The Sense of an Ending
In this episode, we ask how we know when something has really ended, starting with the much-criticised finale of Game of Thrones. We explore why some endings feel satisfying while others feel rushed, artificial or unresolved, looking at the difference between fiction and real life. We discuss how stories impose structure on events, why audiences crave resolution and how endings can depend on framing, perspective and the difference between something simply stopping and something properly ending.
We then broaden the discussion to real-world endings, from the Second World War and the fall of apartheid to the Cold War, the war on terror and other messier historical examples. We consider why humans are so drawn to narrative, how stories help us understand the world and why fiction may train us to expect closure that reality rarely provides. Finally, we test a five-part “endingometer” for what makes an ending work: significance, uncertainty, symbolism, irreversibility and a quiet moment of resolution.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. On this podcast, we look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint.
And today we're asking the question, how do you know something has ended, Peter, you got something on your mind, Go for it.
Speaker B:Yeah. So this came about when we were thinking about the end of Game of Thrones in case, you know, if you.
Speaker A:Good thing we're not a topical podcast. Anyway, keep going.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, we're just catching up. So, yeah, I think the central complaint about Game of Thrones, so it gives some numbers, really.
It went from plus 90 rotten tomatoes score in seasons one through six, I think was season six. Eight was the last one.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:One through eight was sort of up in the 90s for like Ron. How much people liked it. Right down to 55% in the last season. The end of last season, because the general complaint was it ended badly. Bad ending.
Right. Which I think is a little unfair and I'll explain why.
So, I mean, Game of Thrones was built, you know, built a reputation of a sort of anti narrative realism, you could call it, where the things happen that you didn't expect. Think like the Red Wedding.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:Spoiler alert, spoiler alerts all over this podcast.
Speaker C:Game of Thrones, first of all, what you're doing.
Speaker B:And secondly, go and watch the Red Wedding. Good characters dying. Like Ned Stark dying in the first season, episode nine of the first season. Villains winning. No. So, no. No sense of moral order.
You know, bad guys win, good guys lose quite a lot in Game of Thrones. So it was. It was already in as much as.
Speaker C:There even are bad or good guys, because a lot of them are kind of realistic.
Speaker B:Realistic.
Speaker C:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker B:So they're like. It's sort of.
It was set up to sort of be counter to the normal expectations in fiction of, you know, heroes prevailing and the evil being vanquished, etc. So it's sort of. It wouldn't. It shouldn't have come as a big surprise to people that Daenerys. Spoiler.
Daenerys is going to, you know, turn into a total murdering nutcase at the end of it. So, yeah, I don't, I don't buy. I don't buy. I think people are wrong.
Speaker C:Right. The case. The case for the prosecution. I'd like to put the case for the prosecution because I think I think it was dreadful.
Speaker A:Absolutely. And I probably agree. And just before you do, just two things.
First of all, I'm quite excited for this episode because most episodes we talk about where we do. I have no idea what I'm talking about. This one I do.
Speaker C:You're a phraseologist.
Speaker A:Well, it's not so much that I'm a storyologist. I'm a narrative guy. That's my life. That's what I do.
Speaker C:Actually, I'm a storyteller. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker C:I know you call me a photographer, but actually I'm a storyteller.
Speaker B:Yeah, I tell visual stories.
Speaker A:Exactly that. And that's first thing.
Second thing, maybe this is what you're leading into, but I think this stuff means specifically to Game of Thrones to do with the books being written and the timing of the films and rushing it out. This last one, et cetera, et cetera.
It was definitely squeezed in the mode of production of the story itself, of the books, let's say, was very different from what had been written before. But anyway, Nick, go for it.
Speaker C:Yeah. Just to outline the main complaints, because I mainly agree with you with them.
The sense actually that it shifted from things happening because that's the kind of thing that would happen to things happening because they need to get to the end. One of the great things about Game of Thrones was this sense of proportion that, you know, these were big places.
People took a long time to get to places. Things took a long time to happen. And, you know, you suddenly got armies appearing.
