@Ronoso Kinda like what happens to Dorthy in TWoO?
There's a plausible and valua or way that the "it all happened in a coma/dream" can have value—if it helps the person process
trauma.
Like, imagine if a person's best friend dies, but they left shit unresolved. If they had that alternative world experience as a dream, it can mimic the "spiritual journey" type trips that ancient cultures use to treat trauma & create expansive growth in human development through "mind altering practices".
There's a connective reason to this for why MDMA is now is Phase 3 trials with the US FDA for treatment of C-PTSD and Oregon has legislation on the ballot for psilocybin therapy—because the psychedelics can under the right circumstances help us process & treat trauma (it's about the environments that we are in & experiencing around us when we take them).
Because of the parallels with experiences for things like DMT, some people concluded that the experience taps into something that exists outside of ourselves, hence the title: "The God Drug", because users think that after the "mechanical gnomes", they meet "God", generally depicted as feminine of sorts and in such a way that people can't translate from the experience I to conscious waking thought.
As an extension of that idea, we might imagine that the experiences the person have were a model for their care & growth, or even possibly a simulated reality with other people intended to help them. Like, the woman, would she have been able to cope with her friends' death's without that other world? Would she have seen that guy and accepted him if she hadn't already had the experiences with him?
If his personality is similar, one could argue that perhaps there were Divine forces at play (played by the author) to give meaning to the senseless loss and tragedy, and also to move the young woman to find true happiness in the uncommon relationship in the broken reality of the real world? If the world isn't a "fairy story", but a tragic look I to the real, then in a way, by having that ending, one might think that the MC got beauty, love, personal growth, and even in the opportunity for happiness even admidst the broken tragedies of life.
Like, how does she react to the death's of her friends from the other world?
Does she mourn them? If she does, perhaps, if she didn't know them from her own life, she gave their lives meaningful ends—maybe,
they experienced the other world and the happiness of friendship, or perhaps they got to see that people in fact
did care about them—it could have been a commentary on the suicide rates in Asia or other cultural phenomenon.
All of these hold potential to be "canon" & offer a meta-analysis on the purposes the author set out to address. I've seen it done before. It's not unheard of to have thoughtful things in stories. But, I do recognize how one could take something like that as authoral betrayal.
I think it best when the author doesn't lose the reader if they go down such a path, writing wise.
Hope that offers insight as to why some authors might do that—it isn't necessarily to punk you or show lack of care for their characters. Sometimes, it plays other roles.
I have no opinions if that were done at this point. It doesn't feel like the setup would be effective at present.
Also, it could have been
@Sadrobot, sorry for the confusion! We don't know what was happening! We were springboarding off a comment by the MC and that triggered
@Ronoso due to a previous novel that in their mind made the side characters' lives end in tragedy. I offered herein an alternative to it that embraces the positive story qualities of tragedy done well. :3