@satsuma @Taskerland Even worse on the TV version. The titles alone are horrifying (which, incidentally, is the source of everyone thinking that Rupert Bear is called Rupert the Bear).

@satsuma @Taskerland Exhibit A:

@Taskerland Alan Moore is clearly a fan, Enid Blyton references in V for Vendetta and one chapter of Jerusalem is written from the PoV of a "savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton".

Yes, his real name is Shardik

@BigJackBrass @satsuma @Taskerland

@Taskerland My second-grade teacher read the Faraway Tree stories and possibly some others to us in class, and my primary school library was fairly well stocked with other titles, as I recall.

Sometime in the late 1980s, though, criticisms of racism and sexism (which had been around since the 1960s, TBF) started to stick, and Blyton was either sanitised or removed from the shelves.

@Taskerland He is usually quite vocal about the things he doesn't like. But in interviews he professes to like Blyton.

IIRC Magic Faraway Tree is quoted directly in V for Vendetta (I don't have a copy here to check).

Interview With an Author: Alan Moore

Alan Moore is an English writer widely regarded as the best and most influential writer in the history of comics. His seminal works included From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He is also the author of the bestselling Jerusalem. He was born in Northampton, and has lived there ever since.

(www.lapl.org)

@Taskerland I also confess a soft spot.

They are all about the solace of blood dimmed personal rituals, and the way we all scream silent in paralytic terror when we realise the consummate privation of the universe from any existential meaning except futility. You'd love them.

@Taskerland @strangequark

I'm genuinely amazed how many book covers Shardik has had. Some of them are great.

@BigJackBrass @satsuma @Taskerland

@BigJackBrass @satsuma @Taskerland

That would do me for an RPG style actually. Red vector overlay on black iconography of weapons/ghosts/wes-streeting. Nice white space pages. Themed so it's all SVGs and rescales flawlessly on a PDF or to print. I think that would have a nice impressionist quality as game art. Thematic, compelling but not demanding.

@BigJackBrass @satsuma @Taskerland

*stabsies*

I suspect if you released a few "this is minimalism" revivalist RPGs it would take off.

"Coffee Table RPGs"

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @satsuma

@Printdevil Eat the Reich winning prizes for art proved to me that while RPG people like to think of themselves as appreciators of art and design, they actually have the aesthetic sense of toddlers. @BigJackBrass @satsuma

I read that as "yodellers" and it still basically worked.

Eat the Reich looked like visual sick, but that that's an example of "lots of people" liking something is not a great system for critical recommendation.

Wasn't it Bias of Priene who's maxim was "Most people's opinion of RPG art is rubbish"?

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @satsuma