I'm honestly not sure what this genre tag is for.
5346669
It's definitely a solid way to get a glimpse of one's own leanings (and to speculate on what overall trends they represent and why). Of course, it helps to have a large and representative sample of works so that anomalies don't distort the overall picture too much. Although outliers like my romance fics can be interesting precisely because they're such wild, bizarre outliers.
That said, I'm honestly not surprised your EqG ranking is so high - you definitely seem a lot more enthusiastic about it than I am - though I was half-expecting your SoL to be higher than your Comedy. And you've done way more Crossover and AU than I have. I wonder if I should be jealous about that.
We also seem to have very different interpretations of what the "Random" tag is for, to say nothing of the utility of "Thriller". Ah well, the former in particular I've always had trouble understanding.
Another interesting comparison is with the total on-site Tag Directory counts for each genre. If you pick all tags and sort them by type, you can get in one go all the counts for all the genres mentioned here (should note that AU, Crossover, and Human are nowadays categorized further down as "Content", and Equestria Girls as a "Series" under the letter M for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls). At the moment, the numbers for all the tags mentioned here are thus:
The overall number of stories at present is 135,136. That should help get an idea of the ratios involved.
Naturally, it's risky treating this data as if it represented an "average" user, because it's unlikely there actually are "average" users whose genre ratios correspond very closely to this. Given the sheer number of combinations and biases possible, that seems very unlikely. Still, we can at least compare ourselves to the overall trends and see what biases stick out.
For instance, at a glance we both seem to be relatively typical in terms of a heavy "Slice of Life" and "Comedy" bias, whereas our respective "Drama" and "Equestria Girls" biases are higher than the norm, and our "Romance" and "Human" much lower.
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Perhaps I should elaborate on that more? I think, to keep this interesting, I'll ignore the obvious weird stuff like creepy incest fics. My lack of interest in that should definitely go without saying.
A large part of my attitude towards "Romance" is probably more because of just how big a deal shipping is in fandom circles. Ordinarily, the odds are I'd treat "Romance" as simply another genre, like "Sci Fi" or "Tragedy" or "Drama". But the massive interest in shipping caught me by surprise when I started out, and I still find it hard to understand. Especially when, unlike "Slice of Life" and "Adventure", it's not really a major aspect of the show, so it wasn't what I came for.
Even now, I'm still overwhelmed by how popular it actually is, and how passionate people can get over it. It tends to make me a bit self-conscious, sorta like being the only wishy-washy agnostic in what turns out to be a highly devout church.
I mean, I'm not existentially against it. Obviously, romance is a hugely important part of the human condition, so artists are going to tackle it sooner or later (ha, understatement of the year!).
But I've generally preferred writing about more flexible and platonic friendships. There is some overlap, only it's enough to make most of the more psychologically interesting aspects of romance kind of redundant: close friends have to show some degree of loyalty to each other (like a marriage vow), they can trust each other with intimate and vulnerable feelings (like special partners), and they often share life experiences together. Friendship, like strong family bonds, already has a claim on the beautiful stuff.
And it's largely free for everyone, in a way that the generally narrower requirements of romance wouldn't - in many cases, shouldn't - allow: consider a friendship between a young child and an old fogey, and tell me swapping "friendship" with "romance" doesn't introduce a massive heap of moral problems.
But even in areas where romance is acceptable - and likely expected - in my view, that generosity and diversity of friendship is already the majority of the attraction, without the peculiar baggage that often comes with romances. Between friendship and family bonds, romance only occasionally brings anything new to the table that doesn't make the relationship seem to be either shallow infatuation or just an overblown relationship.
Couple that with my generally family-friendly leanings over, say, any interest in depicting hot, steamy makeout sessions or rampant sex, and I don't particularly feel any real need for writing romance.
I think this is a long-winded way of saying I just don't click with it. Also, that even the Victorians are calling me a prude.
