Fusion Fantasy

All right.  It's about time I got to this defining shit.  I consider it pretty much self evident, but that's probably because I became a fusion fantasy writer without knowing it.

Ahem.  "Fusion Fantasy":  Take a base of fantasy--any subgenre you like.  But when you are making this fantasy, you--whoops--put in all the mad skills, and brilliant mistakes, and fly by the seat of your pants other genre-itus that you have.

Some are happy with the phrase, "speculative fiction."  Speculative fiction is a work of "What if?"  Those genres most associated with the genre are fantasy, science fiction, and horror, because each genre takes reality, but then moves it about and recreates it all to ask the reader the essential question:  What if?  What if unicorns were real and secretly a league the propagated all the purity ring bull?  What if aliens landed because they got lost and the dad refused to stop for directions and they were as petty and beautiful as any of us?  What if the house you bought used to be a frat house where several members died during initiation and they now want to play fooseball and attempt to drink all day but can get really violent if you don't agree to do their homework for them?

The idea is that each of these genres borrow much from each other, so they should all be one, more respected class.

Fusion Fantasy--I'm not a serious girl, but recognize bitch, or I'll be coming for ya.  Fusion Fantasy is directly related to fantasy.  Fantasy is still the meat.  If people don't like that they can go make up their own genres like fusion romance.  Because that's the thing about fusion fantasy.  It asks "what if?"  So we're somewhere in speculative fiction.  On top of that, though, we ask crucial questions like, "Why not?"  It makes statements like, "It's my party and if I want to pull from Romance, Films, Mythology, Horror, Memoir, Poetry, Literary Fiction, Gay and Lesbian Fiction and Post Cards, I get to."  Fusion fantasy allows the author to grasp at as much as they wish to to get the point across.  The heart is fantasy, but there is so much more to a body than a heart.

So before I mix anymore metaphors or make another random pop culture reference, let me give you the low down on how fusion fantasy was born, and why I have to use myself as an example.  Basically, because people kept asking me what the hell I was doing and so I created an answer with a name to it, so I sound cool.  I am sure there are other fusion fantasy artists out there, but right now I'm not coming up with one.

So maybe I have explicit sex scenes (don't worry.  I cranked down the language some).  Oops.  Aren't you Romance?

Yeah, but what about the fact I'm talking about two guys sometimes?  Oops.  Gay and Lesbian.

Sure, relationships are central--write me down for character-drive--but having children eating cannibals and skull fragments slicing open a girl's feet when she steps in brains and a woman that wanders around with her dead four-year-old on her back?  Oops. Horror.

Jeez.  This reads like a screenplay.  Oops.  Film.

A really popular oops, there it is, right now, come to think of it, is paranormal romance.  That is fusion.  Paranormal romance takes the format of a romance novel, but studly, or his babydoll are vampires or werewolves or other things that go bump in the night.  And the horror people are saying, Hey!  That vampire is ours!  We get the vamps.  You are making them romantic and it's just not done!  And the fantasy people are saying, no we get the vamps and the werewolves!  We stole them after Buffy when people started saying "urban fantasy!"

The kick ass thing is that fusion fiction is willing to take ownership of anything.  We are the demented collagers of fiction.  We take the many, and create the one.  

You get the idea.  When everyone kept telling me I belonged nowhere, I made a somewhere for me to be, and I invite you to join me--through your own writing, through the writing of others that you realize is fusion.