PLEASE, STOP WRITING HAPPY ENDINGS

A plea to writers and designers

I’ve been promising a post about this for ages and now I finally have the opportunity to procrastinate on something, so I’m going to do it.

This is a plea to other writers and game designers to start seriously considering the power you wield so that you can use it ethically and responsibly.

A note on nomenclature: I’m going to be preferring the term “narrative” here over “story” because many people tend to have a limited perspective on what constitutes a story. All works of media, even those without an explicit plot, have a narrative: even Pong has a start (when you begin playing), conflict (you want to win), and ending (when you finish playing).

The power of narratives
Narratives, more than anything else in the world, have a powerful ability to shape people’s perceptions of the world around them. It should follow naturally then that people who construct narratives (whether you write prose or design games) should be held responsible for maintaining stewardship over their narratives and ensuring that they’re transforming the perspectives of their readers in an appropriate and ethical way.

To illustrate my point, here’s an exercise. Do you believe that stealing is wrong? Probably. Can you pinpoint the moment in your life when you decided that? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a belief that was ingrained in you through exposure to many narratives that all, implicitly or explicitly, asserted the same message. Perhaps you stole something as a kid and your parents put you in time out, or maybe they hit you, or maybe they lectured you that stealing would get you thrown in jail. These narratives all follow the same basic template: You want something -> You steal it -> Something bad happens and what you stole is taken away again -> You learn your lesson.

It seems like one of the most basic and self-evident truths, but it’s not something that children come equipped understanding automatically. Instead, it’s a lesson that gets taught. Maybe it’s taught many times. When we hear the same message from lots of different people, we start to subconsciously understand it as the way of the world. The more we hear it and in the more different contexts we’re exposed to it, the more universal a truth it seems to be.

Children don’t really have a sense of right and wrong aside from the one they develop by digesting the narratives they’re exposed to growing up. What are property rights? What does it mean that that toy is “mine” and that toy is “yours?” All of this is learned through narratives. We tend to roll our eyes and tune out when people lecture us, but when we’re personally invested in a sequence of events (whether it be through reading a book or experiencing them in reality), we’re wired in, receptive and sympathetic to the outcome. Humans are extremely good at recognizing, integrating, and applying patterns. It’s the fundamental allure of games. Therefore, when we (consciously or not) recognize a pattern in narratives, we start to integrate it into our understanding of the world.

Narratives in fiction
Fiction is an incredibly powerful way of conveying a narrative because we can imagine ourselves in a situation that we might never encounter in reality, allowing us to learn from an experience from the safety of our homes.

The most important part of a story is its ending. Generally, the ending is when the protagonist applies the lesson they’ve learned from the story and either succeeds or fails at achieving their goal. The protagonist is the vessel through which the narrative of the plot is conveyed. What they ultimately end up doing, and what ends up happening to them, becomes the message that readers take away from the work. Captain Ahab and his crew are destroyed by the whale, showing that revenge is a self-destructive voyage. Romeo and Juliet die meaninglessly, showing that surrendering yourself to emotion is harmful to yourself and those around you. Aladdin and Jasmine live happily ever after, showing that all you need to do is become rich and lie to someone in order to find true love.

People laugh when I bring up examples of Disney movies and usually say that I’m overthinking kids’ movies, because Disney is a brand so firmly associated with being kid-friendly that questioning the value of their works is funny. But Disney’s messages are so over-the-top toxic that it’s kind of low-hanging fruit. How about Harry Potter? Voldemort is murdered, showing that killing someone who wronged you is not only okay but necessary, and it fixes all the world’s problems.

Maybe you think it’s acceptable to murder people who do bad things, and if so, I can hardly fault you; it’s such a pervasive message in all of our media that it’s hardly a surprise that so many people accept it. Try to think: why is it that you believe that? Can you remember when you started to think that way? Narratives are powerful. They shape our worldview in ways so subtle that we don’t realize they’re doing it. We incorporate their messages into our identity and defend them, even without knowing where the belief came from.

Happy endings
Whether we intend them to be or not, all narratives are inherently argumentative. Most sports movies argue that the path to victory is through lots of tough practice and teamwork. But is that really self-evident? Can’t you normally overcome someone who’s better than you by cheating? And so these movies often have a subplot where someone gets caught cheating and they suffer for it, arguing that cheaters never prosper. Sometimes, the good guys win even though the opponent is cheating to show just how strong their teamwork is.

