Bad Things don't just happen in comics, unfortunately

[AnotherFairportfan]

Monica's story is, sadly, unique only in the extreme (and paranormal) nature of it.

And Suzie McBride isn't real...

Woman Claims Doctor Raped Her While She Was Sedated

[Julie]

Ugh! How horrible!

[Sgt. Howard]

If that happened here and I was aware of it... I might get arrested, most likely would be fired... but at the very LEAST, his face would look different...

[Luke Green]

Stories are shadows of real life.

[GlytchMeister]

Stories are shadows of real life.

Have a cookie.

[Luke Green]

Pretty much. The examples I used to use when tutoring high-schoolers in Texas were Star Wars and Harry Potter and asking if it was fantasy when children were emotionally abused or neglected...or if it was fantasy when families were broken up after the death of parents....or if there were absentee fathers involved dangerous stuff that put pressure on their families to help them with....usually after they scoffed that there was anything worth picking out of a piece of fiction.

My basic thought is that building a story around a message is self-sabotage, the message gets there on its own and different readers will read different messages, but that heavy fantasy makes it easier to absorb the pill without resisting.

[Dave]

My basic thought is that building a story around a message is self-sabotage, the message gets there on its own and different readers will read different messages, but that heavy fantasy makes it easier to absorb the pill without resisting.

I remember reading a review of a piece of fiction that was thoroughly preachy about something or other. The reviewer declared of the author, "He has sold his birthright for a pot of message."

[Luke Green]

Yeah, always feels to me that the best stories are the stories made to be a fun story. Make a story you want to read and some of you will get into it and then a reader who picks it up will add some of themselves to it. The meaning you get out of a story you wrote won't necessarily be the same as that of each reader because you have different life experiences. But there's something real behind every story written with any effort...no matter how goofy that story might be.