More Fannish 50 ramble

[tellshannon815]

We've probably all come across at least one show where we didn't like the ending, and also at least one where the ending was controversial in some way/disliked by a lot of people. In a similar vein, we've also all most likely come across a character who got a shit ending. An obvious one that comes to mind for me is Michael from Lost (Harold Perrineau has said that he wasn't happy with his ending) and never get me started on Jin and Sun; Lost as a whole (I never want to hear “so were they dead the whole time?” again, even had to grit my teeth in the From episode where the Matthews family raise that same question), or the Game of Thrones petition. And don’t even get me started on How I Met Your Aunt Robin, which it might as well have been called after that ending!

For the purpose of this Fannish 50 ramble post, I'm not referring to those where they got cancelled too soon and finished on an unresolved cliffhanger because I think that's one for another post. Here I'm sticking to those with a planned ending.

In that situation, would you try and rewrite a better ending? Has a bad ending ever soured you on a fandom or character forever?

I still stand by what I said about the Game of Thrones petition when discussing it with a family friend at my uncle and aunt’s ruby wedding (when it had only just happened); yes, I could see where people were coming from, and yes, there were things I would have done differently myself had I been writing the scripts (I’m referring specifically to Jaime Lannister’s ending here as the first thing I’d change, but there would have been more). However, I didn’t sign the petition, and wouldn’t have done even if I’d thought for one minute it would have resulted in a change of ending. The reason is, and I’m speaking generally here rather than Game of Thrones specific, there was never going to be a way of pleasing everyone. One person’s crap ending is another person’s fitting end for the show/character, and even if hypothetically that petition had resulted in a rewrite of season 8, there were always going to be people who wouldn’t like that either.

As fans, we do have the means to rewrite our own endings. If we want to have Jaime Lannister tell Cersei where to go and live out his days with Brienne, we can do that ourselves. Personally I like the author Olivia Dade’s response which was to write the Spoiler Alert trilogy – anyone with any familiarity with Game of Thrones will recognise quite a few references. In the second book in the trilogy, the actor Alex is very unhappy with a storyline where his character Cupid returns to the family he’d been trying to escape, and as an actor, he felt that the story undermined Cupid’s character development over the last few seasons of Gods of the Gates, and I thought “That’s Jaime”. (While his best friend Marcus responds to it by writing fix it fic, Alex writes pegging themed fic and declares at the final con that it’s an improvement on the scripts for the upcoming final season. I love these characters).

What if it’s difficult to know how else to end it? Dark is the one I’m thinking of here – I feel that a lot of the characters didn’t deserve…the fate they got, and even with the continuation of what I’m working on now where Ulrich misses out 1953 and instead makes it to 1986 to retrieve Mikkel, I’m not sure how easily I can actually save the characters.
Lost, I’ve done it lots of times. Jin becoming a member of the Oceanic Seven and he and Sun escape her father, Michael gets an afterlife in the sideways verse where he gets to save Ana Lucia, and lots of variations on the happy ending for Sayid and Desmond theme!

Comments

[mxcatmoon]

Oh, yes. Torchwood. The ending of S3 put me off the show. I couldn't care less about it anymore (and the whole fandom pretty much died a quick death as well). However, I still love Ianto Jones, and that's the only reason I consider myself still 'into' the show and write fic (it was also cheap drama to kill off over half the team as well). I never watch the episodes now, nor do I listen to any of the new audio dramas. And there are tons of fix-it fics with happier endings. I've written quite a few myself.

[geeklover80]

Just have to say agree with every word! For me, it wasn’t just the ending but how the HW reacted to people’s reactions.

Stacey

[mxcatmoon]

Yes, definitely. Still have a bad taste in my mouth from it all, even after all these years.

[rionaleonhart]

I tend to view endings that kill the protagonist with some wariness. There are some that really work for me; sometimes it's executed really well or feels like the most fitting end for the character! But, in too many cases, it feels like the writers just didn't know how to end the story, so they killed off the protagonist because, hey, death is an ending; problem solved.

It's not a television show, but the single ending I dislike most is the end of the game Ori and the Will of the Wisps. It left me reluctant to ever replay the game, even though I enjoyed the rest of it.

I think, in that case, the main problem was a mismatch between the ending and the story I thought I was being told. Most of the game had been about trying to rescue the protagonist's sister; that's what I was emotionally invested in, that's what I was looking forward to seeing resolved, with a side of emotional investment in the tragic story of the villain. And then the ending went 'the protagonist makes a big sacrifice to save the forest! The sister and villain are pretty much irrelevant; forget about those guys,' and I went 'what? What?' I didn't think I was playing through a story about saving the forest; I thought this was a story about the relationships between characters!

