Happy's Landing

Quick programming note: Having just now completed the stunning horror manga "Gyo" by Junji Ito, I have concluded that I will never conceive of something so horrifying. I officially retire from the horror genre. There is nothing that I can say that could begin to match Junji Ito's "Gyo". Thanks to everyone that recommended "Gyo" by Junji Ito. I will now direct my energies to more fruitful endeavors. I'm done. No more horror for me. What would be the point? So, I'm done with horror.


So anyway, I don't know what got me to thinking about this, but, out of sheer natural curiosity, I got to thinking about stories where a) a character remains alive at the end and b) the story is sad precisely because that character remains alive. And I would just like to do a quick taxonomy of those stories. Where appropriate, I've included relevant examples.

1. The character was a villain. It's fun to root for a villain sometimes, but usually when the fun is gone, and order returns, it's a pretty bad world if they go on living.
2. The character lost status, or capability, or a loved one, such that death is actually preferable. This is fairly straightforward. Despite the fundamental human tendency for self-preservation, after a certain point we settle down and we have a baseline expectation for the rest of our lives. This ending brings that baseline down below the will to live level. The character may yet survive, but their "coda" after the story is told can't aspire to any past expectations for life and happiness. They are hanging on to life, perhaps even ruefully if they're able to understand what they've lost. For example, Happy and his friends were in a car accident and, among others, Happy was seriously injured. 
3. The character's survival directly implies/causes the death of another, more beloved person or persons. Gee, I'm glad Happy survived the car accident! Happy was my favorite character. OMG he was so upbeat. Heh. He would chuckle the day away with his friends, a grin seemingly sewn on by a benevolent plastic surgeon. Only trouble is, we could only give the blood he needed to Happy or every other main character in the story (7 in total) injured in the car accident. After cold statistical calculation and a donation by Happy's politician relatives, we decided to save Happy. And what a blessing it is that we even have Happy. Come on, Happy, can't you laugh anymore? Oh, well, you can still smile, and that's what's important. Also ties into ending 1, in the sense that a villain generally doesn't just survive; rather, he keeps on villain'.
4. The character had a chance to be heroic but squandered that chance. Shakespeare has given characters at least a few excellent monologues upon the premise that - especially in Shakespearean, clockwork universes - time is of the essence, and there are worse fates than death in letting the time pass and saving one's self. Happy, no one's saying you caused that crash, or that you could have done more. But if you'd only stood and fought, Happy, maybe you could have bought your friends a few extra minutes and they wouldn't have had to drive so quickly through the dark and terrifying forests, Happy. You know you were the real target.
5. The character is only alive because of some horrifying alternative that kept them alive. I mean, yes, Happy is alive, Happy survived the crash, but we had to make some changes to Happy. From now on, Happy can only communicate through this special flute which has seven distinct notes. He will eat and drink through this flute. And he will likely vomit, the corrosiveness of which could distort the seven notes that are possible to make over time. Happy is blind now, and that flute is so shrill (Oh, but it was our only possible alternative to death!) that Happy causes pain to everyone around him just by communicating, causes irritation just by breathing and making soft, under-one's-breath-whistle-register whole notes. If the flute ever decays, current medical technology has no way to replace it. He will just have six notes then. 
6. The character, by continuing to live, has nothing to look forward to but moral and physical decay. For example, Happy will statistically lose one tenth of a sense every month he continues to survive.
7. The character can never die, no matter how horrifying the world becomes or how horrifying life would become. Happy thought he'd at least be able to escape with death. But that surgery didn't just keep Happy alive and it didn't just give him the means to communicate again. That surgery altered his central nervous system in an oddly mechanistic way. Happy can think, of course, and Happy's life course is dependent on the survival of that central nervous system that allows him to think. But the changes in place make the possibility of a mechanical breakdown slim. Happy is expected to live for six hundred years, even in the absence of food and civilization. So long as that flute can suck in air...

So there you have it, that's my personal taxonomy of those situations. I suppose the choice of Happy's name might seem slightly ironic, but if you're reading closely, note that Happy is in fact happy for much of the story, only having some of that happiness taken away from him in the fatal car crash and its denouement. And, despite what is taken from him, he still manages to crack a smile without exception.

Plus, he's becoming quite an ace on that flute.