Does this still count as fantasy if there’s no magic?

[MartinLevy]

Hey everyone!

I’m the author of a BL novel The Little Night. The story takes place in a world with humans, beastfolk, and hybrids between the two. But there’s no magic, no dragons, nothing like that.

So now I’m kind of stuck on how to think about the genre.

If a world has fictional races that don’t exist in real life, but there’s no magic or other classic fantasy stuff… would you still call that fantasy? Or would it fall into some other genre?

[Cairn_Rath]

Fantasy dosent need to be magical, just fantastical. It has a very loose definition.

You have beastfolk a made up race, so yes you can define it as fantasy if you want.

However if youd trying to figure out what to label it as its important to remember genre acts more as a guide,a loose collection of ideas, for publishers to easily markeet to their target audiencs.

So less "is it fantasy" and more "if i label it as fantasy would i draw in the correct audience"

Most superheros technaically can fall under fantasy and yet it gets marketed more as science fiction, with the few exeptions being characters liks thor or dr.strange. though even than in alot of thor stories he can fall under sci-fi with writers like jack kirby.

[zhilantern]

Well, it depends. It could be fantasy or sci-fi, but as they already told you, the genre is a guide not a strict label. You should think about your target audience. As a BL writer and reader myself, if the only peculiarity in your world are fictional races and the overall series is more like a romance (i.e. no battles, no intrigues, no mysteries to be solved, etc), I wopuld label it as a Bl and a romance (drama only if it has darker themes). There's no need to put another label if it doesn't fit, and fantasy readers expect at least battles, knights or court setting even in a BL.

[MartinLevy]

That's make sence. Thank you!

[GamerPrincessXI]

I guess my story counts as fantasy since Kansas doesn't actually have an indoor Archery Cafe. My story takes place in Kansas, more or less. I guess....

[MartinLevy]

Most novels, comedies, or other stories talk about people who never existed, or conversations that never happened, or events that never took place. That alone does not make something fantasy.

I guess the boundary seems to lie somewhere else, not between invention and real events/places. That distinction already exists in the difference between fiction and things like history, biography, or other non-fiction writing.

But if there's a troll working in a cafe in Kansas, then my thoughts are meaningless

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I definitely think that "fantasy" would be an appropriate tag for a story that involved not-of-this-world beings such as your beast folk.

[MartinLevy]

Yeah, I’m honestly starting to lean more and more toward that too. And unfortunately I’ve already hit the genre limit on Tapas, so I’ll probably have to add fantasy as a tag instead.