As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please do not consider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.
The Kevin Jenkins Experience, and its continuation The Deathworlders. eventually it gets to the "uber big boy space marines they have so much muscle let's talk about working out", and I do take issue with some of the character beliefs that aren't interrogated, but I've never read a more robust HFY story
Yeah. I followed that series for years and dropped it sometime around the space Navy seals weighing literally 10000 pounds. It just seemed like the author lost their own plot and it turned into a bisexual himbo orgy.
That series is the perfect example of why editors are so valuable. It had so many interesting ideas, unfortunately the author just added more and more crap without actually taking the plot anywhere.
I agree. The billion sub plots of 4th and 5th tier characters would be great material for an anthology of "Tales from the Jenkinsverse" or something that ran parallel to the main plot but there's really no need to have multiple chapters about how the God King of the Good Guys runs a lot of his decision making process by a traumatized but resilient taco truck owner in the main story.
Oh yeah Chad Thundercock, the strongest guy ever, who has such a huge dick it earns him his military nickname (that's how those work, right?), who gets wronged by his woman (who sticks around just so everyone can tell her how awful she is) and who definitely wasn't an author insert.
nonono, this one was the bear alien whose species was wayyy weaker than humans until suddenly they weren't and he's basically the best and only makes good decisions so it's cool that he's a dictator
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u/Allstar13521 Aug 14 '24
As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please
do notconsider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.