The tradition of certain genres (a perfectly acceptable plural in English, as it’s correct to pluralize any word by using English’s inflectional endings — yes, even “syllabus” and “octopus” [syllabuses and octopuses, respectively, though the proper Latin plural of "octopus" is "octopodes" and not "octopi," which is dog Latin]) being better than others is basically classist. Tragedy was considered better than comedy because its subject, in terms of genre, was kings and kingdoms, while comedy focuses on the “working classes.” Epics dealt with the founding of kingdoms. These are all the markers that signal the genre, they are correctly tied to those forms — it’s the assumption that one is better than the other because it deals with a “better class” of people that is the fallacy.

Fun fact: I was reading a recent issue of The Writer’s Chronicle about MFA programs and “popular” fiction, and some casual research has shown a link to class upbringing and preference. Specifically, upper-class and upper-middle-class people tend to look down on sci-fi and fantasy, while working class and lower-middle-class people tend to want to do specifically SF and fantasy (along with mystery, &c.). So it continues to this day.

I find genera (proper latin plural, biatches, because it looks better, which generoi doesn’t) to be a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating and harmful practice. The way they originate is wholly arbitrary: while fantasy and sci-fi are named after the elements that appear in the stories, tragedy and comedy are named after what emotional effect they have, and ’slife after what situations the story is about (yes, Lucky Star has a story. Shock ain’t it?). We could just as well have a genre which went after if there are cellphones or close analogies and an associated set of tropes/clichés – after all, we already have mecha series, with their associated tropes and clichés. That is, unlike the hierarchy of Work-Plot-Story in a signifier-signified sense, genre is a set, with elements being some of the atoms of story.

…let me explain why I’m still so willing to engage in a taxonomy project with you all.

I think that any system of classification and organization can be useful to a critic. I’m one who likes to compare one thing to another, being a believer in each example of literature having implications on all things before and after as per T. S. Eliot, and genre can help with that — hell, the evolution of genre can serve as a prime example of that (says Kaiser, “genre only makes sense when it’s an comparison between several works”). I think that what Kaiser seems to denounce, the use of genre to designate “high” and “low” literature, is taxonomic abuse. I don’t think there’s anything inherent in any genre that says “I’m better than you;” it’s probably the case that genres (or genera, I guess) coexist horizontally, even if certain people want to take them vertically, insofar as they’re “readings” of a text, and (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again) all readings have equal literary value (but not social value, which varies) in that they have value at all. And, yeah, I’d agree that genre is pretty arbitrary, that we could have a genre based on cellphones, but that in itself isn’t such a bad thing; it’s when people get the crazy idea that one genre can be “better” than another, in a literary sense, that problems arise.

I lift that Tolkien bit wholesale (altering it for the worse, I’m sure) from his essay “On Fairy Stories.” It’s readily available in The Tolkien Reader, but I heard recently that a British publisher released a really swanky, annotated edition of just the essay and its backgrounds, and it’s hard as fuck to get in America. Sigh.

Usually I go to TV Tropes for the “lulz,” but if I ever wanted it for anything else I would feel the same way. So I think our taxonomy will be fun, perhaps, for all I know.

*touches comments*

I will, predictably, disagree with you about your judgment of genre — I feel it is necessary to interpreting texts. A text will have signals in it that signify a certain genre; they’re not implied after the fact, they are purposefully present within the text itself. As such, “membership” in a genre helps create a meaning that the reader would not take away if the text was a “member” of a different genre. Something that self-identifies as fantasy or sci-fi, for example, isn’t just telling the reader it’s going to have unicorns or black holes; it’s telling the reader part of the aesthetic experience is to be removed from the reader’s own society and mores, often to be led back around to them in a roundabout way (such as the dystopian sci-fi novel that creates an incredibly strange world only to reveal its strange foundations are social problems prevalent in modern society).

Of course, texts mix and match genre signifiers willfully. Many fantasies also use the traditions of the bildungs-roman (the education of a youth), or the transformative green spaces of traditional comedy.

[I said "predictably" because I'm, at least in part, a genre critic, so obviously I'm going to disagree. ^_^]

So if the reader isn’t active, doesn’t that necessarily mean he or she is passive? And if the reader is passive, the experience shouldn’t be individual — and as such, every single person would react the same way to a text, as it broadcasts the same things every time. I know that’s not actually what you’re saying, but it seems (to me) to be the eventual conclusion of claiming the act of reading isn’t active. If you want to get the good versions of “active reader” theory under you belt to see what all the hoopla is, try out Wolfgang Iser (reader-response) and Georges Poulet (phenomenology). Or, alternately, read the chapter titled “Blood in the Gutter” in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. I’m not saying that you must agree with them, but you were saying yourself you’d like to try them out, see what’s going on.

Despite the fact that you forced me to disagree — according the the idea that the reader is passive ; ) — great post. We regretted, at the time, that you weren’t there. I’m glad you responded here, at least.

Opposing theses meeting are what makes the world go ’round and Hegel go all giddy!

Or well, at least they make Hegel go giddy.

I was a tad harsher on genre than I should have been, I guess. The act of assigning genre doesn’t irk me as such – as you say, humans can’t help but generalize (and most concepts are generalizations – making equal that which is not, as Nietzsche said) – it is rather the act of hardwiring tropes together, gluing them into a stagnant lump that hinders creativity. If they’re rather a tool to adjust reader expectations/attitude of the text I’ll change my view and agree that they are useful (no idea why I didn’t consider that option at first really…).

praetera censeo genera non esse delendam?

