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Left Hanging, Cut Short, No Ending

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Vidor Since: Nov, 2009
#1: Jan 9th 2012 at 9:56:08 AM

I haven't made many threads in the forum so if this one is horribly flawed in some way, my apologies.

I happened to have just finished watching a Korean miniseries, The Slingshot, that ended with most of the plot threads deliberately Left Hanging. The main villain is left in an asylum, faking mental illness to avoid prosecution, with the implication that he'll try and scam his way free eventually. The hero anticipates at the end having to fight the villain again. Two plot elements are added in the last episode—a mayoral election and a secret bribe account book—that are not resolved; we never find out who is elected mayor and the secret bribe account book, which would be a powerful weapon if the villain got it, is not found.

Anyway, searching for a trope to describe this led me to several tropes that kind of describe the same thing and seem to be somewhat redundant. Left Hanging describes leaving plot threads dangling, but not deliberately. Cut Short describes a series that ends abruptly, for some external reason like cancellation or simply too many plots. No Ending describes a deliberate No Ending, but specifies that it applies only to individual episodes of a television series.

There does not seem to be a trope addressing the deliberate decision to end a work abruptly. The description for "No Ending" specifically says that if it applies to a whole series, you use Cut Short, but the Cut Short trope, as noted above, is described as an involuntary ending. The list of examples for No Ending, despite the front matter description saying it applies to episodes of a television program, DOES include several examples of works that were deliberately given abrupt endings. It has a whole Film section filled with films that mostly were not parts of a series—The Birds, The Shining, etc. The Live Action TV section also includes programs that were deliberately ended without an ending, with The Sopranos being the most famous example.

So that's a longwinded way of saying I have some questions. Should No Ending be used as the trope for works that are exactly that, works that do not have a proper ending? This would require revising the introductory description. If so, are Left Hanging and Cut Short even required as tropes? Cut Short seems to me like it should be a subtrope of No Ending, if a trope at all. And Left Hanging, as described, seems like a work that has multiple cases of What Happened To The Mouse, which raises the question of why Left Hanging exists as a trope.

20LogRoot10 Since: Aug, 2011
#2: Jan 9th 2012 at 11:35:35 PM

Just from the descriptions, Left Hanging seems like No Ending's supertrope; however, a number of examples for the former seem like they belong on the latter.

Yeah, unwritten rule number one: follow all the unwritten procedures. - Camacan
Vidor Since: Nov, 2009
#3: Jan 10th 2012 at 6:06:26 AM

If that's the case, then I could tweak the description of Left Hanging to make clear that it applies to, among other things, the deliberate decision to end a work without an ending, as seen in The Birds and The Sopranos. Still not sure that Left Hanging and No Ending both need to exist as tropes, however. I guess Cut Short has value as a description of works that were ended abruptly due to cancellation (My Name Is Earl) or Author Existence Failure (The Mystery Of Edwin Drood) or some other unplanned externality.

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