Endings

[extrapenguin]

(But! The Guardian rewatchalong has yet to end. Episode 35, with time travel talk!)

Observation of the day: Other people seem to have a much higher tolerance for fairytale endings than I do; I find a lot of the more wish-fulfillment-y ones unrealistic and prefer stuff like "no matter what the rules are, you can live happily within them" to "if the author likes you, the rules will go out the window for your HEA". Perhaps primarily because the former is a thing that can happen while the latter is not applicable to reality.

(By "the rules go out the window", I mean stuff like e.g. a slash ship in a royalty arranged marriage AU in a world where there is no mpreg, no sexual nonexclusivity to create an heir with a concubine, and no stuff to handwave away the lack of biokid heirs, whether that be worldbuilding so that the monarchy is nonhereditary or simply a mention of there being a convenient nephew for them to adopt. There are lots and lots of other ways to go full fairytale in a fashion that I find unbelievable, but this scenario is perhaps the easiest to explain.)

Comments

[extrapenguin]

Let's see if an itemized list would be clearer?

1. If the worldbuilding sets up something (e.g. medieval era same-sex arranged marriage for the sole heir of the kingdom, a woman knight in which deviation from stereotypical US gender roles gets the death sentence) then any implied issues or contradictions must be dealt with at least at the brief handwave level.

2. Stuff where the worldbuilding covers whatever the issues or contradictions might be (e.g. it's fantasy and any two people can generate babies with a ritual, the society isn't sexist) doesn't need to handwave them. It can, and it can bring texture to the narrative or a subplot perhaps, but it's not necessary.

3. Stuff that would be in category 1 but don't do the necessary handwaving often feel flat and unrealistic to me, especially when the aim was realism/naturalism.

I hope that clarified matters!

[ranalore]

I assure you, matters were clear before. However, what is also clear at this point is that this is an unproductive discussion, and so I will disengage. Good luck with your WIP!