I’ll still disagree with the necessity with them purposefully put there – but nevermind that, we’ll agree to disagree I hope.

Oh, and yeah, on the passivity of the reader, I’d say that everyone have their own, peculiar decoding mechanisms for meaning and sign systems, partly because the decoding mechanisms aren’t naturally within us but learnt (allowing for varying especially since most signs are not directly translatable to a signified entity which is not a sign. The signs refer to eachother, and the relations are not a “thing” per se, they are contigent on what experiences you’ve had. Hence the reader being a part of the sign, as per Pierce – without him/it, there is no meaning at all. So I am mostly determinist in what meaning a person will extract from something – they aren’t “free” to read it as they “like” – I also think that everyone interpret everything differently since we have different “decoding mechanisms”. And then imagination makes its entrance and allows us some freedom, with any luck, but alas, as of yet I have no hypothesis of how it works so I’ll stay negative.

Hmmm I’d disagree. Just because the signified is contingent upon a concrete signifier doesn’t mean the closest one is the thing to which we establish causality. This depends, and I’m confused as per your distinctions between plot/story/metaphor. I’d say that the story can proceed in one vector and the the story/signifier to which the signified-metaphor refers to can proceed in a totally opposite direction. It’s not like the container must be coextensive with the contained – the two are autonomous.
[addition]
To rephrase, vehicularity is not causality.

maybe…….

Hmmm… But signifiers do not cause signifieds? Vehicularity is the only relationship they have, so what you’re saying is what I agree with. But then I have never pondered the causation of signs, so I might interpret you totally wrong here or something…

And yeah, story and story-signifying-metaphor can extend in different directions, like you decided to do with Kannagi. I just sketched a possible model for some fiction to take, while others can choose coextensive stories, one of which is metaphorical and the other literal (Orwell’s Animal Farm is an excellent example of a work where the story is a vehicle for a metaphor – well, analogy).

I don’t get it…

Haha, I should’ave been clearer, yeah… I’ll see if I can explain it clearer: We start at Art, the highest in the hierarchy of a work that I cared diagrammatizing (a word just about stupid enough to work). Art is wholly of our “own” reality, as opposed to the alternate reality of fiction. So as we descend – to the Work, then to Plot – we go closer to the fictional “world”, culminating at the story, which is the bread and butter of the fictional world. It is a semiotic complex not about our world, but about another one, which is not “real”. Then as we go lower down, we get “more real” – the signs begin referring to “actual” things again. The Metaphor is about this world but stated in the signs of the other one, and then lower down to the signs used to construct the story in the first place – the words, images, sounds of the fictional work. Those refer to things in our world/reality, they’re the atoms of our thinking of the real world.

The question at the end was just posed regarding the possible illusion that the levels above the fictional work are “in reality”. I hope it’s clear now… it’s possible it is not, in which case I’ll just have to try again/give up :P

So yeah it was just rambling, I just played with the concepts for no real purpose lol

Noooo you took me out of context. I really didn’t want to use the word “genre” there – I would have preferred “style” but both are equally confusing. What I meant, and I termed it as “intra-paradigmatic”, was how, really, stylistically disparate events are related. Within TTGL you have both drama (Kamina dies), comedy (Yoko’s boobs), GAR (everything else), angst (Rossieu suicide) – so what is the pervasive gel that glues it all together? Story, I thought (the progression of events). In this sense, you can indeed use “genre” (idiolectically speaking, style) operatively within the same piece: it is extractable, quantifiable, “atomic”, as you put it.

And so really it’s just appropriate to have different styles according to the story. When things get sad, you need drama. etc. Shit…Perhaps a good term would be stylistic events?

Oh… Now I get it. *hand to head* I’m such an dojikko, te-he~

Stylistic events sounds spiffy. I might abduct the term.

I will say that I generally use Tolkien’s idea of a secondary world to deal with the world of the fiction — and as such, everything that happens in the fiction (assuming it is skillful enough to avoid violating the reader’s belief in the secondary world) is perfectly believable, because it’s not a construction as you read it, it’s an event that happened in the secondary world. As such it feels difficult to claim it varies in style, as the aesthetic experience is simply one of seeing events in a secondary world. But then, I haven’t put a lot of thought into this, so it’s probably counter to other things I’ve said, and likely quibbling thrown into the bargain. Just thought I’d mention it.

*scribbles frenetically* Awesome, this is pretty darn close to my own theory of fictional worlds… Tolkien was so badass.

Then let’s do it! Let’s have a project:

A Superfanicomic Taxonomy of Anime. It shouldn’t have only the best (i.e. critically acclaimed, and/or popular) titles, but the examples that fit the most within the tones, genera, styles and “prefix: sub” of the same.

We can offer it to MAL or some such service, for the purpose of being of service. We must do it. LET’S DO IT!!!

I SHALL JOIN THIS GREAT CRUSADE.

I always thought the worst part of TVTropes was the disdain of intellectualism that creeped up here and there… so this’ll be like perfect.

In the mean time, I suggest that we set up Google Docs/Spreadsheets, as these too are useful collaboration tools. I favor spreadsheets for the ease of creating tables and manipulating data. At no charge lol.

his lack of comments, as always, could symbolize simply his laze — he should get on that. ^_^

I was out, actually, with a friend of mine I don’t see often. With that said, though, goddamn you people have a way of proposing ideas I’ve had all along but can’t think of a good reason to propose. It’s like you were all born of my mind, and quickly became smarter than I am. First the podcast, now this master wiki, this ur-TV-Tropian attempt to map the webs that bind and sustain our arts.

tl;dr YOU HAVE MY SWORD