As to why authors don't usually go this route, especially when writing their own fiction, check out the blowup over the ending of the Divergent series. It caused so many problems that Veronica Roth had to take to her blog to explain why she did what she did.

It didn't help. And in truth, her ending wasn't nearly as bad as what you're suggesting.

 

Anything by Darth Marrs will have a terrible ending, but by far the worst was https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6859254/1/The-Lord-of-Light (other then his current trilogy, where basically every deserves to be brutally slaughtered).

Spoiler

The entire story is wiped out in the last chapter because of a character not previously named or mentioned anywhere else in the story appears (with only the most vague possible foreshadowing), and tries to kill Harry.

Harry then drops everything, including all the women he loves, rewinds history, wipes all of his actions in that universe so that Star Wars effectively returns to canon, and proceeds to stay with the woman who tried to kill him. The End.

God Darth Marrs stories are downers.

 

Well, I don't know about fanfiction, but I read an original web story called The Life and Death of Diggory Franklin or something.

It was interesting, had time travel, action, adventure, romance, drama, emotions and was superbly written. You know from the onset that the protagonist dies at the end (time travel shenanigans) but still you get drawn in. The characters seemed compelling and real.

And then, when the end actually came, I raged.

Throughout the story, Diggory seems to be making at least some impact, so that you're sure that when he dies he'l be leaving a hell of a legacy. Then he dies due to a stupid mistake, no one in his time knows what the hell happened and most people think he was actually going crazy from stress. And a short epilogue sums up that the ambiguous antagonist basically had him out-maneuvered from the start.

That was a really dick ending and no matter how well the story was written, I felt like I had wasted hours of my life.

In summary, dude that shit causes rage.

 

This is pretty much how I've felt after I finish reading about half of the fics I've read (or more). Either because the ending was unsatisfying and left me feeling conflicted, "To fight the coming darkness" is a great example of this, AMAZINGLY well written, but the ending was had too many people fucked over in too many ways for me to be happy. Or I've read a few 100k words and the story has deteriorated in quality and I'm just left thinking about how good it could have been if it was written better and it may as well have been abandoned, because I'm not going to finish it.

 

A "bad" ending.

You mean, everything that George R R Martin has ever written?

That fucking asshole.

Why is Cersei still alive? Of all the people I liked that you killed off, you've still kept alive the ones I hate.

Anyway, in regards to HP fanfics: Barb LP's Psychic Serpent Trilogy. Written from 2001-2004, the one in particular that pissed me off was the second one (book 6) where Harry goes back in time with Tom Riddle and forces his mom to bargain for his life as a baby so she lives. It ended up with a disappointing Lily character, which pissed me off, and a likeable Snape character, which I was fine with, and with Harry leading a cadre of muggleborns who never knew about magic--and unless I'm mistaken, he pretty much changes his mind and goes back to when he was with Tom forcing Lily to bargain and stop himself from making Lily bargain for Harry's life. And in the end, the entire book was just a "Welp, so nothing really happened."

Fuck you, guy.

 

Because without her "A Feast for Crows" would have been less entertaining. Seriously, who doesn't enjoy reading about her paranoia, how the washerwomen are shrinking her gowns because they're paid by the Tyrells, how Tyrion is hiding in the walls of the Red Keep, how she fucked Lancel, Kettleblack and Moonboy for all I know, how Aurane Waters made perfect sense to make Admiral of all her fleets just because she got a tingle in her nether regions and so on.

I'm glad she's alive, because without being constantly confronted with her flaws, Jaime wouldn't have changed as much as he did.

 

There are several, but most are basically retarded in that they think that Voldemort would leave nothing but ashes, or that the Purebloods and Halfbloods would die out, among other things that basically scream "WAAAAAAH, IF THE VILLAIN WINS, NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS EVER AGAIN" and a bunch of other things that add up into a terrible and pointless conclusion.

Wish Granted is one of these. It's utterly and completely stupid.

And other ones have Voldemort swiftly conquer the rest of the world. Because lazy writing and stupidity apparently. People kind of forget that it is highly unlikely that the rest of the world is so restrained in not dueling to kill as the Ministry and the OoTP was. Which means Voldemort would need to wait a bit before taking on the ROTW. Or else he would very quickly face severe shortages of Loyal Wizards and Witches.

