Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 2314919" data-attributes="member: 8394"><p>No, it's absolutely correct. You said "once I show a single SF work with a certain characteristic, that characteristic exists within the set of all SF." That's utter nonsense if you're asserting it has anything to do with a definition of SF, which is the entire point of this thread. What <em>is</em> F? What <em>is</em> SF? The answer isn't 'well here's a diagram of every work of F or SF ever written, and F and SF <em>are</em> everything included in these works.' Before you can even draw your diagram, you need a way of deciding what is and is not SF in the first place, which the all-in approach is decidedly incapable of giving you. So the question remains: how do you decide?</p><p></p><p>If you really believe what you said however many pages back ("There are portions of each circle that do not touch any other. In other words, you can have pure Fantasy"), then why are you talking about all-inclusive sets? The point of defining SF and F is to locate the portion of the circle that does not touch the others, so again, it seems to me you're muddying the issue by fore-deciding what SF is, then saying everything that is part of every work of SF is part of SF. What <em>is</em> SF in the space where F and Horror and whatever else are not present? Which was my point when I said: a definition of SF contains only what is essential to all SF (and not everything that has ever been included in every remotely SF story ever but which is in no way obligated to be a component of any SF story at all).</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know whether you're quibbling over semantics or just dancing around the issue. I've already said that all writing is mixed, meaning SF can have elements of other genres. You're saying no, all writing is homogenous, and everything that is part of every SF work is part of SF, only inessential to it, so unusable as far as defining SF goes. So you agree that squirrels are inessential to defining SF, lovely--what the hell was the point of talking about sets and inessential qualities then? Just to say that, in your opinion, everything that's part of a SF work is SF, though not <em>essentially</em>, whereas in my opinion much of a particular work of SF may belong essentially to another genre, which is in that work mixed with SF, and the only thing that is SF is what is essentially SF?</p><p></p><p></p><p>A sword is nothing whatever--it's a prop. A genre can make the sword its centerpiece and be definable in terms of the sword, but then we aren't even talking about the sword anymore: we're talking about its iconography, or its uses, what it does or could do, who it belongs to, what it represents. The sword in itself, as mythusmage was saying, is mere staging. It could just as well be a broom or a chainsaw. This is surface stuff.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Why is this the point? Nobody's claimed, as far as I've seen anyway, that the difference between a dog and a wolf is what they have in common. I thought we covered this when you said "By defining something as a genre, then, you are taking for granted that it is unique," to which I responded "Yes, I am, otherwise it's undefinable: for every class α1 and definition β, if α1 is β then α2 is not β ( (α1) [βα1 → ~βα2] ), otherwise α1 and α2 are the same thing, i.e. there is no α2." In other words if chair and cushion have the same definition then there is no difference between a chair and a cushion; in order for there to be two different classes of object, chair and cushion, their definitions must <em>differ</em> somewhere; as totalities their relation to one another is one of difference. At what level this uniqueness emerges is unimportant; it's simply a tautological fact that if there are two different classes, the two classes are different.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Are you just deferring the debate from "genre" to "characteristic?" Honestly, at the biological level we're all made from the same components, and our differences emerge farther up, that's a bit duh. Genre and biology aren't the same thing, unless you're sticking to imagery, in which case maybe the comparison highlights the ridiculousness of that approach. In terms of content, not all writing is made from the same stuff; meaning always emerges uniquely, and doesn't necessarily have anything in common with any other writing at any level, really. There've been a few movements that claimed otherwise, like structuralism, but those always died out rather quickly for a reason.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wayside, post: 2314919, member: 8394"] No, it's absolutely correct. You said "once I show a single SF work with a certain characteristic, that characteristic exists within the set of all SF." That's utter nonsense if you're asserting it has anything to do with a definition of SF, which is the entire point of this thread. What [I]is[/I] F? What [I]is[/I] SF? The answer isn't 'well here's a diagram of every work of F or SF ever written, and F and SF [I]are[/I] everything included in these works.' Before you can even draw your diagram, you need a way of deciding what is and is not SF in the first place, which the all-in approach is decidedly incapable of giving you. So the question remains: how do you decide? If you really believe what you said however many pages back ("There are portions of each circle that do not touch any other. In other words, you can have pure Fantasy"), then why are you talking about all-inclusive sets? The point of defining SF and F is to locate the portion of the circle that does not touch the others, so again, it seems to me you're muddying the issue by fore-deciding what SF is, then saying everything that is part of every work of SF is part of SF. What [I]is[/I] SF in the space where F and Horror and whatever else are not present? Which was my point when I said: a definition of SF contains only what is essential to all SF (and not everything that has ever been included in every remotely SF story ever but which is in no way obligated to be a component of any SF story at all). I don't know whether you're quibbling over semantics or just dancing around the issue. I've already said that all writing is mixed, meaning SF can have elements of other genres. You're saying no, all writing is homogenous, and everything that is part of every SF work is part of SF, only inessential to it, so unusable as far as defining SF goes. So you agree that squirrels are inessential to defining SF, lovely--what the hell was the point of talking about sets and inessential qualities then? Just to say that, in your opinion, everything that's part of a SF work is SF, though not [I]essentially[/I], whereas in my opinion much of a particular work of SF may belong essentially to another genre, which is in that work mixed with SF, and the only thing that is SF is what is essentially SF? A sword is nothing whatever--it's a prop. A genre can make the sword its centerpiece and be definable in terms of the sword, but then we aren't even talking about the sword anymore: we're talking about its iconography, or its uses, what it does or could do, who it belongs to, what it represents. The sword in itself, as mythusmage was saying, is mere staging. It could just as well be a broom or a chainsaw. This is surface stuff. Why is this the point? Nobody's claimed, as far as I've seen anyway, that the difference between a dog and a wolf is what they have in common. I thought we covered this when you said "By defining something as a genre, then, you are taking for granted that it is unique," to which I responded "Yes, I am, otherwise it's undefinable: for every class α1 and definition β, if α1 is β then α2 is not β ( (α1) [βα1 → ~βα2] ), otherwise α1 and α2 are the same thing, i.e. there is no α2." In other words if chair and cushion have the same definition then there is no difference between a chair and a cushion; in order for there to be two different classes of object, chair and cushion, their definitions must [I]differ[/I] somewhere; as totalities their relation to one another is one of difference. At what level this uniqueness emerges is unimportant; it's simply a tautological fact that if there are two different classes, the two classes are different. Are you just deferring the debate from "genre" to "characteristic?" Honestly, at the biological level we're all made from the same components, and our differences emerge farther up, that's a bit duh. Genre and biology aren't the same thing, unless you're sticking to imagery, in which case maybe the comparison highlights the ridiculousness of that approach. In terms of content, not all writing is made from the same stuff; meaning always emerges uniquely, and doesn't necessarily have anything in common with any other writing at any level, really. There've been a few movements that claimed otherwise, like structuralism, but those always died out rather quickly for a reason. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?
Top