What Happens Next?

I was watching a movie last night. It was the Disney movie and it was cute and funny. And at the end the protagonist smiled and the music started and then it cut to commercial. And we waited through the commercials, and the previews of shows to come, and the next show started, and still we sat there waiting. Because, really? That was the end? She just smiled and it was done.

I hate endings, in movies and books. I want to know what happens after. What happens after the princess becomes queen? What happens after the wizard defeats his enemy? Does everyone's life carry on as normal? What is normal exactly when you are a newly crowned queen or a wizard without an enemy?

And because I'm forced to imagine what happens after, I'm not always satisfied with how their lives turn out. For example: the newly crowned queen tries to rule the small country but then all of her followers decide that they really didn't appreciate how she had an affair with some guy while engaged to be married and they televise the court proceedings that inevitably occur because having an affair automatically makes her unfit to run a country and they send the video out over twitter and facebook and pretty much she becomes just another politician whose only remembered by that affair she had and to handle the stress she starts to drink and pretty soon she's walking into homeless shelters and calling the customers bums and telling them to get a job and that obviously leads to more court proceedings until she's barely hanging on to her crown, there's rioting in the streets, crime has gone up over 98 per cent in her small country and she's forced to resign leaving the kingdom up for grabs to who-knows-who (perhaps a wizard who suddenly has nothing to do), then she writes a book about her life and fades off into obscurity.

What's happily ever after about that? Wouldn't it be nicer if the screenwriters just told me what happens.

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