You got people, they're suddenly they're in, they're up in, you know, the far north, and then 10 minutes later, they're in King's Landing. And you've no idea why all this kind of. Yeah, fair enough. Daenerys can change from a liberator to a sort of syndical, but it just happened overnight.
There wasn't really a very clear development or set of incentives as to why she had that kind of journey. The Night King, the big scary guy, just killed just there.
And then all of the military strategy, which earlier in the, in the series had made sense and there was a lot of realism and all the kind of logistics was important. And it looked like reality, medi, evil reality to an extent, all thrown away.
You've got kind of cinematic battles rather than realistic battles, and then, you know, the kind of characters just being like Jon Snow, just his whole arc just being sort of more or less thrown away. So, so I, I, it was of clearly shit, right? But now the case for the defense is George R.R.
Martin hasn't finished and obviously all of the good bits are his now. Apparently he had quite a lot of input into it, but. But you know, they have not got the writing. And it feels to me like George R.R.
Martin's method is almost a simulation. It's like he says, what would these people do next? That and then where would we go now?
And it's like he's running a simulation in his head and he describes what's happening in that simulation. Great. However, real life doesn't often deliver endings. Right. So if we, if we really want it to be realistic, it should just stop.
That's a realistic ending. It just stops and nothing's really properly resolved. So.
So, so I think we want to ask this question, is like, why can't we just stop at season six and go, well, that was good. Okay, Yeah, I know 7 and 8 are shit, but I'll pretend they don't exist. I'll be happy to stop at season six.
I don't know what happens, but you know, I don't know what's gonna happen after I die. You know, I experience stuff and then it stops. And, and why can't we be happy with that? Why do we want an ending? And then what makes a good ending?
Right. So not just why do we need.
Speaker B:It, but how do we design you? Can you do it? Can you pull it off? I think interesting in like the long running things like neighbors, soap operas, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:They don't have an end. Yeah.
Speaker C:Ended people wouldn't complain about it.
Speaker B:They keep going like. But they keep going like real life. They just sort of persist forever and ever and ever.
But when soap operas do kind of close or long running TV programs do close. I always however is done. The ending, the ending, he's always cringe.
Speaker C:And they do like to tie it up in a bow.
Speaker B:Yes. It always ends with a wedding or something.
Speaker C:It should just end.
Speaker B:It should just end.
Speaker C:It's a realistic ending. Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, I've got something I want to come in with. But what are you about who's. What we do?
Speaker C:Well, I think Peter's got some fictional ending. I think we both looked at fictional endings. I've got some real life good and bad endings. So which way round should we take it?
Speaker A:We'll go with Peter first. Yeah. Just before you do two things. One. Yeah. You're a Monty Pythonist. Right. That's what this feels like.
Because famously, you know, the way they ended their sketches was not in a usual kind of way and sort of almost famously with the Holy Grail, I think it was how that ends. But I think it's because they ran out of money.
Speaker C:That's what they say. Yeah. And I. I have always personally found it a little bit bothersome.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, I absolutely love the Life of Brian. And the ending is one of the best scenes ever made.
Speaker A:Beautiful ending.
Speaker C:And the ending of the Holy Grail is disappointing. And it leaves you unsatisfied as much as you believe it might be an artistic decision. Right.
Speaker A:And second point, which is I do think about this stuff a lot. Narrative is a construct. Right. And so.
Speaker C:Man.
Speaker A:Well, no, but it is. It just really is. So all these sets of events happen in real life. And I know we're going to be talking you and be talking about real life endings.
Right. But stuff just happens. And there's something within the human psyche that we like this sort of evolution.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And stories. Something I.
Because one of the things I do, as you know, is I teach film photography, whatever, is that you can take any set of events and things and there is always a story. And the reason why there's always a story, because we make the story.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah. Sort of. Often it's imposed on it. Always after the fact.
Speaker A:Always. Yeah, not just often. Always. So anyway, not withstanding that. Peter, go for it. I think you're gonna talk about fictional endings.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, I don't have any. Maybe a few examples. But what I thought about was what fiction does that real life doesn't or what fiction can do that real life can't do.
