Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Quick Poll - How do you feel about 'bad ends'? (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-09 18:09:29
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Poll

Quick Poll - How do you feel about 'bad ends'?

  • 'Bad ends' are fun. Love them. 43
  • 'Bad Ends' are fine. Eh, whatever. 27
  • I hate 'bad ends' and actively avoid them. 15
  • 'Bad Ends' are the BEST. The Worse the better! 5
  • I like clicking buttons in polls. 19
  • 2024-08-09
  • —2024-08-16
  • 109 votes
{'title': "Quick Poll - How do you feel about 'bad ends'?", 'choices': [{'text': "'Bad ends' are fun. Love them. ", 'votes': 43}, {'text': "'Bad Ends' are fine. Eh, whatever. ", 'votes': 27}, {'text': "I hate 'bad ends' and actively avoid them. ", 'votes': 15}, {'text': "'Bad Ends' are the BEST. The Worse the better! ", 'votes': 5}, {'text': 'I like clicking buttons in polls.', 'votes': 19}], 'closes_at': datetime.datetime(2024, 8, 16, 18, 8, 39, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc), 'created_at': datetime.datetime(2024, 8, 9, 17, 58, 15, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc), 'description': None, 'allow_multiple': False, 'total_votes': 109}

Content

Quick Note : This is NOT about Open Trade. Just the idea in general. Don't Panic.

What is this about, then? So I was thinking about using the Captioned Images to explore some paths not taken, and some alternate outcomes that could have happened to our characters. Some of those paths could be happy. Some could be darker.

What's this about a "Bad End"?I don't know how universal a term 'bad end' is. But basically I'll frame it as a story that does not end well for our characters. It can still be satisfying, as maybe that person was a jerk and you wanted to see them get cursed. Or it could be the fall of a good person, like Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul.

Bad ends are more often seen in shorter works. For example anthology shows, short stories, one-shots, novellas, captioned images.

Some examples would include Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, What If?, Any Simpsons Halloween Special, many many more.

What's the poll about then?I'm just curious how you feel about 'bad ends'.

That all??Pretty much. I guess is there is a 'path' not taken for any story that you want to see (good or bad), leave it below.

Comments

Natalia

In general I don’t like things that feel unfair. So if the bad end happens to someone who earned it with the own choices (like breaking bad, BCS, etc) I’m fine with it. But if it’s just a random thing that happens to someone minding their own business I tend to dislike that. I couldn’t watch the show The Boys because of (mild spoiler) what happens in the first episode with the speedster guy and the MC’s fiancé. That scene still makes me upset occasionally.

roseleaf

Personally I think that scene works pretty good. It mostly works in the sense of setting the tone and telling people immediately what the show is. And giving them the choice to stay or leave. It's honest in that sense. It might be a horror movie trope, but there is something about transgresion. Like in order for the audience to be invested that our heroes need to have done something to set things off. They needed to transgress and break into the morge, or touch that mysterious book. The boys was more that the Supes, transgresed in that scene and we are watching their downfall because of it. But..... the rest of the show doesn't entirely back that up. There are worse things that just kind of happen to the people we are rooting for that are not earned. I also see it working in something to do with coincidences in fiction. The large overview being, 'a coincidence can create a problem or conflict, but it should never be used to solve a problem or conflict.' Once you pass a certain point in a story, you can't introduce a coincidence anymore.

Czarzhan

I guess it depends on how bad the bad end is and if it's telegraphed. There was a Xanth book called Crewel Lye, which was about a ghost and the bulk of the story was about how he got killed 400 years earlier. While I could devour one of those books in a day, it took me six months to finish the story, because I knew he was going to die at the end. (End of the flashback, it turns out, although it was the majority of the book. He "got better" by the end of the actual book, and that's not really a spoiler. The crux of the book was finding out how he died and where his body was so they could bring him back.)

Smartkittykhan

That's understandable. I too struggle with watching unfair things like that happen and not knowing if there'll be any catharsis later on. Comes down to catering your own experience.

roseleaf

I know I am a bit of a mystery there when it comes to *how* bad. Sometimes I don't really think something is dark, and others are telling me it's really bad. I wouldn't do something like here's a story about the pokemon card trading, and then they got it by a bus. The end. But I'd do something like there was a case of mistaken identity in the computer system, and our hero wasn't able to break free of the world they were forced t live as a result. Even writing that I'm like, 'yeah, that's kinda dark'. I know I'd enjoy it, but I'd hesitate before writing it.

