Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
From Greece, to Shakespare, to modern day, Tragedy and Comedy have been staples of storytelling. The two were even played back to back to help contrast each other. These two genres also play an important role in the human psyche, which are reincarnated today as Fantasy and Science Fiction.
There’s an old saying that goes:
“Comedy makes you feel while Tragedy makes you think.”
Comedy focuses on emotion and entertainment. Everyone enjoys having a good laugh and Comedy is all about having a good time. Comedy seeks to create emotional relief and catharsis through good humor.
Tragedy on the other hand focuses on the mind. Typically, the audience already knows everything will end badly, so the story focuses on why everything went wrong.
What makes it a Tragedy is that the characters brought it upon themselves. This wasn’t some inescapable disaster; the ending was entirely preventable. For example, if Hamlet and Othello switched places, neither play would have ended in tragedy.
In our modern world of fiction, fantasy holds a similar role as comedy while science fiction holds a similar role to tragedy.
Fantasy is all about those feelings of Wonder and amazement. The world allows the reader to simply enjoy and experience “The Magic”, no math skill required. Fantasy usually draws in a younger crowd because it connects to their emotions.
Sci-fi on their hand wants to engage the mind of the reader. It wants to intrigue you with how things work. Sci-fi usually draws in an older crowd because it engages more of your critical reasoning skills.
Unfortunately, being depressed is often confused with being intelligent in modern society. Intellectual writing like tragedy is considered more refined, while comedy and fantasy are considered low tier garbage.
This is also why all major English classics are about terrible things happening because somehow negativity is more important than feeling happy.
This prejudice is why things like animation, popular books and fantasy are looked down upon, while SciFi and dark literature are often praised.
However, people aren't just walking brains, they are living creatures. And those creatures have emotional needs.
This is also why I’m not a huge fan of Sci-Fi; because it often confuses misery for good writing.