That, and I've tended to be disappointed by the romances I've come across. It seems like a very easy genre to get wrong.
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Oh, where are my manners?
Thank you very much. Although in my mind, I discount a lot of those either for being primitive starter works or for being incomplete/cancelled.
But, until I start removing any of them (and I have considered that for some), this is how the count stands. I certainly hope to add more and better works, sooner rather than later.
Thank you once again for the cheerful comment! We've only (relatively) recently crossed paths here, but I already look forward to hearing from you every now and then.
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I think I'm contractually obligated to say you're my new best friend.
Hello I came down here to loudly applaud: "TRAGEDY! When the Outcome's Blue, and You Got No Clue, it's TRAGEDY!" I love that.
Now I'm listening to Steps and reliving school discos.
I also really enjoyed reading your genre-check. I don't have enough fics to bother, but I generally also skewed towards "show-style" slice of life, and dabbled that one time in adventure. Especially during my primary MLP writing days. Writing a crossover recently was more an exercise in loosening up and not take writing fanfiction so seriously.
I guess I feel with a lot of the other genres I'd have to put more work in to make it "fit" with the show's tone, and at that point... why would I be writing it as MLP fanfiction? I know, I know: inbuilt audience and the other advantages of fanfiction. But it just doesn't gel for me. There are other fandoms for that, as I'm learning now that I've let go and decided to embrace AO3.
Anyway, best wishes for hitting 50,000 words in September. Those are numbers I can barely dream of. August has been my best for literal years, with 29,430 published (and maybe a couple thousand more of discarded ideas).
Hmm. It's interesting that we seem to be of one mind on slice of life (including less interest in the two parters! Think the only one I get any re-watch value out of other than the pilot might be the season 8 finale, and that might just be a mix of Tirek being amusing and the girls being allowed to actually fail)
Where we differ? You seem to have a talent for finding new territory where in all honesty the only ideas I have are crossovers. Those I've written have involved shipping, oddly, even though that's another topic we have similar feelings towards. The crossover aspect is mostly because I feel the show does either such a good job fleshing most of Equestria out that there's almost nothing I feel I can actually add (it would never, for example, have occurred to me to plum the depths of Parcel Post) so that leaves a slightly more abstract process.
(Stressing abstract because going "HERE ARE TWO THINGS, THESE ARE THE RULES" is boring, but you can get a lot out of two complimentary characters just hanging out. For a Marvel nerd I've never really bought into or enjoyed the concept of a Shared Universe™, but I adore the concept of superhero poker night or secret bars.)
Example: Yeah, FiM is a fantasy show, so mixing in the works of Neil Gaiman fits naturally, but I was chatting with a friend about character assumptions a while ago. Why doesn't Romeo just use basic first aid to determine Juliet's alive, Superman's overpowered, shit like that. Someone brought up the gross Sandman idea that "Death's a hot goth girl, what's scary about that, dUr HuR hUr". And that got me thinking about Death. Cool, smooth, caring, takes no shit, and is an alternative rock chic who knows tons about pop culture and music. Break her down like that and you've basically got Rainbow's ideal high school crush.
"So if this is a story, does it have to be a romance? Oh hey, there's that vague rule about how Death can't become romantically involved with mortals." Throw in the Discworld concept of a near Death experience and bingo: a rough skeleton of a story.
TLDR: think it's less "putting things together just because [you~] like them" and finding that right mix. Not so much a Venn diagram of what they have in common as that one element you can mix into both sides. It can help if they're complimentary too, since the Endless don't really stick out that much against Equestria's mythical cosmology. And I think if it's approached like that, "What's the secret ingredient to both these things/what kind of story does that suggest", you actually get...well...a story.
Or there's always the direct approach. Been sketching out a fic about Ponyville being invaded by a Polymorph, because the girls facing a monster that sucks your emotions out and turns you into a parody of yourself feels like something the show would do. Also mused about ponyfying Blackadder and the Thick of It for the same reason. Swearing aside (and if you're selective with it you could use it without breaking immersion too much)...yeah, isn't it kinda easy to buy that Celestia has a Malcolm Tucker somewhere on her pay roll?
