I think what's telling about genre discourse is that the Nerd Genres, fantasy and science fiction, act like the definition of a "genre" is having "rules" about what's "allowed to happen" in the setting, and nerds think all genres work this way when mostly they don't
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SF and fantasy don't even actually really work this way The distinction between these two genres is just the superficial chrome, what it looks like - "psionic powers" aren't actually less impossible than "magic" in any sense, they just look and feel different
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I almost feel like we need a word for setting genre vs. narrative genre. Like, Blade Runner is a thriller that happens to be science fiction. Lord of the Rings is adventure/war that happens to be fantasy. Dune is epic tragedy that happens to be science fiction.
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
But there *are* differences and times when the material genre becomes particularly relevant; for instance, Arrival is a family drama about grief but leaving out the aliens would be a misleading description
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
Most literary fiction is just in genres that aren’t marketable anymore on their own. When’s the last time you read a robinsonade?
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Replying to @Cybren @BootlegGirl
It bears pointing out that tons of literary fiction is technically science fiction or fantasy, it's just that because it's "literary" the art snobs don't treat it as such and the genre nerds don't want to claim it either
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Frankenstein, a literary classic and one of the most well-known horror stories, is also considered the first modern science fiction novel. Go back far enough and these genre boundaries, INCLUDING sf, fantasy, and horror, are either blurry or simply nonexistent.
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In the old days the stereotypical "science fiction B-movie" was a "monster movie", which is really, really inarguably a kind of horror movie In fact if you just say "monster movie" today it's impossible to really sort the ones that we think of as "the horror genre" vs "sci-fi"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
The Invisible Man is one of the "classic Hammer Horror monsters" but he's also, like, absolutely an archetypal "science fiction" story The most recent remake is as "hard SF" as it's possible to get (dropping the magic potion conceit for a creepily plausible "active camo suit")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
It's also really only "The Invisible Man" because they're using the name for branding - the actual movie is a fake-haunting gaslighting thriller where the bad guy is Tony Stark.
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Despite the plot and setting and details all being wildly different from Wells' original novel, it is *very clearly* a remake of Wells' novel because it's *about the thing* Wells was writing about (which is the Ring of Gyges from Plato, the terrifying power of "invisibility")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
Is it, though? The guy is already a monster when he's alive - being invisible isn't really implied to make him worse or change his behavior threshold (they do that more in "HOLLOW MAN") I could be misremembering, of course
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