Misused: Genre Busting

Here's my current draft for the description. Thoughts?

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By nature humans are both imitative and creative, so work creators naturally draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. Sometimes the result is hard to categorize and describe, however, so they may try listing it as a string of genres melded together. For instance, a work comedy set in a police department in a setting with copious amounts of Magitek might be called a Science Fantasy Work Com Cop Show.

Done poorly, it's just confusing, but Tropes Are Not Bad and melding seemingly disparate genres frequently produces a result greater than the sum of its parts.

Games seem to be particularly prone to this, partly because the definition of the word "genre" is twofold in that medium: games have both a setting genre and a gameplay genre. One entire subgenre, the Action RPG, owes its existence to the combination of more actiony gameplay with the story and character generation elements of the classic CRPG.

Supertrope to Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly, which is a hopefully seamless fusion of music genres. Contrast Genre Roulette, which is where the work jumps between multiple genres rather than blending them, and Genre-Busting, where the work doesn't fit into any recognizable genre at all. See also Fusion Fic, which is a fanfic that does this to a particular set of works rather than entire genres.

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EDIT: Incorporated "contrast" reference to Genre Roulette.

edited 20th Apr '13 8:38:32 PM by StarSword

Re-write line two(paragraph two?), it's getting a little wordy and experience says we need to assume Viewers Are Morons

^You mean the <string of genres> bit or the "done poorly" bit?

Yeah, the one that starts with done poorly.

Suggestions? (I'm not usually very good at writing page descriptions.)

The description could use a reference to Genre Roulette to help distinguish the two.

I'm not sure about the 'Science Fantasy Work Com Cop Show' sentence. That seems to encourage those examples that list every single one of a show's multiple genre elements to make the show seem like a more exciting example.

We're not just men of science, we're men of TROPE!

Last paragraph now reads, "Supertrope to Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly, which is a hopefully seamless fusion of music genres. Contrast Genre Roulette, which is where the work jumps between multiple genres rather than blending them, and Genre-Busting, where the work doesn't fit into any recognizable genre at all. See also Fusion Fic, which is a fanfic that does this to a particular set of works rather than entire genres."

First of all, do away with disparate, and second, change the sum of it's parts bit to something more straightforward.

I'm actually more fond of "Genre Mashup" than "Genre Fusion". Sounds messier.

Me too. Genre Fusion sounds like the birth of a new genre from merging two others, rather than a one-off combo.

All right, made the swap. I also dropped the Science Fantasy Work Com Cop Show sentence, though I need to remember that idea for later.

Somebody in the YKTTW discussion reminded me of another variant we already have a page for: the Space Western. I broke the reference to Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly out of the Compare/Contrast section and made an indexed subtrope list.

Bump. Can I get some help transferring examples from Genre-Busting?

I can delete some and post them here for you to move, if it helps.

I think the description is clear enough, but the issue (for me) is that it's too easy for people to exaggerate how different something is or how much a newer element makes for a new genre. A genre is a big thing. And how new does it have to be? For instance, Tolkien could rightly be accredited with causing the fantasy genre in modern books to appear, but his ideas nor his way of telling them were not at all original, and were in fact borrowed from some our most ancient and long-lasting stories. Instead the example tries to distinguish it for having regular folk be the hero (something not usual in the genre, but common enough in fiction itself), but that's not a busted genre, it's just a new, unique element within the genre.

And then you get the reaching. Just read through the Pixar examples!

• Up is a comedy/drama/tragedy/jungle adventure/WW 2-style pulp adventure/talking dogs/extremely difficult to categorize but highly enjoyable movie.

Or it's an adventure flick set in South America?

But I think most of the misuse comes from this genre but with...!

The trope consistently confuses a work that is not utterly quintessential to the genre with genre busting. I'm tempted to say YMMV in its nature, but I don't think it really needs to be, so long as people exercised some restraint. Truthfully, there really shouldn't be many examples. It's difficult for anything modern to truly break the mould. We've been telling stories for thousands of years—coming up with a new genre that doesn't fall into one of the already creating ones is pretty hard.

edited 28th Apr '13 6:36:53 PM by helterskelter

Up! is a character drama with a lot of pulp adventure elements.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

It's the adventure that dominates the movie. It's not what most people love it for (although they love that too), but it's a lot more fair to call it an adventure film than it is a character drama, as the moments of character drama are a lot less than the moments of adventure. Regardless, even your definition is still not a Genre Buster, and just emphasizes what's wrong with much of the trope as it's used.

Sorry, I didn't mean that I disagree with you on whether it's a Genre Buster. It isn't.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Well I think the main thing is that given time a specific example may go from "refreshingly different" to Genre Launch. That's why it's hard to label certain things as genre busting just because it uses a variety of genre tropes to tell its story.

That would be a case where the Genre Launcher itself can be listed, I think.

Clock is set.

Clock's up; locking up.