A Pitch for Redoing the Genres

[ar-ninetysix]

I'm just reading all the replies kinda lost on the subject of how this new system would work. It sounds complicated and that's a big turn off for me for using the search feature I genuinely like where we're at, I just want more genres to pick from. That's it. None of this prime, secondary business. Just.. more genres.

[Zaboem]

Some of these main-secondary combos just don't work. Like, none of the six main categories really work with Non-fiction as a secondary. If a creator makes -- say a drawing tutorial like "Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga" -- this doesn't match any of the six main categories. For a Tapas-derived example, look at the novel series "The Stalker" which is all book reviews. The entire reference section of my library would have the same problem.

I don't have a problem with the concept of major and minor genres as organizational tools. It's just the way.that these were selected seem to be focused in preserving the way things already are done (which is why Action and Adventure remain separate categories) and making that broken system more complex with more choices. To borrow a software term, that's feature creep. The proposed change doesn't actually fix anything as far as I can tell and therefore isn't enough of an improvement to justify the change.

[HGohwell]

I think it's just an over complicated way of saying main genre and sub genres. My comic is mainly sci-fi but there are some hints of fantasy and romance. But more complicated.

[jjfresh]

That's basically what I'd vote for lul. More genre options and more genres you can pick. It should definitely be limited how many you choose but, how many can we pick now? 2? Could do with more

When Tapastic first started, you only could choose one of like 5

[shfra13]

Honestly, true. An ability to choose more than one genre to filter the story we're searching is what we need for. I don't think it needs to be divided into prime and secondary genre. Just... a bunch of genres where we can mix and match to find a randomly specific story.

[Llyrel]

I second that. The very premise of my story is based on the fact that magic exists and lets you do things you normally wouldn't be able to do, if you take that out of the plot, the entire story would make no sense... so no, it's definitely not just an "aesthetic" thing. I also wouldn't lump sci-fi and fantasy in the same category, as they're two very different things. They can overlap depending on the story, but that isn't always true and putting the two things together would make it hard for people to find what they're truly looking for.

Overall, I don't think I like this whole distinction between "prime" and "secondary" genres... especially since a lot of the genres I see listed as "secondary" are actual genres of their own, often with a long and well established literary tradition (poetry, anyone?), not some sub-genres or whatever, so why calling them "secondary" or using them to "refine" a research? If I'm looking for poetry in a book store I look under the poetry section, not under "drama", "action" or whatever. I find it far too convoluted and counter-intuitive for both readers and creators.

Personally, I like the current system in which we pick a main genre and then add a couple more labels to define other themes that can be found in our stories. What I'd do is adding more genres and give sub-genres to each category. So, for example, the "Fantasy" category would be left exactly where it is, but additionally you could pick a sub-genre, which can be High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Dark Fantasy etc. That would help sort things better, help readers find the exact sub-genre they're looking for and also make it easier for creators of specific sub-genres to be found, especially when it comes to extremely broad categories where it's easy for your work to get drowned under all the much more popular stuff. Basically, more options, rather than less.

[domisotto]

Because you rely on the readers to come to the site with a very specific idea of what they want to read in mind, then go through a ladder process to find it. That's not realistic and inconvenient.

The Genres should be sensitive to what's popular and organically break out the large incoming streams of that, even if they are technically a subgenre, because, practically, who cares?

Which Tapas did with BL and GL, etc, and will, hopefully, do with Paranormal or Isekai or High School

[darthmongoose]

Honestly I think a more actionable change based on things that are already on the site would be to make secondary genre tags on our works actually have a mechanical function in terms of search or filtering.

Right now, secondary genres we pick are pretty much just descriptive. My ranking determined entirely on my place in the "Action" Genre, and that's fine, but let's say hypothetically, somebody really liked my comic and went "hmm, okay, Action-LGBTQ+, Fantasy.... what else has those three tags?
If we had a way of searching things by narrowing down to two or three genre tags, somebody who liked my comic would be recommended stuff like "Magical Boy", which I think they'd almost certainly like. Unlike the current system, which recommends just whatever is popular in the "Action" genre.

