The heroic cycle is fine...but you can do that without copying SO MUCH of the original plot points.

Because without a Death Star knock-off, or a clone of Tattooine, we wouldn’t have know it was Star Wars?

Except, Trendacosta is arguing for a zero-sum, ‘this is worthless’ “garbage” position.

This is called “presentism,” the application of today’s ethical and moral standards onto the figures and their decisions of the past. The work itself is open to debate, just as is any statement or work, but the trying to cast it’s purpose or intention through the lense of today’s world is a completely meaningless…

Well, yes — you should do that with all literature, because it exists in a context. Four centuries after his death, I’m not the only person celebrating William Shakespeare as the greatest playwright in the English language while still acknowleding there’s an awful lot in his work that’s (to put it politely) profoundly…

Not a single soul, young or old, needs to know Rudyard Kipling’s thinking or the time period of its writing in order to properly enjoy the story of a boy making animal friends. That’s not to say it isn’t valuable information nor that there should be no conversation about it, but to rail against this story as though…

He was a man of his time, and should be judged by the time he lived in and not by today’s standards.
Just like Katharine Trendacosta should be judged by the time she lives in and not be called a reactionary capitalist pig by generations of the future.

That’s my point. We know that. Most works from that time period have that baked into their DNA. So we should ditch everything from that period and forget it was ever written?

That’s kinda like saying 19th century Europe was racist as fuck and imperialist garbage.

/s