But in the real world, cheaters prosper all the time.

As writers, we’re all familiar with the fact that most stories follow the three-act structure. The protagonist starts off with a lesson to learn, fails to achieve their goal because of their ignorance of the lesson, then finally learns the lesson and uses it to solve their problem. The lesson is usually a pretty unadventurous cliche: teamwork is good, caring for others is important, you need to take responsibility for yourself, etc. Picking a good lesson is easy.

But a lot of writers stop there. Just as important as the explicit lesson of the story are its implicit lessons. What methods does your protagonist employ to achieve their goal? What moral choices, large and small, does your protagonist make along the way?

-Does the antagonist die in the end?
-Does the protagonist kill any of the antagonist’s minions?
-Do wrongdoers learn their lesson or are they irredeemably evil?
-Does the protagonist lie and cheat?

All of these are commonly glossed-over and accepted tropes but each one is making a statement about the way the world works. This finally brings me to: what’s wrong with happy endings?

Narratives follow the same basic argumentative form: if you do X and Y, then Z will happen, where Z is the ending. If Z is an undesirable outcome, then the narrative warns you against the dangers of X and Y. But if Z is desirable, then the narrative not only condones doing X and Y in order to achieve Z, but suggests that it’s the “proper” way of achieving Z.

The problem with happy endings is that they’re inherently prescriptive. A narrative with a happy ending is a guidebook, teaching readers the correct way to live their lives. When you write a narrative with a happy ending, you have a very tall order ahead of you: you need to be aware that you’re condoning the protagonist’s methods and everything they learn.

-In a narrative with a happy ending, killing an antagonist condones capital punishment, violence, and war. Just making them dissolve or fade away or otherwise sugarcoating it doesn’t escape this message; you’re still metaphorically killing them.
-In a narrative with a happy ending, having wrongdoers be irredeemable is to claim that rehabilitation is impossible, that once someone has done something wrong that they’re evil for life. This often goes hand in hand with killing them.
-In a narrative with a happy ending, if the protagonist uses deception or trickery, then the narrative asserts that the ends justify the means and that lying and deceit are okay.

And maybe you agree with those messages. If so, then maybe you don’t have a problem encouraging them. But if you don’t, then you need to think strongly about why it is you’re incorporating them into your story. Do you want other people to think that way? Do you want to be responsible for other people thinking that way?

Even if your narrative is completely scrubbed of undesirable messages (which is no small feat), the notion of a happy ending is itself a political statement. In the words of media researcher Ed S. Tan, “a happy ending corresponds to prototypical representations of justice.” If you do the right thing, then you’ll get what you want. If you do the wrong thing, then you’ll be punished.

If you’re unfamiliar with the just-world fallacy, then maybe that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to you. Consider instead turning those statements around: if you don’t get what you want, you didn’t do the right thing. If you were punished, then you did something wrong. Happy endings reinforce a conservative worldview and implicitly condone victim blaming.

A personal note
I had a pretty rough upbringing and I often turned to books and games as a form of escapism. They offered some solace from the problems I struggled with by reassuring me that if you did your best that everything would turn out okay, and that the people who wronged me would eventually get their comeuppance. But no matter what I did to try to shut out my problems, they didn’t go away. Many of them grew worse as time went on.

As I became more mature and accepting of my situation, it became both difficult and painful to continue reading. There wasn’t a happy ending in sight for me, and the people at whose hands I suffered were never any worse for it. They most certainly didn’t learn a lesson. I struggled with relating to the books that everyone else loved because I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile what they said about the way the world worked with my personal experience with it.

Sometimes, I wondered if I deserved it, if I had done something wrong, or if there was something just “wrong” about me that made me deserving of everything that happened to me. It might sound silly if you’ve never been through it, but I’m sure others who grew up with tough childhoods can relate. It’s easy to accept difficult and painful situations as a part of life as a coping mechanism, and when you do, you’re faced with the need to explain it to yourself to make your view of the world consistent. Because our narratives teach us that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people, often the only way to resolve this paradox is by wondering if you’re one of the bad people. I felt ashamed, guilty, and worthless.

