Tag: Genre Discussions

A landscape of a decrepit and abandoned wooden railway, with dead leafless trees on either side and a dark sky with only a faint, thin, blurred line of light in the distance. Creepy, haunted atmosphere.

Genre Discussion: How do we discuss mental illness in horror?

Elena Fernández Collins October 11, 2018

Content Warning: I’m talking about mental illness and its depiction in horror (as someone with a mental illness); as such I make mentions of ableist language, various symptoms, and gamifying mental illness. I spent all weekend at a horror film …

A painting of Ivan the Fool riding a margic carpet with a giant magical lantern, over a bare forest ending at an ongoing river, with birds flying off in the lower right. A sensatin of greyness, desolation, the edge of the world.

Genre Discussion: What can be counted as magical realism?

Elena Fernández Collins September 12, 2018

Magical realism is a post-colonial genre of fiction, originating in and heavily represented by Latin American authors from countries colonized and exploited by various European empires and governments.

An edited photo of a heavily industrialized city with many skyscrapers, and a sensation of a desert in the distance and lots of air pollution, all stemming from what it likely an explosion of some kind far away that is large and bright, like a setting sun

Genre Discussion: Engaging with dystopian and light-hearted fictions

Elena Fernández Collins July 30, 2018

To start this off with an understatement, we’re living — all of us, worldwide — in some particularly turbulent times in all spheres of life: socially, politically, economically, and environmentally. In 2017, there were a lot of articles about the rise of dystopian fiction, mostly focused on …

A close-up photo of a police line that says CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS

Genre Discussion: The necessity of subversion in true crime parody

Elena Fernández Collins July 2, 2018

A warning before we start: I’m talking about true crime parodies, and violence against women and minority communities. Nothing graphic. Ever since A Very Fatal Murder made waves in headlines, the parodies of the true crime genre are coming in droves, having …