I think that what we like about HHGttG is at least party craft? The tone remains consistent and light throughout, even when crazy stuff is happening. It's legitimately funny. It's a very pleasant and not difficult read. Adams is FUN enough that you don't notice the bleakness
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Replying to @Czhorat @mssilverstein
The grossout sight gags from R&M as an Adult Swim cartoon certainly give it a different tone Although I think people are also kind of remembering HHGG as more innocent than it actually was because rose-colored glasses
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Czhorat
Yeah, but I think that's a significant one! Horror/trauma is a different reaction to cynicism than absurd indifference.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @Czhorat
That's exactly what got me thinking about it though The first big thing in HHGG is Arthur having to deal with this profoundly detailed experience of the trauma of the Earth being destroyed and no one else giving a shit, even Ford
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Czhorat
Yeah, very much. But I think that's also a pretty key distinction: HHG has that kind of nihilism, where nothing really matters and everyone just moves on to the next thing. This is horrible, but kind of reinforces that you're right to be mad about it.
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Even if you can't change anything. All the suffering in the world happens, not exactly by accident, but because of indifferent and shallow people making rushed decisions while thinking about something else. R&M gets closer to a kind of belief that everyone really does hate you.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @Czhorat
Which is a lot more like the darkness of Adams' attitude in Mostly Harmless, with the reveal that the Vogons have created a pan-dimensional conspiracy to ensure the Earth is destroyed and stays destroyed, long after the original purpose for doing so was gone
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That's brought up in the text of the first book, though, Slartibartfast tells Arthur paranoia is a normal and expected reaction to the nature of the universe and makes no difference either way
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(If you were actually keeping track, the actual reason for the Vogons' destruction order against the Earth was a conspiracy from Gag Halfrunt and the other psychiatrists to keep the Question from ever being discovered so the full Meaning of Life can never be known)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Czhorat
I think the distinction is partially that HHG takes aim most squarely at things like pride and dignity, as meaningless constructs, whereas R&M sees hope and kindness as equally mockable.
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Mostly Harmless is the one book that gets closest to what I think of as R&M's genuinely bleakest moment, the episode where Morty saves the "Fart" gas being and then finds out he has to kill it because it intends to destroy all solid life forms and it was all for nothing
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It has that same sick feeling where you find out Tricia's act of kindness, to try to give the Grebulons some kind of purpose in life by creating an astrological system for them to follow, dooms her own Earth (because they were all being manipulated by the Vogons)
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That one was interesting because it was Adams coming into his aggressive New Atheist phase Where he gives what he thinks is the best possible argument for astrology to the Kate Schecter character ("The stars and planets don't matter, they're just a tool to explore your desires")
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