Natalia

I’m aware that artistically the show is making a statement about how “the real world” would react to the presence of super powered individuals. I agree with the general thesis that humanity working together is more valuable, etc. (idk, never actually watched the rest of the show) I’m just saying that I empathize too much with characters to see them going through traumatic experiences and finish the media consumption process wanting more. I simply cannot enjoy seeing a work that makes me empathize with a character and then tortures them for the sake of the plot without a happy ending. I similarly had to stop watching The Walking Dead at a certain point even though it was a ritual watching it with my mom. I understand that certain messages and plots cannot be conveyed correctly while treating all innocents fairly. I’m just saying I don’t like it. That being said I don’t think one caption of an innocent guy getting traumatized or whatever will be a problem. I just won’t like that one.

Smartkittykhan

I would LOVE some bad ends. I generally prefer happy endings, but with TG content I'm more open to the protagonist not necessarily coming out on top. Concerning you stories specifically I think What-ifs have a lot of potential. Art God knows I've thought about Con Artist and what could've happened if Gwen hadn't reigned herself in.

roseleaf

I think you are making the right choices. There are 'the real world' where some people are bastards, and not everyone makes right choices. But there are good people who can change the world just as much as the bad people. Then there is 'the real world' where everyone is a step away from being a nazi, a rapist, a cannibal, or murdered for no reason. Sadly this is where The Boys, Game of Thrones, and Walking Dead are.

roseleaf

Yeah, I definitely pulled back a couple times during Con Artist. There were a couple ideas I thought about exploring and didn't. Gwen could have really ruined her life more than she did.

Halima Abdi

Not a fan, they tend to be poorly written or written just to get a rise out of the audience.

Mr. Domino

Bad ends are the best ends. A lot of my content is bad ends right now because I write darker stuff when I'm stressed out and depressed.

Steve

Definitely saw you starting to dip your toe into the pool there. In some ways even though the online tg art community is heavily influenced with the use of magic, there exists a crossover with how folks feel in reality with the desire to “explore the other side”. In that vein, it makes sense that there are occasional bad ends as that too mirrors life. Not all choices that seem positive in the beginning play out as happily as hoped. Thanks for taking our input. I personally love the idea of what if alternative endings to see how things could have gone off of the rails if your creative muse took you all the way down that path

roseleaf

It was just more fun for readers to watch Gwen claw back her life into some resemblance of what she had then to continue to descend until her life was ruined entirely.

roseleaf

I know alot of what I read in the genre tends to be mostly bad ends with no escape for our hero. So I'm tempted to lean into that inspiration, but those are also not entirely TG stories. I hope they help with the stress and depression. Those are hard things to deal with.

