What's your favorite type of ending?

[Rhonder]

Bittersweet endings are tolerable so long as it's not an ending where the heroes have to sacrifice their own power, or die, then it's a no go for me.

My feelings are kind of related to this: I don't necessarily mind bittersweet endings where it's like "everyone had to die for the greater good". Like obviously that's super sad but I can come to terms with it. Or similarly where it's like 1 or 2 people had to die for whatever reason. Sad but 'ight.

What i really hate is where they just kill off almost everyone but leave like a good 1/3 or 1/2 of the people alive, sometimes kinda arbitrarily. That drives me nuts :X There's one anime in particular in mind that ended this way that left me feeling rather unsatisfied.

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On topic, I prefer happy or bittersweet myself. As with many others I hate getting really invested in a bunch of characters just for everything to go to shit and stay that way at the end x__x Of course, genre partially dictates this, if that type of tragic ending makes sense then I'm cool with it (and I wouldn't want a forced positive ending).

[HoodQuest]

I always love dark endings. For example, when a character tries to climb a mountain. Several of the character's friends get hurt and/or die, but they keep going. When they reach the top, they don't feel happiness because they lost more than they gained. It's dark, bittersweet endings like that I always love. It just shows that not all stories have "happy endings".

[baasinsimple]

Bittersweet, happy or whatever as long it leaves a lasting impression.

[racarter]

I prefer bittersweet. Straight up happy endings often don’t leave me wanting more.

One good example is in Danganronpa 3: Future Side. My fave died tragically while basically saving everyone, including the man he loved. During the whole series he was presented as a jerk and got the most shit (including a very public outing topped with humiliation and blackmail, which haunted him for years). Not to mention the man he loved stabbed him.

Had he loved it wouldn’t have been as satisfying. Tho I have issues with the ending in general of that series, that sacrifice actually meant something and it made me want more of the series and that character so I buried myself in fanfic.

Same for basically all my faves who die, Enki from Nanbaka, Pyrrha from RWBY, in some ways their deaths were senseless as one only temporarily wounded the villain by dying and the other really only succeeded in stalling the villain (tho her death unlocked Ruby’s power, so there’s that).

Basically loss makes it more impactful for me. To lose things or people but still managing to continue onward.

Tragedy can also be good tho, depending on the story.

In general I prefer darker stories because I like to feel the pain of connecting to a character only to have them brutally ripped away from me in one way or another. And it always happens to me. My faves are always killed, scarified, tortured, etc. Even if they don’t die, I like seeing them suffer and be tortured in one way other another. But they always succeed in some way, thus adding a silver lining to all the hell they went through.

So yeah. Of course happy ends don’t bother me or anything, it just depends on the type of story it is.

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[unknown_user]

When I was a teen, I loved very much three certain types of endings:

• Lovers die
• Everyone die
• World is destroyed

I managed to find them rarely, but when I did, I concluded "THIS IS THE MASTERPIECE!!!"
And yes, I was the huge fan of Shakespeare
I still like tragic endings, but no so passionately anymore. Now I'm more agree with this opinion:

my favourite type of ending is a fitting ending. One that goes well with the story and it`s message. (if it has a message)

It is really the most satisfying, when ending organically follows from events and atmosphere of the story. It makes the story solid.

When I was a kid I loved dark tragic endings, bittersweet ends etc. Now that I'm an adult and see that fear, despair and tragedy are real...I 100% prefer happy endings.

I can understand this point too, but only partially. I still don't like happy endings when they are out of the blue. I can "believe" in them and feel good from them only if the author made them very logical. Bittersweet endings seems more logical to me in many cases.

[ratscout]

This is true. My favorite type of ending is a complete one, LOL.

[ratscout]

You said it so well. Loss makes it so much more impactful for me, too.

[ratscout]

I'm all for killing off characters myself (LOL, I'm a sadistic mofo), but I agree that it has to be organic, has to be meaningful, and has to make the other characters change in some sort of way, Maybe the loss just becomes apart of the character of the living or something. <3

[OliviaMerteli]

I like "ending", ending. Sad/happy/bittersweet don't matter to me as long as (most of, as least) my questions are answered as the end.

[ratscout]

Those types of happy endings are. So. Unsatisfying to me. They oddly enough feel so insincere and fake, haha.