More unsolicited thoughts from a stranger on the internet:
Romance: Again, my stories so far have it as a major element, but it's not the driving force. At least not so much. And I think that's the trick. Romance is a tool in your box as much as drama or irony or whatever. But if you just use those you don't have much of an actual story, because it's not about anything except those things. Shipping compounds this because it's more the assumption of the presence of romance more than...dunno, making a case for it? If you think about most of the big time pop cultural couples, your Marge and Homers, your Uncle Phil and Aunt Vis, we're usually introduced to them in media res. Wanna flesh out their relationships, hey, that's what flashback episodes in later seasons are for.
Shipping, on the other hand, doesn't just insist on Undying True Love as a definite instead of a potential, in the hands of most nerds who dabble in it you'd think the entire reason for the franchise in question was so the chosen two could hang out in the woods, professing love and only love for each other. And as you point out, some people can take this to a degree that...does not suggest a healthy understanding of an actual relationship.
Only real observation I've got is that if someone's gonna ship, maybe think of it as writing a sitcom I guess? Because you might get the same boyfriend/girlfriend husband/wife dynamics, but you also get all the shit that gets on their nerves, you skip most of the awkward courtship stuff by opening in media res, and what the hell, you can at least be funny.
Speaking of!
Comedy:
Noooot quite what you're doing. Comedy stories tend to be one giant observation, even if the observation is "This specific part of society I'm talking about is fucking dumb." Stressing comedy story because there's all types of comedy, but stories lend to being funny, not just asides but actually funny, or at least likeable, because a story is a progression of events, yeah? So's comedy if you think about.
Don't just mean farce either, although I think studying those is the one of the best ways to learn how to structure a story. (EDIT: and also how to learn timing, one of the most important things in comedy) Hell, most comedy movies you can probably think of aren't necessarily farces. Fish Called Wanda is a heist movie, it's just a slightly more absurd one, and part of the absurdity is it uses the structure of a heist movie but combines it with characters and British drawing room elements that don't...quite feel like they belong in that kinda movie. So maybe the actual dialogue and acting doesn't make you laugh, but there's something about that incongruity. And it's an incongruity rooted very firmly in those two opposing settings.
Hell, speaking of John Cleese, here's the thing about describing Monty Python as rAnDoM™...not that that's wrong, but is it though?
One of the less appreciated aspects of Python is how it came about due to it's collaborators (and I'm paraphrasing here) being fed up with the routine of sketch comedy. I'm not sure of the actual wording or inclined to comb through Google for it, but most (and more informed) comedy historians tells us about how they wanted to make their own brand of sketches without having to bother with punchlines. And that sounds like completely breaking the rules, and yeah, sure, it's a "Flying Circus" and things are going off the rails...but doesn't nailing that tone require a certain familiarity with the rules in the first place?
Most Python sketches, especially their earlier stuff, stick very closely to the style of the BBC at the time. News reports, interviews, variety shows, documentaries. Except it's a version of the BBC in an absurd alternate universe, and again, in that early stuff, part of the logic is that rules that govern this universe are breaking down. All this because a bunch of nerds thought jokes were more important than punchlines.
BUT. They still had to follow the logic of the jokes they were making, because jokes are inherently about that logic, even if that logic is absurd. You don't need a punchline, but to have a sketch at all you need to be able to go from A to B.
Hell, even the Holy Grail isn't quite so mad if you take that kind of top down view. It helps that there's years of interviews where the Pythons clarify that they picked the subject because of a mix of a movie feeling like it should have an epic theme like King Arthur, followed by the comedy logic that actually, Arthurian Britain would be kinda...y'know. Horrible and not romantic.
