Angst--A Bad Thing?

I was on tumblr this morning filling up my queues so I wouldn't have to worry about my blogs for the next two weeks when I saw the following post. And, honestly, this is exactly how I feel at all times when I'm reading:

I’m not a sucker for love stories.

When I say I ship something, I don’t care about the happily ever after. I don’t care about romantic comedies or princess movies with a seamless love arc and a fairytale ending. That isn’t what I’m in it for.

I’m not a sucker for love stories. I’m a sucker for character stories.

I want to read a story in which the characters don’t fit perfectly. Where they complement each other when they’re happy but tear themselves apart in desperate situations. Where their relationship is healthy but not always, equal but not always, happy but not always.

I want to see characters suffer because that’s how I know they’re real.

I don’t ship to be happy. I ship to feel real. I ship because I love relationship dynamics, not relationships themselves. That’s why I don’t just have otps. I have brotps and dream teams and favorite family dynamics and favorite characters alone.

I ship because I like to see how a given character will respond to another given character in any given situation. I like to see how they mesh together, how their personalities match and mismatch, how they push and pull at each other and then come together or fall apart.

I don’t ship for the what of the situation. I ship for the how and the why. Don’t give me characters waywardly thrown together for the perfect puzzle-piece ending. Give me the two people who would seemingly never fit. Make it work. I don’t want fireworks or fairytales. I want realism. Passion and lack thereof. Heat and coldness and love and hate.

Don’t give me love. Give me character. Don’t just tell me. Convince me.

 My mother always asks me how I can read "angsty" stories (stories that either give the reader or the characters a feeling of dread or fear) without immediately having to go read fluff. When she reads angst, she can enjoy it, but afterwards she has to read something happy to make herself feel better. I suppose I could do that, but where is the fun?

Here, I'll give you an example most of you know about or have heard of. In the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta do not have a perfect relationship, yes? Katniss is headstrong and awkward, rude and inconsiderate. Peeta is the opposite--a tender, loving person who is in love with her. When they are put against each other as enemies in the Games, it's obvious that Katniss will do anything to get out alive for Prim; she just drags Peeta's emotions along with her. After the Games, Peeta learns that she was toying with his emotions the whole time, just trying to stay alive, not caring how he felt. Yet, through Catching Fire, he still defends and protects Katniss as much as he can because he loves her.

Katniss and Peeta's relationship is exactly what the above passage is implying. How and why are the two of them going to get into a relationship when there's obviously so much that is forcing them apart? They are not the perfect characters who are in a perfect, lovey-dovey relationship that some readers search for. They are damaged, selfish people who go through exactly (okay, not exactly because of the Games, but you understand) what we do now. They are real. Everything that they say, every action they perform, comes from a place readers can relate to. How often have you been rejected? How often has someone ruined something that was precious to you? How often has someone told you lies about the person you loved, and you believed them? True, you probably would not attempt to strangle them as Peeta did with Katniss, but you would have been hurt.

Katniss and Peeta go through the worst experiences I could imagine, and it sometimes seems that they will not be together. It is angst through and through, especially in Mockingjay. Angst is delicious though. Angst, when written correctly with the correct characters, makes you feel so much until you think you might explode. It does not always guarantee a happy ending--instead it guarantees that you will relate to the characters, you will feel for them, you may even cry. That is what I love about angst, and why I read it so often. It makes me feel.

I find that beautiful.