Change the ending.

[mailedbypostman1]

Yeah, the dream is less annoying.

For relatively short fiction you can get fancy with an ending, but for something really long people are going to be pissed that they just read 54 books only to see the protagonists suicidally charge an opponent Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style.

EDit: I was about to say Animorph,s but you were in fact referring to that so now I will pretend I meant...
Hell, Fist of Legend or something

[mailedbypostman1]

Plus its like a gut shot to the fans. Not "The Mist" level gut shot, but a gut shot non the less.

Speaking of which:

Immediately after the dad shoots his son, he comes back to life as a zombie and eats him.
Then he eats the rest of the dead.
Then he infects the soldiers, who infect the monsters in the mist, who infect the rest of the world.
Then they accidentally chew on a nuke, which explodes, and sets off a chain reaction, destroying the world.
Then they all wake up in hell.
Because if you're going to do stupidly overblown melodrama, you might as well go full tilt and make it totally off the chain.

[sun tzu]

In the Wanted comic:
Add a final panel. That panel shows the shark tank where we saw Mister Rictus drop the memory-wiped Batman analog. And we saw him, bloody but alive, climbing out of the tank with an expression of grim determination...

[Legato]

Quantum Leap

"Sam made it back home"

Period!!!!

[KurtW95]

http://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom

[aNamored]

I'd change the annoying it-was-all-a-dream ending of Son of Rosemary to actually happening: Rosemary being a very powerful participant in her son's ascent as the Anti-Christ.

[Ghost]

My thought for the change to harry potter wasnt the cheap it was all a dream.

BUT it makes TONS of sense that this poor little abused boy has the dream that he isnt a nothing destined for nothing but the most important boy in the world.

Wait, how does "it was all a dream" make more sense than Harry ending up a famous wizard on, basically, a combo of pure luck and self-fulfilling prophesy? It's not like Harry became the Boy Who Lived because he was totally awesome. He was always fairly average aside from his connection to Voldemort, which was really Voldemort's own fault - for crying out loud, it was basically a coin toss between him and Neville Longbottom.

If anything, shouldn't the whole "magic" part be the unrealistic bit as opposed to Harry actually being important for, as it turns out, relatively mundane reasons?

See, I'm not saying the It-Was-All-In-Harry's-Mind theory doesn't make sense, just that it doesn't make more sense than it actually happening, let alone tons of it. Disregarding the fact that dreams don't even work that way*, and the fact that we see Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid interacting with him as a baby (while clearly using magic) the fact remains that Harry's story just doesn't resemble escapism. He's too mediocre, not nearly popular enough**, he feels guilty because people die all around him and, heck, just stuff like Cho Chang not working out for him. What kind of teenage boy has fantasies where he doesn't get the girl? For that matter, who fantasises about his beloved imaginary pet dying violently? If it was really all a coping mechanism, Harry Potter would be the biggest and most blatant Mary Sue ever, because that sort of thing tend not to be very subtle. At all.

*People in real life do not dream in complex narratives. Now, sure, absurdly realistic dreams are themselves a type of narrative device, but guess what? So is magic.
**Fame isn't the same thing as popularity. Harry should have been drowning in adoration, but instead he made a handful of close friends and twice became widely mistrusted by everyone in the whole school.

[Omegalith]

Wait, how does "it was all a dream" make more sense than Harry ending up a famous wizard on, basically, a combo of pure luck and self-fulfilling prophesy? It's not like Harry became the Boy Who Lived because he was totally awesome. He was always fairly average aside from his connection to Voldemort, which was really Voldemort's own fault - for crying out loud, it was basically a coin toss between him and Neville Longbottom.

And lets be honest here: If he'd picked Neville he'd have lasted four books tops. :P

[The Dog]

Fame isn't the same thing as popularity. Harry should have been drowning in adoration, but instead he made a handful of close friends and twice became widely mistrusted by everyone in the whole school.

The whole school? He was widely mistrusted by pretty much the entire wizarding world because of the government using their control of the magic paper to make him out to be a maniac, all because they refused to believe magic Hitler had come back.

[Dark Soul # 7]

One More Day: The spirits of May and Ben Parker show up, accompanied by the "God" figure that appeared in the second to last issue of Spectacular Spider-man and tell Mephisto to take a hike and Peter and MJ to go on with their lives.

[Legato]

One More Day: The spirits of May and Ben Parker show up, accompanied by the "God" figure that appeared in the second to last issue of Spectacular Spider-man and tell Mephisto to take a hike and Peter and MJ to go on with their lives.

