Changing an ending for mood reasons

Have talked about mood and story before, and in a previous post did an alternate ending for the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot. And am wary of such things as wish to be respectful of the original and powerful creative work. But also am endlessly wanting better in entertainment, and think can help.

Am going to change yet another ending, and with this one need to put warnings up front. The original deals with suicide and not surprisingly, am going to remove the literality of suicide here with an alternate ending.

So am going to re-interpret 13 Reasons Why and is an ongoing series, so am even more hesitant. But also am just giving some opinions here. Does not make them right. And I don't think they're wrong, but is my opinion.

The original story is about a young woman who commits suicide and there are tapes that explain why. Where to me, in a literary work, death is rarely actual death.

When writers use death in their writing it can be about LOTS of things, where that comes across in the writing.

When goes to a visual work with moving pictures, often in my opinion, death is taken literally which wrecks the ending.

In considering the character Hannah, she confronts the reality of how badly people have treated her. Imagines confronting them through protagonists who step through a process. And in accepting the need and right to challenge them: ends her prior too compliant self.

So alternate ending with an obvious plot device for a VISUAL not needed for the book: She wakes up screaming and drenched in sweat. She pauses for a moment pondering the nightmare.

She gets up, and reaches for her tape recorder. And begins recording. Fade to black.

So with the alternate ending, we have a character development. The point then is she has learned she needs to stand up to these people, and confront them. And ending insinuates in THIS case, she will be her own advocate. But also nonetheless leaves viewers hanging.

(Oh yeah, highly recommend standing up for yourself when people treat you badly.)

Ok, so my own interpretation where in this case read about the show as have NOT watched it, is that the mood is actually about standing up for yourself and confronting people who behave badly towards you. Ok. But if character is actually DEAD then is meaningless. But if is a literary device implying she has killed that too timid self, makes more sense, to me.

And there will leave it.


James Harris