Douglas A. Reeves wrote:

Gary Kleppe wrote:

On Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:40:08 -0400, "Douglas A. Reeves"
<dougreeves@earthlink.net> wrote:

gaffney@iconn.net wrote:

Hey, no one's mentioned Now It's Time to Say Goodbye, my Maison
snuff fic either.  Not to mention Sour Times.  *sigh* :-)

Heh... Zen has come along and passed us all by.  With a work that was
supposed to be a 20k shortfic, no less...

Okay, question for everyone here:

Depressing fics generally involve people dying prematurely, usually by
being blown up, stabbed, etc. In other words, they depress by having
people get killed who shouldn't. All the fics nominated for the
Chicken Ball depression award that I'm familiar with are like this
(except for one or two which I didn't find depressing at all and are
probably in the wrong category).

So are there any really good depressing fics where NOBODY dies?

Well, there's always my little 19-line Ryouga shortfic... it was pretty
depressing (to me, anyway... but then, I was REALLY depresed when I
wrote it.)

As a general rule, I set out to tell a story... and if that story
happens to be depressing, so be it.  When characters die, the result is
almost always a depressing story.

More importantly, when someone dies that ends hope.  No matter how 
depressing a fic might be, as long as people remain alive, they may 
still be able to change something.  Ranma can leave his abusive 
spouse, or Akane her neglectful one, Ryouga can get over his despair
to some extent and find a different girl, Kodachi can get therapy,
Tatewaki can kill himself, whatever.  Things can always get better,
as long as people stay alive.