One of my most powerful childhood memories was when we read Bridge to Terabithia in school. It was a really shocking and upsetting book, and it was one of the first works that really challenged the way I had been taught to look at the world. It was the first time a story spoke to me. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, for no reason at all. Everyone cried when we read it, but I was overjoyed. Maybe there wasn’t something wrong with me after all, and maybe I didn’t deserve everything that happened to me.

I credit works like that with starting to bring me out of the deep depression of my childhood. As books with moving endings tended to be way above my reading level or too serious/literary for my tastes, this was when I started getting really into games, particularly RPGs, where I could find the drama and tragedy that resonated with the events of my life. I developed a more nuanced way of looking at the world and I began questioning fundamental assumptions about the nature of good and evil (like if they even existed!).

Responsibility
I struggle a lot with writing happy stories (if you’ve played any of my games, this should come as no surprise). When I was young, I just couldn’t relate with happy characters in any way except intense jealousy, and even now I struggle to see happy characters as anything but shallow and unrealistic. But now, remembering the struggles of my childhood and having spoken with others who shared my experiences, I’ve started to wonder if happy stories are not merely unrealistic but actually harmful.

We live in a world where innocent people suffer constantly at the hands of others who not only are not punished, but reap tremendous rewards from it. As a society, we tend to overlook this painful truth because it runs contrary to everything we’ve been taught since childhood. Research has shown that people who believe in a just world tend to blame victims of crimes or to deny they ever happened, because that’s the only way to reconcile what happened with their view of the world. It encourages complacency, to accept that people who are wealthy and powerful must have done something to earn it, and that the poor must simply be lazy.

Given how virtually all narratives aimed at children implicitly condone the popular notion of justice, it should really come as no surprise that beliefs about good vs evil and good things happening to good people are so thoroughly ingrained in our public consciousness. Because of that, when I start to conceive of a happy, none-too-serious, heroic story about good triumphing over evil, I feel guilty. Can I in good conscience contribute to a worldview that’s actively hurting countless people all the time?

It’s easy to invent excuses (“it’s just a story!” “it’s just a game!”) to escape responsibility so that we can happily write whatever kinds of stories we want, but as writers, we wield a tremendous power to transform the world. We need to analyze the stories we’re writing and make sure they’re nudging people in the right direction. When you’re planning out your stories, ask yourself what messages and behavior you’re condoning. Who could your story hurt? Who could your story help?

If you only take one thing away from this, I want it to be that there’s no such thing as “just a story.” No matter how cute, or brainless, or light-hearted a story is, it is making a statement about the way the world is. Your responsibility is to take ownership of that statement and to ensure it’s something that in some way betters the world.

Posts

Holy shit, so much discussion. O_O
Then, I'll be quick, and sorry if I repeat something somebody already said:

People should make the ending they want for their story. If they like happy endings, let them make them! If they like sad endings, fine! Let them make them! If they like ambiguous endings, let them make them! If they like open endings... you get the gist.
Just because the world is shitty and humans are both kind and horrible, doesn't mean every ending has to be attached to realistic happenings all the time. I doubt humans would've evolved this much is all what they thought about was realism and real life. Escapism is something natural in humans, you can't stop that.
By the way, I also think that the concept of "happy ending" has been severely misunderstood in this article.

Oh, and just in case somebody asks: "And what if the ending doesn't fit/and what if the ending is shit?"
That's responsibility of the author, not mine.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
The ending of any narrative is important because it's the summation of everything that went before it.

I mean, do you think that people shouldn't care about who wins a race or sports game? That's the "reason" behind them, after all- it's what the entire thing is focused on.

It's not that people are "waiting for it to be over," it's that, when you've invested work and emotion in a narrative for a while, you'd like a rewarding payoff for your time. If people weren't invested in the narrative, they wouldn't give a shit about the ending and would, in fact, not bother at all. If someone cares at all about a narrative, they give a shit about how it turns out.
yes, but did Tony Soprano die?
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
author=PentagonBuddy
This still happens, for the record. One of those shitty ideas Disney often promotes to kids? Consistently coding their villainous characters as if they are LGBTQIA+. (Honestly for me as a kid it also just made me identify more with villain characters. that's another thing you can talk for ages about)


What Disney villains are we talking about here?
author=Corfaisus
author=PentagonBuddy
This still happens, for the record. One of those shitty ideas Disney often promotes to kids? Consistently coding their villainous characters as if they are LGBTQIA+. (Honestly for me as a kid it also just made me identify more with villain characters. that's another thing you can talk for ages about)
What Disney villains are we talking about here?

