I'm asking SKoolmunkee to guest again on this one, but we'd like lots of good contributions!!

This time revisiting the idea of genres in webcomics. What I'd like to know is:

What are your favourite webcomic genres and why do you like them?
What makes them so cool and interesting to you?
Whether it's the genre you like to read or create in, I want to know what makes it so special!

The genres we covered last time were: fantasy, post-apocalypse, slice of life, and spiritual in Quackcast 29
http://www.drunkduck.com/quackcast/episode-29-genres-generally-speaking/

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- For VOICE recordings please keep them under 2 minutes. and send them to me at:
ozoneocean AT gmail dot com.
- For TEXT submissions in this thread, please keep them under 500 words.

Genres…
Sci-fi fantasy and horror are my favourites, there is a lot of crossover…. bla nlah blah.
Why? because if i wanted real life I can just live it or watch a fucking soap opera. My life is interesting and colourful enough and I want to escape that shit.
fantasy a la LOTR or conan is all about esccapism, sci fi can be but also can be about ideas, be they purely scientific or about society or the human condition. Sure non sci fi can do it but I prefer subtle analogies to heavy handed interpretations of real events.
As for creating in genres: well it's mostly aesthetic to be honest.
Although with BASO part of the appeal is to do everything and create a vast space opera setting with all manner of possibilities, I can explore all manner of ideas without being tied to one.

Re: genres I like to create in, since i create to express a passing thought or idea, the genres I create in would be slice-life, gag (altho I'm not usually that funny),absurd, spiritual(??). I am not sufficiently commited to any creative project of mine that would demand an arc-ing story line, which is necessary for most other genres.

Genres I like to read: I agree with Genejoke that I read for escapism, but NOT to get any kind of rush. I find my life has enough adrenaline.

I like several fantasies (?? – it's all fiction so beyond those comics with a very cerebral, philosophical bent, isn't most of it “fantasy”?). Anyway, the majority of my reading includes laughs (both joke per page and continuing storylines with mainstay characters), quests and adventures. er, that's about it. I'm not a gamer, so there are Vast numbers that hold no appeal for me. I frequently like a certain witty, sardonic tone, but when it's 100% cynical, 100% of the time, I lose interest.

I want and need to keep things light, so the heavy stuff is not right for me.

Viva la difference.

man… I like way too many genres…

My favourite genres are, in no particular order; comedy, drama, fantasy, spiritual, mystery, slice-of-life, adventure and romance. (good like finding a comic with all those genres mixed in)

for me i don't read literature or fiction for the escape factor, as I've found the excitement and fun of real life. I read it merely because I'm interested in a good story and seeing how that quirky character is gonna get out of that sticky situation or not.
I love comedy because sometimes i need a good laugh if i'm in a bad mood. Drama is just a nice way to feel tension when reading a story. Fantasy, well anyone would want to imagine what it would be like to have the ability to fly or shoot lightning bolts out of your toes, however even though i like it i always find myself so chained to reality that i have to come up with a logical explanation for what it is their doing that's all magical, otherwise i can't feel like i'm enjoying the story enough. Spiritual gives me new views on different subjects, allowing me to see what the author's viewpoints are, whether i agree with them or not is not important, just the fun of seeing what the human psyche can come up with to screw with your head. Mystery is always fun because it always leaves a large tension when associated with drama, leaving an amazing climax when the crime is solved and presented in all its glory. Adventure is a fun way to explore new worlds that may never exist or already exist in some other plane of existence, exploring this world is perhaps the more enjoyable part of the stories. Romance… well, I've never had a girlfriend (a shocker, I know) so it's fun to see what i should NEVER do in a relationship haha! and finally, My favourite is Slice-of-life. I've said this before, but i have this fascination with the real we currently live in, it can be both presented as a haven and a prison while being both heaven and hell at the same time, to see the rules of society and psychology of average humans who happen to have a more interesting setting in their lives. Being able to relive past experiences along with the characters if you happen to have had a similar experience to them. It gives you the want… almost the NEED to associate with the characters, and it becomes much easier to inmerse yourself in their world as you've lived most of your life (I assume) in the same world they do… the real.
((because of the 500 words limit i left out a big chunk i wanted to include))

No rule that says I can't have a go at this too! :)

The genre I work in for Pinky TA is diesel-punk. That's sort of like your cyber-punk and steam-punk but it's in between the two… What those terms mean, at least to me, is taking technology from a particular era and making is amazing and super high-tech, but staying within the constraints of that era: steam and clockwork for Victorian Steam-punk, petrol, coal, diesel for diesel-punk, and speculative computer controlled high tech stuff for cyber punk.

But it's not just the tech, it's also the aesthetic of your character's clothes and look etc. The “Punk” part of the name refers to (for me) the highly individualised look of the characters who tend to have a lot of pop-culture fashion in their style, fetish gear, coloured hair, tattoos, or whatever it takes to make them stand out…
In the most rudimentary, simplistic sense this manifests in the form of body augmentation- a folding lens over one eye, a crude and obvious mechanical arm powered by whatever the tech for the world is (steam, diesel, electricity, clockwork, whatever), and goggles! You HAVE to have those goggles.
In a more advanced sense fashions of the era are explored. For steampunk you're going to have men with fantastic facial hair, women in tightly laced bodices etc, for cyberpunk you'll have all sorts of speculative scifi flavoured versions of clubbing gear. Diesel-punk is more varied, for my work I've gone with 1920's styles (not for Pinky herself though) because that's the era I've chosen, but some diesel-punk is post apocalypse (eg Mad Max) so bikers on a bad day is what they go with (not very imaginative). In Something like Warhammer 40K which is largely Diesel punk, a great deal of the aesthetic is 1940's Soviet Union.

I have a love-hate relationship with genres. There are some I find myself drawn to and there are I others I will never admit I like yet have found myself reading. Then there is my thinking Ill write that SF story or that fantasy story and yet when its written I could remove every single thing about it that is SF or fantasy and itd still be a story about ordinary people in extra-ordinary situations.

However, genre conventions allow some tinkering with things that cant be done in real life. So it stops being regular drama and suddenly a twist pops it into a genre. Everything in fiction revolves around What would happen if? Some what ifs cant be done outside of fantasy or science fiction and additionally in SF and fantasy you can do the if this goes on and take an ordinary contemporary worry and stretch it out until it completely changes everything and write about how someone reacts to that.

Thats why I keep finding myself drawn to reading historical works but writing SF and fantasy because there I can stretch out the what-ifs and If this goes on to ridiculous ends and see how an ordinary person deals with the resulting extraordinary circumstance.

ozoneocean wrote:
The genre I work in for Pinky TA is diesel-punk. That's sort of like your cyber-punk and steam-punk but it's in between the two…
and lots more

Thanks for this, Oz. This is incredibly illuminating for me. most cool.

Thanks Ayes! ^^
I think one of the things with genre is that no matter what, your work fits into at least one, so it's good to know about it so you can more esasliy explain and sell your work to other people- because that's really what genres are all about.