Should stories have a moral ending?

I have a story in the library where a man sets up a bogus office and abuses vulnerable female migrants and this maybe makes for very uncomfortable reading. He comes to a rather sad end because I thought the morality of the story more or less demanded it, but then I wondered whether this was the case. For example, I enjoyed the Hannibal Lecter stories and Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr Ripley" and was not at all bothered that in such cases unsavoury murderers get away with it (sorry for the spoiler).
Would it be acceptable in a kink story to let a bad character triumph?

I think it's difficult to say a firm yes or no to this, because circumstances vary so much story to story. I find that bad characters often get the final say in spanking stories - terrible teachers, cruel parents, bad bosses. With the exception of consensual spankings, many spanking stories have power imbalances and a cruel person applying pain purely because they're bigger and stronger. In the real world, that would disgust me, but in stories I can enjoy them. Do I want the bad characters to come to a bad end? Sometimes, certainly. Am I dissatisfied if they don't? Not always.

That said, I think a lot of it is down to individual tastes, feelings and morals. Some stories with a cruel character just make me sad - how did this person get to this place? I'm far more inclined towards rehabilitative frameworks rather than punitive ones (funnily enough for a spanking fetishist), so I'd rather see the bad person become a good one than the bad person punished. Plenty of people are exactly the opposite.

I've written a lot of words to basically say 'eh, I dunno' haha, sorry.

I was glad in that particular story that the character got some sort of comeuppance but it doesn't have to be the case in every story. And actually, like transmanspankee, saying I'm glad he got some comeuppance puts him (in my mind) firmly in fiction as in real life I'm not inclined towards wanting anyone to suffer, even really horrible people. In real life the villains generally come off pretty well and I read, and choose to read, plenty of things that reflect that.

There's lots of school stories on here and I like them and they're often about an innocent person being hurt. I suppose I tell myself that no one is being left traumatised for life but then maybe they are. I like rather less the ones about Victorian masters whipping their maids but don't have such a problem with Victorian ladies. I suppose I'm a hypocrite.

I think that the issue is having some idea of what you're about to read and what you seek to get from it.

From a lot of your stories mobile_carrot I expect humour, so with the one mentioned above, while there was some humour, it was the sort of thing that if I'd read in the paper I'd be really upset, though even then there'd be things I'd have found quite funny (like watching Secretary).

Thinking about it, it was the very realness of the story that made it horrible and so if he hadn't been caught I suppose I would have wanted some sort of thoughts from the narrator about where his sympathies lay. If the story had seemed like complete fantasy, some sort of ridiculous character with a Dickensian name, roaming the country spanking random women, even it the women hated it, it wouldn't have been particularly upsetting because it would have been obviously fiction.

Some spanking stories can be very moving (BashfulBob's 50 red roses is a good example of that) but mostly I read them because I want to feel pleasure and I don't feel much pleasure reading about someone seeking to cause permanent harm to someone else.

But I'm just one person among thousands on here so you know, write what you like, and end it how you like.

No, because Disney no longer do spanking.

Gawd, I certainly hope not! Sure, it's one option, and perhaps even the most common one, but it's far too limiting to consider it a "should."

This, basically.

Spanking stories that place their sympathies with an abuser can work as long as they don't take themselves too seriously. The more abusive the spanker is, the more fantastical or tongue-in-cheek the tone has to be to make it palatable.

Like, take barrethunter for instance. His stories are all full of innocent women being beaten, raped, sold into slavery, etc, and usually with the text encouraging the reader to empathize with the tormentors rather than the victims. But he writes it with an almost Douglas Adams-like level of cartoony irreverence, and that makes all the difference.

It depends, it depends on the situation, on the author, what the author is trying to do in the story. I've written several stories about kids being done badly in school, either by a bully or a sadistic teacher. So far, in each one, there is at least a somewhat happy ending where the bully, or sadistic teacher got their comeuppance, and the wronged student was there to witness it. This is not the way it always works in real life. At some point, I may write something where the bad person gets off scot free and pays no price for their wrongdoing whatsoever. It's going to depend on what kind of mood I'm in and where my mind is at the time.

I think harsher endings work best in stories that are either over-the-top fanciful, or loyal to a goal of realism.

The sillier tales of misunderstandings resulting in multiple spankings, or even pure fantasy stories with spanking elements, have the benefit of not being believable enough to be disconcerting. In my experience, I feel let off the hook to invest too much seriousness, and have fun. Some of those stories even come off as slapstick, toward characters who are not believable as real people, but enjoyable to read, nonetheless.

In the case of a more grounded story, I prefer characters I'm expected to care about not to be used for an author's indulgence. I can't say I've read many like that in The Library, but there have been a few with pretensions toward being more emotionally resonant than the average story I haven't liked. Whenever a scenario of realistic abuse that sounds like something from a graphic news report is used, I prefer having emotional moments earned by an author with a careful hand. When these stories aren't properly fleshed out, they feel exploitative and overindulgent, even if that wasn't the original intention.

Neither one is more or less worthy of exploration or play, but like any fiction, things have to add up in some way. The only stories I haven't liked felt like they were forcing emotional notes, as though they were jamming a big red "FEELINGS" button in some parts, with a pointlessly nihilistic ending.

For me, it depends on the story. Set in my Irons universe, sometimes the bad guys are doing really bad things (Concentration Camp, story too harsh for this library one example) or violating the "norms/understandings" Irons created to someone whose not bad but whose brain is off to people who are looking for serious sessions to either atone or simply keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Like I said, depends on the story & setting, etc.

The quality of the writing matters most to me. I too love Patricia Highsmith's amoral characters who get away with their crimes. I find I agree with KatiePie in disliking male Victorian masters whipping their servant girls but am slightly more open to high-collared dominant women punishing younger subservient ones. As a switch I do find that I can find myself in sympathy with dominants and submissives on an unpredictable basis. I don't like cruelty or stories involving children; they just make my skin crawl. But good depiction of embarrassment is fantastic and highly arousing. Role reversal exemplifies this talent.