And lo and behold, how does the movie end? Arthur and his army being arrested because of a gag earlier in the movie where a knight lops off a historian's head while he was narrating the adventure. Because they aren't lecturing you, but they are sticking to their point. Arthur and the knights of the round table aren't heroic and noble, they're a bunch of clowns who either dipshit themselves to death or kill undeserving people. Because the joke is logically...isn't that ultimately what people running around with swords would really do? Really?
And that logic and structure runs through every moment of the movie:
The opening gag with the air velocity of an unladen swallow is a perfectly logical conversation about that topic, but an epic movie about King Arthur isn't supposed to open with this discussion.
The plague village should be depressing because death and suffering have become so commonplace there's business built around it. But it's a tacky, modern business and the equivalent of corruption is you can bribe a cart owner to take someone who's "Getting Better"
Dennis isn't an awe struck peasant who gives Arthur some vital information, he's an opinionated young man who has some very interesting, very pointed observations about how democracy works in this setting.
The Black Knight isn't some mysterious, unrelenting force, he's an idiot who doesn't realise he can't win.
And on and on and on and on. Hell, the bit with the rabbit? That's a double inversion. There's no great terrible beast, there's just a rabbit, except the joke actually is that the rabbit can kill you. This is how Monty Python treats the fantasy part of it's epic fantasy movie.
Way, way, waaaaay TLDR: Comedy is more of a logical process than you might think, and going off that Parcel Post story I think you've got more of a knack for it than you're giving yourself credit. Not that you have to be the next Monty Python, but if you ever wanna commit to a bigger, more comedy project taking a top down view will help you put something together. For inspiration, well, you've got the sitcom world of Equestria, which has an adrenaline junkie lunatic like Rainbow Dash in it. An absurd but completely logical series of events will suggest themselves.
And that's more what writing comedy is. You're really promising that this makes it's own off beat brand of absurd sense. No one can really promise to make an audience laugh all the time because not everyone in an audience finds the same stuff funny.
Dark:
I like that.
Dark can be hard to even qualify, yeah, but I think like romance it benefits from a certain amount of intellectual honesty. And doesn't benefit anyone if it's a blatant attempt to seem intellectual.
I dunno. "Honesty" feels like a good word for it, but another term I've heard that felt right is "Grace". As an example, I'm one of those people who thinks Adam's last Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book works as The Ending because...well, after everything Arthur Dent's been through even before winding up right back where he started. Isn't there a kinda grace in just...accepting this is how it's all going to go?
Logic of comedy in there, too.
So yeah. Honesty and grace. That's the good stuff.
Human: Get thee behind me.
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I haven't forgotten about your comments (especially not TheManehattanite's, which could be a respectable educational blog in its own right). I'll try to address them later, for a flexible value of "later". Right now, it was either reply in depth here or post a blog I've been meaning to post for a long time, and I prioritized the older self-imposed obligation. Plus, I've been doing other stuff in the meantime.
Besides, there's a lot of food for thought to chew on here, and I'll have to think about some of it. Especially TheManehattanite's. That's a hell of a lot of potentially inspirational considerations to digest...
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At the moment, I'm thinking that - if ever I do write romantic relationships in any form other than "let's have an excuse to do a Sunset Shimmer Alternate Universe again" - they might be just for canon relationships or background characters/original characters. Still viewing it as an unlikely experiment, but I'm keeping my options open.
"Pear Butter and Bright Mac" is really the only time canon romance has interested me. Credit goes to how good "The Perfect Pear" was, but I also had a pre-existing interest in the Apple family boosting my appreciation. Such a sweet episode.
It's more fandoms in general for me. Go on something like TVTropes, for example, and a good chunk of the fan reaction stuff (like the "Your Mileage May Vary" subjective pages) is about shipping. It's enough to make one suspect humans are just obsessed over those kinds of relationships.
Alas, I wouldn't know for sure. I haven't been in many, certainly not with enough dedication to tell.
Ha! Accuracy, thy name is Crystalchameleon.
