WARNING: The word "story" appears in this blog post approximately way too many times.
How do you end a story?
This question arises from the game Mass Effect 3, the last part of a trilogy that arrived in March of this year. That trilogy began in 2007 and many of its fans continued to replay the first two games of the series right up until the third game's release.
While the third game was generally well-received, its ending was met with incredibly mixed reviews. The series' fan base was largely polarized, with some declaring the game's ending as wonderful art and others decrying it as an insult to the series.
Could that have been avoided? Largely, perhaps. I think it could have been avoided if the game's developers had kept fandom in mind. Fans are strange creatures. They become incredibly dedicated to the stories that are being told, perhaps to the point that in a way those stories become very real to them.
Indeed, stories must become real to us all in some way or they would not work nearly as well. If something about Harry Potter had not rang deeply true in our hearts, we would not have followed it nearly so fervently or closely. Those characters will never stand next to me in line at the grocery store, but they are very real to my soul, and often more real to me than many of the people who ARE standing in line next to me. For a story to truly move us, its characters and its tragedies and its triumphs must become some sort of real, even if only in meaning rather than individual characters.
Why, then, do we tell tales full of good overcoming evil when our world is already so full of brokenness that we could be mending? All of our art tells stories, and those stories seem silly in light of how many physically real problems we have to deal with, yet so many have a compulsion to write them, and even more have a compulsion to absorb them. I would posit that stories help us reconcile our souls to our worlds - that, broken as we are, something deeply embedded in so many of us cries out for the world to be made right and whole and good, as perhaps it once was. Stories can answer that cry, and often do. In turn, this can inspire us to greater heights and better stories.
Fandom in particular often responds very strongly to stories and their endings. Fans are still mad about the endings of Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and The Matrix. For the common fan, their media is largely real in its soul and spirit to the point of getting mad about it when things don't quite go their way. Why, though, are they not mad until the end?
I think it's partially letting go of the story that frustrates many fans. They have watched a story unfold that feels real, and now a void is left. While the story will probably be retold time and again, perhaps nothing new will happen in its retelling.
But more than that, fans have invested emotionally into a story. In return for that investment, they need some kind of catharsis. Frodo needs to go back to the Shire. Bill Adama needs to enjoy the rest of his life with Laura Roslin. These desires vary from person to person, but they express an emotional reward to the viewer. Everything has turned out alright for the heroes who made it this far. The world is a better place for their struggles. All of that fear, anxiety, and worry about our characters dissolves into joy.
When that emotional return is denied in the ending of a series, fans are upset, and understandably. While it's not the fans' art, they're invested all the same, perhaps more-so than the artists. Nor could the artists exist without them.
Indeed, storytelling is often a form of symbiotic bond. You as a writer can tell your story however you like. But when you want others to read that tale you're going to have to return their investment. Not every story is the same, but every good legend rewards its fans in a manner befitting the genre.
Mass Effect 3 does largely break this bond, initially providing a pulpy space opera heroic and suddenly shifting into an attempt at high science fiction for its ending.
The authors of that story told their fans that this was the intended ending regardless. While the Extended Cut of the game certainly improves its ending a great deal, it also maintains that odd shift into an attempt at high science fiction, and based on that alone it's going to leave quite a few of the series' fans upset.
How, then, do you end a story?
Factoring in symbiosis with your fans and the reason that stories exist, you need to reward the audience for its investment. If your art is created in a void for your own reasons, then by all means, go to town with whatever insanity or sanity you'd like in the story that you're telling with that art.
But if your art is going to be absorbed by others, you need to consider your fans and their investment along with your intentions for that story. Endings are no place to screw around. You're never going to make all of your fans happy, but you'd do well to give it your best shot.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on anything that I brought up or anything relevant that comes to your mind.
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