My Favorite Genres

 I wanted to make a short blog talking about my favorite genres of fiction, how I define them, why I like them, and what their overlap is. For me there's 4 genres I really like more than any other including:

1: Magical Girls

Magical Girls is a genre that can be kinda hard to define. I see people try and use the common elements like transformation sequences and cute animal mascots but for every "rule" like that I feel I can easily find 3 counterexamples that are still clearly magical girls. My definition is admittingly a little broad but I think it captures all works that should be in the genre and crucially explains what the genre is about.

A "Magical Girl" is a character archetype where:

1: The character has magic or magiclike powers

2: The character is a girl, at least when using aforementioned powers

3: The prior two points are connected, either explicitly (like using a magic power that can only be used by girls) or implicitly (through use of feminine iconography)

and a Magical Girl series is just a series where the main character is a magical girl. To account for the broadness I can understand saying it's a bit of a gradient. There are series that are you could say "accidentally" magical girl series because they fit this pattern but aren't trying to be a magical girl series and then there are "purposeful" magical girl series which are deliberately trying to evoke the magical girl idea.

Magical Girls are my favorite genre and I could write for a much longer period why I like them, though I'll try and keep it reasonable in length. Magical Girls are a reflection of society's feminine virtues, what ideals they ask young women to aspire too and as such are both intellectually fascinating and emotionally for me. The Magical Girl is an idealized figure, a representation of the power of the feminine. Without being too political I have seen those on both the hard left and hard right like Magical Girls and there is something progressive and traditional about them, it's the statement that traditional feminity matters, has power, has importance and is no lesser than masculinity. It is not just the Hero's Journey but genderswapped, it is in all respects the Heroine's Journey. The genre's very existence brings me an indescribable joy. 

2: Superhero Fiction

Superhero Fiction is a genre focused around individuals with unusual, usually metahuman abilities, that take on a different identity to better society. Once again people often try to define the genre by the elements but I don't like doing that because it's easy to find counterexamples. Hulk does not have a particular superhero costume and Green Lanterns don't have secret identities. 

My definition is still kind of broad, so again I see it as kind of a gradient where some things are more so accidentally superhero series vs intentional superhero series.

I enjoy Superheroes for some of the same reason as I enjoy Magical Girls, they are a representation of society's ideals and virtues. Superheroes are described as the "Modern Mythology" and I absolutely agree. Superheroes are representations of society's collective dreams, wishes, and ideals. I find it constantly compelling to see how our modern mythos reflects us.

3: Mythological Fantasy/Mythic Fiction

Mythic Fiction is a type of genre that taken from wikipedia is "rooted in, inspired by, or in some way draws from the tropes, themes and symbolism of myth, legend, folklore and fairy tales." What I like it slightly stronger and I call it "Mythological Fantasy" which I think is basically what I and I'm guessing most people thought when they read the title "Mythic Fiction", which is a series set in a world  where myth, legend, folklore or fairy tales are true and important rather then just taking some inspiration or elements from it. To give a more clear example, a series set in the world of Greek Mythology, rather then a series where a Centaur shows up once and that's the extent of the Grecian influence.

I said Superheroes are the Modern Mythology, and likewise I find the study of myth and religions to be fascinating, it's maybe my favorite thing to study. I love to see how different value sets and worldviews are depicted in different cosmologies, and the weird conceptual conflicts that emerge from putting them together. I don't like when people make Mythological Fantasy but make it entirely suited to modern views on things, that to me just seems to be missing the fun part. I really like mythological fantasy that is trying to recreate the eccentricities and sometimes alien-ness of what people believed. 

4: Occult Fiction

So this is another genre pretty hard for me to define because Occult is deliberately a nebulous concept meaning depending on context the supernatural, all things mysterious and unknown, both, or something else entirely. Broadly speaking I think Occult Fiction is a type of Fantasy (work with supernatural elements) somewhere between Urban Fantasy and Horror Fantasy that has 2 defining elements:

1: An inordinate focus on death, the afterlife, or the denziens of (such as ghosts, angels and demons) Somethings other purported real world mystical phenomena are included but this seems to be the central feature

2: An element of secrecy, the fantastical elements are hidden from ordinary persons

These two things together seem to form the basis of "Occult" in Occult Fiction as the mysterious dark underbelly of human experience.

