Major Rant : Angst

[CX]

I'm really getting cranky lately. I've taken time to read a lot of stories lately and some people here seem to have a serious knack for angst. Can someone please explain a village idiot from Germany what the appeal of it is?

Two prime examples. Dinah's "Thorne and the Rose" or the "Commander Tucker...whatever" series. TnT are put through useless suffering usually with T'Pol being protrayed as a manipulative ice cold bitch. What the hell is up with that

The latter Chapters of Dinah's story are some of the best I ever read. That whole story has influenced me heavily, but the first 5 or 6 chapters require an antidepressant. Why is it in so many stories that the two are put through useless suffering and contrived angst, didn't we get enough of that in the TV series? I'm really havin' a hard time getting my head around it

For some people, that kind of stuff pulls at their heart strings and is therefore dramatic for them. Some writers do it better than others. In Dinah's defense, usually there's a pay-off at the end, which is why I sucked it up through her last series until the end.

[shameless plug]But if you want, you could always check out my series, Star Trek: Foundations, which doesn't have much angst to speak of, yet anyway. [/shameless plug]

[WarpGirl]

It's amazing, I'd agree that there's a little too much rip your guts out angst with almost everyone (including myself) except Dinah! I mean just her OC's alone make anything worth reading. Even Malcolm in a pink tutu.

[Asso]

Angst... or rather the search for angst, THE DELIBERATE SEARCH, it's totally useless, and foolish for the men. Men are not made for angst: they look for the women who can love them without too many questions.
Men are cave dwellers, Escriba. Don't you know that?

No, it's not that what I meant. See, men (at least where I grew up) are taught to decide, to take charge of their lives. You know, to be the paterfamilias. They do that in every side of life except in the emotional terrain. Which makes a lot of men miserable (at least, here). You can have a man with a disastrous family life, who doesn't love his wife and isn't loved by her, and he can't take himself to divorce and be happy. Men suffer a lot trying to avoid suffering.

Because they are cave dwellers, Escriba. For them it exists only the rectilinear road. Mh... maybe I should read Machiavelli again.

[WarpGirl]

Men may have cave dweller instincts, which are handy in certain situations. But I don't agree that men aren't programmed for emotional problems, we all have to be to an extent because we'd all turn into raving lunatics if we weren't.

[Alelou]

Oh, I think there's a huge difference between men and women in terms of cave-man instincts, but it's on a continuum that varies quite a bit from individual to individual.

By the way, it's the male baboons who socialize and groom the most and hang out in a friendly way with the females instead of getting into endless fights for dominance that live the longest and age most gracefully.

Just a little food for thought.

[Dinah]

Visions of "Extinction" just popped into my head. Not a good thing.

[Silverbullet]

Hey, I am 74 and have been in every kind of relationship with females you can think of. One thing that stands out is that people instinctivly protect themselves. there is always someting held back a part that is not revealed. It is surprising things that come out years later in a marriage.

With TnT that is also true for T-Pol especially. She is holding back to protect herself. She does not admit to Trip her true caring for him to protect herself from perceived hurt that may or may not happen she is not prepared to take a chance. She wants certainty
she wants guarantees. Vulcan relatinships are preprgrammed that is the young are behtrohed at age 7 amd that is it. They grow up get married and are told that hey may become fond of one another some day. No chances taken their path is laid out for them. With trip T-Pol would be in uncharted waters without a compass. That is a big step to take and the only way she can really take it is if she knows that she can count on Trips strength and Love to help her. That is why she acts the way she does she is not certain of those two things and until she is she will not commit.

[Alelou]

And I think much the same could be said for Trip, actually. I think he instinctively hides his deepest feelings (though despite his efforts it's obvious to anyone when something's bugging him).

[WarpGirl]

And to think with all that people still say T'Pol is a cold hearted witch to poor Trip. I don't get it.

[Kotik]

And I think much the same could be said for Trip, actually. I think he instinctively hides his deepest feelings (though despite his efforts it's obvious to anyone when something's bugging him).

WHY? It's illogical

[Alelou]

It's self-protective. Loving someone is risky. Loving someone who doesn't love you back has got to be one of the most painful experiences in life. Doing all that in open view of the person who doesn't love you and everyone else just makes it worse. It's like being a turtle without a shell. I think people who live that way, with their hearts wide open, sometimes freak the hell out of other people. (And alas, some people respond by being mean to them, the way some kids in school instinctively torment anyone who's different.)

[Dinah]

I never thought of T'Pol as a cold-hearted witch. I just thought her upbringing failed to prepare her for life on a Human ship and the discovery of deep feelings for one Human in particular. She's spent four years deeply immersed in another culture. When the Kir'shara was discovered, I think it made her realized how far she'd drifted from her own people. It's no wonder she's trying desperately to figure out who she is and what she wants from life. I'm not sure she could make those difficult choices and maintain her relationship with Trip. She needed time. I think the problem arose when she left it open ended. Maybe she should have specified how much time: give me a month, give me a year to figure things out. Then Trip would have had some frame of reference. As things stood, in his mind this distance between them could continue indefinitely with them only drifting further apart.

[WarpGirl]

Oh Dinah I didn't mean you said that. No no no no, and you never wrote her like that either. But other people here use the words cold hearted when it comes to T'Pol a lot.

[Aquarius]

In answer to the initial question, I believe that there is a distinction between "angst" and "conflict."

That said, I think a lot of TnT fics are mislabeled "angst," simply because there is a lot of conflict inherent in who and what they are. They are from two different worlds--usually in a romance we mean that in the figurative "wrong side of the tracks" way, but for them, it's literal. So right off the bat you've got culture clash...and then you factor in one's lifetime dedicated to cold logic and the other who's free as a bird expressing his emotions.

Personally, I find that there needs to be at least SOME conflict in order for a story and a relationship to be interesting; some hill to climb, some obstacle to overcome. And yes, I AM the girl who took the prompt "wrecked" and wrote a response that is as un-angsty as you can possibly get! Yet even my humor pieces are centered around some kind of obstacle--"Wrecked" and the "Sex, Lies, and..." sequels it spawned are not exempt, as we learn that keeping their jobs hinges on keeping the captain distracted, though they remain transparent despite their best efforts. Though I occasionally write serious pieces, my "thing" of late seems to be to look at the conflict and find what is inherently funny about it.

Alelou's fics, I believe, just center on a more realistic representation of the kind of conflict that's going to come with the territory in people like Trip and T'Pol, and I don't believe she ever showed much of anything that I felt was inconsistent with the characterizations that were presented on-screen. I personally don't believe that things got magically fixed for TnT after "Terra Prime," so I appreciate an author who shows he or she has obviously thought this through and considers the possibility of things getting a little worse before they get better.

[WarpGirl]

There is a difference between magically fixing problems and giving characters a positive attitude about fixing those very real inherent problems. I don't mind angst I do mind negitivity. And some authors (nobody specific) have Trip and T'Pol behaving very negitively about their problems. That annoys me. Now with Dinah's beautiful work there is some negitivity due to the mental illness Trip suffers, and T'Pol's inability to see the way to help him, and that is another can of tuna... But, what makes the series so inspiring about the series is that even with all those problems they're actively learning and fighting to overcome them with a positive attitude. But I really hate it when stories are so bogged down with bad attitudes.