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

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.)