Fiction/Screenwriting Thoughts

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Lately I've noticed a trend in writing where the characters go through horrendous tragic events and death defying adventures and at the end everything is nice and happy again.

Case in point:  last season of Stranger Things. I loved the first season. The second was good, but the young people were so normal and happy and untraumatized at the dance in the last episode. Hello! After what they'd been through? (And I just won't forgive them for treating Sean Astin that way! It was as if, "OK, we're going to use him, he's a good actor and people will watch because he's in it but we can't really have him end up with Joyce despite how kind and good and brave he is so we will have the little raptor whatever-they-are creatures eat his intestines."  I'm shuddering now.)

They are not the only ones, though. Scarring happenings should leave scars. The characters should be different. There should be something at stake.  This was what I liked about the end of Lord of the Rings: Frodo is not a happy camper in the end. He is not well adjusted. The ring took so much of him, the journey to get rid of it so much more.

We suffer and do not stay the same.

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