Yeah, Et in Italia Ego feels perfectly designed to smash readers fond of the idyll--because it takes Bodie and Doyle into the greenwood, creates such an idyll, cradles them (and us) in it for the entire story--and then at the end, the idyll is absolutely banned from moving across the borders back into daily life. NO. CANNOT HAVE. SMASH.

The thing is, the destruction of the idyll there never convinced me, if I remember rightly (although take with a grain of salt, since I haven't re-read it anytime recently). It just seemed to be taken for granted that of course it can't go with them into their daily life, and in fact it's a complete toggle-switch of a conclusion--not even a fragment of this new togetherness they've created can come with them, it has to be either All or Nothing and the story says the answer is Nothing--for no convincing reason I can discern. At least not one that fully convinced me.

That sort of approach tends to automatically be given more credence, I think--the way that Grimdark is often seen as somehow more authentic/classier than Fluff. But I think an ending that completely and almost arbitrarily crushes the possibilities like that, can be just as empty and unconvincing as any story that goes 100% the other way, like one of those Everybody's Gay And It's Okay things that pairs off every single conceivable character also for no reason. In either case, the conclusion doesn't seem to rise organically from the setting and characterizations, plus it's again that toggle-switch, that spurious, unnuanced extremism that says it's either Everything or Nothing.

Not that I can't handle an unhappy ending (although it is way not my preference). But an extremist unhappy ending that feels unsupported...that just ends up feeling kind of irritating.

...you know, I just ran into a line from a review of the story on ci5_hq (linked from the Fanlore article on the story) that seems to get for a second at my feelings here:

"And then there's the bittersweet, poignant, heartache of an ending. But really it can't end any other way. Not if it's to have the impact Sebastian is after."

So, "it can't end any other way"--not because the tragic-ending is entirely inherent in the characters as presented, not because the situation has wound itself into a certainty. But because of the effect Sebastian wants. That seems to agree with my issue of the ending not growing organically from the story, but being imposed from without in order to Write A Sad Story.

(But then, who am I, you know. *g* I'm someone who likes happier or at least more-hopeful endings. So I would think that.)