Mr. Domino

EDIT: This comment has gotten really out of hand. Apparently I had a lot to say on the subject, lol. TL;DR I talk about narrative structure, ending points, how bad ends can service a story without just being there to kneejerk a reaction out of the reader, and how stories have natural ending points. I provide some examples of webcomics for each of these points. Then I talk a bit about image caption narratives, both good and bad, and how I do stuff with my stories. Yeah, that scene was particularly upsetting to me as well, and why I don't watch The Boys. It's a level of grim, bitter, gory cynicism that I don't have patience for. For me, Invincible is about as 'dark' as I'm willing to take my superhero stuff. When it comes to my own image captions (and my comic, when it was being produced) I always tried to 'soften' the blow of the bad end. Typically someone does something to earn the bad end, or they'rej ust unlikeable as a character. But when I do toss an 'innocent' into the life of fire and leave them stuck (usually as a woman in a less than happy life) I try to at least stick a humor cushion in there. But sometimes a guy is just going to end up stuck as a Hooter's Girl, stuck with a whole new life and forgotten in his old one, because the witch thought he was the one pinching her butt, when he was just slapping his friend's hand away and his was the only hand she saw. Sometimes a couple is gonna get stuck as a statue in the park, or a man as a bird, a woman as a cat, or an executive team turned into the new interns with no memory of who they used to be. Sometimes a little girl with the powers of a chaos god but no restraint is gonna turn an office worker into her new dolly and be they stuck like that because everyone forgets about her. There are points to be made about bad endings for side characters and how it serves a narrative function to point out something about the character or to make the story move along. In worlds where transformations can happen, sometimes bad things just happen and forcing a 'good ending' only weakens the narrative. Drama, in this case transformation drama, is just as much a driver of narrative as exposition is. And too much of one without the other leads to just bad, unsatisfying stories. And all stories have a ending point. Most of the time it is good, sometimes it's bad, and typically now they're more ambiguous. Sometimes the conclusion to a story is designed, sometimes it just sort of happens naturally. When a story feels like it needs to end, it needs to end otherwise it just...continues and loses what it made it good to begin with. An example of this in particular is a certain famous webcomic artist who 'feels bad' for even his villain characters and refuses to introduce any sort of consequences into his comics. Everything gets resolved in a peaceful way and the story is unsatisfying because of it. There's no stakes, there's no consequences, there's no true drama that makes the story be compelling. He leans on his Twitter fanbase that tells him he does no wrong, silences any criticism no matter how constructive and continues to act as if his comic is better than it truly is. Yeah, it was a starting point for many people on this road, but because it lacks any sort of true drama (save for weekend cliffhangers), the story is unsatisfying, lacks depth, and is only 'complex' because the guy is addicted to exposition of his own convoluted logic of how things work in his comic's setting. It, and the artist/writer, is overrated. His art is good, it's been updating since 2002 and his TFs are great (when they happen anymore). Those are it's biggest draws. I check it out entirely because of habitual momentum at this point because I've been reading it since 2002...When it actually had consequences and drama and bad things happened to it's characters. This is a comic that reached it's natural ending point years ago, probably at least a decade. Storylines connected, characters had resolution and things changed for the characters. It could have been good ending. But it continues on, losing everything that made it good to begin with as the creator refuses to add drama, consequences and needlessly complicates his own lore. Another example of a comic that ended but did NOT have a feeling of satisfaction for the reader was Zebra Girl. The comic just...ends with a hasty epilogue that wraps everything up in a bow. And I get it, Joe was tired of the comic, he wanted to be done with it and move on to different projects and stories. But the story, to feel naturally complete, needed at least another arc in order to bring it to a natural conclusion. It was a forced conclusion, a forced 'good end' that was constructed as the ending. It just didn't feel like it should have been, though. To bring it back to TG/TG stuff and make this all relevant to this Patreon page: Con Artist. Con Artist reached a conclusion that felt both natural for the narrative AND constructed as an ending. It had consequences and wasn't a perfect neat and tidy package. Kendra was stuck in a radically different life, but she had managed to make it work out for herself. It wasn't a 'good end', but it was a good ending. But Con Artist was really popular...And Roseleaf gave it an extension it didn't need. We didn't need Kendra and the Girlfriend and all that silly age regression and race change stuff to happen. And in the end, and while I can't speak for Roseleaf, it seemed like there was a sudden moment of 'this needs to end' and the narrative was given a flip-flop to basically reset the entire thing so that it would have a 'good ending'. It felt forced and it wasn't satisfying from a audience perspective. Sorry if some of that was a little harsh, Roseleaf. I'm really hoping that Open Trade is allowed to reach a conclusion that feels right to the story and isn't carried on longer than it needs to be. And this entire discourse about narratives needing to reach endings, even if they are 'bad endings' is especially true for caption authors. It's one thing to make a comic where the narrative can be spread out and have time to breathe, where you can 'show don't tell' with visual. With captions, you have a VERY limited space in which to tell your story. You have to hit the narrative beats, introduce the characters, introduce the conflict, describe the transformation, create the response to the transformation and then bring it to a satisfying conclusion...Typically in the range of about 2000 words or less. That's not a lot of space, and even if you plan on making the story of a caption into a series, you're limited by the images of the pretty girl you found. Maybe you'll get lucky and find a series of related images, or you're going to have to essentially repeat the process of 'introduce conflict/describe transformation' ad infinitum until you get tired because you'll have to pick a new picture for each caption and then link them together to form a narrative. Which most people won't care a lot about because they're mainly just there to look at the sexy girl and skim for the caption's base content so they can jerk off to the fetish side of it all. For caption writers, we absolutely have to know when a narrative needs to end due to space constraints and how much effort versus reward we put into the work. Sometimes it's just easier to write a story with a bad end because the narrative resolution can be concluded in a much much concise manner. Good endings, frankly take longer and put you at risk of running out of space/losing the attention span of your audience. But I digress. Bad endings, bad turns have a place in fiction and can be well done in a way that only makes the story better. And they can be done poorly, done purely to shock the reader, make them angry or feel sad. It's still art, even if it descends to a crude level of sexual wish fulfillment. Art is supposed to create emotions in the audience and is subjective. We can't simply have all bad endings, and we can't simply always have good endings. But I try not to linger on the bad ending. I'll either start with it, then do 'en media res' for the events that led up to it, or I'll basically slam the bad ending on and leave it. Lingering can be pretty edge-lord territory, and it can get pretty old pretty fast if all the character is doing is drama-dumping about how awful their new life is. There IS a market for that, just like there's a market for all the weirdo sex stuff that people get out of this fetish and all the sub-genres of it. It's just not my style because I'm not into that. Even if I have been told that 'all my characters have broken empathy dials'.

