I Don't Wike It: The Cliches and Sterotypes of Wattpad

And They All Died...The End

Here's a rant. A rather angry one. Because I'm tired of this crap and I'm tired of being tired and stuff.

So.

You know when you're invested in something — be it a movie, or a tv show, or a book — and you have this favorite character, and they've been put through the wringer, time and again. And then, at last, the clouds open up, there's light at the end of the tunnel, everything's coming together for this character — they've found a family, friends, happiness. They're getting a very well-deserved and hard-earned happy ending.

And then they get shot in the face.

Or something.

It's like you can almost hear the writers laughing at you. 'Haha! Gotcha! Surprise, you insolent little fool, you thought you were gonna feel good but you thought wrong! Aren't we cool?'

And then, if you're like me, you go searching for fix-it fanfiction, but the problem is there isn't any. And with or without a fix-it you're just...left feeling crappy and disappointed, and now you have a headache, and Jess Christmas why did you have to put all that time and effort into watching that show or whatever, get all those feelings invested in a freakin' fictional character, just for them to die or be betrayed or screwed over for absolutely no good reason?!

Hhhhhhuuuurgggghhhhh????

Because there wasn't a good reason. There usually isn't. Sometimes there is. But usually, it makes no sense to kill this character. The character's death is blatantly done for 'shock value'.

Well you know what?

You can take that 'shock value' or whatever you call it and shove it where the sun don't shine!

Seems to me that a lot, if not most, of the new stuff coming out right now, relies on this kind of 'shock value', 'gotcha good, didn't we?' storytelling. It's always people dying, or everything just turning out crappy and depressing, or a ship not ending up together, because it's 'realistic', and 'happy endings aren't realistic'.

Well that's the point of fiction, isn't it? To make things happen that might not always happen in real life? So if I want to write a story where against all odds, everyone lives and is happy, I'm darn well gonna do it, because I want to.

So take that, Bembridge Scholars!

It's exhausting, really, to watch or read much of anything these days, because I'm constantly tense and worried. Who's gonna die next? How is this gonna end? What horrible thing is gonna happen? How many unhappy endings are there going to be? And yeah, suspense needs to be there to an extent, and yes, it's good to try to avoid predictable endings, but why does the 'surprise' twist almost always end up being death?

I could use, as an example, the series finale of Supernatural. Or even some of the episodes leading up to it. I mean, the whole show was basically about Team Free Will and how they were gonna do what they wanted no matter what. So shouldn't it make more sense if the ending had that? If they all broke out of their so-called destinies, lived long, happy lives, married the people they love *cough* destiel *cough*, and then died when they were super old.

That would have been the ultimate middle-finger to the 'powers that be'. If the final 'big bad' had been defeated, because the whole show was about good vs. evil and how good would win in the end no matter how dreary things looked?

And also, they spent the entirety of the show saying, 'hey, hunters never get happy endings. We always die bad'. So wouldn't the best 'surprise', 'twist' ending be to have them all live and have happy endings??

But no. Death and sadness are on the menu. Bury your gays! And your straights! Stab your bi's! Have ships not end up together just because! Ruin everything! Just like Game of Thrones, apparently (not that I watched GoT, I just heard about it).

What's with the obsession with dark, 'edgy', grim, depressing storytelling right now? Sure, there's a time and place for that sort of thing, in tragedies and suchlike, but not so much in fantasy, or sci-fi, or action-adventure. Sometimes people — people being ME — want to curl up and watch something that yes, is exciting and has you on the edge of your seat with suspense sometimes, but everything ends up okay in the end.

A good example of suspenseful storytelling with a happy ending would be Good Omens. It was my ultimate comfort show for a while and I watched it a bunch of times. It was so nice to be able to sit back and be like, okay, shit's going down, but I know everyone's gonna be okay. Even inanimate objects were okay in the end! It was a show without a bunch of gory deaths and a bunch of melancholy, and it was without the worry and tension. It was enjoyable. I want more like that.

Another example of this is Lord of the Rings. Yes, some people lost their lives along the way. Yes, there were struggles, there was suffering, and fear, and suspense. But in the end, hope and goodness won out over evil and despair. It made all that suffering and sacrifice worthwhile. The bad guy was defeated, and the surviving characters got to live happily with their loved ones. Until Frodo pulled a fast one and went on a cruise. But I digress.

I'm well aware that there's got to be a balance. I mean, if the movie Titanic had everyone on the ship survive, that's not very realistic. If war movies had everyone survive, that's not very realistic. But my thing is, sure, a bunch of people are dying on this godforsaken boat, and yeah, some assholes locked the Irish downstairs in the steerage section because apparently nobody cared about the Irish (except for me, I care), but balance out all that horribleness with Jack and Rose both fitting on that frankly enormous door and both making it out alive and both living to a ripe old age. But even though Jack didn't make it, Rose did. She made it out alive, she lived to a ripe old age, and that sort of balances things out, too. (But seriously the door was huge and they could've taken turns, ugh)

But mostly I'm just ticked off at this new brand of 'gotcha' storytelling, and the whole 'grim-dark-death' storytelling, too. I'm tired of it. I just want something comforting once in a while, y'know? I don't mind some 'grim-dark' stuff, but when pretty much everything is grim-dark it gets a bit old and tiring.

Anyway. I was not clever nor funny nor offering advice in the chapter. I just wanted to scream incessantly about this for a minute.