Tag: genres

Dead Book Genres

Dead Book Genres
Posted June 10, 2023
Books, Discussions, Ramblings

Hi friends! 👋🏻 Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about genre trends and whether certain tropes or whole genres will make a comeback in the future. A lot of people claim that “elevated horror” is the current big thing thanks to directors like Ari Aster (Hereditery, Midsommar) and some horror movies becoming more cinematic and focusing on psychological elements instead of physical horror, but I don’t really think that’s true. The genres that are popular often reflect the world around us, with some genres being more trendy than others at certain times. Publishing and movie studios like money more than anything so they’ll pump out more and more of the current popular thing until general audiences get sick of it and want to see something else. Think the recent claims of “superhero burnout” or the resurgance in cosy crime books in the UK. There are also genres that die off because of sociopolitical reasons; the messages and tropes that they promote just aren’t considered acceptable to modern audiences and the genre looks stuck in the past. I wouldn’t say that there are a lot of dead genres since genres as a whole tend to be evergreen, but tropes and subgenres are […]

READ MORE

Why I Love Horror

Why I Love Horror
Posted October 4, 2022
Books, Discussions, Movies, Spooky Month

Hi friends! 👋🏻 When looking through my past Spooky Month schedules, I noticed that I’ve done posts about why I love monsters, vampires, and also horror subgenres, but I’ve never made a post talking about why I love the horror genre as a whole. I haven’t been a lifelong horror fan because I was an absolute weenie as a child (I blame the undiagnosed autism) and really eased myself into the genre as a teenager. Weirdly, coming up with my reasons for being a horror fan was harder than I expected it to be because once I think of things, my mind goes blank. horror is cathartic Admit it, we all love seeing bad people get what’s coming to them, don’t we?  That feeling of relief once all the scary stuff is over and the day has been saved is one of the best ever and nothing can beat it for me. Even if we know that the bad guy is going to come back, at least they’re gone for now so we can get ready for the next time we end up going through the wringer to get to that relief. horror can be deeper than just blood and […]

READ MORE

My Favourite Sci-Fi Subgenres

My Favourite Sci-Fi Subgenres
Posted November 4, 2021
Discussions, Sci-Fi Month

Hi crew! 👋🏻 Last month I talked about horror subgenres that don’t work for me, and I want to flip the script and talk about my favourite sci-fi subgenres instead. There are very few sci-fi subgenres that I actively avoid – like hard sci-fi and military sci-fi – which means that it’s a lot easier to talk about the subgenres that are my favourites. DYSTOPIAN Dystopian is a subgenre that we haven’t seen a lot of in recent years after the huge boom of YA dystopian series that came out in the early 2010s, but it will always have a special place in my heart because dystopian fiction is where I started my journey into sci-fi outside of Futurama and Dragon Ball Z. You would expect me to go from Uglies to other YA dystopian series, but I actually went from Uglies to the harder stuff by reading Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was fourteen years old. I didn’t really understand it other than knowing that it’s a satire of the Soviet Union at the time, but I didn’t know that much about George Orwell’s personal politics. Now I know that he was a democratic socialist who thought that communists weren’t left-wing enough, but back then all I knew […]

READ MORE

Why I Love Gothic

Why I Love Gothic
Posted October 14, 2021
Books, Discussions, Ramblings, Spooky Month

Hi ghouls! 👋🏻 Gothic fiction is not only one of my favourite horror subgenres, but one of my favourite genres in general. It’s my gateway to the genre so I’ll always have a soft spot for it and it’ll always be a special interest of mine. I first started reading Gothic novels when I was either 16 or 17 and was studying the genre in sixth form. Usually, studying a genre turns me off of it (like it did with modernism), but Gothic novels weren’t like the other books I’d studied at all. Genre fiction in general still isn’t really seen as being worthy of academics’ time, who see it as being cheap lowbrow entertainment rather than high art. Being able to study something that was actually entertaining to me really helped me to enjoy the genre. I have studied Gothic and read it for fun so many times that both my BA and MA theses were about vampires and Gothic literature in general. Nothing has stopped me from enjoying the genre and I can’t see my love for it waning any time soon. GOTHIC STORIES ARE TIMELESS. The very first Gothic novel is generally agreed to be The Castle of […]

READ MORE

Horror Subgenres I Can’t Get Into

Horror Subgenres I Can’t Get Into
Posted October 7, 2021
Books, Discussions, Movies, Spooky Month

Hi ghouls! 👋🏻 Earlier this year I made a post talking about genres that I can’t get into and I wanted to revisit that topic, but with horror subgenres instead. Even though horror is my favourite genre now, there are still areas of the genre that just don’t gel with me for one reason for another, and that is totally fine. We all have aspects of our favourite genres that we don’t like and we don’t have to force ourselves to sit through every single thing that is a part of the genre just be considered a fan. I don’t tolerate gatekeeping here because if you enjoy a genre, you are a fan of it no matter how many books you’ve read, movies you’ve watched, or events you’ve attended. RAPE REVENGE I think it should be pretty obvious why I don’t enjoy this subgenre. There are two key features to a rape-revenge story: someone (usually a young woman) is sexually assaulted in graphic detail the victim or a friend/relative of the victim gets revenge, also in graphic detail. It’s a simple formula and some women think it’s an empowering genre, but I personally don’t feel empowered when I see a […]

READ MORE