Story Endings (revised).

  Why is it that in the stories that we most like things turn out badly? Actually let me re-frase that. In the stories I most re-read things turn out badly. For instance the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series doesn't turn out that well. In an arsonists guide to writer's homes in new england he (SPOILER ALERT) ends up back in prison. In the Bartimeaus trilogy (another SPOILER) Nick dies at the end. But i loved all three books (and series) and re-read all three many many times.
     Maybe it's because I'm trying to impose a happy ending on it. If, for example I read it enough times it will change how i ends. Sometimes in other books I'll go back and re-read the sad parts. It's as if my brain can't accept it and I want it to change. I'm a person who likes being in control of a situation, at least a little. Not being able to change hoe things will end, when I'm being driven somewhere, or on a plane, bothers me. If I can't do anything about a situation, and that doesn't meen I have to do something, just if i know I won't be able to change it, makes me feel powerless. That's something hard I find in books. whatever decisions the author makes, I can't change it. In real life, at least with the little things, I can change them. But books won't change. I'll throw them against a wall sometimes I'm so angry at a stupid line or plot choice.
     Maybe that's why people like books or tv shows, especially thrillers. You can't control what happens and it leaves you helpless, and at the edge of your seat.

The Man Who Was Thursday: Turn Around

     Towards the end of The Man Who Was Thursday there is a huge turn-a-round/plot twist at the end. I'm not going to tell what it is, because that wouldn't be cool. But it was a gigantic change in plot. But i saw it coming. That happens to me alot, when I se changes in plot coming. and it happens to alot of the people I know. Why?
     Sometimes I think that these things are done too much. People do thriller endings and plot twists so much, sometimes the unexpected becomes expected. In alot of thrillers and really serious books the authors feel obliged to do something "unexpected". sometimes its better if they don't.
     I think it would be really great if in movies where you aren't expecting such a sharp plot twist, like, say, that movie knight and day where Tom Cruise is a secret agent who falls in love with Cameron Diaz. It is a romantic comedy sort of thing. but if in the middle tome cruise is just driving and is hit by a bus, and dies. That would make movies in general much more interesting. The same thing for those kinds of books.

Hate and Love in Everwild

     In the book I'm reading, Everwild, one of the main characters, Nick, is in love with the main antagonist, Mary Hightower. They are arch rivals, and are actively trying to destroy the other. the theme of people falling in love with people they shouldn't, or hating the people they are in love with, comes up a lot in books. Another example of this would be Romeo and Juliet.
     Now, I'm only a middle schooler, and I don't know that much about love. But the various stories I've heard about how people got married, or how we met, stories, have never started with "well, we were arch enemies and he wanted me dead" or "He was a oil baron and I was an environmental activist". As far as I can tell love really doesn't work that way, or at least is not very common.
      So I wonder why the whole doomed romance thing is so common in media. It seems humans in general like the underdogs, the people who it will never work out for. But why? Is it that we feel better that our lives aren't that messed up, that our love is easier to find? Or maybe we LIKE the feeling of fighting  against all odds. But if that's true, why? what in the evolutionary history of humans would make that an advantage?

Grotesqueness in The Man Who Was Thursday

     In the book i am reading detective Syme, a detective investigating anarchy, is horribly disgusted by Sunday, the president of Anarchists. He isn't quite sure why it disgusts him, but it appears to him "grotesquely huge". Earlier in the book, it is revealed his parents died in an anarchy related accident. As he looks at each member of the Anarchists council, he is horrified and revolted by each.
     This made me think: why do we really dislike people? even when we first meet them? Like how Syme is horrified by the anarchists at first sight. is it because something of them reminds us of something from our past? maybe Syme is horrified simply because they are anarchists. or remind him of his parent's death. I know I've let things that have happened to me in the past cloud my judgement of the future.
      I find myself not liking something or someone is because they remind me of something in the past I want to forget, or something in myself. When someone I meet has one of what I think are my negative qualities I find myself not liking them. they become a personification of something I want to make go away, and sub-consciously I think that if I somehow disapprove of them, I will make myself a better person, which is obviously false. Sometimes people, me included, need to step back and look at themselves the way they look at others.