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Happy endings or sad ones?
Happy! 7 (28%)
Sad, I'm morbid like that. 7 (28%)
I don't care, I'm apathetic like that. 6 (24%)
This poll is damned stupid, boy! 5 (20%)
Total Votes: 25
Endings?; how do you like em?
Topic Started: 9th March 2006 - 10:00 PM (639 Views)
Stinkhair
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Dabbling GM. Clanrat loon. 6th Edition Aficionado. Bitter.

Okay, I have just finished reading my third book of the month and...

Everyone is dead.

The main character and his hideously scarred female friend are alive in a badly damaged airship...

The corageous adventurer who we find out is really a dirty villanous scumbag is dead.

As is his daughter, who we have come to identify with, as she uncovers her father's 'closet skeletons'.

As is her dog, Dog.

As is the engineer that helped the adventurer's daughter [who was in love with her, and she with him].

As are the two men who helped the adventurer.

As is the entire population of a city.

As is an airship pilot.

As are several hundred soldiers defending a fortresses' airfleet.

As are a large group of historians we have partially identified with.

As are the populations of two large towns.

As is the engineered tech-soldier sent to kill the hero.

As are the hero's parents, and his female friend's parents.

And.. well... damn.... Yeah, the hero survived and the story is over and all... But all that death... kinda makes it very anticlimactic....

I also read waylander a while ago, which had the same thing. Waylander and his girl are alive, and the girl's kids [well... two out of three ain't bad in Gemmel's books]. But everyone else we have followed and identified with is now dead. Except Karnak.... He's killed the elected leader of the Denai [who we've grown to know] and taken control of the land, after a civil war, in which another person we identify with [A captian called Jonat] also dies....

So now I want to ask, what does everyone prefer, those happy[ish] endings? Or the 'everybody's dead' ones? And people who like the dark endings... why? I loved these books, but the endings make me sad :(
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Morkskittar
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Unhappy ones. Why? Because they are more realistic and I find that they make better stories. ^_^

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Bassik Dwarveripper
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I like a happy ending.
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Skittin Warpchoker
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morbid endings...

but i have a nasty morbid streak at times.... so it's not that surprising....
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Kill-Kill
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I think that a balence must be struck. Kill off one character early on, who you then learn more about, kill one on the way to the final climax, kill the main character and/or 2 of the supporting characters.

Or go all-the-way morbid, like in Eisenhorn. Out of 7 main characters, 5 die all of which are the ones you get emotionally attached to.
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Jackety
FEAR THE LEMMING!
Mix realism into it man.

Example: If the hero is taken prisoner and his chains are cut, don't have him break out of the prison unharmed. Have his ass dead or crippled, or both. Remember, if you don't want to kill a character, crippling him works just as well *Coughrrmartincough*
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GrimviewGrot
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Anyone ever read the Sword of Shannara(the book, not necessarily the rest of the series. :P)? Suffice to say most of the population of one of the supposedly "safe" fortresses of humanity is wiped out, the rest goes to exodus to the supposedly safest, which is then betrayed and the gate is opened to the attackers. Which results in the death of, IIRC, at least two main characters... and I'm pretty sure roughly half the defenders die before the elves ride in and save their sorry asses.

*shrug* I also just read Dreamcatcher, by Steven King. *spoiler below, in black*

Order of main character deaths; Beaver, Pete, Mr. Gray, Kurtz, Underhill, Perlmutter (assumably), Duddits, Freddie. So basically, to sum up the main surviving characters; Henry and Jonesy.

Lots of death in that. :P


Though, when I write things, it's always fun to kill characters... the only reason Grimview and the Grot Family have never died is because... well... I have endless ideas for them. :P
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Jackety:
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Jackety
FEAR THE LEMMING!
Grim, yeah, I've read the Shannara books.

Damn do people die in those...thing is that for the most part they're killed off before you care about what happens to them.
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Madthing
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Honestly, it all depends on the execution of the ending, and more importantly, the tone of the whole story. If you write a story with a reasonably happy tone, and then kill off 90% of the characters at the ending, you better pull it off damn well or else it just won't work as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, if characters are dying left, right and centre throughout the story, and suddenly everyone who makes it to the end comes out of it alive, that smacks of author preference to me.

I am a sucker for happy endings. I like it when everyone survives. But some tragedy is good, too; I have a thing for tragic characters. There has to be the right mix of emotions in a story. You can't have it overwhelmingly grim, but you also can't make it endlessly happy. That's why I see humour as a very important part of writing: it is one element that moderates the tone. The general tone of a story can be one way or another, but you can't be unrelentingly morbid or happy, or else it just doesn't feel quite right. The other problem I have with this is that it's so very easy to make it one way the whole way through, and I think any good author should be able to vary the emotional tone.