So in real life, as we've pointed out, there is no beginning, middle and end. Neat three part three acts. Structure to anything. A lot of things in life just grind on until it doesn't anymore. Until it dies.
But fiction imposes a sort of frame on. On. On. On. On the. On the narrative. And someone decides to do that. So it's an. As you say, it's invented by someone. It's a construction. So. But it gives.
And it gives you. It gives you constraint, but that constraint. But it means that you can. It gives you a framework which makes it compelling.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So something. Yeah. An interesting thing which I came across, which I didn't read. I don't fully get it yet, but I'll throw it to the listeners anyway.
ook the Sense of an ending in: Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:For real life to explain real life versus fiction. What he means is fictional narratives always have a sort of tick tock structure. Right.
And then the metaphor being that tick Tock is completely invented. Clocks don't tick tock, they tick tick. Right, so real clocks tick like tick flip flops. Real clocks always just tick, tick, tick, tick.
There is no resolution, there is no change. Whereas metaphorical clock, the sort of fictional clocks tick tock. There's a resolution, there's a sort of point. It tick, tick, ticks until it talks.
When it's kind of the end and it resolves and everything makes sense. So that's what fiction can do that real life doesn't. It has to resolve. Otherwise it is, as we've said, unsatisfactory. So you have to have a so.
But this, because you've got this framework though, that is for whatever reason, psychologically satisfying. It means that you can maximize your, your sort of the drama and then the, the release of a story.
So another nice old spoiler I thought I'd throw in as an example is the Sixth Sense, the movie.
Speaker C:Okay, but sorry, just I really want to underline the spoiler alert here. If you haven't seen the Sixth Sense, please go and watch it. Right. You've been warned because it really will ruin the film.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the, the whole, the whole bit, the whole lead ups, the movie, all the sort of, whole 91st, 95% of the movie leads you on one, leads you into one sort of conclusion, that this, this, the main character, Malcolm Crowe, is a, is a psychologist helping this young boy overcome sort of some trauma or understand some sort of strange thing.
Speaker A:That's going on, a major event that has happened in his life.
Speaker B:And then. So that's the recognition phase. That's the tick bit.
And it's only at the very, very end you get the reversal in this sort of climactic, this, this sort of tragic structure that his entire thing is flipped on its head. And he's not, he's not that at all. He is one of these dead people. This boy is reportedly.
Speaker A:He's a ghost.
Speaker B:He's a ghost. So that, I mean, it's, it's, it's simultaneously incredibly surprising but incredibly cathartic as well, because it just resolves, it explains it.
And you go, oh my God. Obviously. And it's, it is a brilliant movie. It's a brilliant movie. Even if, even if it has been spoiled, is rewatchable.
And life, the point being though, that life doesn't, doesn't do this.
Speaker C:Well, okay. I mean, I think it might.
Speaker A:Okay, so before you come in, Nick, something you talked about, fiction versus real life. But, but also to go back to this thing, what we're doing is. We're trying to tell. We are trying to tell a story to people, right.
Through whatever medium, whether it's a book or whether it's a film or whatever it might be. Right. We're trying to communicate something. And so what about documentary? Right.
Which is obviously what I do, where it's, you know, documentary is fiction. Discuss. Because even with documentary, you know.
Well, no, as with fiction, you're doing the same thing, which is you're not just giving a list of stuff. Even though in theory it's factual. You still got to make a compelling sort of narrative, really. So it's. The same thing is going on there when it.
When it's. When you even talk about something real. I've got some other stuff to do with psychology, but that's for later. Nick, what do you got your.
Speaker C:Well, real life endings.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:So we've talked about. Well, Peter's mentioned fiction, I think. Although I just want to say I do think putting in a twist is. Twists are quite.
Are always kind of interesting endings. But there's plenty of other things which.
Fictional works which have been judged to have good endings that don't involve a twist and simply wrap things up. All of the arrows converge in a single point.
