Do you ever find yourself thinking that we harp on our social messages a bit much in fiction?

All stories have a social message of some kind. Some are just more explicit about it than others.

Impassioned, maybe? People enjoy expressing themselves. Some use paint, some use poetry, some use a newspaper column. Some use Fluther. Fiction is just another medium.

I thought that The Day After Tomorrow got really preachy at the end, and Avatar was kind of “that way”.

When it is so blatant, it gets very annoying. Avatar could only get away with it because it had so much other visual stuff going for it.

But I think it is an issue of quality. Good fiction gives you the message without you even noticing. Bad fiction just pounds you on the head.

You cite BioWare, science fiction, amateur fiction, and webcomics. That is why.

I think a lot of amateur fiction writers (including the hacks who work for BioWare, no offense) feel the need to imitate the stuff they’re taught in school re relevant social issues and the idea that every work of fiction has to convey a very clear and wholesome commentary on what’s wrong with society. The reason it’s incredibly obvious and seems like it’s lazy is because it is, but only in the case of bad fiction, like @wundayatta has said.

Anyway I find most good fiction does not convey clear or wholesome messages at all.

I agree with you, and this drives me crazy. I hate being preached to. I think you’re right that part of the reason is that the writers may be overly romantic, but I think you’re really onto something with your guess at brainwashing. We patten ourselves on the models that came before, and writing is no different. Moralistic fiction is a very old thing, and back in less secular times, the moral a story imparts was often considered its purpose. I don’t think laziness is the reason, generally speaking – why write at all, in that case?

@absalom I disagree – Ayn Rand’s and C.S. Lewis’ books were some of the first I really noticed this beat-you-over-the-head-with-the-point phenomenon in, and they are not amateur writers.