 

Surprised no one chimed in with DH...Also, a problem I have with Psychic Serpent's trilogy is that in the end

Spoiler

Harry becomes a fucking muggle. First he is left blind. Then he loses his magic. Whilst everyone else stays in the magical world, he becomes a fucking P.E. teacher. From spell slinging to teaching kids. Piece of piss.

 

Ha. Good point.

Wow, that's some serious hero bashing.

 

The issue with the bad guys winning is that they're the bad guys. It's not fun to see non-humorous evil triumph. There are a few stories that end with Harry dead, certainly. Not many that end with a worse world than canon (where, if you've forgotten, Rowling introduced the subplot that the Death Eaters were even more blatant Nazi ripoffs than they would otherwise be.) I'd be interested to read a story that ends with the magical world broken, but the actual characters still alive and victorious: that's a "bad" ending that should be more common.

The real issue is that fanfiction writers often struggle with not-distilling things into black and white struggles. Most "lesser of two evils" stories are handled halfheartedly, with one side clearly being "good" in relation to the bad guys. You rarely get a story where both sides are good, which is the only non-disappointing "bad" ending I can think of. And it's really hard to do that when one side is filled with bigots.

 

Well, at the end of Honey Harry kills the lesser of three evils, making the world pretty much defenseless against the other two much more powerful and evil evils. But that story has a sequal, so it doesn't count for a bad "ending".

 

TLDR AT THE BOTTOM.

Except this is and remains one of the other really stupid points about Deathly Hallows. Even stupider is seeing it repeated.

The Death Eaters actually have more in common with Jews and possible Jewish Extremists who are none to happy with outside converts, and these Jews also have special super powers, like, I dunno,.....magic. Purebloods are a stark minority, seeing themselves die out, mostly because they apparently have too few children, and also because their fellow Purebloods are marrying directly into Muggles, not just Muggleborns, but outright Muggles, which puts both the Statute in jeopardy but puts their whole society at risk, not to mention the blatant insult of not seeing a fellow witch or wizard as good enough.

So you have other Jews marrying into Gentiles, and "pure" Jews not having that many kids and such, and the traitor Jews endangering them all in doing so. There are plenty legitimate safety concerns for the Magical Community, and the old Purebloods are mostly those who have long enough memories to personally feel those old attacks, and have the most invested in Magical Society. So of course they take it the most personally. Meanwhile, far too many Muggleborns are keen on Muggle-fying Magical Society, so Magical Reactionaries, a Pureblood core but others as well, become ever more keen on what separates magicals and muggles and makes them different and such.

Basically, Jews reacting against Gentile Assimilation and criticizing everything about Gentiles and focusing on remaining different and separate to try and preserve themselves. Old Jewish families remembering ancient pogroms and such, while presently being reasonably well off. Its just that instead of Pogroms with a smattering of outright slaughter, its mostly attempts at outright slaughter with a smattering of running people out of town.

Wizarding kind has so, so much more in common with Jews it isn't funny. And Deathly Hallows was handled a bit stupidly in other ways, but in some ways, is kind of a Brick Joke referring to how previous adventures went. But that's for another thread.


As for what would be perceived as a bad end, just portray it as sympathetic to the Pureblood agenda, and when the Dark Lord wins, he does things like outlaw the marrying into of Muggles directly, forces all Muggleborns to swear Unbreakable Vows of Allegiance, yes most survived, just wand-deprived, and kidnaps Muggleborns outright to be raised with chosen families, replaced with changeling children or something, and segregates Muggleborns into their own school and such. And then because he is Immortal and plans to take the world and will need more soldiers, begins requiring/forcing all Witches to be married by say, 20 or 17, not so much arranged marriages as that marriages will be forcibly arranged if affairs aren't in order, and legislating that all married Wizarding couples are to make like the Weasleys and have loads of kids.

Oh no, what have I done! Made the Dark Lord almost reasonable if evil! Maybe I should have every Non-Pureblood, Non-Slytherin expelled from the country, force everyone to take the Dark Mark, and randomly Crucio people for giggles. :facepalm Or not because I am not retarded.


Basically, its the old bitchfit of people whining when people ask about what if the Nazis had taken over Europe. Because nobody likes to hear that for the victors, things would have become pretty damned good. Kind of like how certain kinds of people bitch and whine when you mention how Rhodesia had better standards of living even for the Black Africans and that there were Black Africans who fought for Rhodesia, or how South Africa isn't all roses since Apartheid ended and that no, not everything got better and in fact some things did in fact go to shit.

