You’ve heard of fantasy romance, steampunk mystery, and paranormal thrillers, but don’t those seem a little… normal? Mixing genres is nothing new, but it does tend to fall into patterns. Some genres are more compatible than others, and those are the ones we see combined over and over again. We think it’s time to get weird with it, mashing up genres that were never intended to go together. Literary thrillers, slow burn litRPG, and cozy tragedies. Okay maybe not that last one; we don’t want the readers to burn down our house!

Generously transcribed by Manasa. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Oren:  Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants Podcast. I’m Oren.

Chris: And I’m Chris.

Oren: So we’ve heard about science, fantasy, steampunk, romance – all that stuff. That’s old news. Get ready for my time-travel, slow burn, LitRPG, character-driven thriller.

How’s that for a genre mashup? Is that the same but different enough to please the Publishing Gods?

Chris: “Slow burn”: so does that mean it’s a romance?

Oren: It’s a slow burn LitRPG. It means that they do, like, one LitRPG element. They’ll call up the game menu and then 10 chapters later, they’ll select their inventory.

Chris: Oh, I see. I see. Well, I suppose that might make it easier to fit other things in there if we’re basically like, “I swear we’ll have LitRPG later.”

Oren: As little LitRPG as I can legally get away with- I’m not a fan of LitRPG. I don’t know what to tell you.

Chris: Oh no.

Oren: I should try to maintain an air of “neutrality”, but that’s hard, so I’m not gonna.

Chris: I’ve looked at a bunch of openings for them, and I honestly haven’t found one that’s both really popular and is bad enough that I want to critique it.

Oren: I’m not saying they’re all bad. Dungeon Crawler Carl’s a good book.

Chris: I’ve seen really bad ones, but they’re not the super-. It’s hard to tell what’s a mega hit in the LitRPG space because I think a lot of their traffic happens on Royal Road and other places. So I’m not sure-

Amazon with its easy-to-see ratings… numbers is the best measure, always.

Oren: Plus, as Men’s Fiction, it’s not really that relevant, let’s be honest

Anyway, so today we are talking about weird genre mixes and/or “Genre Mashups”, I suppose,  is the technical term. 

Chris: What even is a Genre Mashup? Are they all Genre Mashups?

Oren: So, that’s actually an important question. At what point does it stop being a Genre Mashup and become its own sub-genre? For example, “Science Fantasy” is like a mashup of Science Fiction and Fantasy, but it’s also just sort of recognized as its own thing now.

Chris: Yeah- I think that once it starts to have its own tropes that it’s uniquely known for, then it starts to get to be its own- like Science Fantasy just has a number of things where it’s not just a unique mix between Science Fiction and Fantasy: we know there’s probably gonna be space royalty, for instance, a very specific trope that often appears in those works, and I think that’s kind of when it becomes its own thing and isn’t really a mashup anymore.

Oren: It’s also things like Sci-fi Western, is that a mashup or is that- I’d say that’s probably its own genre at this point. Its own sub genre.

Chris: Is it? What is there- what am I missing that’s a Sci-fi Western?

Oren: I guess the things you expect from a Sci-fi Western are basically various combos of Sci-fi and Western, right? Like, you expect people to be riding horses even though they have spaceships. Why do they do that? Who knows?

Chris:Admittedly, when I think Sci-fi Western, only Firefly comes to my mind. What am I missing?

Oren: Well, there’s a lot of books that are Sci-fi Westerns… I guess you could argue Cowboys Versus Aliens, right?

Chris: But that one, that one definitely doesn’t seem – that’s definitely a mashup, right? Because they’re even getting novelty and humor out of the fact that it’s a mashup.

Oren: And here’s the thing: if you trace the origin of a lot of Sci-fi TV, even though it isn’t exactly what we would think of as a Sci-fi Western in the way that Firefly does it, they are heavily influenced by Westerns. Like a lot of older Sci-fi serials have a very Western – as in cowboy movies – flavor to them. You get that famous line of Gene Roddenberry describing Star Trek as “a wagon train to the stars”, which is not really accurate. like at all. But it was a way of pitching Sci-fi shows that producers understood. Because Sci-fi was relatively new, Westerns were pretty established, so you could convince producers that you were just doing something that was kind of an iteration as opposed to like a weird, spooky new genre.

Chris: I guess you could call the Mandalorian a Sci-fi Western. Although, that’s almost subtle, right? It’s like Western-flavored Star Wars.

