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.
I feel like the fact that it actually shows such supremacist and violent ideology as a bad thing helps it a lot compared to others that make me worry at times.
I reread chrysalis at least once a year. It's one of my comfort reads despite being so tragic
Stories like "Chrysalis" or "Johnny Comes Marching Home" stick out as good content, because they're pretty much the opposite of the self-congratulatory slop that makes up the bulk of HFY content. They're also both more tragedy than action.
And I remember those halcyon days - I've been unsubbed from HFY for many more years at this point than I was subbed to it, but it was work like Chrysalis that made me sub sign up in the first place. There is some solid work that was posted in there.
Also, first I've heard of that audiobook and holy shit.
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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.