As much as I despise OMD I'm going to be fair here. There are alot of ways they could have done seperating Peter and MJ that would have made more sense than what was executed. First off they could have just get a divorce. No Aunt May getting shot or any of that BS just a simple divorce, showcase them going through with the divorce and moving on with their lives. That alone could leave open a possibility that perhaps they could get back together down the road instead of some cosmic fate seperating the two of them. Another scenario would be to have MJ be the one who got shot and died and Peter still made the deal but with the intention on that MJ could live a better life without him. For one, yeah he still makes the deal, least he wont come off as a selfish asshole who doomed May from reuiniting with Ben. He sacrificed his own happiness just so that MJ could live a better life. So one you have a real life scenario that could be relatable to people going through a divorce if handled well while another you have an alternate version of the deal, which makes it tragic yet better than what we got.

So yeah this is how I would have handled OMD

[Ghost]

The whole school? He was widely mistrusted by pretty much the entire wizarding world because of the government using their control of the magic paper to make him out to be a maniac, all because they refused to believe magic Hitler had come back.

Point, though that didn't affect Harry directly. The magical community at large calling him a liar wouldn't have made his life misirable if his fellow students had refused to believe it and supported him instead. That would still have worked with the escapism angle because it gives Harry something to prove. (Without actually having to suffer much for it.)

[Dark Soul # 7]

As much as I despise OMD I'm going to be fair here. There are alot of ways they could have done seperating Peter and MJ that would have made more sense than what was executed. First off they could have just get a divorce. No Aunt May getting shot or any of that BS just a simple divorce, showcase them going through with the divorce and moving on with their lives. That alone could leave open a possibility that perhaps they could get back together down the road instead of some cosmic fate seperating the two of them. Another scenario would be to have MJ be the one who got shot and died and Peter still made the deal but with the intention on that MJ could live a better life without him. For one, yeah he still makes the deal, least he wont come off as a selfish asshole who doomed May from reuiniting with Ben. He sacrificed his own happiness just so that MJ could live a better life. So one you have a real life scenario that could be relatable to people going through a divorce if handled well while another you have an alternate version of the deal, which makes it tragic yet better than what we got.

So yeah this is how I would have handled OMD

Yes, those are both much better ideas. But Marvel nixed a divorce and MJ dying would make Peter too old.

This is why Ben Reilly should've been kept around. That way you can have the young(ish) single Spider-man AND the more adult(ish) married Spider-man.

Marvel is kind of stupid in regards as to what to do with Spider-man.

[Omegalith]

This is why Ben Reilly should've been kept around. That way you can have the young(ish) single Spider-man AND the more adult(ish) married Spider-man.

Kaine apparently has a pretty decent Scarlet Spider series right now.

[Guy Smiley]

As much as I despise OMD I'm going to be fair here. There are alot of ways they could have done seperating Peter and MJ that would have made more sense than what was executed. First off they could have just get a divorce. No Aunt May getting shot or any of that BS just a simple divorce, showcase them going through with the divorce and moving on with their lives. That alone could leave open a possibility that perhaps they could get back together down the road instead of some cosmic fate seperating the two of them. Another scenario would be to have MJ be the one who got shot and died and Peter still made the deal but with the intention on that MJ could live a better life without him. For one, yeah he still makes the deal, least he wont come off as a selfish asshole who doomed May from reuiniting with Ben. He sacrificed his own happiness just so that MJ could live a better life. So one you have a real life scenario that could be relatable to people going through a divorce if handled well while another you have an alternate version of the deal, which makes it tragic yet better than what we got.

So yeah this is how I would have handled OMD

Eh, a little off-topic, but I was originally expecting it to be some sort of Job deal with Mephisto setting it up as part of a bet with some other being:

If Pete ended up discovering what happened and getting back together with MJ it would void the bargain (the whole point being that they sacrificed their romance for Aunt May not to die and Pete's secret identity to be returned) and gave Mephisto free reign to rewrite reality or something.

If Pete went with MJ without figuring things out, then true love would have prevailed and Mephisto would have lost. (And if Pete ended up with someone else, Mephisto didn't get to screw Pete over worse, but would win his bet for bigger stakes.)

Meanwhile, Mephisto was leaving behind all sorts of evidence that the bargain had occured, hoping to get Pete to twig to what had happened so Mephisto could win his bet. Seriously, I remember the bit where he shows Jessica Jones his identity, and her reaction ("Oh my god! Peter Parker?! We went to school together!") is completely different than when he reveals it to Johnny Storm. ("Oh yeah! You're Parker! How'd I manage to forget that?") This inconsistency being intentional would have been an interesting way for Mephisto to make Pete go "Hey, something doesn't add up here..."

Then I would have ended it after a couple of years with Pete foiling Mephisto's plans and ending up with MJ again, just before figuring things out. Fans stay happy, Pete gets Mephisto swearing vengeance, (Seriously. Having the Devil in your rogue's gallery is worth some serious hero cred.) the writers get to ship tease Pete, Black Cat, and various nubile twenty-something-year-olds for a bit, the writers get to have explored the public identity and Aunt May's death angles without lasting repercussions, and it might even become a fondly-remembered storyline.