Oh, yeah, everybody dies, and sometimes it is a relief, but there should be some good somewhere. And my secret, schmoopy, heart of hearts, I want everyone to get together with their man/woman/alien/undead/inanimate object of choice and have at least a few days to be happy in. Deathbed revelations of true love are a little too Twilight Zone cruel for my taste.

I think that to snark about despair, you have to have some sense of a space outside of despair, if that makes sense. And I'd call that space hope.

I think you can safely snark at rock bottom, as sort of a thumbing of nose to the Fates. But only after you've been there long enough to set up shop.

I don't know. I mean, I don't consider myself a darkfic writer. Beige, yeah, or deep grey at best. I've even done fluff. Shameless fluff. Marshmallow Fluff. But, I'm not overly invested in the happy, for which you can blame Tolstoy.

I'll go dark grey. Cause I like seeing evil having flashes of light. The light, though, definitely has its deep shadows.

I didn't consider myself a darkfic writer at all until I started trying to write Angel's POV. I don't think you can do that convincingly without going dark, at least a little. And, to be honest, I was pretty thrilled that I managed to pull it off.

I think I started writing Smallville because it could be happier -- I mean, I read Te's "Freud," and all I can think is, this is kind of like a 30s comedy, except with the big gay alien sex. Of course, now I'm writing a darker SV fic, and I'm convinced people will hate it...

I didn't consider myself a darkfic writer at all until I started trying to write Angel's POV. I don't think you can do that convincingly without going dark, at least a little.

I think it's hard to pull off any ME character without going at least a little dark. It's what I love about them. Of course, there's the danger of forgetting that with the dark, they also all have senses of humour. A complete lack of quippage loses me.

V!Giles is going to play in the shadows before much longer. Well, Giles will, but some other people are going to leave their flashlights at home and go play in the dark.

Pretty much all my stuff is either dark or dark grey.

I think I waver in both ends of the spectrem. Though I tend to stay dark grey.

Personally, I'm quite the optimist, but my fics tend to go very gray in parts. I'm a big fan of the endings that are mixed good/bad. I also think that whether an ending is 'happy' or not depends on the characters' attitudes towards things than anything else.

If, as Connie said, they are able to cling to a genuine (and not self-delusional) hope or are able to be at peace with things, then it's a happy ending. If it all ends in bitterness and despair, then it's not. Death and destruction have little to do with it.

Or, what Ple said:

Because ultimately, it's the whole death and taxes thing. The end is inevitable, it's how we face it that matters.

So true. I find that the characters create their own happy or unhappy endings inside their own heads.

Whether I like a schmoopy or angsty story depends in large part on what fandom I'm reading. In due South stories I want the more traditional happy ending to win out. In stories based on ME shows, however, things need to be at least a little bit dark and twisted, or it just doesn't ring true.

Secret Slasha names have been revealed.

This one is mine.