I can think of a couple of early examples where that seems unlikely. Odds are, once I reach a level of output I consider secure, they'll be on their way out.
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I have a tendency to retro sometimes. Hell, I'm not convinced I didn't get stuck in the late 90s/early 2000s mentally, and everything since has merely been a refinement.
Might be the perfect excuse for me to do so, then. Though knowing me, I'd still take a crossover deadly seriously. Work hard, play hard...
A concept that's always intrigued me is that of the "spiritual successor": something that isn't a direct continuation or spinoff, but which captures the essence of another story or world. Pony G4 strikes me as very good for that because the show itself likes to dabble in various genres here and there (Western for AJ, random for Pinkie, and in a couple of memorable cases they even tried mystery stories). Especially when you can transplant explicit elements of the show (characters, most obviously) and see how they fare in a new narrative obstacle course. It's what I've tried to capture in my own AU stories, so I might try it again.
I get the impression this is less of an advantage in pony fanfiction these days, though that's probably relatively speaking.
Ceffyl Dwr/paperhearts hopped over there way back, though I haven't heard from them in a long while, so I've no idea how they feel about it. I've been keeping an eye out for alternative writing outlets myself, but right now I'm stuck in the "It must be FIMFiction.net" stage. Barring a few changes over the years, the layout and formatting here is very comfortable to me.
Halfway through September, and I haven't written a thing. Not the best way to start a month.
I know I tend to be a bit ambitious with my writing targets, but between a constant stream of inspirations and my past experience hitting said targets, it's incredibly unsatisfying not to hit them. This may be a character flaw.
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Well, it's been a while, and it's rather rude of me to have put this off for so long. Then again, I could point fingers at you for making me read what's effectively a blog post in comment's clothing, ha!
At the risk of a bloated result, I think - for simplicity's sake - I'll go the old "quote, then comment" route. Note I won't be quoting everything: quite apart from size considerations, some points just grabbed me more than others.
Now then, let's get started.
I personally can't stand the Season Eight finale, for a whole host of reasons.
Speaking more broadly, I think one of the reasons I like the slice-of-life episodes more than the two-parters is because the SoL eps can rotate among an impressive and engaging cast of characters and give each one a moment to shine. The adventure two-parters, by contrast, have a bad habit of either turning most of the cast into one-note extras (a trend I trace back to Season Two's finale) or focusing on their blander elements (Twilight's princesshood usually requires her to be a generic leader type, which feels like a terrible waste compared with what an unconventional rational/scientific/academic/intellectual type of leader she could've been).
This surprises me: if anything, I'd have accused the show of not capitalizing on most of its unexplored elements. Except for the later seasons, where my criticism would be that they should not have touched them at all cough-Scootaloo-cough.
It was a point I raised during my blog post about the episode "Frenemies": this show has such a wide community of characters to work with that it's a shame most of them end up as one-episode one-offs (Coloratura's my go-to example of that: there's so much story behind her life up to the present that her starring episode could never really do it all justice) or unexplained loose ends (Zecora being a classic example: we're no wiser about her story at the end of the show than we are at the beginning).
Music to my ears, apart from the "shit" bit. I don't see a contradiction in loving a work while still being aware of the inaccuracies or logical holes left within it. "Warts and all", and all.
Your example is interesting, but I still find myself hesitant. (I don't know much about Gaiman's works, so I'll in ignorance have to take your example at face-value and follow the logic as-is).
The major sticking point for me is how... glib an AU-type crossover can feel. It's a major reason I have difficulty fully investing in the Equestria Girls spin-off: something about slapping an AU right next door to the pony universe feels unwarranted, or unconvincing, or too transparently wish-fulfillment to me.
It's not the character logic that bothers me: an unconventional Death taking an (oddly romantic?) interest in Rainbow Dash (and vice versa) could work, based on the principle you mention of finding an angle involving both of them that can expand further into a well-rounded story.
