In the final installment, briefly, the focus of the original painful situation came back just as the main character was on the verge of fulfilling all the reader-expectations carefully cultivated over the course of ten chapters and several months.
The main character thinks about it for about two seconds and half a paragraph, then jettisons everything readers had watched him carefully put together over the course of the whole story, and run to throw himself back into the situation we had been given to understand only brought pain. The end. (The painful situation represents the OTP of most of this particular fandom, but I don't care, mostly because I find the pairing creepy and it was established as a Do Not Want from the beginning of this story for the sake of the character's mental health.)
Now, I do get that writers can write whatever they want, but the ending to this story was so random, and so utterly disrespectful of everything the writer had encouraged readers to care about, that it read like a huge GOTCHA! In reading it, and also the author's replies to a comment or two on the story ending, I was left with the impression the author had spent the whole story giggling up his/her sleeve in anticipation of how upset readers were going to be when they read the ending.
I don't mind that in a one-shot short story, but I find I really hate it in a serial. I feel like I had my time wasted, and it turns out I don't like the feeling of being deliberately duped by an author. The point of the story seemed to be not to tell the story the author appeared to be telling, but to mess with the heads of readers for the author's entertainment.
I've probably spoken before about contracts with readers-- I certainly recall that when I unkilled a character in the second draft of my band murder mystery a while back, part of my rationale was, he became a potential victim the reader could worry about. This was, I felt, the kind of story in which the reader knew the protagonist was safe, and was quite sure the protag's sister was safe, so if the reader was going to worry about any potential victim it wouldn't be them. I felt like that was a contract with any reader familiar with the conventions of that type of mystery, and so the extra potential victim was less of an extra after all.
What I mean is, as a reader reads a story, they develop a perspective on what the story is about based on what the writer has deemed to be important. And what happened yesterday was, the writer told me certain things about personal growth and starting over were the core of the story, only to end on a gotcha, stupid! note in which none of it was even important enough to acknowledge. I mean, the story literally ended with the character asking to please be put back in the original painful situation, the end.
Writer's choice, but as a reader who feels like I was deliberately made a fool of, I won't be reading anything else by that writer.
(Full disclosure: I should admit that I am the fic writer who spent, like, 300 000 words writing family reconciliation and redemption and so forth only to kill my protagonist at the almost-end of the story that closed the redemption arc. But I resurrected him for reconciliation-and-redemption plot-related reasons, and I'm pretty sure every reader who read the death scene knew it could not possibly be the end, since it was not that kind of story. So that was more Crowning Moment of Angst, if that's even a thing, and anyone who had stuck with the story to that point must have been in it at least partly for the angsty feels, of which there were plenty.)
Anyway. Promises to the reader should probably include: The reader will not be the butt of my elaborate jokes. At least not for me as the writer, because as a reader, it pisses me off.
Good to know.
Comments
And to a (much lesser but still valid) extent, something similar happened in the movie "Serenity". Completely senseless and unnecessary.
I totally get that sometimes readers like to be shocked. But not in a way that leaves a horrible taste in your mouth and ruins the series for you.
And not in a way that negates the whole story that came before!
And I'm glad you warned me about Life On Mars, because I saw a number of episodes of that and really liked it. I'd thought I might look up the series on DVD and see the whole thing, but now I'll know to be wary of the finale.
I just feel like... if you make certain things important in a story, then they should remain important in the ending. Even if it's so you can deal with why the characters and reader can't have them. Just snatching them away and ending the story feels like, as I mentioned, a trick. And I despite writing fanfic about the God of Mischief, as a reader I don't like to be tricked.
(As I mentioned in the post, I'm not as ticked about gotcha endings to a short story, but when I invest months in a story I've been promised is about one set of things, I want that set of things to be dealt with. Even if, as I say, it turns into the author saying I can't have them.)
Memo to me, I guess!
There is also the opposite end of the tale where a writer begins the story with some of hook which has really little to do with what follows but is some kind of dramtic attempt to draw a reader in. Which fails miserably when the story is nothing about the opening, or only loosely connected.
Sartorias said the other day that each reader takes something different from a story, and that is true, but to keep any kind of audience there has to be a common theme which folk can identify and empathize with. When a writer disappoints to such a degree that a book gets thrown across the room it feels like a very personal let down.
And oh gosh yes, the heavy-handed "bring 'em in" hook (especially the kind that promises something the book never delivers on) annoys the heck out of me.
Ahem.