#btw this is the guy who’s brilliant examination of a chaos/order system got bastardized into D&D

[grandwitchbird]

When I do analysis here I’m usually working at a very 101 level. Always in good faith, of course. But I’m intentionally kind of ethically mute about it and just focused on what a text is doing at the most basic level. Let’s ditch that approach for a minute to address the elephant in every room.

If you’ve found yourself wondering why audiences these days frequently demand childish indulgence under the guise of ‘darkness and maturity’ and deride more honest writing as ‘actually childish,’ Michael Moorecock explains the phenomenon (while making another point).

Excerpt from “Epic Pooh” by Michael Moorecock

It’s been an ongoing issue in the fantasy genre since at least Tolkien (though more fairly we can point to the resurgence in his popularity midcentury). Adults want to be comforted and indulged, so children are the only audience who can be taken seriously if you want to write anything ethically or stylistically interesting. This has a perverse effect where the more honest a text is, the more childish it’s judged to be. That effect is compounded by the very real decline in literacy and attention spans leading to increased technical/stylistic simplification of the text regardless of audience level. And that’s why it seems to be getting much worse all at once.

It’s also worth noting that since Moorecock last revised this essay, the juvenile expectations of the audience have been entrenched even further by the decline of YA into a category almost designed to kill off the stronger children’s fantasies. So now we’ve got a fight on all sides as children’s lit is also increasingly degraded. We’ve almost completely substituted the juvenile fantasy of self seriousness and self importance for anything of either literary or ethical interest (One Piece will be the last man standing here, as a bastion of artistic integrity and ethical rigor, and yes I’m taking bets).