hey guys, i solved it! optimistic fiction and pessimistic fiction have the same moral value! we’ve done it! we’re free
like, ok
i’ll just pass this on to kurt vonnegut and fuckin…elie wiesel shall i
lmao YES like…whether you’re fourteen and creating characters who explode the preps with their brains or you’re an adult writing existentialist french novels…there are SO many reasons to engage with those ideas and emotions that aren’t “i am a rampaging asshole who hates hope” the way apparently some people assume??
like, it’s even reductive of who is experiencing the (fictional) cruelty. “dreaming of the battlefield” in dark fiction is just as likely (or more likely??) to mean “processing feelings of despair by imagining MYSELF as a cursed foot solider in an unending war” as it is “processing feelings of helplessness by imagining myself as powerful and unaffected by emotion”
or like. “hey guys, i actually WAS a cursed foot soldier in an unending war and it sucked shit.” if those guys are pessimists, fine, they earned it