Scar, Jafar, Urusla (who was literally based on a real drag queen) -- basically most of the Disney Rennaisance villains.

Really just like... any of the villains, tbh. If the villain is male and effeminate, they are absolutely being coded as LGBT. There has been a lot of discussions about this elsewhere in the past, so I'm sure you could easily look up a few and get more details on the subject that way.

(You can also probably check out how a lot of the villains are coded as Jewish, like Mother Gothel, but I'm not an expert on that and thus can't really comment beyond yup that sure is a thing that Jewish folks have noticed and discussed.)

Anyway that's all I have to say on that, since it's kinda off topic!
PentagonBuddy
Consistently coding their villainous characters as if they are LGBTQIA+.

Well I don't know. Some of them were but... consistently seems a bit much.

Anyway speaking of Disney, I thought the story of the Lion King reminded me of Hamlet.

I'm by no means an expert of Shakespeare but judging from what we studied, his tragedies while having really terribly sad endings (King Lear, Romeo & Juliet, Othello) have appealed to people for ages and they're anything but "happy" endings.

Food for thought.


Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
I thought the story of The Lion King reminded me of Kimba the White Lion

Wait a minute...
Scar is effeminate. The villain in Kimba wasn't.

That's what she's talking about - the majority of villains in Disney films are portrayed to be either effeminate or manly (opposite depending on the gender) and thus are subtly pointing towards a man being effeminate/woman being manly as Bad Things.

List

Cruella De Vil
Ursula
Captain Hook
Jafar
Hades
Scar
Doctor Facilier
Claude Frollo
Mother Gothel
Anastasia Tremaine
Drizella Tremaine
Madame Medusa
Prince John
Ratigan
Clayton
Queen Narissa
Michael "Goob" Yagoobian
Hans
@Toaster_Team: no one is saying that sad endings are inherently bad or that they shouldn't exist. Like yeah some stories have tragic endings and that's fine. The argument here is that happy endings are lazy and have less value than Serious or Sad endings, but commenters several pages ago took that right apart.

Also, here, more food for thought: Shakespeare also wrote a fuck tonne of comedies, and even his tragedies are full of hilarious moments/characters. These plays are also incredibly beloved.
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
author=ch
The argument here is that happy endings are lazy and have less value than Serious or Sad endings, but commenters several pages ago took that right apart.

That's certainly the argument that people are responding to, which I can understand since it's a lot easier to argue against a point no one is making, but I certainly never made that point, so I would appreciate it if you didn't shove words in my mouth.

The definition of "happy ending" that I'm discussing is one in which good things all but exclusively happen to "good people," and bad things all but exclusively happen to "bad people," a notion which demonstrably causes people to become more closed-minded, bigoted, and scornful of minorities and the poor. I never said that these endings are "lazy" but that when you write an ending like that, you are convincing people to become more bigoted.

You're certainly allowed to do that if you want to, but it's your responsibility to be aware of what you're doing and to have it inform your choices as a writer.

It's certainly possible to have optimistic/positive endings that don't perpetuate bigotry, but they're rather difficult to execute. Whatever your favorite story with a happy ending is, it's more likely than not that it preaches victim-blaming either explicitly or implicitly.

The notion that there's an invisible, magical force of Justice that rewards all good deeds and punishes all evil deeds is so deeply-engrained in our cultural consciousness that it's difficult to invent stories that don't reassert its existence, and that alone should make the fact that we need to fight it self-evident.
My apologies, I oversimplified your argument for the sake of sounding snappy. People far more eloquent and intelligent than me have responded to the point you actually tried to make, too. It's all several pages back, if you're still interested in having that discussion.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=Sailerius
The notion that there's an invisible, magical force of Justice that rewards all good deeds and punishes all evil deeds is so deeply-engrained in our cultural consciousness that it's difficult to invent stories that don't reassert its existence, and that alone should make the fact that we need to fight it self-evident.