[meridian_rose]

I'm rarely happy with a planned ending (I wrote about a couple I liked during the Snowflake Challenge) to the point sometimes an unplanned ending (cancellation) leads to me saying "at least they can't screw this up so I no longer liked it?!"
I hated the last season of Picard for various reasons and it's soured how I look at Picard himself and Beverley.

It is impossible to please everyone but still. I refused to even watch the end of GoT and "rocks fall, everyone dies" is supposed to be a fandom meme from an old computer game, not Quality Writing.

I do think there's a certain amount of fame goes to people's heads, where writers start making things up believing they can do what they want regardless of audience expectation; deviating from books their material is based on (eg GoT), older canon they're building on (eg Dr Who), or their own established canon because they think new thing is shiny/fun.
(Or because everyone needs marriage and/or babies, which is why even as an occasional HIMYM viewer I was not going anywhere near Aunt Robin can be with Ted now he's got his babies from dead woman, and Barney has to have a daughter to raise...if pushed I'd have been Barney/Robin OTP)

If I hate the ending I'll ignore it and/or read (maybe write or at least imagine writing) fanfic. Alternatively I'll go off the show until the hurt dissipates enough to rewatch or go the fanfic route.

Torchwood mentioned below is another that had a strong start than disappeared up its own backside. "Lost" of course is culprit of ~mysticism which expanded uncontrollably, they clearly didn't have planned ending so tacked one on.

[tellshannon815]

I have one fic that I stopped writing until the hurt dissipated enough (this was about specific character deaths) and I keep saying I'll go back to it, got as far as posting the first three chapters to AO3...and yes, it remains unfinished. Sun is still stuck in 1977 with a shot Ben Linus to treat. One day I will get there...Having said that, I have done some other ending rewrites on that one. (A lot involving my OTP Sayid/Desmond).

[rogueslayer452]

there was never going to be a way of pleasing everyone. One person’s crap ending is another person’s fitting end for the show/character

My thoughts exactly, it's impossible to have a story be completed that makes everyone happy with how it concluded, and it's not really the job for creators and writers to try to appease everyone because it rarely ever works out.

For me, when I feel unsatisfied with how a show ended, it depends on whether that series finale (or even, in some cases, final season) ruins the previous seasons of the show. For the most part, I just tend to ignore it and pretend it never happened. I won't rewatch it and keep myself preoccupied with fanfic fix-its and the like. It's the perks of being in fandom, disgruntled fans creating something out of their frustration. Sometimes if something happens that truly sours me, I'll wait a bit, stew in those feelings and let it pass before revisiting that particular canon again. (Because sometimes needing that space can help gain perspective of the story, because opinions and thoughts can change over time, what you liked initially you might not like now or vice versa.)

But mostly, being someone who has been in fandom for a long time, finding comfort in fix-it fanfics and creating what-could-have-been scenarios and headcanons is part of the experience of being a fan. We tend to be disappointed by various things, but we use our creativity to work that out. What the creators did might not have satisfied certain individual needs, but that's why we retreat to fanworks to fill in those holes.

[dolorosa_12]

Things like that Game of Thrones petition always seem so ludicrously entitled to me, because they speak to a fundamentally different way of being a fan of something, or of being in the fandom for a show/film/etc. It's as if these fans think they've entered into some kind of contractual arrangement with the creators of the show, the terms of which mean that the creators must produce an end product that is pleasing to all the intensely invested fans, and if they end product isn't pleasing, the creators need to make a new one that satisfies the fans.

Whereas, well, I was rewriting the endings of my favourite childhood books since I was about eight or nine years old whenever I felt unhappy with where the authors had chosen my favourite characters to end up. When I discovered transformative fandom years later, I realised I'd found a whole community of people who thought the same way about their favourite works of fiction: the original material was a starting point, and they as fans were in conversation with it.

[charlottenewtons]

I hated the ending of Game of Thrones but I thought the show had been poor for a while so it didn't bother me that much in the grand scheme of things. The petition was just ridiculous entitlement. Fandom has far too much access to creators these days (and creators are far too willing to engage with whoever shouts the loudest). A big part of fandom and fanfiction is to take those endings you don't like and do something different with them, and as you say, writers are never going to please everyone so why bother trying?

[tellshannon815]

Almost makes me wonder how far those fans would have gone if they had got a new ending and thought that was shit as well, it could have ended in a lot of petitions and rants. Seriously, people, just go find some fanfic if you're that hacked off at the ending, there's bound to be something out there you'll like!

[laurapalmer]

Pretty Little Liars.

Like...

WHY?

[tellshannon815]

Yes, that was one I probably should have mentioned!