Realism vs Satisfaction in Narrative/Storytelling?

[Mechavomit]

You know what I think is unsatisfying in stories? Lack of character development and proper structuring. I would never leave out development in favour of satisfaction, I feel like an underdeveloped character looses their entire point of being, they're like an unfinished story on their own, they turn into useless luggage in the plot. Sometimes even death of a character is nescesarry and I feel it's important not to leave out things like that out of fear that the audience will stay despleased with loosing a fave.

I had a conversation with a friend about a similar topic not so long ago. She was writing a story of her own featuring a kid who lost her parents. She could not decide wether or not to make the kid still depressed about their death or move on to able to properly engage herself in a new adventure(the plot has ariiiived). My friend feared that having her character move on would be unrealistic (lots of literature on child psychology has beer read..), but having her sad would interfere with the story. We though about it and decided that sometimes it's ok to sacrifice realism if needed. Not saying that the charscter should completely dismiss a trauma or whatever, but focusing on it for the sake of realism is just unnescesarry. The story needs to follow certain rules to work properly, even if it means admitting that "that would never happen.. but it just works so well!"
You mentioned Frodo and the Ring (and I much prefer the movies version of Frodo, so...). The realistic situation would probably be him dying somewhere along the way to Mordor, but that would be horrible for the story.