Speaker B:I think the twist is just an extreme version of resolution.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, so things like the Godfather, considered to be one of the best endings, you know, that you've always had this ambiguity about whether Mike Corleone is going to be good or bad.
And then at the end, you know, it all suddenly this circles back round and he's now just become the new Godfather and the door closes and that's that.
Now we don't, obviously, because, as Peter says, we put a frame round the ending at that point, but, you know, at some point he's got to come out and maybe get the toilet. And it might be a bit awkward. We don't see that bit. You know, Casablanca, Rick, is he gonna put morality in front of his love for Ilsa?
You know, is he gonna put what the right. Then eventually does the right thing. And, you know, it's a wonderful scene on the Runway. The Truman Show. Not really a twist. Almost a twist for.
For Truman himself, but not a twist for us. But that sense of, you know. Well, he has. It really is the end of that phase of his life that he's.
We don't know what happens when he goes through the door, but, you know, we know that. We know what's just happened before.
Speaker B:He has a transcendent.
Speaker C:Yeah. Shawshank Redemption, Lovely ending. So, yeah, look, lots of, lots of non twist endings that people really like, but just.
Okay, I want to talk about some canonical real life endings because I know you're kind of trying to make out that everything is a construct and we can just make up endings and narratives, but reality is real.
real because I got bombed in: Speaker A:When did the First World War end?
Speaker C: The First World War,: Speaker A:But did it really.
Speaker C:Oh, God. Look, can we just accept the Second World War was real for a minute and stop being so post structuralist about all this?
Speaker A:Look, so just to put it there for a moment, I, I sort of profoundly disagree, but okay, just, just keep going, keep going.
Speaker C:Yeah, right, so I suppose you think that Hitler was a construct and him killing himself was a construct, but I, I think, you know, the, the end of World War II, particularly Berlin, to some extent, the war in the Pacific. But I think the ending of World War II was absolutely canonically what an ending should be like.
You've got this very clearly evil kind of regime, appears, you know, explodes into Europe, causes masses of harm. It almost looks kind of completely undefeatable.
And then in:There's no loose ends, there's no coming back. The Nazis are expunged. It's absolutely brilliant.
There's only a few other things which sort of compare to that, I think certainly in the heart of any European Christian is the thought of the fall of Constantinople and with it perhaps the last remnants of the Roman Empire. But again, you know, what have we got there?
the end of the Soviet Union.:Now, I'll go on to say something about that as well. But the end of Napoleonic wars again, Napoleon captured, imprisoned. The end. Napoleon of France is finished. And the end of apartheid happened.
It just happened on a day and it was over, you know, so there were. I think those are all things where we would consider that is a real life good ending. That's what we want to see.
Speaker B:And just, just a few points.
Speaker C:Go on.
Speaker B:Napoleonic War, wasn't that tidy because he came back and he did do that.
Speaker C:Yeah, but that's good. That's like in the horror films when the. The baddies always come back to life just at the end. You've got to. They never die the first time.
Speaker B:These are large historical events. Right. You didn't live through any of these. But apart from the end of the.
Speaker C:I lived through apartheid. I mean, I wasn't in South Africa at the time.
Speaker B:But the point is that you have a sort of historical rendition of what these were all about, which is inherently already a narrative.
Speaker C:Okay, Right, right. I've just. Okay. Even if you think we are constructing these narratives. Yeah. Hitler dying and the Nazis being wiped out gives you a lot to work with.
Right. So let me just give you some unsatisfying real things.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And we can. And we can. And we can just think about whether they're that. Right. We can ask.
If we love narratives so much, why don't we stick endings everywhere is because reality has real life endings sometimes and you don't have to work very hard. Here's some unsatisfying endings which I have lived through.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C: ,: Osama bin Laden was killed in: ithdrawal from Afghanistan in:It's basically just faded away, you know, and it would be nice to go, that's the end. But unfortunately it hasn't delivered an ending. So that's an unsatisfying ending. The Cold War, I think. Unsatisfying ending. In a sense.
the fall of the Berlin Wall,:But actually then the Soviet Union went on for another couple of years, and then Russia kind of went into an autocratic phase. And then Russia as a kind of antagonist, hasn't really gone away. You know, they're still annoying people the world over.
her good example, they won in:Iraq changed into a different kind of a country. We got rid of Saddam Hussein, but it doesn't really look like a thing we would have liked to have ended up with.
