I think I'm missing an angst gene...
May. 23rd, 2011 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxAngst. Shows love it. Season finales love it. Whedon loved it. GRRMartin loooooves it.
Myself? Not a huge fan.
I seem to have limited patience for it.
While quite well made and well acted, Kate Winslet's movie "Jude" is still the movie that I most wish that I had never watched.
And angst is one of the reasons that in retrospect, I lost some of my love for the 10th Doctor. He got entirely too angsty for my taste by the end of his run.
Don't get me wrong. I loved Ten and David Tennant. I just got burned out, and I cannot say that I'm dissatisfied that the Doctor then morphed into this guy:
Now, I'm not saying that I don't relish when a show/book/whatever pulls off a great emotional moment that brings me to tears.
This one always works:
Ooh! And this one was also very well executed (and apparently everyone who uploaded it doesn't want embed codes given out).
But, overall, I apparently have a relatively low threshold for how long I can take angst before I either want snark or...well.. something! Virtually anything. It seems a little angst goes a long way for me. I don't seem to crave it much. It's not necessarily my preferred alternative. It's like red pepper flakes. It has its uses. I like it... sparingly. You've got to be careful. A little goes a long way. And it's not the very first spice I reach for on the rack. (red pepper flakes are a spice, right?) And, weirdly, if I allow myself to indulge in it too much, I start to feel like I'm becoming this guy:
It can feel a bit inappropriately adolescent writing bad poetry in a hello kitty diary. (Seriously, I wrote some angsty stuff as a kid. I think kids have a sadistic streak).
Other times it makes me feel like turning into this dude:
I also think that it may partially be due to the fact that it's a little too easy to turn angst into emo belly-button-gazing or brooding territory. I'm not a big fan of broody-types. If it's a choice between brooding and snark, I'll choose snark.
Besides, it's not all that much of a challenge to make me cry. Hallmark commercials can do that. Heck, news stories about a lost cat can do it:
It's fairly easy to access my waterworks, so making me cry isn't necessarily a sign of brilliant writing when it can be pure reptile brain and/or emotional manipulation. And once I feel like that, it takes a while to work up a desire for more. For example, by the time I finished "Clash of Kings" (sequel to "Game of Thrones") I felt like I was drowning in angst. I needed a break (I've about reached the point that I think I can now continue on to "Storm of Swords" even though I basically expect that angst to continue. But it's taken me days to recover equilibrium enough to want to continue. And, well, to be honest, to stop being angry over the angst at the end of the book.
Look, I can enjoy angst, just in limited doses because I seem to have a weird reaction to too much angst -- I grow angry. (I think I share that trait with Game of Throne's Arya) Actually, anger is probably not all that weird of a reaction. It's probably a coping mechanism. Anger is closely associated with grief. It's just that particularly with fiction I flip from grief to anger quite easily. I think it may have something to do with something that either Christopher Vogler or Micheal Hague (I get the two of them confused) pointed out in their writing seminar.
The point that one or the other of them made is that you have to give a reader/an audience the happiest ending that you can manage. That's an easily misinterpreted statement because it sounds like insistence on 'a happy ending' and it's not. That's not what he or he meant at all. Their point was that if it's a tragic/sad/angstastic ending, then it had darn well be the best solution to the situation that the characters are in, the only way out because otherwise the audience feels manipulated, like the writer is toying with them. If the angstastic ending is the best possible these characters can hope for in this situation under these circumstances, then go for it. It's the natural, organic outcome of the story. But if the audience can think of other options for those characters in those circumstances, the chances are relatively high that a large percentage of the audience will feel manipulated. In that case, the angst doesn't work particularly well. It runs the risk of making the audience/reader resent the writer.
Personally, I thought that was a good point.
The truly angsty moments in things that I've loved, have been bittersweet moments where I have to admit that the sad and/or tragic circumstance felt inevitable. One of the example of that that springs to mind is the Farscape episode "A Dog with Two Bones". To me that is a good angsty season finale because I can't think of a believable alternative. Given who each of the characters are and what they've been through during that season, I can't reasonably expect the characters to react any other way and it still be those characters.
On the other hand, BtVS's "Chosen" finale with "No you don't, but thanks for saying it" flipped me immediately into fury. My reaction was, "Really, Joss? Really?! That's the way you want to play it? You think that's clever? After all these years, that's what you roll out?" It just made me feel ripped off. (I still don't react well to this scene even after all these years.)
And speaking of, what in the hell was that tonight in the House finale? Was I supposed to think that behavior was okay? Am I supposed to empathize? He could've killed someone. For a hissyfit! Teenaged boys have more emotional maturity than this dude. Guh.
Frankly, sometimes characters need a chill pill and a word from the wise in the form of Cordelia Chase: "Embrace your pain. Spank your inner moppet. Whatever. But get over it." (Yes, Dr. House, I'm looking at you.)
