What type of stories do you wish there were more of?

Yeah. And then you have the whole "missionary" thing, which is... a huge issue in of itself in terms of quote un quote missionary work being used to eradicate other religions and cultures around the world. And just like a regular church, missionary work is rife with people abusing children. I know there is a lot of non fiction covering these issues, and the more the better, but I wonder if there is enough mainstream fiction, especially for younger people, that is allowed to discuss these problems. I'd imagine anything that shows children what that type of abuse looks like would be a huge help in them knowing it when or if they see it or, God forbid, endure it.

I'm glad your father got help. Losing a community oriented space is so hard. I'm glad he still had one and was able to get the help he needed. As for your story, it sounds fantastic. I had some religious criticism also pairing the hypocrisy of the church with big businesses, though that's been replaced in my story now since it took a more Western turn.

I'm working on one myself, but I would love to see more stories where the female lead is older than the male lead. Not all couples have the male as the oldest. I am not saying make her DRASTICALLY older, but a few years wouldn't hurt.

It would be nice to find more stud with aro-spectrum main characters. I'll find one ore two in a cast here and there, but not many important players in the story. Hell, a story where being Aro-spectrum was something that was discussed outright would be really cool to find.

Wait, is THAT the reason? Because I was thinking of wacky tabaccy "this anatomy doesn't make sense and would never happen in the real world" nonesense. I had a style in mind where the important characters are mostly human palatte swaps while the background characters... well... they just look nonesense. Something Spacy Dandy-esque where the proportions for some aliens make absolutely no sense but you roll with it because the cartoon's universe is utter chaos.

ALTHOUGH I thank you for your message because now I can be like "DON'T WORRY ARTISTS, I'LL ONLY MAKE ALIENS THAT YOU'LL ABLE TO DRAW. TELL ME YOUR LIMITATIONS PLZ".

I'd like to see more adult stories that don't have porn, don't have romance as a major genre, or aren't raunchy comedies. There's a TONS of YA webcomics that explore a huge variety of themes, but you don't get much with stories for adults. It would be nice to have that variety with the nuances that only older folks can understand, as well as the freedom that only adult fiction can bring.

Also I want to read more stories about elderly people, there aren't enough of those.

a lot of people are talking about wanting to see ace characters and i, as an asexual, AGREE. I WANTTT. my next webcomic i'll start in like half a year is gonna have a male ace spec protag fs B-)

Stories that are anti-capitalism, not just against a few people abusing their money and power, but that are critical of the elaborate socioeconomic structures designed to subjugate people and show us alternatives.

@DokiDokiTsuna Man, I hate it! Adult animation is so crap most of the time, it's always edgy or sexual comedy, the animation is hideous, the audience is treated like they're stupid. Why can't we get quality stuff? Same with live action movies/shows and books, when the story isn't horror it seems the default is to make it sexual, I don't get it. Do people get dumber as they grow up and can't handle nuance or subtilty? Are my expectations for adults too high?

Gosh the MCU can do SO MUCH if they stopped caring about families and just told a story, but you gotta reach the widest possible audience. It's almost fascinating because they feel like they should be for adults, but aren't, and it's kinda uncanny.

@TheLemmaLlama ... I feel like that second paragraph is a jab at my comic, it's probably not, but I've been called a fetishist and edgelord before because I deal with upsetting topics. Regardless! It's not the same thing? Fiction that is kid friendly has a distinctive style separate from adult fiction, stuff with kids in mind tend to be more simplistic in execution and don't feature certain topics purely because they don't have the life experience or brain development to empathize or comprehend them. You can also see the distinction in the casting, child inclusive fiction have younger characters, while adult centric fiction usually have older adults. Also adult fiction can lean on the experimental side, being more abstract/surreal because the intended audience can comprehend it for the most part. There are also things fiction can tackle that children find boring unless they're super dumbed down, like politics, money, existentialism, religion, culture.
Sure, there are kids who can empathize with older characters, comprehend abstract concepts and all that jazz, but they're not very common.

