Let the Story End

People are always asking for what happens next.  It's not enough for them that I save the world and found the love of my life.  Maybe I just want to live a quiet, normal life now, with a nice home with my husband, maybe a couple of kids.  Sure, I was created to be a fighter, but I just want to be done fighting.  I just want to be left alone.

But that's not enough for people.  The first story was so interesting and intense and moving that they want more.  There was never intended to be a sequel.  My story was intended to have an open-ended but implied happy ending.  It was supposed to end in beauty and victory and hope.  And that was supposed to be the end.

But because so many couldn't accept it, because so many claimed to have loved me and wanted to hear more, my author felt forced to write a sequel.  I'm not sure his heart was in it.  He had done so well with the first story, how could he do better with the second?  He couldn't possibly write the happy, boring ending he originally wanted for me.  He had to do something amazing, drastic, moving, heart-breaking.

That's why he killed the love of my life and left me alone and angry and seeking revenge.  The entire sequel revolves around my descent into darkness and near insanity following the loss of the thing that mattered most to me.  Readers were forced to question their love for the character who was so brave and noble in the first book and wonder if I was really all they thought me to be.

Of course, at the end, there is still a glimmer of hope.  There has to be or else the fans would riot even more. It was just enough glimmer for them to think that it was all worth it.  They ended up enjoying the book in the end.  They applauded it as "not quite living up to the hype, but certainly living up to the original."

And at what cost?  They had demanded this second book, they had created the hype, they had forced my author to do something drastic in an attempt to fulfill it all.  But what about me?  What about my life, the life they ruined?  They forced my author to warp me into something I was not originally intended to be.  Sure, the second book is still about me, but it's more of a shadow or dark cloud of who I was in the first book.  I couldn't be the same as I was before.  Of course I had to be different.  Otherwise, the reviews would have pegged it as simply "a rehash of what had already been written" and my author certainly didn't want that.  They didn't want more of the same, they wanted MORE.  They demanded to see another side of me, and so that was what they got.

And in seeing that other side, they destroyed me.  I'm wreck of what I once was.  My happy life is gone, and I'm left worse off than at the beginning of the first book.  Hope, yeah, whatever.  Hope is nothing compared to actually having the life I had always dreamed of as a little girl.  I had my dream, my heaven, for a few short time suspended years before the sequel came out.  And then it was over.  Forever.

Fans are satisfied now, for some reason.  They must like my pain, because they don't seem to be begging for another book quite as much as they were before.  And so, it seems likely I will be stuck in this state forever, without my love, without my life, even without my friends being fully back on my side, but with this blasted glimmer of hope.

I have to hand it to him, he did leave it open for a third book, much more so than he did with the first, when he wasn't expected to be forced to write a sequel.  There would be a final story, maybe something that more closely mirrors the first.  Maybe he was expecting, hoping himself, that people would want a third book, that he could do a sandwich type thing, the two good slices of bread with the bad bologna in the middle.

But its all about the fans.  The "real" people.  What they want is what they get.  That's what happens when you become a little successful.  If you're not successful, you might as well do what you want.  If you're already super successful, you might as well do what you want.  If you're in the middle, like my author, you have to do what the fans demand.  The fans demanded my demise and he gave it to them.  Goody for them.  I hate them all.

You might just think that's my dark side coming out.  And I say, of course it is.  I wouldn't even have this dark side if it wasn't for all of you.  So thank you.  Thank you for loving me so much that you demanded more, more to a story that was already concluded, nicely wrapped up with a bow on top.  Thank you for wanting to see another side of me, the dark side that was never meant to exist.  Thanks for all of that.  I really appreciate it.  Of course, you don't really care.  You loved me so much, but I'm still just a character to you.  Someone who isn't real.  Someone who doesn't actually matter, just put here for your entertainment.  And wanting more entertainment, of course, you couldn't just let the story end.  Why couldn't you have just let the story end?