@cstross I think the biggest problem with the Hero's Journey is that it was study meant to describe a common narrative structure that spanned stories from all over the world. When people began to use it as a guide, it became a problem. Reverse-engineering might be handy, but not sublime.
For many, there's an emotionally satisfying landscape to stories that roughly follow this structure, but if emotional satisfaction is all a writer is after, then just rewrite fairy tales over and over.