Oren: The Mandalorian is more – again, it’s Sci-fi with Western themes. Like Firefly is a lot more direct with its Sci-fi Western-ness. ‘Cause again, they actually ride horses and have cattle ranches and spaceships. But in The Mandalorian, it’s more like we have put Sci-fi things in place of Western tropes. So, but yeah, that’s another Sci-fi Western for sure.

Chris: Yeah. -, maybe I’m just not familiar enough with Sci-fi Westerns, but to me, they don’t meet the Science Fantasy benchmark where it kind of has its own tropes. Instead, it feels like each Sci-fi Western is its own unique mix of Sci-fi and Western because it’s copying, it’s not copying other Sci-fi Westerns, it’s copying Science Fiction or Westerns.

Oren: What’s funny to me is I was wondering about-  is Fantasy Western a thing?

Chris: The Gunslinger. The Gunslinger Series, I think would be the biggest. But that – again – not that common, I don’t think.

Oren: Well, that’s the thing, right? Is that it sort of is, but in a not obvious way because the subgenre called the Weird Western.

Chris: That is its own subgenre.

Oren: Right. That’s definitely its own subgenre. And you could definitely say that that’s a Fantasy western. It’s just like spooky fantasy, mostly. Right?

Chris: Yeah. I, I think that that when you look at speculative fiction as a whole, I don’t know that it always has things that are that recognizably fantasy, right? Like Wild, Wild West – for instance – was a lot more Steampunk, but that would still be classified as a Weird Western

Oren: So I don’t know how many people have actually played this game, but a role playing game, which seems to have inspired a lot of people’s ideas of what a Weird Western is. It’s called Deadlands. And that one’s kind of again, its own mashup. It has Steampunk elements, but it also just has straight up spooky magic. Like there’s vampires, and I think Abraham Lincoln might be a vampire hunter in that series. I think that might be where Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter came from. Don’t quote me on that though, but like it has, you know, classic monsters, uh, many of whom it turns out are actually very appropriative. So, uh, ignore that.

Chris: One of the things that I’d have to say isn’t a mashup, because, that’s just standard. But before I knew, what really struck me was realizing that there’s cosmic horror in Conan and Sword&Sorcery stories. And I didn’t know that until I read The Eye of Argonne, which is just, you know, some kid copying Conan, right? I’m like, wow, okay. Suddenly this kid who clearly doesn’t know much about writing is clearly copying cosmic horror. And then found out, okay, wait, the original Conan also did that, and it’s such an odd thing.

Oren: Like Howard and Lovecraft and a bunch of other writers from that period all knew each other. They were all exchanging ideas and borrowing each other’s stuff. They all published in magazines, like Weird Tales, if I remember my early Spec-fic history correctly. In that case, that was like a mashup that came around because a bunch of writers happened to know each other, which is interesting. It’s not how it usually goes nowadays.

Chris: I just think that without that influence, the type of villains that would’ve existed in some of those stories would’ve been very different, had a very different feel to them.

Oren: I think that’s probably true. It is interesting to look at which genres are easier to cross and which ones are a little more challenging. You’ve got genres that are defined by a type of plot and genres that are defined by a type of setting. Those are almost so easy, you don’t even notice.

Chris: Right, right. Which is why Romantasy works and it is both Romance and Fantasy. Just in case we have that one listener who wants to think Romantasy is not Fantasy. It is. And there have always been romance plots included in fantasy. They’ve always existed. 

Oren: But the Sci-fi Mystery, the Fantasy Mystery, those are so basic that you probably don’t even think of them as Genre Mashups. And then Romantasy has clearly become its own sub genre. It has, at least I think it has, specific tropes. Then again, I don’t read a lot of the Classic Romance that romantasy evolved from, so maybe it’s just doing those things, but also elves.

Chris: I’m trying to think of  what Romantasy would’ve evolved from. There are some early Fantasy Romance that probably influenced, and we’ve looked at some of those.

Oren: We’ve talked about how a number of romantic authors have made the jump from Non-speculative Romance. My thought was that probably there was some cross-pollinization at some point. For all I know, some of the tropes that I’m familiar with – like the love interest, having to be eight feet tall and three refrigerators wide – maybe that’s a Classic Romance thing that I just don’t know about because I don’t read a lot of those books.

Chris: I don’t read Non-Speculative Romance typically either, so I wouldn’t be able to answer that question.

Oren: Did Bully Romance originate in Romantasy or did it migrate to Romantasy from Non-Fantasy Romance? I have no idea.

