This Happily-Ever-After thing never really ends

Two things that'll survive as Things Fall Apart - chocolate and happy endings.

According to a BBC report, Hollywood has traditionally been quick to employ artistic liberty and liberally sprinkle its annual produce with happy endings during times of gloom.

The BBC's calls this 'happyendification' and makes a perfectly pleasant fairy-tale ingredient sound like an embarrassing body condition.

Let me take a moment here to say I Knew It All Along.

It's time the contribution of escapism and the comforting predictability of stories to the collective human sanity is well recognised.

Hell yea we've earned it after living in reality the rest of the day.

Of course one (means I) shall be willing to appreciate (albeit slightly grudgingly) the (apparent) emotional depth and narrative intricacies of a tear-jerker and one (me again, with a Queenly disposition) will clap when it gets that Oscar.

But with the power to decide an ending for any fictitious expression, why not choose to brighten some dreamer's day. Leave the depressing stuff for Robert Peston, willya.

Princess Lessons

It ought to be my dirty little secret, but I owe these books too much to hide the truth.

I love the Princess Diaries. All ten of them.

I'm quite certainly too old to be in the demographic that the books target, but I remain a sucker for happy endings and I credit them immensely for their significant contribution towards my social and emotional development.

Why deny it - I've learnt more about myself, my friends, and everything that goes with being part of the cell phone, iPod, pop-culture, consumerist generation, from TPD.

Other books have real conflict. The heroes and the heroines have real problems - war, poverty, no family, evil witches.

It's all very well that that's inspiring, but that doesn't really help me in my cushioned existence now, does it?

Just because I have nothing but love, friendship and comfort at every step, doesn't mean I'm going to give up on having some drama in my life.

Me and Mia, we like the drama.

It's my right to have problems. Loads of them. Nobody has problems bigger than mine and I'm convinced that my world will end.

So it's an extremely grounding experience to be reminded in rather amusing literary style (full of smart contemporary pop-cultural references that have for too long been denied the recognition deserved in fiction) that none of my problems are problems at all.

That every nobody-understand-me or nobody-cares-about-me situation is a been-there-done-that-so-get-over-it for every other formerly self-pitying teenager (and 20-something to be fair).

That happily-ever-after is only what I make of it. And hence, there's still hope for happily-ever-after. After-all, everyone needs the fuzzy feeling of a happy ending :)

Meant to be

Some fairy tales just come alive.
It's easy to ignore too-good-to-be-true when you Know happily-ever-after is around the corner.