this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
719 points (96.9% liked)
Comic Strips
23263 readers
2001 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
Rules
-
😇 Be Nice!
- Treat others with respect and dignity. Friendly banter is okay, as long as it is mutual; keyword: friendly.
-
🏘️ Community Standards
- Comics should be a full story, from start to finish, in one post.
- Posts should be safe and enjoyable by the majority of community members, both here on lemmy.world and other instances.
- Any comic that would qualify as raunchy, lewd, or otherwise draw unwanted attention by nosy coworkers, spouses, or family members should be tagged as NSFW.
- Moderators have final say on what and what does not qualify as appropriate. Use common sense, and if need be, err on the side of caution.
-
🧬 Keep it Real
- Comics should be made and posted by real human beans, not by automated means like bots or AI. This is not the community for that sort of thing.
-
📽️ Credit Where Credit is Due
- Comics should include the original attribution to the artist(s) involved, and be unmodified. Bonus points if you include a link back to their website. When in doubt, use a reverse image search to try to find the original version. Repeat offenders will have their posts removed, be temporarily banned from posting, or if all else fails, be permanently banned from posting.
- Attributions include, but are not limited to, watermarks, links, or other text or imagery that artists add to their comics to use for identification purposes. If you find a comic without any such markings, it would be a good idea to see if you can find an original version. If one cannot be found, say so and ask the community for help!
-
📋 Post Formatting
- Post an image, gallery, or link to a specific comic hosted on another site; e.g., the author's website.
- Meta posts about the community should be tagged with [Meta] either at the beginning or the end of the post title.
- When linking to a comic hosted on another site, ensure the link is to the comic itself and not just to the website; e.g.,
✅ Correct: https://xkcd.com/386/
❌ Incorrect: https://xkcd.com/
-
📬 Post Frequency/SPAM
- Each user (regardless of instance) may post up to five (5 🖐) comics a day. This can be any combination of personal comics you have written yourself, or other author's comics. Any comics exceeding five (5 🖐) will be removed.
-
🏴☠️ Internationalization (i18n)
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
Sí, por favor [Spanish/Español]
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
-
🍿 Moderation
- We are human, just like most everybody else on Lemmy. If you feel a moderation decision was made in error, you are welcome to reach out to anybody on the moderation team for clarification. Keep in mind that moderation decisions may be final.
- When reporting posts and/or comments, quote which rule is being broken, and why you feel it broke the rules.
Web of Links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Holy crap I was about to use the same yuck someone’s yum phrase to make the same point. Keep up the good work hive mind.
Edit: To clarify, in response to the shit storm of replies you got, I meant specifically that’s my issue with Marvel movies, and I assume that’s more what you meant, not all fiction ever.
Eh, I was kind of punting towards all of fiction there. With something like Scrubs (if we count that towards fiction), it doesn't bother me, because the situations are realistic and then as many others said, it's about the stories that unfold in that scenario.
But even copaganda or trash TV will play up each new case, e.g.: "Jeremias has not touched grass in 17 years. Will our team succeed in changing that?" and "The police has been on the hunt for this serial killer for 5 years. After 378 victims, will Shirley Holmes finally catch him?".
I guess, yeah, it is also a matter of bad writers, though. It is far too easy to come to a point where you need drama and to then just make up big numbers with no credibility.
There’s a lot of that out there. I’ve definitely become jaded to the point where I will rarely adopt a new show unless I know it’s a limited or finished series, and one that didn’t just keep renewing until they couldn’t make money one upping themselves.
Yeah, I think you just might just hate formulaic genres. Let me guess, you also don't like hero's journey stories.
How do you feel about LeGuinn's writing?
Definitely possible. I remember being genuinely appalled when our teacher casually told us that most stories can be divided into three acts (Setup, Confrontation, Resolution).
Rationally, I've understood that it's almost like a law of nature. You kind of have to tell stories this way.
But on an irrational level, I'm thinking, great, they've spoiled the end of most stories. If they all end with a resolution, why even bother listening to them?
...that is somewhat of a hyperbole, but there are further subdivisions that make this even more obvious. Like hero's journey that you named, where you can tell that they're going to survive at least until the final conflict, and even then there's a pretty good chance for a happy end, because people like those. If my brain latches onto one person being the hero, it feels like I know the remaining story arc already.
And I have to admit that I don't read much, so this is the first time I'm hearing of Le Guin.
But it's not just the writing either way. I do also always feel like I might as well read about the real world before I read about fictional worlds. I don't need to know about aliens and dragons, when ants exist and are so much cooler.
I kinda get it, I found myself frustrated as a student learning about story structure because it felt like it spoiled all stories too. But rather than the framing of these things as laws of nature I think it's better to see it as more like known formulas for making a story compelling. The three act story is so common because it's relatively snappy while containing all the things necessary to make a story work. Like, there is avant-garde storytelling (especially in theater and film) that completely says "fuck you" to story structure, but at its best it's not something most people will enjoy. It tends to revel in the fact that it's unsatisfying or confusing, it looks at the structure of its media and asks what if I did something different. And it really teaches you the reason for convention.
But yeah LeGuinn's big thing is using what if scenarios to shine light on society. The main books people recommend are The Left Hand of Darkness which is about a man from earth serving as the initial ambassador of a union of planets to an ice world where everyone is both male and female, which is used to explore gender relations in the real world, and The Dispossessed which serves as more of an imagining of the problems and struggles of a free thinker who grows up in an anarchist society as he visits a far more geologically fortunate world engaged in a cold war style conflict.
I bring her up because her fiction isn't subtle about its exploration of real world ideas and themes. Ultimately I don't think anyone should have to like fiction, but I do think it's valuable to understand why people like it and the intellectual value we can get out of some of it