Chris: But like for instance, Uprooted. That came before the big Romantasy, I believe.

Oren: That’s definitely before the Romantasy term came around

Chris: It’s not as turned up to 11. It’s not as intense as a lot of the current Romantasy, but it has a lot of things in common with the kind of type of romance it is. There’s some other ones like the – I can’t remember – the inspiration for Court of Thorns and Roses… That Dragon series.

Oren: Oh, The Lord of the Fading Lands.

Chris: There’s that one, but there’s also the other one where people get magic based on dragon scales.

Oren: Huh

Chris: Yeah, they have Dragon magic. That one is also very melodramatic and intense like a lot of current Romantasies are. But yeah, that’s another one that the Court of Thorn and Roses, I think is known for – you know – copying from.

Oren: It is interesting to trace how each new iteration of a very popular genre often gets more and more intense. I remember the same thing happening with YA Dystopias. The Hunger Games, when I first read it, I was like “wow, this is pretty intense. The bad guys seem almost cartoonish.” And then by the time that particular genre wave crested, I was like, “oh no, please give me back the Hunger Games. Those villains were so grounded.” They seem so realistic compared to what came afterwards.

Chris: If I were to guess. I would say that a lot of the tropes from Romantasy actually come from early Fantasy Romance. And that got popular enough that Contemporary Romance readers started to jump on board. And then from there it attracted Contemporary Romance authors, if I were to guess. But again, I don’t know for sure. It’s hard.

Oren: An interesting one that I have seen slightly more of these days is Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy. So you’ve got the most literal interpretation, which is like the Shannara Chronicles, where you have the real world and an apocalypse happened, and now there’s elves. Which- like if you look at the funniest thing about the Shannara Chronicles is that the magical species are all the results of the apocalypse: except elves. Elves were already around, which I can only assume is because the author felt like elves had to be ancient, and the apocalypse was long ago, but not that long ago.

Chris: This one definitely. I’ve seen a number of these, but they definitely still feel like a mashup to me because again, they all feel a little different in how they go about it. Like do we have a typical Post-Apocalyptic with like radiation or a plague, and then somehow that causes fantasy things to exist? Or is there a fantasy!cause of the apocalypse, for instance?

Oren: Well, that’s interesting because you can kind of go the other direction and have it be entirely fantasy, and there was an apocalypse and now you’re in a fantasy world where an apocalypse happened to a different fantasy world. Breath of the Wild, the Zelda game, is like that: it’s pure Fantasy. There’s no modern stuff in there. There’s no tanks or motorcycles or guns, right? But there was a cool fantasy kingdom, and then something happened, and there was a big explosion in an apocalypse, and now there’s ruins everywhere.

Chris: Do people consider that to be Post-Apocalyptic?

Oren: It is literally Post-Apocalyptic. Is it part of the Post-Apocalyptic genre?

Chris: It is technically Post-Apocalyptic, but it doesn’t seem to have a lot of the tropes.

Oren: It has some of the tropes, right? It has the “discovering the lost advanced stuff in the ruins of the previous civilization”. It’s just that it’s a magic sword instead of a gun.

Chris: Yeah. Fantasy does that all the time, even if it’s not Post-Apocalyptic. All the Zelda games: they’re all have their ancient temples and-

Oren: -it does, that’s true-

Chris: -et cetera. I was just wondering about- I was thinking something like-  we have an Urban Fantasy setting and then there’s a fantasy!cause of the apocalypse. Or like what you would often have is a setting that is just, there’s no magic, and then suddenly magic appears and destroys everything.

Oren: I think part of the reason you’re less likely to have, for example, a Dresden file style Urban Fantasy setting that an apocalypse happens to is that you first have to explain how the Urban Fantasy setting worked, and then you have to explain how the apocalypse happened. And that’s just a lot of explanation to put on a setting.

Whereas, you know, Shannara Chronicles, except for the elves, the magic stuff is all a result of the apocalypse. That’s like only one thing you have to explain. And elves.

Chris: You could have something that is magical and causes the apocalypse, but then it sticks around afterwards. So it’s integrated to the story and gives you an opportunity to explain what it is.

Oren: I think the Eberron D&D setting is a Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy…could be wrong about that- There is a D&D setting that is Post-Apocalyptic D&D.

Chris: That’s the Magitech setting.

Oren: I think it is also a Magitech setting.

Chris: Well, that’s quite the mashup then. Magitech Post-Apocalyptic.

Oren: But Magitech in Post-Apocalyptic makes sense. Especially if you wanna replicate a lot of the conventional Post-Apocalyptic tropes.

