I’m going to spoil a few endings in this blog. Mass Effect 3. Blade Runner. Star Wars.

This is a stupid question. I understand that. But it means something more. It’s a question of story telling consistency and laws of an invented fictional world. A great story does not have to be possible. Things too wild for you to imagine can make the greatest story. But wild fantastic or magical events in a story have to be consistent with a story or they’ll jar. They throw you out of place.

So what happens to a werewolf who becomes an astronaut? There’s many questions in this. First of all why the hell would a werewolf become an astronaut? Does he not know? Has he not seen a full moon or those the change come with amnesia? Has nobody noticed? And if he were to make it to space what effect would the moon have? Would the shuttle and the suit protect him? Or would the lunar power be too great so close? Would he turn werewolf forever? Or fully wolf? Or would he die? The answer is you’re going down the wrong path even considering the idea. It’s utterly ridiculous. Do not include a werewolf in a space story. It’s dumb.

Now this is a stupid example of a real problem in a lot of story telling. It’s easiest seen at endings. Because as far as I can tell, endings seem to be hard. Especially in pop fiction. A stupid, crowd pleasing stuck on ending a can spoil the entirety of a narrative and end up not pleasing anyone but the idiots. And who wants them? Examine Blade Runner. There’s a lot of good in maintaining the world’s consistency. The completely one-sided fight between Deckard and Batty is how that fight should have gone. It fit the world. But if we look at the original cut’s ending, when Deckard and Rachel drive away beneath a blue sky we wonder what the hell is going on? Didn’t we see an industrial hellscape and blasted sky at the film’s beginning?

It’s similar in Star Wars, although not so obvious. There’s a problem with the entire plot around the theme of balancing the Force. In the chronological arc of the story the universe we see has is overburdened with the good Jedi. Then all but a few of them die and the evil Sith have the power. Then the Sith die and there is Luke. The lone Jedi. And he’s good. So the Force is not in balance. What I read into this is that the prophecy of such importance has turned out not no be true. It’s nonsense. And not in the way the entirety of the story is. It’s nonsense because it doesn’t stay true to itself.

Last year the end of the Mass Effect series of video games saw widespread controversy over its ending (read: whiney people with internet connections). It’s the same problem. But it comes about differently. It has a greater excuse but it shoves the deviance in your face so you cannot miss it. Throughout the games you are fighting against the oncoming doom of the Reapers. You are told again and again that there is no hope, that it is impossible, but throughout the games you are doing the impossible again and again. There’s nothing especially clever in a philosophical sense about anything that happens and when the plot gives you an apparent way out and then tears it away to give you some stupid ham-fisted quasi-philosophical cliché that has shown up in every other science fiction since 1950 it doesn’t come across well. In fact it spoils the entire three preceding works. It’s an example of writers trying very hard to be clever and believing they’ve succeeded when in fact they’ve  done something incredibly stupid. The ending did not match what a come before it.

I just want plots to keep hold of a tone. Be something. Blend things maybe but don’t tack things on.

Just keep it simple stupid.