Hello, as an angst writer and a mainly angst reader who enjoys character death and dark themes in fiction, I just want to give my two cents in the matter.
I do not agree with the fact that we don't need angst. I may be a majority or a may be a minority but I personally do not think there is anything wrong with angst in fact, I find it beneficial. It helped me through the worst.
People read for many reasons. I gravitate towards angst fics for many reasons. I like fluff too but on most days I'd read angst and character death because to put things straight for me
Angst gives me companionship.
Fluff is a reminder that I'm not living my best life and most likely, given the constraints of my status in society, I may never live that best life.
I was never allowed to express emotion growing up. I grow up in a household where everyone expresses their own emotions calmly. My parents never cried in funerals. When I lost my scholarship, when I was experiencing the worst time of my life to the point where I was at a dark place, no one was there.
Because I was taught that no one wants to deal with someone problematic. No one wants to deal with someone who processes emotions through shouting, through screaming, through crying. No one is allowed to cry, scream, shout except in the comforts of their home with people they completely trust if they are lucky enough to have those.
In school, I was taught that crying was immature. I was a baby. At home, I was taught if I wanted to scream and cry they'll treat me like a baby. When I had too many problems and I needed someone to talk to, everyone tells me they were busy. if I ask for someone to talk to, I'm needy.
No one can be available 24/7. Not everyone can give me the reassurance that processing emotions is a very valid human thing.
And that's a fact of life.
So what is there 24/7 to make me realize that there is companionship elsewhere, fics about processing emotions maybe. Investment in characters going through the same thing, finding hope at the end of the road after loss.
Losing someone is fucking painful. And here's the shitty part. Your life stops for the two months, three months after they die, you have to fall back into routines, you have to rebuild routines without the person.
And no one is going to be there for you 24/7. Bereavement leave only lasts a week. You can only take at least a week off school after someone really important dies.
And you can't lock yourself in a room to process emotions because you have funeral preparations, you have to pretend your fine in front of every single person who shows up.
So you just have the weekend right? Then Monday, back to work. People will ask you how you are but you have to go back to work to keep your job.
You can't talk to anyone, you have to work. Or else you starve, you can't take care of yourself.
And you know how incredibly validating it is to articulate such emotion, to create seemingly real avatars who probably understand, who probably experience the same thing?
Society won't do it for us. Society is too focused on being happy, positive and productive, they forget. People need time to breathe. They need time to remember that what they're experiencing, this sadness, this lack of productivity, this frustration at the world, this loss and sadness is fucking real.
Because sometimes no one is gonna remind them. Not everyone is lucky to have someone stay up until 12am everyday just to listen. Just to sit there and listen. Because even the people closest to us have lives, have jobs, have skeletons in their closets, have other friends to think about.
And sometimes even the best advice and the best listenerd just aren't enough because horrible events happen and they leave holes in our heart and sometimes the best thing that can help is this conjuration, this avatar created from our writing and yes, I was at my lowest last September, no one stopped to ask about me, not my parents, not my sister, not my boyfriend because they all had fucking jobs. And at night? They were too tired to listen. They had hobbies, they had things the wanted to do, they wanted to rest because life is stressful for them too.
I really wanted to talk to someone. I really did but therapy was fucking expensive and would the therapist really care about me enough to listen?
I had to get past it myself. I had to get past every single one of them myself and what really helped is sometimes just having someone on paper, remind me, it does happen.
And I just have to get past it and that's why every single one of my fics will end that way with that same lesson.
Some people turn away to fluff when life gets overwhelming, I seek companionship in something similar to what I've experienced because I said before, I never got this validation in real life. I articulate this validation for myself.
So I'm sorry, if my fics aren't everybody's cup of tea but I started writing fanfiction again at my lowest because I needed some sort of reminder that even when no one would listen, my feelings were very much real.