Chris: Right. Where we’re piecing like scrap together in contraptions.

Oren: We just read The Road to Ruin, which is, it’s got the desert, and it’s got the big lizards, which are pretty common in post-apocalyptic stories.

Chris: I was like, where did these come from? Does every post-apocalyptic story have like dinosaurs and why.

Oren: It’s not “everyone has dinosaurs”, but big lizards are very common trope in desert based, Post-Apocalyptic stories, and so moving from there to dinosaurs is a- I’d say not that big a jump. But in that story, there’s also the Magebike, which is a magical motorcycle so that you can have. Like the post-apocalyptic courier zooming through the wastes…Only motorcycles, though. Whoever made it didn’t make any other magic vehicles. No magical four-wheel-drive for you.

Chris: Look, four-wheel-drive is just not as cool as the motorcycle.

Oren: The motorcycle is cool. I do like, you know, fantasy motorcycles.

Chris: I think one combination that makes genres particularly tricky to combine is if you have a High Realism and a Low Realism genre.

Which is why I’ve encountered some Sci-fi Fairytales…That just don’t seem to work out as well as expected. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it, because you can translate the fairy tale and make it much more grounded if you want to. But I’m still reminded of The Dark Angel series where it seemed like a very Low Realism Fantasy series, but also takes place on the moon, that’s been terraformed, and they came from earth.

Oren: The novel Cinder was like that.

Chris: That’s the other thing I was thinking about is- it’s a Sci-fi Fairytale that I didn’t feel worked very well. Although I think that novel just had a lot of miscellaneous problems. It wasn’t all necessarily “High Realism plus Low Realism issues”.

Oren: I could totally see a Sci-fi story that has the general shape of a fairytale, but this was definitely trying to make it a little more literal. They were trying to do arranged marriages and – I don’t know, man. Like those are hard enough for me to accept in a Space Fantasy setting. This was like a normal, sort of gritty Sci-fi setting. And then also, you gotta marry the king of the moon or whoever she had to marry. I forget.

Chris: I know some people really like Cinder, but that book is still in my mind as the book that somehow managed to punch down at every marginalized group at least once.

Oren: Probably not a direct result of trying to be a scientific fairytale, but you never know.

Chris: That’s all it is in my mind. Yeah, no. Probably not related, but I’m just like, how did you, how did you manage to do this?

Oren: Look, it’s efficiency. Okay. You move on, you punch down at Women. We can get in Disabilities at the same time, if it’s a woman with, like, a broken arm or something, we can get all – we can get it all in at the same time.

Chris: Get it all in.

Oren: Smacks the roof of the book. “This baby can punch down at so many people.”

Chris: The other one besides High and Low Realism, again, if you translate. All of the Low Realism stuff to High Realism. You can make it- but you’re gonna have to give up some things to do that. The other one is things that are distinguished by their tone and have different tones because there’s no way- Like if you meet in the middle…then it’s just nothing.

Oren: Cozy Tragedy.

Chris: No, it’s not

Oren: Just a regular Cozy Fantasy story. And then at the end, one of the characters dies horribly. Cozy Tragedy.

Chris: That’s, no, it’s not….

I have read those manuscripts before and… no. This is the type of thing that a client turns in, and I’m like, “all right,” I sit down, “we need to talk about the tone in this work.”

Oren: Look you, you can do it. I’m not saying you should, but you can.

Chris: We’re not the boss of you, so of course you could do anything. Technically the question is, does it get the results you want from your readers?

So yeah, you can’t really combine two different tones – like atmosphere maybe. Because atmosphere then adds in like the aesthetics. There’s things that are part of atmosphere besides the tone, but two different tones.

Although I do think that you might be able to do something like Gothic Cozy, where we’re taking some of the dark aesthetics, again, of that gothic atmosphere and combining it with the coziness. The little living rituals and the wish fulfillment, you know, of living in like a gothic castle or whatever.

Oren: Not to be a smart ass, but it’s called The Addams Family. The original TV show – what came later wasn’t really cozy. The movies are much more focused on the comedy and, you know, the weird, horrible things this family does to each other.

Chris: But the sitcom, yeah,.

Oren: But the sitcom is very much Gothic Cozy. I’ve noticed that Urban Fantasy is, at least in my mind, harder to mix with other genres than High Fantasy is. And maybe that’s just because I haven’t seen it done enough.

