On Happy Endings
Posted by Rashika • 15 Comments
If you know me, you know that I LIVE for my Happily Ever Afters but I realize that many people don’t like them (which is 100% okay because to each and their own.) Today I just wanted to sit down and talk about why they are important to me.
So ideal endings. We all want them and chances are, we hardly ever get them. For me the perfect ending is happy but is also open in ways that allows me to continue interacting with the text. So in the case of a romance: they get together… but preferably not the whole we are married now and have 100 babies epilogue because that’s cheesy (at least in my opinion.) I don’t just think of HEAs in terms of romance though, in my brain, an HEA is also satisfying. So like, I can close the book feeling happy that the characters are okay but I can also continue to think about all the adventures they would have. This is something I couldn’t do with the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows epilogue which is why I absolutely hated the ending. That epilogue cut me off from the text in such an awkward way and forced me to look at the characters I had come to love in a new light.
Why do I like HEAs? AM I NOT A REAL HUMAN BEING? DO I LIKE TO AVOID EMOTIONS?
So maybe both of those things could be true but my logic is really that there is way too much heartbreak in real life for me to want to deal with in books. As overused as this is, I totally read to escape from the real world. Sometimes what you really need is a good book, a cup of tea, and the real world to go the fuck away. There are times when I will read sad books but those are rare and I generally tend to avoid them.
I am also one of those kids who sometimes reads the ending before I even start the book. I’ve been doing it since 4th grade so it’s kind of a little too late to change my ways. Sometimes I read the ending because I am just curious, other times a book makes me so anxious I NEED to know the ending before I can go on. There are some series I know I will not read if things don’t end in ways that work for me. And yes, maybe those series’ are amazing but I also value my sanity and KNOW that if something doesn’t work for me, I will be a mess. I remember when one of my most anticipated series ended horribly, and even though I never picked the last book up, I spend over a month feeling absolutely horrible and in a constant stage of rage. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if I had actually read the book.
Have a kind of gone off topic and am wondering what I am talking about right now? MAYBE. I really just like HAPPY ENDINGS OKAY? I like reading a book and feeling GOOD. I don’t like feeling like my world is ending and nothing will ever be okay again. I enjoy being sucker punched in the feels too as long as things work out. The world isn’t perfect and endings shouldn’t be either but again HEAs aren’t always perfect. They can be messy and complicated, which just makes them all the more better. Okay we’re done here. TOODLE-LOO.
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