Basically rather than shuffling all around the genres we have, make the genre combinations have a function for searching or filtering and recommendations. Combined with adding frequently asked for genres like "Paranormal" and you're onto a winner. "Okay I want... Paranormal and Romance....everything with those two tags in order of popularity" BOOM, the site recommends you all the stories about straight romance where people are in love with werewolves and vampires and whatever.

[Llyrel]

This would also be great!

[jjfresh]

Genre fix or riot \o/

[DaveStankoven]

Great point. Non-fiction needs an Prime Genre.

[DaveStankoven]

That is essentially what this is. The Prime and Secondaries are all treated functionally the same I just have them divvied for organization. It could be exactly this but just with more options, I just figured boiling it down would make it easier to find what you're looking for or filter out what you aren't.

[DaveStankoven]

Essentially exactly this.

[DaveStankoven]

The very premise of my story is based on the fact that magic exists and lets you do things you normally wouldn't be able to do, if you take that out of the plot, the entire story would make no sense... so no, it's definitely not just an "aesthetic" thing

I believe this to be a misconception of how stories work. The world details could easily be translated to a real-world version. This takes some bearing with me.
Yes in fantasy things that are impossible in our world become possible but that doesn't change the nature of themes of the story. Most fantasies use this world-difference to highlight issues with our own world. Lord of the Rings for example, you can easily swap the fantasy races with real world ones, make the ring some sort of tempting but dangerous weapon like, I dunno, the button to a nuke, and make the Orcs part of some radical warring cult. obviously this is less interesting but you could make the same story with the same themes without the fantasy elements. Thus my reasoning.

especially since a lot of the genres I see listed as "secondary" are actual genres of their own, often with a long and well established literary tradition (poetry, anyone?

Yes it seems my naming scheme is ruffling feathers. I'm going to make an edit.

[HGohwell]

I think the major issue with this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a genre is and why they're important if you think action and adventure are 2 categories and sci-fi/fantasy is on. You're not using "genres" you're using "what I deem to be categories".

And also a fundamental misunderstanding of how Tapas' categories work. BL got seperated out from Romance because it was a huge category. Fantasy is likewise, huge and sci-fi isn't tiny. They would never combine them any more than they would put BL back into Romance.

[Llyrel]

Yes, fantasy and sci-fi can be used as metaphors to talk about real life issues... but if you were to swap everything with a real life equivalent, can you even call the thing "fantasy" or "science-fiction" anymore? XD

As @HGohwell said, genres are there for a reason, and so far what you have expressed sounds more like your own personal opinion about how to categorize a story rather than anything based on how genre categorization in literature/comics actually works.

[DaveStankoven]

I have posted a new version above. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

[DaveStankoven]

You wouldn't and that's exactly my point. That sci-fi and fantasy dependent on the aesthetic and not the story itself.

Yes this is based on my understanding of how I think Genres should would. I believe we were limited by the order in which genres appeared in history and because we didn't have computers when libraries first existed so organization was far more difficult.
BUT I've posted a new version above so please check it out. This should negate my opinions on genre and focus on the search needs of the readers and creators.

[ar-ninetysix]

..I mean, I dunno how else to say it. You have a very roundabout way of explaining things, man. You make it sound like there wouldn't genres, but a category of genres.. But then you can select from a long list of genres to further clarify what we wanna search for. That long list is techincally what we're already doing, so it just sounds needlessly more complicated than it has to be for a future change. So there's that. On a seperate note, I don't agree with conjuctions of Sci-fi/Fantasy and what sounds like Romance/BL/GL either. Why? Just.. Why? They've already been recognized as seperate things here, we'd just be going backwards.

Also, none of these ideas have any visual examples either, so that's not helping either lmao I'm trying to understand, but it's all convoluted the way I try to imagine actually using it, and I would hate if that system I imagined is what we end up working with in the future

[DaveStankoven]

I understand. I figured this would be easier to grasp on paper and I considered visual aids but my main fault seems to have been trying to divide things into Primary and Secondary and that caused pretty much everyone's issues in the comments so there is a NEW version above in the original post that loses that part and hopefully explains it clearer.
Let me know what you think.