[SPOILERS] Yes, it’s really an HEA

 To be classified as a romance, a book must end with an HEA (happily ever after) or at least an HFN (happy for now).

Simply put, that generally means that the main couple needs to end up together—in a committed relationship, living together, getting engaged or married, expecting a baby… there are different ways to show that they’ve found happiness together, but that “happiness together” thing is key.

Now, a lot of romance novels (like a lot of novels, period) also have subplots. Maybe the main character is struggling at work or school or with family issues. Maybe a supporting character is also looking for love. There really aren’t any genre rules that say those subplots all have to end happily… but at the very least you want a romance to end in an overall uplifting place, so even if the characters don’t get what they initially *think* they want, they still tend to end up with a satisfying alternative.

But what if a romance includes something that can’t be fixed? (Or at least, that can’t be realistically fixed within the scope of the story and it’s setting… we all want to end cancer and capitalism eventually and I hope it happens, but it hasn’t happened yet, and some eyes are going to roll if your typical small-town romance MC accomplishes it.) What if one or both of the characters is living with an incurable medical condition? What if they face discrimination such as racism or homophobia? What if they’re living with the lasting effects of trauma or grief? Can an ending that includes those things still be called happy?

A Twitter thread from author Courtney Milan the other day brought this issue back into the spotlight.

But it’s also something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while.

Because when I was getting beta reads, and then ARC reads, and then reader reviews about THE STARS MAY RISE AND FALL, in which the love interest has multiple physical and mental health issues that literally cannot be cured by “the miracle of love” or by anything else, I've seen the same thing. I’ve seen people question whether my ending was really an HEA.

And while I don’t really mind reviews that say they just don’t like my writing style or my characters (personal preference FTW!) this particular criticism hits at a different level, because it feels like not just a criticism of my writing, but of my experience and worldview. Trust me, you can absolutely find happiness without a miracle cure.

And I’m not just talking about the physical.

!!!SPOILERS START HERE!!!

Now, even in this fuckpile of a society we live in, I think there are some things that just aren’t going to fly with readers, and I HOPE that the stereotypical "miracle cure" trope is one of them. “Betty was blind her whole life… until she opened her eyes to LOVE.” … like, people know that love doesn’t cure blindness or paraplegia or whatever, right? (RIGHT???)

So I don’t think the people who complain about my ending are necessarily complaining that Rei is still physically disabled at the end. Love is a wonderful thing, but it can’t heal severed nerves or eliminate chronic pain. During the beta reading stage, I did have a few readers ask why he didn’t do (fill in elective procedure that might help but not cure here), and I tried to address some of those options in editing… but again, I don’t think most people are expecting some kind of PHYSICAL miracle cure, especially when that isn’t even the main plot of the book.

But what I HAVE seen people wanting and not getting is, in my opinion, still a kind of “miracle cure.” And from the beginning, that was a trope I wanted to steer 100% clear of. I HATE miracle cure endings. I've hated them ever since I was a kid. But what I maybe didn’t realize until I was an adult was that THAT APPLIES TO MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES TOO.

So. When you (hypothetical “you” here, of course) complain that at the end of the book, Rei still doesn’t love himself or wear his scars with pride. When you complain that he’s still grieving the death of a man he calls “the love of his life”. When you complain that the last line of the book (“For as long as they had, until the seasons turned.”) implies that the main characters will NOT in fact be together forever… it MAY just be a sign that my writing didn’t do what it was supposed to do. (If so, I apologize.) But it also feels like a misunderstanding as to what, exactly, healing means, and to what, exactly, a happily-ever-after IS.

One of the things I put a lot of thought into when developing a modern(-ish) Phantom retelling in the first place was creating a character who would plausibly ACT like a “Phantom” character in the early 2000s in the first place. We’re not living in 19th century Paris here. Most people don’t respond to disfigurement by living in a basement and killing stagehands. So, while there’s no killing (and no lair, just a dark, soundproof apartment), I still needed to make sure that this character was the type of person who would dress in full costume everyday instead of showing a HINT of “imperfection”, who would manipulate people behind the scenes, etc. Rei is extremely proud and also extremely vulnerable, and the ability to control his own appearance and to appear strong and intimidating is a shield that he’s used for YEARS to hide some really deep insecurities that got a million times worse after he was injured but DEFINITELY existed before. That shit runs DEEP… and again, maybe I failed to establish in my writing just how deep-seeded that insecurity is, but that kind of thing just doesn’t go away because someone finds love.