I get the reason why everyone makes their work friendly for most/all ages, but that doesn't really change that I want adult fiction, not "adult" fiction. Call me a monster, but I would like to read stories that are clearly for an older audience, that aren't child friendly in style and concept. Kids have SO MANY stories they can read, the mass majority of movies, shows, comics and books are YA or G rated. Also I disagree, they don't always have to be "edgy" or "fetishy/glorification" to be for adults, we're not all mentally immature Hot Topic rejects, just some of us. In case that bit was related to my comic, I don't consider my work to be an example of what I mean. Yeah, it's clearly for adults, but it's a super niche story that only about 1% of people would like. Like, not even adults like my comic. Lol

Oh shoot, you're the author of A Guide to a Healthy Relationship! This is kind of awkward; I was definitely NOT trying to make a jab at your comic but I HAVE read it, and now I'm tempted to pretend I haven't in case you don't believe me lmao :'D I'm sorry you've been called those things btw, I feel like you've portrayed the upsetting topics quite tastefully.

Ahh I guess I meant I don't necessarily disagree with convincing people to limit the amount of graphicness in order to maximise accessibility, but I do disagree with calling all graphic content "edgy" or "fetishy/glorification". By extension, when I said the work has to be graphic to be adult (by which I mean warrant an adult rating), I didn't mean it has to be "edgy" or "fetishy/glorification" :]

I guess I just don't have an understanding of what you classify as adult fiction. Is it about ratings at all? Let's say a piece of fiction ticks all the boxes you mentioned:
- the execution is complex and nuanced
- it features topics kids find hard to comprehend (but won't traumatise them)
- older adult main characters
- abstract/experimental
- it features topics kids find boring (but won't traumatise them)

I can still see such a work being rated PG since from what I understand, ratings are more about restrictions for safety and less about marketing, and there's no real reason to outright restrict this work from kids because while they may not find it entertaining, viewing it will cause them no harm. Is this, then, an adult work?

Lol you're good! I just wasn't sure since people normally use the other's work as an example for their argument when sharing their pov... I hope that makes sense, I have no idea how the word that. So I thought that was the case, and I've been on the receiving end of those terms before, so it made sense. xD
Regardless, thank you for checking out at some point, and I'm glad you don't think it's trashy.

So, I may not explain this right because I'm not a writer, and I really suck at putting that kind of stuff into words. So forgive me if I sound like an idiot.
It's not so much the rating, but how the content is handled. A kid can watch it, but they won't understand most of what is going on. Like the movie The Tree of Life for example, it's basically a story about the meaning of life through the perspective of a middle-aged man. The film is rather conceptual with surreal imagery mixed with childhood memories, a child most likely wouldn't really understand most of what is happening, but a person who has more life experience and has had more time to speculate about the meaning of life and general existentialism would.

Another example, although this one is R rated, is Beyond the Black Rainbow. A film about a girl with a type of ESP tries to escape a special facility where she's been held captive under sedation. This one is also more on the surreal side, and while kids may find it more entertaining than The Tree of Life, they probably wouldn't be able to pick up the more subtle bits of the movie.

Not all of them are surreal, Citizen Kane is pretty great, I love that movie. I guess what I mean by adult stories is stuff that kids aren't necessarily restricted from, but stuff kids wouldn't understand or be interested in, stories that even if a child enjoyed the main bulk of it they wouldn't be able to see the whole picture either because they can't pick up the details or they're not experienced/mentally developed enough to understand everything. And again, some kids may be able to get those types of stories (Film and theater nerds.), but most won't. I really hope that makes sense.

Edit: Not sure if this counts, I consider it a kid friendly film because it can be very silly and I may have just been an extra stupid teenager, but I didn't quite understand the main themes of Big Fish until I hit adulthood. I didn't even fully appreciate it until my grandpa died in 2019, seeing the movie after that hit way differently.

Yeah, this was pretty much what I was trying to narrow it down to. Since you've given examples that don't have an adult rating, you've answered my question, though that's not to say the elaborations didn't help me understand what you meant further as well! And yeah, I'd like for there to be more completely unrestrained explorations of deep ideas that don't feel the need to dumb it down as well :]