And then you've got things which don't end at all, like the Korean War, which won't go away, you know, so. So that I think, you know, there are, you might tell me, oh, it's all just narratives.
But if that was true, it would be easy to spin up endings that were satisfying for anything you like. And clearly you can't. Reality has delivered, sometimes delivers good endings and sometimes delivers bad endings.
And I think I want to know, I want to work out what you need to have a good one. And I don't mean good in the sense of a happy ending, but good in the sense of a satisfying ending.
Speaker A:Sure. Let's see. So you've not persuaded me. Right. And one thing I want to think about is this.
Is there a difference between something stopping and something ending? Right. Because I think there is. There does feel like there's something different there.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I think, yeah, we imagine a piece of music just stopping halfway through versus us getting to the end.
Speaker A:Right. Clearly a big difference. So I think the word ending in itself implies a sense of satisfaction in a way that the word stop doesn't.
So just to try and be objective about this, to talk about some of the examples you've gone through there, Right. And that's when I was asked about this. World War I, as you yourself have said, you know, Sometimes World War I is.
Is now called, you know, half knowingly, as sort of, you know, global Conflict Part one. Right. And so in that sense, you can say that there's not an ending, let's say, for World War I, right.
And it just stopped for a bit, or one thing stopped and a whole bunch of other stuff stopped. I think what you were saying about World War II ending, I think that's quite compelling.
And what I think you can Say is a lot of things stopped and together we can say, yeah, there's an ending there.
Speaker C:All at the same time.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, absolutely, I agree. All at the same time. I think that's a really strong case for saying, you know, against this anti construct in this anti construct argument. Right.
I think this is where perspective can be interesting.
So if we're talking about this World War I, World War II thing, you can sort of add to that if you address that from a perspective of a different time perspective, that's when you can bring in this thing about, you know, part one, part two of the same conflict. And I think the same thing can happen with what you were talking about with I think so the war on terror.
I think you said, and I think you said it was an unsatisfactory ending.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:I think perspective is interesting there as well.
So if you're the Taliban, who were definitely a key element of the war on terror, so we're not talking about Al Qaeda, but Taliban, you could argue, key supporting player.
Speaker C:I think.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think there's an argument of saying, actually it was a very satisfactory ending that we've got. Right. If we look at the sort of the, the, the hurried exit of Western forces from, from Kabul.
So actually just thinking about perspective, for a Western perspective versus a local Taliban perspective, actually it's a very satisfying ending.
Okay, so, so, so that's why I would argue against this point about, you know, I've stated quite strongly about stuff being a construct and narrative and endings. I still kind of. No, not kind of. I still, I don't think you've convinced me.
And I think it sort of ties into this thing about stuff stopping and stuff ending. And there's like I say it's laden with this sense of satisfaction. Can you. Do you.
Speaker B:I agree.
Another way of perhaps putting it, Radio, I think is it's how you're choosing to frame that perception, but also how you're choosing to frame it because you could say, well, where do we choose to draw the line of the Cold War? Is it actually still kind of going and we've got a new kind of. It's no longer a Soviet regime, it's now.
It's now a Putin regime because we are still in competition with.
Speaker A:There you go. And that's another really good example.
And then also hand back to you guys, which is, you know, one of the things that people have talked about in this place, this area we called Russia that, you know, that, oh, it's all totally different now and you know, the Cold War has Ended. And now we're dealing with a new kind of person, new kind of Russia.
But then you can go to another perspective of what's happened recently and go, do you know what? Actually, we're dealing with a similar kind of system, really. Very authoritarian, very similar kind of way of thinking.
So, yeah, I mean, these are my thoughts on this. I think the final thing I would say is, yeah, this point about narratives is. And stories is how humans interact well and try and understand things.