Occult Fiction is the hardest for me to explain my feelings towards it, but I find it uniquely evocative and demonstrative of the human condition as fragile and temporary. In doing so I think despite it's fantastical nature it feels like one of the real-est genres to me, the say Cosmic Horror feels very real to some because it feels like a way of exploring the hardest parts of reality to deal with; the inevitability of death and the disconnect for those of still living from those who are gone. 

How do these Genres interact

Magical Girls and Superhero Fiction:

Japan has it's own history of superhero fiction most well known through the Sentai/Toku series. The most well known Magical Girl series Sailor Moon took inspiration from Sentai and since then every Magical Girl Warrior series has been a superhero/magical girl combination and the default idea of what a magical girl is to the point that a lot of people don't actually know there are magical girls that don't fight villains. Cutie Honey, predating Sailor Moon, was probably the first hybrid of the two genres. The two genres fit together pretty naturally as both are about society's virtues and ideals. The large superhero universes have characters that could rightfully be considered magical girls such as DC Comic's Amethyst, Princess and Gemworld and many Magical Girl Warrior series often have male heroes that function very much like superheroes such as Tuxedo Kamen and the Blue Knight.

Superhero Fiction and Mythological Fantasy:

 The Modern Mythology meets the Classical Mythology. This is fairly common meeting in superhero universes with two of the most famous superheroes of all time being the Olympian-powered amazon Wonder Woman and the Norse God Thor. Likewise Superheroes sometimes meet the Heroes of Myth as representation of the class of ideals across history; I think for instance of Superman arm-wrestling Hercules in All-Star Superman. This speaks to the potential of this clash to be a representation of the change in the ideal across time. 

Mythological Fantasy and Occult Fiction:

Occult Fiction as I have defined is close enough to Mythological Fantasy that it could be seen as a subset, as pretty much all views of the afterlife draw from classical sources at least in part, however to me Mythological Fantasy is about worldview and setting and Occult Fiction is about atmosphere and tone, and some Occult Fiction is about death as a force rather then the afterlife particularly. Nonetheless Occult Fiction is prone to taking inspirations from religions. This is true especially of Christian-inspired work with focus on angels and demons, or on Mythological Fantasy based on the ancient Egyptian Religion due to its extremely high focus on life, death and rebirth. I think for instance of the final arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! about the restoration of the spirit of the Pharaoh's identity and laying him to rest using lots of Egyptian iconography and placing the events in a fantastical version of ancient Egypt. I think often this overlap emphasizes the alien-ness of both genres, combining the strange otherworldlyness of other cultures from across time with the strange otherworldlyness of the afterlife. 

Occult Fiction and Magical Girls:

People who have no experience with the Magical Girl genre expect the genre to be extremely light and carefree, which is why it might shock them to learn that Magical Girls as a genre can get extremely dark, to the same degree as Occult Fiction. Despite this, there isn't that dramatic an overlap between the two genres. There are some Magical Girl series that deal with angels and demons like Wedding Peach or especially Panty and Stocking which have both and ghosts besides. Witches are often enemies in the genre, with occult-themed dark magic. That said the occult tone and atmosphere isn't striven for often in the Magical Girl genre, with one of the most prominent examples to come to my mind being Shamanic Princess. Women in history have been historically associated with mystery and magic being more often suspected of witchcraft. Symbolically then this combination is the exaltation of that traditionally prejudice against women. 

Magical Girls and Mythological Fantasy:

There's a little bit of overlap, though most Magical Girls are set in the modern day. Usually if there's any mythological references it's to Greek Mythology, especially to the Goddess of Love Aphrodite, given how often love comes up as a force in these settings. If you include fairy tales as I would, then the overlap grows dramatically. Many Magical Girls reference and incorporate fairy tales and try to create their feel such as Princess Tutu. I feel this combination tries to unlock the archetypal power of the feminine, evoking the goddesses of antiquity to refer to the ideals of stereotypical "feminine" virtues like love and compassion. 

Superhero Fiction and Occult Fiction:

This is an odd combination in my opinion because they are both about the same thing but from inverse positions. Both are about the relation between the finite world of the human persona and the infinite world of the inhuman. But while the Superhero Fiction seeks to clothe the persona with the conceptual world of virtue, to demonstrate the human uplifted into the world of the transcendent and eternal, Occult Fiction instead juxtaposes the temporality of human with the eternal of the undying inhuman world. DC's magician heroes like Zatanna, Constantine, and Deadman exist in the space between them. This genre intersection I think offers the possibility of giving a broader perspective of how the temporal fits into the eternal, how humanity bleeds out into eternity.