Chris: High Fantasy is so very flexible because it takes place in another world, and so you can do anything that you want with it, whereas Urban Fantasy is already a mashup of two different worlds. Basically, you already have to take the messy reality and then adapt it.

Oren: Right, and that’s part of the draw of Urban Fantasy is seeing either A) “wow, there’s all this secret, magic below the surface of the real world”, or “how does magic affect the real world?” Right? Those are kind of two different draws. So you try to put that into Sci-fi, and now it’s weird. You made it weird. I’m not gonna say you can’t do it though. My experience with it is limited…I was trying to think of, have I read any books that might qualify, and I guess there was Blindsight.

Chris: No, that is the thing, is that once you add Sci-fi, it’s like you’ve got into Superhero settings that really have no theme to them. It’s just like, “yeah, sure. Everything that could possibly exist in a speculative fiction story is in here. That’s what we’re doing now.”

Oren: It’s all here, baby.

Chris: Again, Marvel has a reason for doing that: it’s because we’ve got this huge, complicated comic books and they’re all different, but we also want crossovers to attract fans.

Oren: People do like crossovers, or at least they used to. Maybe they’re not liking them as much anymore. 

Chris: Maybe

Oren: Kind of hard to tell, 

Chris: But because of the crossovers, they have a reason to throw all of those things together, even though it completely destroys any coherency in the setting.

Oren: Which I think is another reason why Superhero novels have really, really struggled. I’m not gonna say it’s the only reason, but I do suspect that people have a certain idea of what Superhero movies are, and with a novel, it’s really hard to deliver that and not have it just look completely absurd.

Chris: I think it’s become pretty clear as we’ve seen the streaming bubble pop and what shows are coming out, that one of the reasons that Superhero film and TV shows are made is because it’s cheaper than High Fantasy…Right?

Oren: To be fair, most things are cheaper than High Fantasy.

Chris: “Most things are cheaper than High Fantasy”. It’s cheaper than a lot of other stuff because it just takes place in a, like a normal urban setting. Again, there’s been a lot more Ghost Shows, there’s been a lot more Urban Fantasy. So I think that its popularity is boosted above what it would normally be in the market because it’s cheaper to make. But we don’t have those restrictions on a book.

Oren: Yeah. That’s possible.

Chris:I don’t know. There’s probably multiple reasons.

Oren: It’s hard to ignore the MCU elephant in the room, right? Like the MCU made a billion jillion dollars, and so there’s, you know, gonna be a lot of properties either directly linked to it or just trying to coast on that.

Chris: That’s true.

Oren: That seems to be ebbing at the moment. Although, again, it’s hard to tell because movies are doing badly across the board, so it’s hard to tell what any specific franchise is up to. 

Chris: Plot. We haven’t talked about plot genres and mixing those together. 

Oren: Mystery Romance. Sure. 

Chris: Mystery Romance. There’s lots of those. They work great together, mostly because a lot of romance stories also wanna have a little more tense throughline. And a mystery story – it’s really easy to just have your love birds work on the mystery together, and that gives them an excuse to be together and, you know, gives them something to do, or makes them suspect each other. It’s just very useful. So those ones are very compatible. You know, I think at some point if you add enough stuff like that, you could potentially get into questions like, okay, do we actually have room?

Oren: Genres aside, at some point you have too many plots.

Chris: I think a Romance and a Thriller is still possible, but could be a little trickier because a lot of Romance writers wanna have a little bit more downtime to have their lovebirds get cuddly or whatever. And so keeping a really high tension, constantly moving thumping plot might interfere a little more. Not that you couldn’t do it. I think you probably could, but I think that would probably be a little trickier.

Oren: Is it the everpresent I can make this “Literary” crossover, which is, you know, what does that mean?

Chris: Anything can have an author self insert and a bunch of experimental word craft, okay? It does have, High Realism is one of the conventions, but I think a Literary work doesn’t have to be High Realism. That’s only one of many conventions.

Oren: Certainly a lot of the fantasy I’ve read that is described as Literary has not been any Higher Realism than anything else. Like The Sleeping Giant is, if anything very Low Realism,

Chris: Probably more Surrealist, right?

Oren: Yeah, it’s, it’s super Surrealist.

Chris: That’s also common Literary work. You could probably throw Literary genre conventions on top of most other things. I do think that if you had, again, something that was really high tension, that might be a little harder. Because Literary, I mean, Literary writers, they have different writing styles, but as I mentioned, a lot of times they like to put a lot of summary and exposition. Or no summary in exposition, sometimes they like to take their time and the work craft pacing is really slow and that could get in the way of something like a thriller. I think a Literary Thriller, again, not impossible, probably a little less compatible.

