Empty genres; or what to do with all those -punks?

[gmw]

I thought that "urban fantasy" had it's origin with urban myths - the paranormal creature next door sort of thing.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

From The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk by Alexandra Rowland:

I thought the opposite of grimdark was noblebright? What are the vast differences between hopepunk and noblebright?

I'm getting memories of the great Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Siblings and Teen & Young Adult Siblings Fiction genres on Amazon.

And again, both of those terms just describe 98% of fantasy novels, so you're just as well having no tag at all.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I thought the opposite of grimdark was noblebright? What are the vast differences between hopepunk and noblebright?

I'm pretty sure Noblebright was coined by author C. J. Brightley. There is even a noblebright.org site. It seems to be associated more with indie authors -- and possibly more with clean fiction and Christian SF and fantasy. (C. J. Brightley runs a small Christian speculative fiction press.) But maybe as more people use it, the term will take on a life of its own. It's even on Wiktionary.

Hopepunk seems to be the more accepted term within the SF and fantasy world. It was created by Rowland in 2017. And it has its own Wikipedia thingy. Though the term came about in 2017, The 2014 novel The Goblin Emperor is considered the hopepunk novel.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I'm getting memories of the great Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Siblings and Teen & Young Adult Siblings Fiction genres on Amazon.

And again, both of those terms just describe 98% of fantasy novels, so you're just as well having no tag at all.

I see them as sort of like categorizations -- like sword and sorcery (coined in 1961 by Fritz Leiber!), space opera (a term created in 1941!), hard SF, soft SF, science fantasy, military SF, dystopian, etc. But these terms are more about mood or tone and can even be combined with those other categories.

[JSWolf]

Take a look at Ghostbusters. Is that Urban Fantasy or Science Fantasy?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

Though the term came about in 2017, The 2014 novel The Goblin Emperor is considered the hopepunk novel.

Sounds like a good book. Does it need a new genre tag? Likely no.

[JSWolf]

There are only two genres of books.

1. I will like it.
2. I will not like it.

Done!

[Apache]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are only two genres of books.

1. I will like it.
2. I will not like it.

Done!

You forgot one........meh.
Apache

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apache

You forgot one........meh.
Apache

meh! falls under #2.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I thought the opposite of grimdark was noblebright? What are the vast differences between hopepunk and noblebright?

What's the opposite of a dark, heavy chocolate cake? Lemon sorbet? A glass of cold water? Salty potato chips? Jogging? A balloon? I'd say all of those are true, depending on which aspects of the cake you're concentrating on.

Alexandra Rowland has written about what she sees as the difference between noblebright and hopepunk.

I'm getting memories of the great Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Siblings and Teen & Young Adult Siblings Fiction genres on Amazon.

Well, I assume someone has been searching for those books, or Amazon wouldn't spend precious pixels on including the tags. It's meh to me, but why should that bother me?

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Sounds like a good book. Does it need a new genre tag? Likely no.

It's a great book The book might not need any tags, but readers searching for books like it do.
I tried searching for "books like the goblin emperor" and found this list, which includes She Who Became the Sun. I also searched for "hopepunk" and found this blog post which lists The House in the Cerulean Sea alongside with The Goblin Emperor.

• Katherine Addison: The Goblin Emperor. The half-goblin Maya, who has spent his life (all 18 years of it) in exile, becomes emperor after his father and brothers all die unexpectedly. Cue court intrigues, treason, and a desperate scramble to handle an immense job he has no training for, armed mostly with kindness and a sincere desire to do a good job.
• Shelley Parker-Chan: She Who Became the Sun. A peasant girl fights her way to power, stopping at nothing, including murder, because the alternative is death.
• TJ Klune: The House in the Cerulean Sea. Linus is a caseworker in Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's sent to check up an orphanage with some very dangerous children. During his stay, he learns to love the children and the man who runs the orphanage.

The first and the second are similar in scope and overall story arch, but if you're in the mood for a book about "radical kindness" (as Rowland describes hopepunk) then you're definitively better of with Klune's book than Parker-Chan's.
(All those books are excellent, by the way!)

[hildea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Grimdark, hopepunk and a lot of these other silly genres are meaningless and really do need to go away.

Why? Why do you care?

I think that's the part I find so baffling about this discussion, and is probably the reason I return to it Why does it bother anyone "useless" genres exist?

Lots of things are useless to me, but useful to others. If they don't harm me, I simply ignore them.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by hildea

Why? Why do you care?

I think that's the part I find so baffling about this discussion, and is probably the reason I return to it Why does it bother anyone "useless" genres exist?

I’ll expand on this to say that “useless to me” genres are in fact useful to me indirectly. What I find most frustrating is the inability to make any kind of useful granular search and it happens frequently. The more “useless” genres, the increased likelihood that some of the genre breakdowns will fit my own parameters.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by hildea

Why? Why do you care?

I think that's the part I find so baffling about this discussion, and is probably the reason I return to it Why does it bother anyone "useless" genres exist?

Lots of things are useless to me, but useful to others. If they don't harm me, I simply ignore them.

Same here. I'm blissfully unaware of many of these sub genres that have been named. Their existences don't harm me in the least. I've found/read/liked/disliked several of the books mentioned that have some of those labels (after reading about them in this thread). I obviously don't need many of those labels myself, but that doesn't mean they're universally useless. I'm certainly not going to be presumptuous enough to suggest that labels I might not need myself, should go away.

I don't particularly need the word cyan to describe a shade of blue, either. But I'd never suggest that it needs to be gone from the entire world's crayon boxes.

Red velvet cake with cream cheese icing tastes no different than the same recipe sans food coloring. Do I care if someone claims it as their favorite cake? Well OK, maybe a little bit, but not enough to suggest that particular cake description should be nuked.

I'm not the decider of what's "useful" for anyone other than myself. Especially when it comes to petty harmless minutiae like this.

[MGlitch]

I’ve said this before in a thread about physical bookstores, because someone had the seeming audacity to say they had not gone to nor planned on going to a bookstore but still would miss them if they were gone.

Imagine being confused about not wanting something which is of use to others to be gone simply because you have no use for it yourself.

And there the bookstore would have been taking up finite resources it could have been a store that the individual wanted to visit routinely. Here the addition of sub genres doesn’t even conflict with the genres under which they fall. A grimdark fantasy is still fantasy.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

Why does it bother anyone "useless" genres exist?

Because I'm a grouch! I already mentioned it in posts #1 and #5

Also, I'm not trying to get these stupid genres removed from public consciousness. But it can be an interesting discussion on what practical use many of these seemingly silly tags are to others.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

I also searched for "hopepunk" and found this blog post which lists The House in the Cerulean Sea alongside with The Goblin Emperor.
...if you're in the mood for a book about "radical kindness" (as Rowland describes hopepunk) then you're definitively better of with Klune's book than Parker-Chan's.

I have The House in the Cerulean Sea (and just bought Under the Whispering Door, which is on sale today)! I bought them to support a gay author. Or maybe I was a closet hopepunk reader all along!