Everything is the same and I hate it!

Or, homogeneity and Flanderisation.

We're back with ranticles baby!

This is not a new idea, it's not an original idea, it's just a series of opinions (which as a white dude approaching his early middle years, I am sure the world wants...).

Cast your mind back, it's the years following the release of Lord of the Rings. The world is feeling it. One ring has bound them all, and in the wake of this fantasy behemoth "everyone" is writing Tolkien pastiches, ripoffs, or whatever other flavour of influenced piece we see. Think early Wheel of Time. A cultural juggernaught has changed the landscape and it is impossible to be in the scene without knowing of this juggernaught... them naughts be jugging.

Everything is feeling a bit samey, and this is what leads to the rise of grimdark and the swell of appreciation for the fantasy which was already being written by "other voices". This is a gross over simplification, it's very much just trying to give the vibe of the thing.

Grimdark arrives in force, and the world gets a lot of George R.R. Martin-esque stuff in the wake of that.

Not everyone likes it so gritty, and in the wake of what The Wheel of Time became, Brandon Sanderson emerges. Still there are the other voices. The N.K. Jemisins, the Nnedi Okorafors, the list goes on, eventually the R.F. Kuangs. Still the juggernaughts see their wake engulfing what will come next. Writers (myself included) are dragged along by their influences to create things which while unique and different, are reflections of experience and influence.

Now we get to the same-ishness...

"Everything is a superhero movie and they are all the same!"

"The Simpsons used to be better!" "Something, something, something, Star Wars!"

You've heard the complaints and while you may agree or not, there is a level of rightness to them.

Speculation time. The people who wrote the epics, the behemoths, the juggernaughts of their field, weren't only consuming one type of media.

The people writing Star Wars films, TV shows and books, most likely grew up on them. Star Wars was born in the wake of the Vietnam War, it has elements of westerns, it has fantasy in a soft sci-fi setting, and the plot is a heroe's journey. There are only so many times that concept can be photocopied before we lose quality. A copy of a copy of a copy of a... you get the picture. The original trilogy was groundbreaking, the sequels were different but still something new. The next trilogy, well. The longer this cycle goes, the more iterations there are without new input, the more bland and samey things become.

The Simpsons started as a witty take on modern life. It then became a show written by people who grew up on The Simpsons. You can't mock the establishment as effectively when you are the establishment.

The trap here is that people want the same (within reason). Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out and people go wild. It's a homage to the pulp books of two genii's childhoods. Treasure hunting, N**i fighting, bad ass adventuring, it had it all. Temple of doom comes out, and more of the pulp fiction epicness comes... people didn't love it. They wanted N**is, not magic, they wanted (Judeo-Christian) treasure hunting, not South Asian mysticism. Last Crusade saw the N**is return, and the Judeo-Christian vibes reenter.

This is the core of the issue. People wanted Lord of the Rings so we got a decade or more of "clones". People watching The Simpsons wanted more of the same. People select their media and then after a while, it becomes too much of the same, or if they are lucky, they keep loving it.

I think this is also one of the risks of publishers only pushing the super bestsellers and dropping the midlist authors. If we only amplify a narrow band, then we are only going to see that being created going forward. The influences which made the current phenomenons what they are were often those midlist authors. The authors who wrote their quirky takes on classic tropes, or brought new tropes to similar stage dressing. If only the giants exist, we are all doomed to being trapped in their hefty foot prints.

When the same sanding of the edges happens within stories, we see Flanderisation.

Ned Flanders was an at least somewhat nuanced character when he first moustached his way onto our screens. His reduction into the diddly-doodly-oodly guy (with no other tricks) is where the term Flanderisation gets its name (the article linked, from TVtropes.com is great, as is all of that site).

Watch back through any long running series and you will start to see varying levels of this occuring. As time goes by, characters need to go somewhere (generally), which is where things like power creep, character regression, or character derailment come along. There's only so far one character arc can go, in theory. An extension of this Flanderisation is what I think also happens to a lot of media coming in certain genres, and again, it's because people want it to some level. People want new Batman, but they want him to be Batman. People want superhero x or y, to feel comfortable and lived in. When superheroes stray from the mould, people don't like it.

Once again though, this is where we end up with genericisation of media. Every superhero needs to be Ironman or Batman, ever villain needs to fit into one of the moulds. Every Star Wars needs the world weery veteran and the wide eyed youth... the cycle continues.

As with all ranticles, this one doesn't go anywhere other than to say. Read widely, support the middle and lower rung authors (in sales terms, not quality... don't read shitty stuff, your time is worth more than that), and remember that if you keep demanding more of the same, you can't be mad when you keep getting (checks notes), more of the same. T.J. Dobson, out.