Preface! (Major Delicious in Dungeon spoilers ahead)
As the ending of Delicious in Dungeon approached, I found myself worried. What if they ruined it? What if the ending sucked? Would I toss this delightful series out the window? Not literally, I only own Volume 1, but figuratively.
I started thinking about Jujutsu Kaisen, and how this prolonged ending has made me want to sell my series collection and the copious amounts of figures I’ve collected from the JJK universe. I look to stories for inspiration, as most creatives do, and when an ending completely flubs, it can and often does ruin the entire series.
What faith I have in endings is almost entirely thanks to Yuji Kaku, because both Ayashimon and Hell’s Paradise had perfect endings. No notes. Would not change a thing.
Delicious in Dungeon did the same. It stuck the landing. And the resonant takeaway, the lasting impact, feels so good.
Preface over!
I have been giving a lot of thought to the notion of happy endings in storytelling. Especially in light of Delicious in Dungeon coming to an end with an ending that felt just right. It reminded me of Hell’s Paradise, and how that ending felt like a cool ointment on a lingering burn. And I wondered—why don’t all stories have happy endings?
Fast forward like, a few days. My wife and I have been on a journey to see essentially every notable horror movie ever, and our latest stop, The Strangers, was one of the bleakest movies I’ve ever seen, with an ending that makes you wonder why you watched it in the first place.
Everyone gets murdered (spoiler!) and the bad guys get away.
There’s an important question to ask yourself while crafting a story—what do you want your readers to take away from your story? For The Strangers, I don’t know what they want you to take away from the movie. That bad things happen? That you could be murdered at any point for literally no reason? Not to live in the middle of nowhere? Are these really practical takeaways? I guess so. Maybe if I’m murdered in the near future, I can remember how well The Strangers prepared me for this.
I’m being facetious, forgive me.
And then I thought of Hell’s Paradise. Which is pretty much a daily occurrence. And I begin to ask the questions again—why did Hell’s Paradise need a full-fledged happy ending instead of a John Wick 4 kind of ending where the hero dies, but finds peace in it? Spoiler. Again. Sorry.
Hell’s Paradise rewards the reader for making the journey. And that, in my humble opinion, is the key. The ending should reward the reader. It should give them what they’ve wanted this whole time.
Forget what the character wants out of the story, and give the reader what they want instead. If they coincide, great.
In Hell’s Paradise, we want to see Gabimaru and his wife. We want to see these criminals rehabilitated in society. We want them to be happy after what they’ve been through.
In Delicious in Dungeon, we want Falin back. We want all these goofy adventurers to live a happy life. Unless you’re sadistic and want to see people suffer, which I guess is on you.
As a writer, endings stress me out. Probably even more than meticulously planning a character arc. How do you conclusively wrap up a story to make it feel appropriate and meaningful? How do you leave a lasting impression?
Far too often, I find myself closing the back cover of a book, or staring blankly at the credits roll at the end of a movie and thinking that all the goodness in the story deflated like a paltry balloon.
Very rarely, and I mean rarely, does that happen with a true happy ending. Which has created this new fascination with why all stories can’t have happy endings.
At some point in my writing journey, I was bestowed with this notion that there are only four possible endings to a story.
The character gets what they want.
The character doesn’t get what they want.
The character realizes that what they wanted wasn’t what they really wanted, and gets something better.
The character realizes that what they wanted wasn’t what they really wanted, and gets nothing.
I’m officially crossing 2 and 4 off my list for possible endings. See, look—
The character gets what he wants.
The character doesn’t get what he wants.The character realizes that what he wanted wasn’t what he really wanted, and gets something better.
The character realizes that what he wanted wasn’t what he really wanted, and gets nothing.
This may be a me thing, but I’m going down this rabbit hole regardless. I cannot tell you the last time a 2 or 4 ending stuck with me, or lingered beyond annoyance or frustration.
I think of the movie Barbarian. It’s a pretty dark horror movie, with lots of unexpected twists and turns and by all accounts, it could/should have had an ending that followed suit. It didn’t. It wasn’t necessarily a straight-up happy ending, but just about every character got what they deserved.
And guess what? That movie lingers still to this day. Because I know that, at the end of it, through the emotional journey, I’ll come out the other end feeling good.
As a writer, you may feel the need to do right by your character. And that’s not a bad place to start, but at the end of the day, wouldn’t you rather do right by your reader? Is a character going to come back and read more of your stuff? Probably not, but if they do, let me know, because that’s cool. And maybe you’re on the other end of this paragraph saying that you don’t write for your readers, you write for yourself, and hey, more power to you. I’m just a bunch of words, I may not even be human, how would you know. Anyway, I digress.
Yuji Kaku could well have had Gabimaru die at the end of Hell’s Paradise, he finds peace at last, just like John Wick, or he just straight-up dies angry as hell and we’re left remembering how bitter life can be. Delicious in Dungeon could have made Falin stay dead, or stay a monster, as a lingering reminder of the wrongs her party committed in the dungeon. That would have served the characters just fine. Consequences, and all that.
But would it have lingered? Would it have left the reader smiling, or aching?
That’s the question, and I don’t have an answer, because that’s not what happened. What I do know is that happy endings leave readers feeling good. And that’s the gift of storytelling. You, the writer, have the power to leave your reader feeling a certain way.
What you do with that power is up to you.
Hey, creatives—look at your ending. Really ask yourself: what does this leave your reader feeling? Here’s the challenge: how can you make that ending “happy” or happier, if it already is happy. What did your character want in the beginning? Did they get it? If not, could they get something better? I’m asking a lot of questions, sorry.
Hey, fans of Delicious in Dungeon—how you feeling about that ending? Was it everything you wanted?