About the Nazis? An extra 20-40 million people die in the Holocaust, to the point that the Jewish deaths are rendered more of a interesting foot note than the main event, possibly even more than that, an entire generation born under Hitler, seeing nothing but glorious victory for Germany and National Socialism, willingly begin to settle and expand into the conquered Russia and Caucuses, with the entirety of the Ukraine converted to farmland, and the Nazis expanding and claiming basically all of the former USSR territory, since once Russia west of the Urals falls, the rest is a piece of cake. And maybe the Nazis do something with French Africa, who knows. And for 40 years, the Nazis digest what they gained.


And the worst part? By that time, the population is as thoroughly indoctrinated into Nazism as the people of North Korea. The entire Nazi Ideology justified by its military victory, not its promise of a better life than capitalism, but of simply winning. And of course by this time even the Nazis would have nuclear weapons.

Of course, the Nazis winning in Europe and keeping it, is such a fantastical notion that it is utterly absurd to entertain the thought, save for something outrageous like the British Empire or the USA allying with them. And instead of seeing victory, what little girls and boys saw was Nazism and Hitler bringing their nation to complete ruin, thereby more thoroughly destroying militant nationalism for the future than any propaganda that was used by either the West or East.


TLDR
Nobody wants to actually discuss it, because for the victors, things could actually end up alright. Its jsut that there future is built upon a shitload of corpses of people you might sympathize with.

 

This seems like a really shitty post after that monster (nice effort btw), but I really do hate it when the evil guys break down to, "kill everyone that isn't one of us".

I think jbern's Voldemort in TFTCD put it really well, if he killed everyone, who would he have to rule. Ideally he would probably prefer to kill no one, he just wants everyone to play life by his rules. Do that and you're ok (well ok maybe not if you're muggleborn), if you don't he will kill you.

Also I don't understand where the idea of the Deatheaters/Voldemort wanting to kill all the Muggles came from. I'm pretty sure it's not canon. It's a really stupid idea for a lot of reasons, one of the biggest is that Voldemort's camp VALUES THE STATUTE OF SECRECY. I'm pretty sure he didn't even touch them in the first war either.

In summary, a good Voldemort doesn't want to kill everyone, he just wants to control their way of life to suit his own ideals. When he and his followers just start massacring everyone I start hitting my head against the wall. Don't get me wrong, people will die, they have to so he can establish control. But as few as possible is probably his goal.

 

I dont think purebloods are a minority

 

You know what? I'm not leaving this shit alone.

Or, unlike your hypothetical and utterly nonexistant Jewish elite cabal, they're like the more vociferous anti-semitic propagandists who believed Jews to be subhuman, and thus possessing flaws not extant in the "pure" races. Which is effectively the same as these "pure" races having special powers.

Well, that's nice, but I'd like to direct you to this here quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's a key principle of the enlightened world that there has to be a balance between liberty and security. Is allowing people the ability to love whomever they'd like a significant enough factor to override the fear of exposure? Well, it demonstrably is. Maybe if the Wizengamot, or whatever branch of the ministry actually made the laws, created a decree banning muggle/wizard marriages and relationships, you'd have a point. But the fact that elements of Wizarding society are bigots does not mean that the rest of society should be ignored, nor that the wishes of the masses be subjugate the wishes of the few.

Oh, and what would you use to determine the value of a human being? Would it be the ability to do magic? Well, why? Because they're better than those who can't? Why? Because they can do magic! It's circular logic, as with all bigotry. The inherent value of a person does not come solely from their skills, but also from the use of what skills they possess.

Again, this is NAZI propaganda. Like, flat out. Replace "jews" with "aryans" and "gentiles" with "undesirables" and it could come straight out of Goebbels.

What exactly is the point of this? Of course the elderly are attached to the past: it's why corporal punishment still exists, despite being scientifically proven to actively inhibit the development of children, or why the Washington NFL team haven't changed their name to something that isn't a racial slur. People are always more comfortable with their past than their future.

Muggle-ifying how? Removing the aristocracy, and replacing it with democracy? This explains why they're so reactionary, yes, but it doesn't make them sympathetic in the slightest. That's my entire point. Whether their actions can be explained isn't the question; it's whether their actions are right, or even merely misguided. And that's demonstrably wrong.

Anyway, what separates them is magic. Full-stop. Anything else is eugenics...and that's a Nazi calling card! The idea that pureblood magic is superior to muggleborn magic is entirely unsupported in canon, and is simple bigotry.