It's the universe mechanics. I mean, I'd get hung up over how two worlds are supposed to just collide like that. Unless the mechanics of that was a major focus (or it was natural of one of the franchises in general to explore AUs), anything else would seem too transparently forced or sloppy to work for me. Like, there was a Metal Gear - My Little Pony crossover I was reading years ago, and while the character interactions were fine, there was just a portal that happened to exist in the Metal Gear universe that happened to take one to ponyland, and I just couldn't buy that part.
In short, if I do ever put out a crossover, I still think it'll be a long while before I put out anything other than a fusion-type, which at least seems easier to justify and much more agreeably subtle (and intellectually challenging, to boot, making both sides work just so).
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Another reason I don't have much to do with romance. It's all very well smashing two characters together, but the word "why?" is a quick way to discover no glue was ever used in the story's construction. That's probably why I often went for AU's when writing mine: it was just easier to start from scratch, like any original story, than to try and wrangle something directly out of canon.
(Plus all that stuff I said about me not really writing "romance" in the kissy-kissy sense).
Vaguely reminds me of some advice I picked up elsewhere about not having romantic couples turn into carbon copies of some Platonic ideal, wherein they either love each other passionately onscreen or ask "where's Poochie?" - sorry, "where's my lover?" - when they're not around.
Frankly, I'd find that easy advice to follow. Nothing's more boring than characters with no actual distinct character. It's a lot more fun to play up their idiosyncracies.
And if you can give them flaws, annoyances, quirks, and other fun times, why the hell wouldn't you?
I'm going to go for full summary here, partly because a lot of what you say already happens to chime with my general approach to comedy (namely, have it be about something and not just "random lols"). It also fits some advice I think Terry Pratchett said once, about never taking things for granted but applying logic in places where logic was never meant to be (he used it in the context of fairy tales and fantasy, but I like to think it applies to any fiction that can fall victim to thoughtless cliches - which is probably all of them).
I think when I talked about "making readers laugh every other line", it was because I had witty quips specifically in mind. I'd been obsessing over them at the time.
I do like that breakdown of Monty Python's method in their madness. Just don't have a lot to add other than I'll be referring back to it, guaranteed. Especially the absurd logic angle. I never thought about how that worked in the general context of the Holy Grail movie: individual scenes like the coconut one do have a literalist logic to them with some meta humour attached, but I never thought about that weird ending actually fitting into the "absurd but brutally logical" angle before. This bit specifically:
To be fair, I think this is a point that can apply to any genre, rather than "Dark" specifically. Even a comedy can be pretentious.
I'm not sure I get this "grace" argument - or more accurately, I don't think "grace" is the right word. Seems more like a kind of pragmatic pessimism: things are going to be bad, tough luck, you might as well deal with it.
As for the fifth of that particular trilogy, while I'm not hugely as invested in the book myself, in broad strokes it does at least nod to the darker side of the series as a whole.
The universe of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was established as a terrible, chaotic place as soon as Earth was destroyed to make way for a new (and, as it turns out, completely obsolete) hyperspace bypass, by a bureaucratic race who couldn't care less whether or not it was moral so long as it was correctly documented.
Most of its denizens don't care about big philosophical questions and only about hedonism and money. It was nearly all destroyed in book three by a supercomputer pointlessly trying to fulfil a stupid function. Even the heroes (Ford especially) make a point of not getting upset by the regular tragic events, because they just happen too often to be dealt with (like planets randomly getting potted into black holes for a giant game of billiards).
Put like that, the last book undoing the good ending of the fourth book is at least fitting in.
I mean, I still think it's not a strong book for other reasons (digressions being too big, not as much humour as usual, feeling strangely slight compared with the more cosmically philosophical quests of the earlier books), but I'm at least prepared to defend it as a worthwhile darker experiment.
Always look on the bright side of life, I guess.
I mean, I might as well be Satan for other sins, but I haven't sunk that low yet.