Do I like sad stories?

I have been pondering whether or not I like sad stories, using Dr. Who as a jumping off point. I suspect the reason that I have certain favorite episodes that I like to rewatch is simply because they have happier endings. Ones that I know are good, but I can't rewatch, tend to have sad endings. I think this is largely true of my reading, as well. I love poignant novels, but I won't reread them if I feel like they are too sad.

15 thinks that the best Dr. Who is The Silence in the Library. I can't stand to watch it again. I know it's a good episode, but it makes me too sad when River dies. I have to fast forward through parts, or just watch bits and pieces. And then it's even worse with Donna and her children and the man she loves in the library. Wasn't one ruined romance enough? No, you have to give us two.

Whereas I think Family of Blood and Blink have happy-ish endings, so I am willing to watch them over and over again. Cathy finds love back in time, and so does the policeman. So I don't feel sorry knowing that they are dead in the here and now. And the nurse in Blood doesn't get John Smith, but John Smith isn't real, as much as he thinks he is. The vision of the future he has in potential, not actual, so when it is lost, it's just enough poignancy for me to love, but not feel hurt by. And there's always Martha to go back to. And the nurse has been in love before and may be in love again. And I love it when she asks the doctor if he could change back and he says, "Yes," and she asks him if he will and he says, "No." It IS his choice in the end, isn't it? And he gets what he wants.

Some other examples.

The Queen of Attolia. I reread it all the time. It's not a particularly upbeat book. It's about a thief getting his hand cut off, almost dying, and about the gods conspiring against him because the world is about to end. But the ending is a marriage, and it's largely a happy one. I can stand a lot of unhappy, dark scenes, if you just give me a happy ending. Or at least not a sad one.

I think George R. R. Martin is a genius. I love to read his books once. But they yank out my heart and stomp on it, and I can only go through that so many times.

Lois McMaster Bujold. I reread Shards of Honor and Barrayar again and again, and they have a lot of dark stuff, but they end happily. I think I have more trouble rereading Mirror Dance, as brilliant as it is, because I am not sure that it has a happy ending. Or Memory.

I posted a few weeks ago about how you can't give the audience the happy ending they want, and I still believe that is true. You want to twist the audience's expectations around a lot. But if you can find some kind of happy ending, I think that is important. It's a story, after all. It has shape, a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's not like real life, that starts abruptly and ends abruptly and may have no meaning at all. We don't read because we want real life. We read because we want more than that.