Again, the fact that you think people equate fiction with reality and assume that people will believe that they deserve a happy ending just because a narrative device said so sounds deeply flawed to me. Again, I never had that misunderstanding as a child, and found happy endings a bright spot when my actual life was shitty, without believing there was some "magical force of Justice" that was going to give me good things.

My joy gained from happy endings was not "YAY SOON I, LIKE THE PROTAGONIST, WILL GET THE GOOD REWARDS FROM THE MAGICAL FORCE THAT MAKES EVERYTHING RIGHT." No, it was "This piece of fiction allowed me to escape my present sorrows, enjoy a good story, and enjoy the characters in a way that made me feel better." There's a big difference.

author=emmych
My apologies, I oversimplified your argument for the sake of sounding snappy. People far more eloquent and intelligent than me have responded to the point you actually tried to make, too. It's all several pages back, if you're still interested in having that discussion.

Indeed, PentagonBuddy gave what I think was the best response to this article here. Here's just a small snippet.

author=PentagonBuddy
You write this basic formula:
Narratives follow the same basic argumentative form: if you do X and Y, then Z will happen, where Z is the ending. If Z is an undesirable outcome, then the narrative warns you against the dangers of X and Y. But if Z is desirable, then the narrative not only condones doing X and Y in order to achieve Z, but suggests that it’s the “proper” way of achieving Z.

and then immediately follow it up with this:
The problem with happy endings is that they’re inherently prescriptive. A narrative with a happy ending is a guidebook, teaching readers the correct way to live their lives. When you write a narrative with a happy ending, you have a very tall order ahead of you: you need to be aware that you’re condoning the protagonist’s methods and everything they learn.

You know the bit in your own writing? Where you talk about what happens if Z is an undesirable outcome? Yeah that means that other types of endings can be just as prescriptive as happy ones, and can also serve as guidebooks. You also make the link that a happy ending will inherently condone the protagonist's actions. This is a simplistic way to think of a happy ending that reduces them to little more than moral vehicles. That’s a terrible way to think of happy endings.

Yes, I agree that an unchallenged narrative can condone things that maybe the author does not want to condone, but to treat this as a basic feature of happy endings (and not a problem with authors who refuse to think critically about their own work) is....wait for it...

simplistic and reductive
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
I think you're devaluing the intelligence of players/readers in this article. People can decide for themselves what a story or ending means or whether or not the ending was right or just, or if the player characters/villains were in the right or not. And people do this kind of thing all the time, whether the ending was happy or dark or ambiguous, so I don't think you have grounds to call players or developers intellectually lazy for doing this.
author=Sailerius
The definition of "happy ending" that I'm discussing is one in which good things all but exclusively happen to "good people," and bad things all but exclusively happen to "bad people," a notion which demonstrably causes people to become more closed-minded, bigoted, and scornful of minorities and the poor. I never said that these endings are "lazy" but that when you write an ending like that, you are convincing people to become more bigoted.

A lot of what I was hollerin about earlier was yeah, b/c I felt you did not provide a clear definition of what you meant by "happy ending" here and this was mucking up discussion in all kinds of ways.

now that I know exactly what you mean here, I still stand by this earlier statement:

author=this chump
Your objections to happy endings (that they're prescriptive, they reinforce the just-world fallacy, and they create unrealistic expectations that don't align with the real world -- correct me if i'm wrong in understanding what you're saying here) seem to stem more from how various moral questions are handled in a narrative. This is independent of whether or not an ending is "happy". If you want to talk about this, drop the bullshit about happy endings and just stick with discussing what you wrote in your main takeaway at the end.

The things about victim blaming and reinforcing bigotry seem to be more about moral prescriptivism in narratives. This is independent of the tone a narrative takes.

B/c I keep throwing around a Vocab Term like moral prescriptivism i'm just gonna tuck this in here for anyone not familiar and wondering "what the hell is that and what does it have to do with anything here":


like most topics in ethics and philosophy, prescriptivism can be reduced to a seemingly "easy" definition that makes your head spin. It's usually discussed with language philosophy and in a trio of "descriptive, emotive, and prescriptive" meaning. Generally, statements can have one of those three meanings. i am just giving, indeed, a brief simplistic rambling about the topic and you're more than welcome to look into it more yourself.

