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So this is kind of cool: Someone on the Palcomix Discord used AI to create images of my OC Babette from my Miraculous story, “Miss Match.” They did her in both her normal form and her villain form. The pics don’t completely match my mental image of the character, but I think it’s neat that someone even thought to do this.

For sure, I was more using it as an example. The reason why I didn’t bring it up initially is because I was wondering if people tended to write happy endings because they’re more popular or if people tend to get turned off by tragic/not yet happy endings.

At a certain point, it’s speculation. Still, a bunch of likes and a comment… good to have those!

Well I just saw today that they liked one of my other stories. So it’s not necessarily the grim third option. Also, they left a comment early on that they really liked my stuff. Though it was the only comment they made. Which is definitely helpful, if not constructive necessarily. I guess it’s most likely that they weren’t a fan of where the story was going to end, or stopped briefly.

Hi, Deadman and all. Thinking about your original question, I would suppose that the ending of the story should make sense within the story itself. While the occasional surprise ending out of left field can please readers, it can also disturb them. You should also keep in mind that if you persuade a reader to invest in your heroic and likeable protagonist, only to have tragedy befall them beyond the protagonist’s control, the reader might get upset with you. As a comparison with another medium, if you watch episodes of The French Chef, you know that the lobster always “gets it” in the first five minutes. But if you watch Leon the Lobster, you would understandably get upset to see the bright-red shell, the lemon slice, and the drawn butter. If the audience agrees with the ending you’ve chosen, then you’re writing well. Or, I suppose you could deliberately write stories where the (tragic) ending only makes sense to the reader on a second or third reading. But if you do that, keep the fireproof curtains well-drawn while you build up a following. Cheers!

According to AI (Google’s), the longest somebody’s stayed in a casino is 51 hours 33 minutes.

Maybe they were on a spring break or something? Had time to read to where they stopped, had to go back to school/work? Or yes, maybe they decided to move on w/o leaving a constructive critique, hard to tell TBH. (Though there’s always that grim third option, got hit by a bus or something.)

Part of the reason I ask is because I had a reader who is reading one of my long form narrative stories. Within the space of a week, they read every chapter of the story. I know this because they liked almost every chapter and I got a notification. But they got to around 10 chapters from the end of the story and stopped liking the chapters. The story didn’t really have a happy ending. One could argue it’s an “everything is terrible/life is suffering” ending. So part of me wonders if having a not happy ending is what caused them to stop. Maybe they did finish the story but didn’t like the last few chapters. Which makes me curious about what caused this change.