This is my point. What do you think? Or where do we go from there? What do you want to talk about?
Speaker B:Yes. So stories. Why do our brains like them so much? I think it's an interesting place to go.
Speaker C:Yeah, I think we. It's something that crops up quite a lot, isn't it, on this podcast.
Speaker B:Yeah. Is the sort of psychology and the neurology of it. So we are. We are. We are narrative creatures by nature, not by. Not by culture.
It's universal that people like stories and people learn and use stories as a sort of way of educating and passing on knowledge and understanding the world. Narratives are universal.
Speaker A:They're heuristics. Right?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think. I think that's a nice.
Speaker A:Is that the right word? I mean, I'm not always sure if I use that term correctly.
Speaker B:It's a neat way of. But I think a story is like. Is a. Is a neat compression of some part of the world. Right. So you. You. You observe loads of things in the world.
Things start happening, something else happens, and then it kind of stops happening with some other event that occurs. You draw a sort of story around.
You create a story that you can then pass on to people because you can't explain every single feature and every single detail of what happened. But a story gives you a sort of metaphorical compression to explain what happened to somebody.
Speaker C:Yeah, I think a plausible. A plausible way of thinking about, okay, why did it have to be stories and not something else?
Is that it is actually a way of hijacking our kind of social. Our social intelligence, our ability to think about people are very important. What people do, what their characters are like, how they behave.
And we remember. And that means we have to remember quite a lot about the people that we've interacted with. Were they trustworthy last time we met them?
You know, what do other people say about them?
Speaker B:What.
Speaker C:How did they behave when we were in that battle with the. With the mammoth? Right. They're all really important things that I need to remember. So I have quite a lot of brain dedicated to all of that.
Kind of social knowledge.
And you could say that, well, stories were a way of hijacking that to teach me stuff because I'm not very good at taking things in via a huge table of data, but I am very good at taking things in through a story. And I think an analogy might be like, why is it that, you know, we teach kids to, to sing the Alphabet in the, the Alphabet song?
And it's because, you know, we, we for whatever reason have bits of our brain that seem to do music that we remember music and rhymes of poetry in a way that we don't.
Speaker B:Rhythm and melody.
Speaker C:So it's like, it's like, okay, what.
We've hijacked that social intelligence and discovered that creating narratives, particularly if they seem to be structured in a certain way, is a good way to inform people.
And I know we've had this discussion before, but I think that it's plausible that the bits of the story that we remember and why we have that kind of universal hero's journey is because we are actively learning new pieces of information and learning about how to deal with kind of challenges. And it's almost like here's a kind of how to guide based on these.
Speaker B:Heroes who went before and there's this hard science to support that. So.
Speaker C:Hard science. Fraser, I think you're talking about information gain, aren't you?
Speaker B:FMRI based studies have indicated that as readers work through a narrative that sort of describing how a character moves or runs or jumps, then the corresponding sense and sensory motor parts of the brain to do with activating their legs, their arms and whatever is activated, albeit not embodied, they're not actually doing the actions, but their body is sort of rehearsing or pretending to do that. And another example that's well documented is frequent readers of fiction.
So, you know, big, you know, big readers of fiction score higher on theory of mind tests. So that's, that's their ability to sort of empathize or sort of model other people, how other people might be thinking.
Which indicates, which suggests that they've through the sort of, all these stories that they've read of fictional characters being in situations that are unfamiliar to the reader and sort of are able to learn about these people. And that makes, that gives them a, that gives them a sort of an advantage in emulating actual, real other people.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, I mean, it's something I don't really know anything about, but I think it's super interesting and we can only scratch the surface is this sort of psychological, neurological element that you're talking about there, about which I think, you know, intuitively we can all feel that. Right. As well. If you think about, you know, we've all got kids. I'm sure we've all told stories to our kids. Right.
Especially when they were little and how satisfying that felt.
But also being a kid ourselves and having stories told to us and you know, I don't know, you know, what's going on there psychologically, but something's happening. And you know, I completely agree with what you're saying about. I can imagine the data backing this up.