[TheFalseVyper]

I 100% agree lol. Way too cheesy

[soyasholm]

I like happy endings, it heals my heart. Bittersweet endings can be really good too, as can open endings be.
Though sad endings are a tough one for me... It's sometimes hard for me to fully enjoy the series if the ending is sad, but I have read comics with a sad ending that I liked, I think it depends on how it's written.

[Pablo.C.S]

I like any ending that solidly closes all the plot threads developed throughout the story, regardless of the tone of the actual ending itself.

That being said, my absolute favourite types of endings are those that captures an indescribable feeling, something that is beyond simply that of good, bad, bittersweet, etc.

An ending that forces you to think through a different perspective. Something that at first you simply hate, but the more thought you give the more it eventually grows on you.

Since this is entirely subjective, I cannot exactly quantify this feeling, only give some examples, in no particular order of pieces of media that I believe to have achieved this indescribable feeling:

1) The End of Evangellion
2) Homunculus (Manga)
3) pi (film by Darren Arenofsky)
4) Serial Experiments Lain
5) Hiabane Renmei
6) The Stars My Destination (Novel)
7) Metro 2033 (Novel)
8) Stalker (film by Andrei Tartakovsky)
9) Talos Principle (Video Game)
10) The Beach
11) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
12) 12 monkeys (film, not series)

[mrtoontastic]

My favorite is the one where everybody dies!

Nah, nah. I'm kidding. My favorites are the happy endings and the "the job is completed" endings. Happy endings are the obvious, but I give some double points if the happy endings also hit you with the feels from time to time. Other ones include ones where the character's spent a long journey, and the deed is finally done, and they get to live their lives properly. Samurai Jack is a good example of that. It might not have been the most amazing ending, but I feel it was a great ending for the length we've all waited, and Jack can finally live as he should.

[Eveeka]

I like bittersweet endings because real life isn't a fairy tale. And not every story should have one hundred percent happy ending, like in life. For this, for example, I like the ending in How to Train Your Dragon in the first and second movies. (Hiccup lose his leg, and in the second movie his father dies)

[JBrentonParker]

As a reader, I love happy endings! I want the good guys to win, the bad guys to be defeated, Main Character to end up with Love Interest, all the subplots to be wrapped up, the world to be saved, and for there to be happily ever afters all around! As a preteen, I had to give away every book I owned of the Series of Unfortunate Events, because after book 3, I finally caught on that each book was going to be more depressing and hopeless than that last. I probably should have figured that out from the series title, I know.
Over a decade later, I had to give up on Games of Thrones for the exact same reason.

That being said, as a writer, I'm a real asshole. I love to write me some depressing endings. Main characters die, quests are failed, and if the world is saved, it's only at a great a cost. I guess it's because I get so much more emotionally invested in the worlds, characters, and stories other people have created, while I am more aware of my own being just... the threads with which I am weaving a narrative. So I'm a big ol' hypocrite, haha.

One thing I've noticed in my recent forays into the world of short story publication: editors are sick and tired of depressing endings. Everyone thinks they are so cool and hard core and original with their grimdark stories and grimdark endings, but they don't realize that everyone else and their grandmother is writing the same thing. Many fantasy, scifi, and other literary speculative fiction magazines now seem to specify that they don't want to see any grimdark, or anything overly depressing just for the sake of being depressing.

[unknown_user]

I want the good guys to win, the bad guys to be defeated

Different people have different opinion on which guys are good and which are bad
Hm... by the way, if I wanted the so-called "villain" to win, but the main character and their friends defeated them, is this ending happy or not?!

[JBrentonParker]

Haha, good point!
I want the protagonist to win, and the antagonist to lose as long as the protagonist isn't intended to be an unsympathetic and irredeemably "evil" character, in the event that the antagonist can't be wooed over to the "good" side a la Piccolo and Vegeta.

I do get what you mean though, because one of my favorite characters of all time, Johannes Cabal, would certainly be the villain if the story was told from any other character's perspective. He is, of course, more of an anti-hero than, say, Dolores Umbridge, who I think fits the bill of a up-and-up, undeniable "bad guy" pretty well.

[ratscout]

The End of Evangelion really grew on me, as did the show in general. The attention to detail in that show and the whole way it was put together was kind of dazzling to me. It was just so darned interesting and unique.