I was just about to write,

[hmpf]

in a comment on a fic, that what I enjoy in angst (and some h/c) is not the breaking of a character but the character's fighting back against his or her breaking.

And realised, that makes me Methos in this fic.

*is creeped out by self*

ETA: Specifically, this describes how I choose my objects of obsession:

(s)he never chooses those who are broken easily

Comments

[mikes-grrl.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind I didn't read the fic, as I don't know the characters, but...

...but the character's fighting back against his or her breaking.

This, I get. I think that is one reason I tend to shy from most h/c, because so little of it deals with the trauma involved in being broken, I mean in the sense that the character does NOT want to break, and fights it; so often the characters are shown just wallowing in the breakage (one huge problem I have with a good deal of the h/c fic in Life on Mars - Sam is so often shown just weeping in misery. ack!). And to extend that: me personally? I'm much more interested in the 'after' than the 'during'.

(To speak metaphorically, I'm less interested in the mechanics of the car accident or the immediate damages than I am in what the character must deal with a week later.)

So few fics really go there, though. *unhappy sigh*

Just...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Word. Word. Word.

I'm all about the fallout, the picking-up-the-pieces-and-gluing-them-back-together, the living of damaged lives etc. Well, most of my fic is, anyway - and my fic reading preferences are, too.

Mind you, the 'during' can be very interesting, too, if done right. E.g. I'm enjoying some - not all - of the damaged Sam dak is currently writing, although that's technically 'during'. The bits that show him trying to hold up under pressure - his desperate sarcasm in the latest installment, for instance. Or, in The Lord of the Rings, basically everything that happens to Frodo ;-)(LotR was a revelation to me at age 16, because it was the first piece of literature I'd ever encountered that catered *perfectly* to my very odd kink, of which I was only dimly aware myself at the time. It's still the book that provides the most undiluted angst of the particular type I enjoy.) And, of course, Farscape is pretty good about depicting the 'during', too. And so is Life on Mars (the show itself), really. LotR, FS, LoM - they're all about trauma in process. And that's interesting to me - if the trauma is inflicted on characters who are not just laying down and taking it. Frodo, John Crichton, Sam Tyler... they all fight back. Hard.

(And of course, the fact that LotR, FS and LoM are all about trauma in process, makes them very good source material for fanfic dealing with aftermaths...)

I don't want to pity my favourite characters; I want to be awed by them. Or, if there is to be pity (and *some* pity can be good - generally speaking, *mixed* emotions are good, and the most believable, too), it must not be all there is.

An addition about LotR

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

because it just occurred to me:

LotR actually has *both* the 'during' *and* the 'after', as it ends in several chapters of essentially fanfic-like descriptions of the aftermath of everything that happened before. I remember how stunned I was to actually find that stuff included - most books I knew ended at the climax, or very soon after the climax of the main plot. It was exhilarating to find a book that actually did, *in* the main text, what I had been doing for years in my mind after finishing a book, namely, ask: 'And how did they deal with all that, afterwards?'

(Sorry to keep blathering about LotR and FS so much, but they, together with LoM, form the holy trinity of 'My Kind of Angst'. Very, very few texts, in any medium, actually deliver this kind of canonical angst in such high doses.)

BTW:

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

in my experience, this:

>one huge problem I have with a good deal of the h/c fic in Life on Mars - Sam is so often shown just weeping in misery.

is a general problem of h/c, not just in LoM fandom. I think (and I feel I've already talked to you about this sometime, somewhere; if so: sorry for the repetition!) this has to do with the emotional aim of most h/c, which is to show the closeness of a relationship, or bring about a greater degree of closeness in a relationship. The easiest way of doing that is by turning the emotional need that already exists (or is perceived to exist) into a physical need, i.e. making one character temporarily completely dependent on the other.

So, most h/c isn't *really* particularly interested in the trauma itself, or in the character who is experiencing it - it's all about the relationship, instead. And in LoM fandom, where the majority, I think, is emotionally focused a bit more on Gene than on Sam, I think most people just want to see Gene caring for a temporarily helpless Sam - they need helpless!Sam because something needs to bring out the proverbial 'heart of gold' that must be hidden under Gene's rough shell.

>I'm less interested in the mechanics of the car accident or the immediate damages than I am in what the character must deal with a week later.

This is why I have Sam waking up a fairly long time after the jump in my 'surviving 2.08' fic... It's *not* about the broken bones. *g*

[fenlings]

Hmm, interesting. I think for me it's more the hidden angst. Breaking inwardly but not letting it show.

[lferion]

*Nods and shivers right along with you*

I also like the character dealing with _having been broken anyway_