"Prescriptivism says that "You ought to do this" is a universalizable prescription (not a truth claim), and means "Do this and let everyone do the same in similar cases." We are to pick our moral principles by trying to be informed and imaginative, and then seeing what we can consistently hold."

the above comes from this page which WOW who thought bright cyan and black text was okay. Also hide tags seem to be Weird with quotes??? Whatever, formatting

When something is prescriptive, it is making a universal claim. Most any moral statement, which can often be traced back to "you should do/be/think X and not Y" is going to be prescriptive.

"whenever we apply a standard in making a prescription, we are committed to
making the same judgement of two things that match the standard in the same way. If I say this chocolate is good but that chocolate is not, I must think that there is some relevant difference between the two. Likewise, we can choose what standards we live by, but the standards apply universally. If I think that it is wrong for you to steal from me, because it infringes my rights of ownership, then I must think that it is wrong for me to steal from you, because it infringes your rights of ownership – unless I can say that there is some relevant difference between the two cases."

this comes from a pdf over here.

When looking at a fictional work through a prescriptive lens, it's important to know what the "standards" are, or understanding what that work considers "this is how things should be". Deviations from that norm are often what make the villains in something villainous. This tends to come up more in the kinds of narratives that use the kinds of "happy endings" Sailerius talks about in this article.

Sailerius' definition of happy endings in this article includes a prescriptive element: the idea that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When an ending has this element, it tends to condone the protagonist's actions and this can lead to unfortunate implications depending on what those actions are. It can add a moral dimension to things the author might not consider, such as when the protagonists kill the antagonist. In an ending with a prescriptive element, this tends to come across as the morally correct action.

There's all kinds of potential for trouble when writing is prescriptive from the get-go (say, something like Aesop's Fables or most Disney stories b/c they often take inspiration from moral literature), or is often unintentionally prescriptive (like the genre of lesbian pulp fiction I mentioned earlier).

Writing that was not intended to be prescriptive can be looked at through that kind of lens, but even if you're a big fan of the whole "death of the author" concept (i sure am lol) you're gonna run into an author's (or fan's) protests sooner or later and it's not always a tidy thing to invoke. How to resolve those kinda dilemmas is a big topic on its own.

I don't want to come across as saying ALL PRESCRIPTIVISM EVER IS INHERENTLY BAD AND USELESS, just that it can SUPER EASILY reinforce a lot of the ideas criticized in this article, such as victim blaming and bigotry. I mean if you read the last heading under here, the "Moral Reasoning" section, I do generally agree with Mr. Lacewing that there are situations where it's useful. And I think everyone has prescriptive standards they follow, even if what those are varies by person to person.


so again: I dislike this understanding and interpretation of happy endings. I don't think framing this discussion in terms of happy endings is useful. The criticisms Sailerius raises could probably be discussed better in terms of how various moral questions are handled in a narrative and the problems that morally prescriptive writing usually has. I don't think the problem lies in happy endings, but with authors who refuse to think critically about their work or the implications it may have, intentional or otherwise.

Since I was directly addressed about Disney villains:

I'm actually gonna phone this one in for now b/c yeah a lot of other people have talked about how disney often frames their villains. it's in my personal realm of "if you're interested for more info, google that on your own time instead of pestering me"

hope you're not allergic to tumblr b/c i do actually like feminist disney's post on the matter

This post from a different blog goes into some detail about things like the sissy trope and why animators often use it.

If you're objecting to the word "consistently", fine think about it as "some". Feel free to dredge up every piece of media disney has made and go through every list of every character and argue whether or not they are queer-coded. I would say that Disney has done it often enough that it matters and has had tangible effects on what kids (b/c this is their target audience and this is children's media) think of it means to be LGBTQIA+.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
It shouldn't be that surprising or controversial when people point out... let's call it "questionable" coding: Works are inspired by the works that came before them, and most creators don't really want to try to rewrite the "language" that's already established. (That, plus the fact that a lot of the time this is stuff that got picked up when the creators were super young and hadn't been taught critical thinking.)

Why are the villains depicted this way? Because that's how we're used to seeing villains depicted. Why were previous villains depicted that way? Because the creators were using familiar real-life things to try and make it clear that this was a loathsome individual.

The question is, in a setting where we (hopefully) no longer agree that, say, an effeminate guy is automatically loathsome, is it appropriate to keep using that character shorthand?

