User blog comment:Gideoncrawle/1,000th Edit Extravaganza: Featured User Acceptance Speech & Story Previews/@comment-1874924-20100703063303

Fear not, TDIRM, the ending to CVD won't be humilating--precisely because, as you noted, that would defeat the story's purpose.

As for the "barely smoldering fire", that fire has more life than you know. Although the two stories you mentioned (both of which I found dreadful) are old, I have encountered at least one of recent vintage. (It was written by Mr. Unregistered Contributor, so I didn't have high hopes for it. Regrettably, it lived down to my expectations. I won't name it here, because it doesn't deserve the publicity.)

What distinguishes CVD from these other stories is that, although Courtney is being terribly humiliated and/or embarrassed, she is generally portrayed sympathetically. My descriptions are designed to encourage the reader not to laugh at her, but to feel her pain, because her embarrassments are things that could have happened to anyone. That's part of the significance of my basing most of her misfortunes on real-life incidents that I either witnessed personally or heard about directly from the person who endured it. (A couple of other misfortunes expand on incidents in the TDI episodes.)