A thought occurred to me while I was rambling in the corner about how Anette Olzon, despite being a good singer by all accounts, cannot replace Tarja Turunen as lead singer of Nightwish. Stories play a rather big role in throughout human history. History is told, legends are told, myths become much more awesome over time, stuff like that. Without stories, we could never escape from this mundane feeling called life. It doesn't matter if its a magnum opus like Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner or small and pathetic like my FanFics. It doesn't matter if it's a book, a film, or a video game. Most people nowadays like a good story, even if its just a story told by a drunken friend about how she would totally do Shagrath of Dimmu Borgir because he's as dreamy as Duke Devlin.
Now where was I...oh right. One thing that most people seem to forget that it's not the end or the beginning that truly matters. It's the journey and how you got there. The people you met and the people you said farewell to. But I know you guys. You deny the Grey Havens, deny the Republic of Heaven, deny the 19 years later, and deny the returning of the main character back to the beginning in an endless cycle of Hell. You want a good ending. You want to put down the book and breathe a sigh of relief. But what exactly does a good ending entail? Let's find out.
First of all, let's get one thing straight: there is no such thing as a happy ending. People romanticize this so much that it's not even funny (and I couldn't think of a joke for it). A happy ending is not realistic. Plus, you don't know if it really is a happy ending. For all we know, Harry Potter becomes an angry drunk that constantly beats his children and his wife after the 19 years later scene. So, no there are no happy ending. There are just endings. BUT! This doesn't mean that an ending cannot end happily. This just means that the characters are happy. And isn't that all we really want in a story? For the characters to be happy (as far as we know)?
So, you have just read a book. You have grown to love the characters. You felt fear when they did, you felt compassion when they cried and you went AWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! when they confessed their love for someone (or something, depending on what you're reading). In want to know that these characters come out okay.
So what is a good ending? The ending to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be considered a good ending. Everyone's happy, right? So to all you people who were in my senior seminar class who thought the ending to Harry Potter sucked (you know who you are), you can just suck it because it was a good ending because everyone was happy!
Idiot: "But Tim,you handsome, charming yet oddly single, Newtonian Metalhead, you spent all your time detailing what you thought was a good ending, but what about books such as His Dark Materials, which ends where no one is happy?"
Well, stupid idiot (and thank you by the way!), that would be a bad ending, wouldn't it? Granted, there is hope that Lyra and Will will meet each other again when they die, however, at the moment they aren't happy. But how about a story where no one is happy? Animorphs.
Rachel dies, Jake goes emo on us all, Tobias hates Jake, Cassie has to live with some jerk no one cares about because Jakes gone emo, and Marco...well, he's Marco and no one cares about him. And Ax? Killed when he is assimilated by the One, whoever the hell he is. No one is happy! This story's ending is horrible! We have come to care and love these characters, K.A. Applegate, how dare you make them not happy! Granted, war changes all things and there is bound to be some changes to their personality and they'll probably have to deal with PTSD, but still! We want them to be happy! We want them to be smiling because they won the war and can finally pursue their romantic interests! WTF!?!?!?!?!?
So that's my shpeel. Tell me what you think has a good ending and what has a bad ending in the comments below if you want. Or not, I can't stop you.
Cheers.
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