Myself? Not a huge fan.
I seem to have limited patience for it.
While quite well made and well acted, Kate Winslet's movie "Jude" is still the movie that I most wish that I had never watched.
And angst is one of the reasons that in retrospect, I lost some of my love for the 10th Doctor. He got entirely too angsty for my taste by the end of his run.
Don't get me wrong. I loved Ten and David Tennant. I just got burned out, and I cannot say that I'm dissatisfied that the Doctor then morphed into this guy:
Now, I'm not saying that I don't relish when a show/book/whatever pulls off a great emotional moment that brings me to tears.
This one always works:
Ooh! And this one was also very well executed (and apparently everyone who uploaded it doesn't want embed codes given out).
But, overall, I apparently have a relatively low threshold for how long I can take angst before I either want snark or...well.. something! Virtually anything. It seems a little angst goes a long way for me. I don't seem to crave it much. It's not necessarily my preferred alternative. It's like red pepper flakes. It has its uses. I like it... sparingly. You've got to be careful. A little goes a long way. And it's not the very first spice I reach for on the rack. (red pepper flakes are a spice, right?) And, weirdly, if I allow myself to indulge in it too much, I start to feel like I'm becoming this guy:
It can feel a bit inappropriately adolescent writing bad poetry in a hello kitty diary. (Seriously, I wrote some angsty stuff as a kid. I think kids have a sadistic streak).
Other times it makes me feel like turning into this dude:
I also think that it may partially be due to the fact that it's a little too easy to turn angst into emo belly-button-gazing or brooding territory. I'm not a big fan of broody-types. If it's a choice between brooding and snark, I'll choose snark.
Besides, it's not all that much of a challenge to make me cry. Hallmark commercials can do that. Heck, news stories about a lost cat can do it:
It's fairly easy to access my waterworks, so making me cry isn't necessarily a sign of brilliant writing when it can be pure reptile brain and/or emotional manipulation. And once I feel like that, it takes a while to work up a desire for more. For example, by the time I finished "Clash of Kings" (sequel to "Game of Thrones") I felt like I was drowning in angst. I needed a break (I've about reached the point that I think I can now continue on to "Storm of Swords" even though I basically expect that angst to continue. But it's taken me days to recover equilibrium enough to want to continue. And, well, to be honest, to stop being angry over the angst at the end of the book.
Look, I can enjoy angst, just in limited doses because I seem to have a weird reaction to too much angst -- I grow angry. (I think I share that trait with Game of Throne's Arya) Actually, anger is probably not all that weird of a reaction. It's probably a coping mechanism. Anger is closely associated with grief. It's just that particularly with fiction I flip from grief to anger quite easily. I think it may have something to do with something that either Christopher Vogler or Micheal Hague (I get the two of them confused) pointed out in their writing seminar.
The point that one or the other of them made is that you have to give a reader/an audience the happiest ending that you can manage. That's an easily misinterpreted statement because it sounds like insistence on 'a happy ending' and it's not. That's not what he or he meant at all. Their point was that if it's a tragic/sad/angstastic ending, then it had darn well be the best solution to the situation that the characters are in, the only way out because otherwise the audience feels manipulated, like the writer is toying with them. If the angstastic ending is the best possible these characters can hope for in this situation under these circumstances, then go for it. It's the natural, organic outcome of the story. But if the audience can think of other options for those characters in those circumstances, the chances are relatively high that a large percentage of the audience will feel manipulated. In that case, the angst doesn't work particularly well. It runs the risk of making the audience/reader resent the writer.
Personally, I thought that was a good point.
The truly angsty moments in things that I've loved, have been bittersweet moments where I have to admit that the sad and/or tragic circumstance felt inevitable. One of the example of that that springs to mind is the Farscape episode "A Dog with Two Bones". To me that is a good angsty season finale because I can't think of a believable alternative. Given who each of the characters are and what they've been through during that season, I can't reasonably expect the characters to react any other way and it still be those characters.
On the other hand, BtVS's "Chosen" finale with "No you don't, but thanks for saying it" flipped me immediately into fury. My reaction was, "Really, Joss? Really?! That's the way you want to play it? You think that's clever? After all these years, that's what you roll out?" It just made me feel ripped off. (I still don't react well to this scene even after all these years.)
And speaking of, what in the hell was that tonight in the House finale? Was I supposed to think that behavior was okay? Am I supposed to empathize? He could've killed someone. For a hissyfit! Teenaged boys have more emotional maturity than this dude. Guh.
Frankly, sometimes characters need a chill pill and a word from the wise in the form of Cordelia Chase: "Embrace your pain. Spank your inner moppet. Whatever. But get over it." (Yes, Dr. House, I'm looking at you.)
