There are several stories I’ve experienced that left their mark on me in a positive way. There are many different ways that a story can do this. Sometimes the story is just remarkable and emotional, sometimes it’s beautiful, but other times a story can teach us a valuable, powerful lesson—something that changes us for the better. That’s what I’m going to be talking about today: stories that have taught me something. In today’s post, I’ll be listing three different lessons that I learned from three different stories.

Dark content has been prevalent in stories of all kinds for a long time. However, it hasn’t always been as pervasive or in-your-face as it seems to be today. It seems like we can’t turn on a show, go see a movie, play a game, or open a book without experiencing content that’s aggressively dark or grim hitting our eyes at some point during the story. This is something I’ve seen ramping up lately, particularly with the success of shows like Game of Thrones. The question I want to ask today is… do stories need dark or controversial content? Are violence, gore, sex, drugs, trauma, and other topics that have been considered taboo in the past necessary for stories? Do they improve the stories overall, or would the stories be better if this content were cut?