Hello! Welcome back.

If this week seems incoherent, I’m currently fighting off the COVID and my brain feels really fuzzy right now. I’m actually somewhat surprised that I’m able to do a blog update at all—my wife AND my baby got sick as well, probably COVID. But they are both sleeping and my brain won’t rest, so might as well do something with this time. (I’m the only one who took a test to confirm the COVID, but they experienced the same symptoms I did: body aches, fevers, sense of taste being messed with, sinus and throat stuff, etc, etc. Like a particularly bad flu.)

Singing Bad Day during the worst of it did help me feel better, though. (Well, “singing” might be a generous way to describe the croaking noises my throat was capable of making.)

I apologize, but no Failed Technomancer chapter this week. I’ll do an extra chapter or two next week to make up for it.

I was interviewed by Colton at Narrative Ink once again! If you have any interest, I’ll embed the video below. I do need to correct one thing I said in the interview: Kristina Kugler is not the founder of LooseLeaf, nor was she one of my teachers at BYU. That honor goes to Kristy Gilbert. In my defense… well, there’s two Kristy’s at LooseLeaf, which is not a lot, but it’s more than one, and Kristy G’s last name isn’t actually Gilbert anymore since she remarried, so I get thrown off…

They are both wonderful people and excellent editors.

Discussion: Hazbin Hotel and “Mature” Entertainment

(Here’s a big content warning to anyone who might read this and decide to look up Hazbin Hotel: extreme levels of swearing and crude dialogue. Extreme, in this instance, means “Did the writers of this script possess a limited vocabulary?” levels of swearing. But I won’t say more—I’m already spoiling things.)

Hazbin Hotel was originally a 30-minute animated pilot episode put together by Vivienne Medrano (otherwise known as VivziePop) and uploaded for free on YouTube. In it, a demon(?) named Charlie opens up a hotel in hell that might be more accurately described as a rehab clinic—her goal is to take in demons, help them rehabilitate, and then send them off to heaven.

I must admit that Hazbin Hotel (the YouTube pilot) immediately became a guilty pleasure of mine, despite its high levels of crass content. The writing was okay, but the animation was gorgeous and extremely stylized, and the voice actors really hit it out of the park. Particularly inspiring was how Medrano (to my knowledge) brought everything together and funded it herself (and did a fair amount of the work by herself), ultimately producing an indie animation that in some ways was superior to anything you’d find on a TV network or streaming service. This kickstarted a wave of high-quality indie animation that might not have happened otherwise, so if nothing else I have to give Medrano the high praises she deserves for forging this path. Without her crass art, we might not have easier-to-recommend indie gems like Lackadaisy and The Amazing Digital Circus. And the fact that she posted this pilot for free on YouTube and then got picked up by A24 to turn it into a full series is all the more impressive.

Unfortunately, that’s about where my praise ends. I gave one episode of the TV series (produced for Amazon Prime) a try and found myself souring to everything about this series.

So why am I bringing all of this up?

A lot of media that advertises itself as “entertainment for adults” makes a critical error in equating “for adults” with “full of swearing and/or graphic violence and/or graphic nudity.” This is a skin-deep definition that, frankly, is insulting to adults. After all, the important difference between an adult and a child isn’t how much crass content one is allowed to consume and the other isn’t; the important difference is one of development and capacity, whether physical, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual. Real entertainment for adults takes advantage of these developmental differences to challenge or engage adults in a way that children couldn’t appreciate (or even comprehend).

To circle back to Hazbin Hotel, despite all of its strengths this series (at least the episodes I’ve seen) is nothing but the skin-deep definition for “entertainment for adults.” Strip away the show’s swearing and crass conversation, and is what’s left still uniquely engaging for adults? No—the plot and character dynamics are nothing particularly special, nothing that a teen (probably even a tween) couldn’t grasp and have a meaningful conversation about, and the world building just felt messier as more was revealed.

This isn’t to say that there’s no place for swearing or the like in entertainment for adults. (To be clear, I’m not advocating for crass content—entertainment for adults can be clean, or at least need not go down the Hazbin Hotel route of so overusing swearing that each word entirely loses its meaning.) As an example, Theft of Fire is an excellent book that I can’t recommend for content reasons. Is its mature content used effectively and thoughtfully? I discuss that a little bit here, and I conclude that parts of it are probably essential. But what do you have when you strip away Theft of Fire‘s swearing and sexual content? You still have a very deep, complicated story about characters that feel extremely real, as well as rumination on the nature of humanity, our future in space, hyper-advanced developments in technology, and so forth. Some of those things a child might grasp at, but most of it you need a mature adult to really appreciate. That’s effective entertainment for adults!

The long and short of this is, I hope that more creatives will come to realize that adding swearing or sex to their stories does not actually make their stories more “adult” or mature—at least, not in any way that is deep or meaningful. A true story for “adults” engages a mature, developed human being in a way that a child—or even an immature adult—couldn’t fully appreciate. Swearing and sex don’t accomplish that, at least on their own.

But when used effectively, it can be very, very effective.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Writing Updates

I did not write much this week. Last week, I was at nearly 16,000 words, and this week I’m at nearly 19,000 words. I don’t know how I got that much done, when most of this week it was all I could do to stay awake, vaguely lucid. Hopefully I don’t have to outright delete too much of that…

But anyway, Hazel Halfwhisker is looking pretty good. Comments from my writing group range from “extremely adorable” to “very engaging,” and I consider those things promising, as I don’t believe they exaggerate their feedback. This is, of course, a first draft, and the story will need revisions and touch-ups after the fact, but this epic adventure is coming along nicely.

Send-Off

I’ve been trying too hard to stay coherent long enough to type out too many words on a topic that probably deserved better from me. Have a good week. Don’t get sick. Or, if you already are, get better soon.