Read this thread with interest. Not entirely sure what provoked it, but obviously there was a Lois and Clark story recently that didn't have a happy ending.
So I started thinking about what type of story I like and found that I'm a bit of a split personality
. When I read a Lois and Clark story, I definitely want a happy ending. In fact, I tend to wait until the story is posted on the archives and read the last few pages to make sure there is one before reading the rest of the story. I can stand any amount of angst if I know that the happy ending is coming. On the other hand if the story doesn't end with Lois and Clark kissing, I usually just move on to the next story.
However, when it comes to non-Lois and Clark fiction, I'm not quite the same way. For example, my favorite living (or, well, he died a few years ago, so I guess 'current' would be a better word) author is Leon Uris. And yet he often kills off at least one of his major characters at the end of his books.
On the other hand, the death usually does not feel like simply a plot point. It always feels almost essential for the proper telling of the story. For instance, if all the main characters had survived in Mila 18, which is a story about the Jewish uprising in the Polish ghetto during WWII, it would have been quite unbelievable.
However, he always leaves the reader with hope. For instance, in that story,
SPOILER the book ends with the Jewish fighter's Christian girlfriend telling her priest that she has to leave the Catholic church because she's pregnant with the hero's child and she's determined that he be raised a Jew. There are tears rolling down your cheeks when you read it, but you're left with this feeling of hope for the future - that a part of your hero will survive. The enemy has not won.
Now, I have read that book too many times to count, and after writing this may even go read it again
. So to say that I like unqualified happy endings, or don't think a book is worth reading if it doesn't have one, wouldn't be true.
On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure what makes a book or a story worth my time. I just know what I like when I read it.
ML