Speaker B:Yes. A fiction is a. It's been described as a, as a flight simulator for real life, for social life.
You can sort of rehearse emotions, situations, confrontation, moral dilemmas, etc. You know, in a, in a safe inside your head without cost, you know, on privately. So it's, it's, it's. Yeah, it's way of rehearsing things.
The point I, the point I reason I brought this up is and relating it back to real life is there's a danger though that fiction, fictional narratives kind of train us to expect or want closure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That real life doesn't, it doesn't necessarily deliver well.
Speaker A:Absolutely. That's why it can feel disappointing if the bad guys win in life, you know. Nick, you've been sort of working on something here.
I believe you've got a crack team.
Speaker C:Yes, I think I've isolated the key elements of good ending into a five point checklist. The Quist system. Great.
Speaker A:I cannot wait to hear this. Good.
Speaker C:Because I think we can apply this to some of the things we've discussed. Okay.
So in actually the order that makes sense, rather than the fact that they do actually make the word quest, which isn't even a word anyway, we're going to start with T, which is.
Speaker A:Or not yet. Not yet.
Speaker C:Time. So I think the thing that this, I mean, assuming that ending is an ending is a type of change.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:So there's a type of change that happens, you know, that's some, some changes are also endings. And this is saying, so we have a change and, and we're asking, does this change constitute an ending? Right. So the thing that is stops existing.
The thing that ends has to have been around for a decent amount of time or have affected lots of people. Right.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker C:That the higher, the more significant the thing that ends, the higher. So. Well, the war on Terror, for example, would score quite highly on this. It's something that everyone was aware of. It had been going on for a while.
Right. Then we have uncertainty. Right. There has to be a decisive phase where the outcome is not certain. It's no good if it is inevitably going to end.
And that's why. That's why the battle, you know, the bat. The end of World War II is so good. And why. The. Why the battle for Constantinople, it was like. Yeah, exactly.
Like you don't know which way it's going to go. So there has to be it. And then we have to have a symbolic focal point. That's the S. Or at least one of them. A symbolic focal point. A symbol.
There has to be a symbol of the ending which you can point to. And often that's the death of a guy. But it could also be, you know, the breaching of a final wall.
Speaker B:Like tearing down of the burning flags.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Someone being crucified.
Speaker C:Oh, yes. Or the signing of a doctor document or something. Right.
So a lot of these things, the things that we see as well, that's that there is the point where I ended, you know, the. Where Appomattox Courthouse or over. It was, you know, where it was like we're all suddenly said, that's that also I. Irreversibility.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:So it has to not be able to come back, this thing. Often that will be. If the symbolic focal point is the death, then, you know, often that person won't come back.
he form that it looked in the:Now, the often overlooked bit, the Q. I think you also need the quiet moment, the cue for quiet, because after the ending, there has to be the quiet moment where you are returning in some sense to normality or at least to a kind of domestic normality. After the. This is the return bit of the hero's journey, I think. You know, like when on the Runway in Casablanca. This is.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And that Ilsa's off and, you know, Victor Laszlo, they've all gone and it's just them together starting a beautiful friendship together.
The bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover and, you know, Andy and Red meeting up on the beach. And actually, I think this is one thing the Game of Thrones did quite well was that sense of all of that's in the past.
And when they're having that chit chat about brand should be king, that's quite a Nice. And they have to go into that small council meeting and it's quite a nice feeling of great. Now things are kind of nice and normal.
The big threat has been removed, the tension's been resolved, the fear's been removed.
Speaker B:So there you go, Frodo sailing to the east. Yes.
Speaker C:Yeah. Well, actually, I think this in context would be Sam returning to the Shire now plainest of Sharkey.
Speaker A:Yeah, I like it. I don't want to piss on your shirts, but I think you've slightly reinvented the wheel there. Yeah. Because I think for the quiet moment.
Hey, how about the word denouement? You know, it's super important.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:And something I notice with films I think we're better at, denouement is like if you look at films from the 80s or even I was watching Rocky again for the watch every couple of years. I mean, a lot of older films that are 76, I think.