PS: Sail I hope you do not feel too inundated by our gab and derailments. Your subject is really good discussion food!
author=unity
Again, the fact that you think people equate fiction with reality and assume that people will believe that they deserve a happy ending just because a narrative device said so sounds deeply flawed to me. Again, I never had that misunderstanding as a child, and found happy endings a bright spot when my actual life was shitty, without believing there was some "magical force of Justice" that was going to give me good things.

author=Solitayre
I think you're devaluing the intelligence of players/readers in this article. People can decide for themselves what a story or ending means or whether or not the ending was right or just, or if the player characters/villains were in the right or not. And people do this kind of thing all the time, whether the ending was happy or dark or ambiguous, so I don't think you have grounds to call players or developers intellectually lazy for doing this.

Contrary to Sailerius' example, the real danger is not what you think, rather it's when you don't think. If you intellectually dismiss the idea that good people always get a happy ending, this is not a guarantee that you won't nevertheless factor that in when something bad happens to someone.

Assume you watch a movie or play a game where the good people get a happy ending. You notice that they got a happy ending due to dumb luck rather than because of whatever the fiction is trying to push as the source of their success. This does help, but the fact that good things happened to the good people still enters your memory. If you keep consuming fictions where good people get a happy ending, this will be etched into your brain. It will not make you actually believe this is true, but the idea will nevertheless be planted in your consciousness.

Next, assume you hear about something bad happening to someone. You won't think "he must have done something bad for this to happening to him". You may however think in line of "he probably didn't deserve this, but such is life". If you think this, then you're in the clear, you consciously acknowledged the fact that bad things can happen to a good person. There is a third option though, namely that you don't think at all in terms of whether or not bad things can happen to a good person. This is when you can accidentally fall into the trap of victim blaming.

Or brain is made so that we don't necessarily have to consciously think about something in order to factor it in. Even though you intellectually dismiss the good person = good ending idea, it's still sitting in your mind. You brain is perfectly capable of factoring this in even though you are not consciously thinking about it. Of course, there's no guarantee it will do so. Still, being intellectually aware of something is not a 100% protection.

That said, I think the divine intervention happy endings are just a minor part of a much bigger problem. Sad endings can push the wrong ideas into our brain just as much as a happy ending can.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
That shit isn't a result of happy endings in stories, tho, so unless you want to propose a neurological way to counteract natural biases in the human brain...
I did not claim that human bias is the result of happy endings, but I did detail how human bias and happy endings can interact. If that wasn't what you were saying, then I don't know what it was you were saying. I'm afraid I do not understand what point you were trying to make either.
@emmych:
That’s not untrue, especially about the comedic elements present in his tragedies.

I had to dust off my books to make sure I knew what I was talking about and double-checked a couple of things on the internet as well.

Shakespeare comedies are quote wikipedia: “Several of Shakespeare’s comedies, such as Measure for measure and All’s Well That Ends Well have an unusual tone with a difficult mix of humour and tragedy which has led them to be classified as problem plays”.

Norton Anthology of English literature, p. 495: “That Shakespeare is “for all time” does not mean that he did not also belong to his own age. Shakespeare rarely invented plots from his dramas, preferring to work, often quite closely, with stories he found ready-made in histories, novellas, narrative poems, or other plays”.

I think that, part of the reason why this author is so enduring (probably eternal) is because he has tragedies in many of his stories which conform with the following definition:

a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror
-Merriam-Webster

You brought up a good point in saying he mixed comedy and tragedy and that’s pretty much how I think endings should be in my book, a bit of both (just like in life). What I’m trying to say is that the reason why his plays were so popular *might* be because they were based on real things in life, things people could relate to, both the good and the bad.

Can people really relate to 100% happy endings?

“Happy endings” in that sense, are somewhat shallow and won’t ever leave a strong impression as the end of a narrative. Sure, it’ll be comforting but it won’t leave its mark on you. What you’ll remember about the narrative isn’t the ending, that’ll come as a comforting afterthought, it’ll be the rest of the journey and the ups and downs that came along with it.

Liberty sums things up nicely with this quote (and I’ll quote her as I generally systematically disagree with most things she says… except her best blog picks, tee hee!):

“I wouldn’t call it a good ending, but I wouldn’t call it a bad one either – there was hope but there was disaster and it made from an interesting mix”
-Liberty

Just my perception.