Oren: I’ve occasionally gotten a book that’s really good and has tension and is also described as Literary because it’s so good you can’t deny it anymore. Piranesi comes to mind.

Chris: Not Literary. It’s not,

Oren: it’s de- it’s described as Literary that’s-.

Chris: No. you’re wrong. How dare they?

Oren: Certainly, most books that I have read that get described as Literary do not have anything close to High Tension. They seem to be set up to reject that concept, so a Literary Thriller. I don’t know what you’d be doing to make that happen

Chris: Is House of Leaves thriller-ish?

Oren: I have no idea.  I only know what people say about House of Leaves, which is basically controlling, because you know,  reading House of Leaves is basically a hazing ritual you do to yourself, so you can’t actually describe House of Leaves to anybody because then they wouldn’t have to read it. It’s be like telling them your secret Freemason signs.

Chris: It’s maybe it’s a Thriller for like the reader who has to go through all of these trials.

Oren: You have to like read the book upside down in public. That’s pretty thrilling.

Chris: Yeah. Maybe it’s worth, before we go, mentioning a few, you know, popular stories that are pretty big mashups. -, we mentioned some things that are have Western one that I watched. I didn’t realize what a big mashup it was until I had to describe it to my mother. Which is Bon Appetit, Your Majesty. It’s a time-travel, romance cooking show.

Oren: Hell yeah. 10 out of 10, no notes.

Chris: So the protagonist goes back in time and romances a real historical figure who is like a tyrant, who killed people who did some purges and, but she charms him with her cooking. And so every episode she cooks a new dish.

Oren: This is why it’s really cool to live in a country that’s very old and has a lot of old history. You can’t do that in the US. You can’t have someone go back and romance – one of our really tyrant-y presidents – because they’re too recent. It’s like you can’t have someone go back and romance Andrew Jackson because of all the murders he did are still affecting us today. That wouldn’t be cool. We need like. A 2000 year history and then we can go pick some historical tyrant who no one cares about anymore.

Chris: There is a Ministry of Time.

Oren: Yeah, that’s a book for sure.

Chris: That is a book. I don’t think that mashup works particularly.

Oren: No, I wouldn’t say so.

Chris: Particularly since you know, again, I read through it to about the two thirds mark and I was like, this isn’t really a Romance. There’s no chemistry building at all. But apparently after the two thirds mark, they have tons of sex.

Oren: They do a lot.

Chris: It’s like that in itself just feels very uneven. Right? Which you don’t want, right? You want the same group of people to be interested from the beginning to the end. Also, I think the Science Fiction elements are pretty uneven, and the parts I read were just a very slow kind of Literary slice of life.

Oren: Yeah. Stuff just kind of happens.

Chris: Stuff just kind of happens.

Oren: You know, it’s sad because the initial premise sounds interesting of “Hey, the main character’s job is to help time travelers settle into the present. That sounds neat. What’s that about?” It turns out nothing. She basically never does that. She’s just around to hear them talk, is basically the premise she’s around to show us real life guy Gram Gore and how cool he is.

Chris: Uh, so what did you think about the genre for Revenger? Because when I looked at the beginning of that one, it looked like Retro/Cyberpunk/Space Opera.

Oren: Retro Cyberpunk, Victorian Space Opera Pirates.

Chris: Yeah. It’s got a lot going on.

Oren: It’s got a lot going on it… it makes some choices for sure.

Chris: And then the last one I can think of, which I, again, this is one that I do not think worked so well is Sweet Tooth, although I suspect that worked better when it was not in live action because that comes from a comic, I believe, or a graphic novel. I think again, that makes it Lower Realism. It’s a Post-Apocalyptic setting that has like cutesy animal-people, but then it does terrible things to them.

Oren: There’s a horrible plague and somehow the horrible plague created a deer person. Sure Why not?

Chris: It’s definitely Cognitive Dissonance World. But I suspect that wouldn’t have been quite as hard to swallow if it was, again, drawn, right? Instead of Live- Action.

Oren: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s been so long since I’ve watched Sweet Tooth. I barely remember what exactly the issues were with that show, but I do remember that we-

I have to end the show. We are already somewhat over time.

Chris: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, if you would like to hear more about fascinating and very viable sub genres like Gothic Cozy. Support us on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/mythcreants.

Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Amon Schaber: he’s an Urban Fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.