Now, it can get BETTER. And being loved can help. I definitely speak from personal experience when I say that SLOWLY. GRADUALLY. LITTLE BY FREAKING LITTLE, having someone accept and even love your quirks or “imperfections” can HELP you accept them and maybe, eventually, be proud of them yourself. But it doesn’t happen overnight, and it might not happen completely at all. Rei is working on it. I hope that's apparent at the end. But you don't just magically start loving yourself just because someone else does.

As far as grief... it never goes away. I'm going to defer to the "ball and the box" analogy here... Grief never goes away. Eventually, it stops hurting ALL the time. But it's always there, and there will always be things that, every once in awhile, make it hurt all over again. Rei is never going to stop grieving Saki. He never SHOULD stop grieving Saki, any more than my 80-year-old grandmother should have stopped feeling sad when something reminded her of the stillborn baby she'd lost 55 years earlier. But he also shouldn't just decide "Okay, I've had my one soulmate, I don't get to be happy with anyone else." So it does frustrate me a little that some readers seem to want that grief to be gone at the end. It's not gone. It CAN'T be gone, it will NEVER be gone... it just doesn't hurt ALL the time anymore. And THAT IS PART OF THE HAPPY ENDING. I understand that some readers don't like to read about characters finding a new love while still grieving an old one, and if you're one of them I would recommend that you find a different book... but as far as I'm concerned, Rei accepting that Saki, and that grief, will always be a part of his life, BUT also understanding that it doesn't mean that he can't start a new chapter with Teru, IS THE HAPPY ENDING. It wouldn't be happy OR realistic to me if he just left behind someone he loved with all his heart. (You can have more than one love of your life, more than one soulmate, I promise... even if you're not polyamorous, although I expect poly romances get some similar crap too.)

Finally, let's talk about that last line. Because I know not everyone agrees with me, but I freaking love it. It's one of the lines in my own work that I am the most proud of, and I think it summarizes everything that the book is trying to say.

"For as long as they had, until the seasons turned."

That DOESN'T mean that either of them sees this as a temporary thing. (To me, at least... obviously it means what you think it means, once I've published the book and you're the one reading it. But I didn't INTEND it in that way.)

At this point, both Rei and Teru have lost people. Rei lost Saki—that doesn't mean that their love wasn't real, or true, or endgame at the time. And Teru, who has lost Rei once and has now been reunited with him, understands that sometimes things don't work out. They just DON'T KNOW what the future holds. No one does.

Most stories that end with a couple getting together, getting married, moving in together, etc. (i.e. a typical HEA) SEEM happy. Princess Di and Prince Charles look like a pretty happy couple if you end their story with the royal wedding. Tell it again, with Di as the main character and ending with her death, and it's a tragedy. Make Charles the main character and end with his wedding to Camilla and it's a romance again, just with a lot of tragedy in between.

NO ONE has a life that is 100% happy, and these characters FUCKING KNOW IT.

They know that there will be arguments in their future. There will be illnesses in their future. There might be financial troubles or creative differences or family disapproval or unflattering tabloid headlines... and so on. Of course, they're also EXPECTING there to be a lot of happiness, a lot of peace, a lot of contentment. Otherwise, they wouldn't be where they are. They are expecting their life together to be more happy than not.

They also know that, eventually, it will end.

They don't know when or how. But everything ends. That’s just a fact. The point is, though, that that isn't something to fear anymore. The fact that it'll end someday isn't a reason NOT to embark upon that relationship, but a reason to cherish every moment that they DO have, because they both know from personal experience that you never, ever know when that moment will be the last. They've accepted the fact that it's going to end... and decided that what comes between now and then is still worth it. And if that isn't a happy ending, what is?

I often say that I don’t consider this book a genre romance. It doesn’t really follow the typical “formula,” and it certainly wasn’t written to be a romance. As I was writing, I intended for readers not to know whether the ending was a happy one or not until they got there, but because a lot of readers have wanted to know whether there’s a happy ending before they get into it, I’ve sort of stopped considering that a spoiler.

But maybe the issue isn’t that my book isn’t a romance. The love story is the main plot. It has an HEA. Maybe the issue is that some readers (not all, of course) expect a romance to be something that it can’t be in real life. It’s absolutely fine if an individual reader likes perfect, knight-in-shining armor heroes and neat endings that tie everything up with a bow. But there’s certainly room on the shelf, as well, for messy characters who stay messy. For characters who stay physically disabled and mentally ill and grieving, who aren’t cured and will never be cured and who FIND HAPPINESS ANYWAY.

There’s not much comfort to be found for me, as a mess of a reader, in Barbie and Ken finding perfect, angst-free love in their dreamhouse. But there is comfort to be found in characters who go through hell, and who aren’t completely okay, but who find a happiness that can co-exist with everything else, and make their world a mostly-happy place anyway.