But ultimately, I think it depends most of all on how well it's done. Despite my preference for happy endings, I really enjoy Gemmel, even though he has a tendency to kill off the entire cast. On the other hand, you have people like the Eddings, where the characters happily slaughter their way through thousands of enemies, and are never in danger the entire time. That's fun, too.

Laughter, anticipation, dread, fear, awe, excitement, despair, exultation, satisfaction, disappointment. These are just a few of the emotions that an author can evoke, and it takes a very exceptional author to evoke all of them in a single story, but it is getting the right mix of a few of them that makes the story good.
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GrimviewGrot
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Jackety
Mar 9 2006, 05:55 PM
Grim, yeah, I've read the Shannara books.

Damn do people die in those...thing is that for the most part they're killed off before you care about what happens to them.

Read the Elfstones of Shannara? The ending of THAT probably had the death of the least expected character... well... death in a sense...

It also had a LOT of death... demons attacking the Westland was quite a fun area to read. :P IIRC, the High King of the Elves dies... and the best part about the whole thing? The Scarlet Brigade (I think that was the name... read the damn thing two years ago) ended up OWNING everyone. Despite being ex-criminals, traitors, and the like... they end up being the single most powerful force within the defenders. :P That was a great moment, IMO. :P
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Jackety:
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scrivener
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Death endings are a tad cliched, since when a writer tries to avoid a character staying alive and happily ever after, the character usually dies instead. Death is supposed to bring drama and poignancy etc, but too much and it gets dry fast. I usually like open-ended endings, where the character is alive but not happily ever after: Roland in the Dark Tower series is one, Vanilla Sky is another except it has a better effect in the spanish original (in the tom cruise remake you'd just rather he died.) You can also have the hero dying in a happy ending, like in the graphic novel I am Legend, since it properly completes the cycle of the story and you feel happy for the hero.
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SneakyRodent
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I enjoyed the Shannara trilogy immensely (Sword, Elfstones and was it Wishsong for the Third ?!?!). And yes, the ending of the Elfstones one did surprise me a little. But by then I was so wrapped up in that demon the Reaper I didn't care too much..... :P

Endings that really get on my goat are the ones which come about so suddenly they feel contrived, or just tail off into obscurity. Examples? Well, the latest Stephen King book 'Cell' just left me hanging and feeling highly frustrated. Having built up to a specific conclusion all through the tale he seemed (to me) to just kop out.

(I don't want to spoil the tale for anyone, but those who have read it I'd be interested to know if you felt the same).

As long as a story truly ends with everything tied up (plots that is, not the characters themselves.... :P ), for good or bad, I'm not too bothered. I JUST NEED CLOSURE !!
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Bassik Dwarveripper
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A happy ending just makes me feel betther. If everything ends sad, its not nice. And don't give me that realistic cows**t, if I wanted something realistic I wouldn't read fantasy and horror in the first place.

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Skaskrit Venomclaw
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I'll prefer the unhappy ending over the trite happy one... but that needs not mean at all that everybody dies. If anybody's read the farseer trilogy, the ending of that one (which I won't spoil) is a perfect example of an unhappy one, even though most of the main characters survive and the kingdom is saved.

I'll also note that there are more possibilities than just "happy" or "sad" endings... My personal favourite ending would be the one termed "bittersweet", which has elements of both.

Lord of the Rings would be the best example. The war is won, Sauron defeated, all the people of Middle Earth live in peace again. But the hobbits return to a homeland destroyed, Frodo is unable to cope with living at home after his ordeals, and much of the magic and the mystery has forever vanished from the world now the third age has ended and the last Elves take their leave. The war has been won, but things will never be again as they were before it was fought. You cannot go back to the past.
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Underlord Burrows
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*clings onto happyness*
happy happy happy happy. death can be ok i suppose.

my 2 major examples of book death:

hitchhikers guide: douglas adams kills his characters off so he does not have to write more books. he brings them back and writes more books several times and he was meant to have done it again and had been writing a sixth before he died. *mourns* why? why him?

dragon lance series: the character i had come to love as i had identified with him as 100% me in a fantasy setting dies to save his friends and so they can pull of the winning move against evil which you might say is abit cliched but you must understand if done well, as this is, you do not give it a moments thought. it was abit like having my own death predicted. bearing in mind i read this book solid and did not put it down once and this grand finale happend at about 3am in the middle of a holiday and i just sat there stunned for awhile. then went back and reread the bit over and over again picking up every detail. i did not want to spoil it so have kept pretty much all details out. but it has many factors which make it as brilliant and as saddening as it is.


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