are defeated (even temporarily), and the reader can imagine the protagonists continuing on to other adventures, or with their lives, in some positive

The protagonist(s) win/s, the antagonist(s) is/are defeated (even temporarily), and the reader can imagine the protagonists continuing on to other adventures, or with their lives, in some positive way.

I would argue that Endgame is a mixed ending, not a happy one,
specifically because not all the protagonists win and get to continue
on (Tony, Natasha, Vision, Loki, Heimdall).
Avengers has a happy ending.
Armageddon is mixed because Bruce Willis's character dies, even
if his daughter is safe.
LOTR as a trilogy â€” you know, I was going to say it has a happy ending, even if it has some bittersweet notes, because the elves and Ring-Bearers (plus Legolas and Gimli) who depart go on to the West and become immortal. (Arwen and Aragorn, long-lived but mortal,
are bittersweet: they do go on with their lives, but their lives are
not infinite.) But we lose Boromir and ThÃ¨oden. I guess that could be argued either way.
The Hobbit is more mixed because so many of the dwarves die.
Cinderella is a fairy tale and does not have to adhere to modern narrative structures.

Given a story in which the heroine does something very wrong which causes several deaths, but then makes a sacrifice that prevents something even worse from happening. Would you say that that is a happy ending? (This one is personal for me.)

I wouldn't call that a happy ending if her sacrifice ends in her death. It may be satisfying, karmic, or redemptive, but the character herself doesn't get to continue on.

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: Using font to highlight a god's speech in dialogue At one point in my story, the characters are addressed by a god. In the ensuing dialogue, this god has a more archaic way of speaking, but

: Any time you get two or more people in a group (or a family) with the same name, they are almost immediately given a nickname or some extra appellation so everyone knows who is being talked

: Switching languages within dialogue I'm writing a story which requires frequent switching between languages, sometimes in the same sentence. I thought about writing the foreign language in italics,

: What techniques authors use to keep track of their cast? There is a problem as stories progress (especially in never-ending web novels) where the cast of characters keep growing. Some webnovels

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