Speaker C:Yeah, they end, Adrian.
Speaker A:Yeah, they end super suddenly and you.
Speaker C:Go, whoa, wait until the credits.
Speaker A:Yeah, we need a few. Hold on, let's have. He's only just done that bit literally a minute ago.
Speaker C:No, I agree, I agree. That's interesting you say that. I hadn't thought about that in the context of Rocky, but it really does like just boom, cut to black. Yeah.
Speaker A:And you go, was that it?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And we're missing kind of cool at.
Speaker C:The time, I think.
Speaker A:Yeah. And we're missing what some people call that quiet moment. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the queue. So I agree. I mean.
Yeah, you've got it there with all those things to identify, you know, a sat in the endingometer. Right.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:So Rocky actually would score poorly. Why don't we.
Speaker C:Let's just have a look. Rocky, the long and significant build up. So the ending is he loses, doesn't he? No, he.
Speaker A:In that first one, he wins.
Speaker C:I doesn't he just lose. But he lasted for longer than anyone expected.
Speaker A:He wins. He wins.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker C:Yeah. At the end of Rocky.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:He doesn't defeat Apollo.
Speaker A:Apollo, yeah, he does just. They both get knocked down and it's the second one actually, they both get knocked down and Rocky gets up just in time.
But even in the first one, I think Apollo goes down, he can't get up again and Rocky wins.
Speaker C:So let's say that we've had the antagonist now defeated and how big a deal was?
Speaker A:Very big deal.
Speaker C:Yeah. So that's a one decisive phase. That would be the final bout, won't it? When the uncertainty is all there, the symbolic focal point.
That would be the Bell ringing, I guess for the KO Irreversibility. No, because in fact, we know that because Apollo Creed comes back in Rocky 2. So that's three out of five on the endingometer.
Speaker A:Well, we missed the quiet moment, which.
Speaker C:There is really one we just discussed that didn't exist.
Speaker A:So that's already been taken as count.
Speaker C:So three out of five. I think this works, actually. I'm good with that.
Speaker A:Do you want to do another one?
Speaker C:All right, pick one. Which we think is a really, really good film ending. Star wars so long and significant. Build up the Empire. Been going on for ages.
20 Years or something. Yes. Decisive phase. Yes. The Battle of Yavin. Symbolic focal point. The destruction of Death Star. Doesn't get much bigger than that. Irreversibility. Yes.
Speaker B:Can they go and build another one?
Speaker C:The Empire's never coming back from that, I think we can safely say. And the quiet moment is when they're actually. They kind of get together on.
Speaker A:Back.
Speaker C:At the base, don't they? Yeah, no, no, the quiet moment of the thing.
Speaker A:And says, weirdly, the quiet moment is not that quiet. It's the great big sort of procession where they all get their medals at that.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Except for Chewbacca for some reason. Denied a medal.
Speaker A:Yeah. But weirdly, it works as a quiet moment, that whole thing. And it's very. I forget the very. The German filmmaker.
Nazi filmmaker, but it's taken straight out.
Speaker C:Leni Riefenstein.
Speaker A:There we go. It's exactly like that. Sorry, I interrupted.
Speaker C:No, I think we're good. That's it. Five out of five, then.
Speaker A:So I've forgotten where we've got to. I've forgotten where we are in this ending. We need to end this.
Speaker C:That's right. This is now already scoring very, very. So this has been quite a significant podcast we've gone on for a while.
The decisive phase was just now when we weren't sure if we were going to end. That's two out of five. The symbolic focal point will be you saying, thank you for listening. Yeah.
The irreversibility will mean, well, we're not going to record this one again. And the quiet moment will be what we do when the. When the cameras are switched off.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly. Okay, great.
Speaker C:So now you need to just deliver that.
Speaker A:I just need to finish this off. Yeah. Anyway, you've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer.
If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. We try to release an episode every week or two.
If there are any topics you'd like us to cover, please email us at podcast@lephinsights.com thanks as always for listening. Until next time, goodbye.