Brenda

I enjoy a good alternate possibility bad end

terry gene

>>>None of the Above<<<< I'm writing a reply, INSTEAD of clicking on the poll. The selection doesn't capture the issue, not a dig on you, but bad endings is a MAJOR stretch for ANY fiction writer. Now to get specific. In the USA, there was something called the Comics Code. It prevented much of the age inappropriate sex, violence and general anti-social from being peddled to children. A good thing, most people would agree. However, it became the excuse for poor or non existent plots, collapsed character arcs, and cut off most themes beyond "good will always win." Your mission, if you want to accept it is to write Meaningfully! Much of what I see missing in serial fiction these days, and unfortunately dominating Patreon, is the grinding episode after episode of consequences without motivation. Specific, what motivates the antagonist. It is a sign of the baby writer when the antagonist (person, event, society, group, et.al.) only briefly makes the scene, sets up the consequences and effectively leaves to return at the end or not at all. In the case of secondary antagonists, a glimpse into their motivations at the start of their arc, with further disclosure downstream, increases the depth and encourages the reader to read more. Swinging back to the original question, bad endings, I see you questioning as a Good Thing. Bad endings free up the artist/writer, much as the Comic Code collapse matured the comics industry. A bad ending without a fully motivated reason is cause for me to quit an artist/writer. I Believe in You. Stretch, take risks with character arcs, especially antagonists. Your readers will applaud. Terry Gene

A.I.A

I personally enjoy bad ends, and when it comes to tg/tf content, tend to switch from good to bad ends regularly depending on my mood. But to answer your questions about your stories, I guess whether I prefer a story to have a good or bad end mostly depends on how realistic it could be. When it comes to fantasy, magic or reality alterations, I love seeing them backfire because the bad end can be quite harsh yet “unrealistic” - I’d have enjoyed for Con Artist to end badly for example. On the other hand, more grounded, realistic stories can make bad ends trickier imo - I wonder how enjoyable an Open Trade bad end could be, especially if it stems from Stephanie and Lexie getting stuck in legal limbo. But overall, seeing bad ends on your Patreon would clearly interest me!

Alex Smyth

I'm torn. I enjoy seeing/reading transformations with physical changes and mental changes, but changes against one's will, especially mental changes, are morally and ethically wrong. I sometimes enjoy reading those, but feel bad about it. Like I enjoyed the transformation, but I feel bad for the character who was changed against their will and had their whole life taken away. Not just gender transformations, but all transformations. That's why when I do like/enjoy a bad end transformation story, I usually prefer them with an irredeemable, unlikeable, unsympathetic character or characters. This way, I can enjoy seeing/reading the physical and mental transformations without feeling bad for the character/characters. The only other issue there though, is who or what is causing the transformation. If it's a random object the character(s) shouldn't have been messing with (cursed ring, cursed necklace, magic wand, etc.), then that's fine because that's their fault. But if it's another person, like, for example, a girlfriend/wife whose a witch and she was cheated on, then while I'll understand her anger, changing someone against their will is ethically and morally wrong, no matter how justified you feel. And that's my two cents on this issue. I did miss out on voting, but to be fair, I wouldn't know which option to choose that would match up with my feelings on bad ends.

roseleaf

Never too late. I always read the replied. That makes a lot of sense. The bad end needs to be in-line with the story. And not just misery porn.

roseleaf

Thanks. I try to strive for an ending that fits the characters. I know when I started Con Artist that I didn't have an ending in mind, but once it showed itself and it gave a (hopefully) satisfying conclusion to Gwen, I started working for that goal. Satisfying doesn't need to be a happy ending, but just one that suits the character. I'm two eps away from the end of umbrella academy I've been hearing people are not happy with the ending. I saw what it is. I can see that it is something that would leave a bad taste in people's mouth. But curious how it is executed.

roseleaf

Thanks! I had a worse ending for Gwen in Con Artist, but ultimately discovered something that worked better. Gwen had so little control of her situation that screwing her over probably wouldn't feel right.