This is a very different topic! This is what justifies the statute of secrecy itself, not what justifies the actions of the Pureblood aristocratic class. And this has happened in real life; countless times, in fact. Many Ultra-Orthodox Jews try to isolate themselves from the outside world entirely. and you know, that's fine.

The issue is when they try to isolate everyone else from the outside world. And I don't mean removing the statute, I mean the constant bigotry against non-Purebloods in magical society. That's where your analogy sputters and dies: Jewish communities, being of far smarter makeup than our pureblooded exemplars, separated from each other, allowing each group to practice as they wished. That's not what's happening in the HP series.

What? You don't quite get exactly how horrific the pogroms were, do you? Here's a very nice NYT quote:

"The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia, are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews", was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews."

No, what they have in common is a shared history of persecution. That's literally it: the Jewish extremists decided to leave the non-extremists, and coexist peacefully. The pureblooded extremists decided to murder anyone in power who disagreed with their bigotry. And that's another big difference: while the Jews of the shtetl left and formed new enclaves, they were not hiding out of revulsion at the rest of the world; whether they thought that other Jews were lesser beings for associating with gentile culture, they certainly didn't attempt to slaughter any Jews "tainted" by gentile artifacts.

You don't seem to grasp that a history of persecution in the past does not excuse bigotry of the future.

See, that's a very different world than the one that actually came about when Voldemort was in power in DH. What you're talking about is, in fact, basically a rehashing of the background plot-points of Mizuni-Sama's Prince of the Dark Kingdom, if I'm not mistaken.

We have evidence from book 7 that the Death Eaters sure as fuck had no issue with murdering muggleborn by sending them to dementor infested camps.

This is weird, creepy, and doesn't actually help your point. This is very much an unreasonable demand. Beyond being extremely sexist, which makes the group completely unsympathetic.

No, you've listed the plot points from a reasonably good (if way too long) fanfiction, included a weird marriage law that I don't remember from it, and directly contradicted what we see actually occurs under Voldemort's rule in DH.

And you still haven't made them into less Nazi-analogues.

Of fucking course it would. That's the entire fucking point of waging war: to improve and consolidate your power and resources. Of course the Nazis would have no issue with a Nazi-dominated Europe.

Okay, I'm legitimately starting to think you're a racism apologist. Of course some things went to shit. That's still a fuckload better than what things were like prior to the changes.

This is dreadfully obvious, and completely irrelevant.

The 20-40 million additional deaths in just the concentration camps alone, excluding the millions more dying in fighting, are not just "numbers" to be thrown around.

What exactly is your point? The Death Eaters were obvious Nazi analogues, regardless of why you think they acted the way they did. People who aren't bigots don't like to see the bigots win. Which is my entire fucking point. Explanations for bigotry aren't excuses for the same. Humanity is better than that.

 

There is no group of pureblood jews that goes around slaughtering converts. It just doesn't exist.
I have no doubt that if the nazis won, things would be great for the nazis, and if the death eaters won, things would be great for the death eaters. That's what winning is. When you get to kill everyone you dislike and take all their stuff, and nobody punishes you, things get better for you. I don't see what this has to do with the reader sympathizing with them though.

 

Oh dear lord, that is a lot of rage you got there Gene. I really don't think that Knoq is trying to make the pogroms seem trivial. What I read it as was that the witch burnings were trivial next to the pogroms, considering no real witches or wizards were harmed by them.

The only thing I became annoyed at in your post was this:

Humanity really isn't considering that still happens in large part of the world today. That will say people using explanations for bigotry to commit bigotry


Otherwise, you had some points in your critique of Knoqs theory.

 

What about evil happy endings? That would be where the main character is the bad guy and wins in conquering the world or whatever?

 

Maybe the idea comes from all the attacks on muggles described in the first chapter of Half Blood prince with the two ministers or that when they tortured muggles in GoF it was said it was for remembering old times. Or that if they are willing to kill wizard for having pro muggle thoughts (like the muggle studies teacher on the first chapter of DH) then it could be reasonable to extrapolate the killing of muggles.

Perhaps it would be more reasonable to say that they don't want to kill all muggles but that if a wizards decided to do whatever with a muggle (kill, torture, etc) then the government should cover for him rather than punishing or that the tell off should be about the statute of secrecy and there shouldn't be any problems as long as magic is not revealed to the general public.

 

Bad ending?

I bet the jews did this.