Angst in movies and books: Where do you stand?

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26 Nov 2010, 9:27 am

Angst is fine when it's once in a while. It makes you feel for the main characters in the story, but I find it repulsive and depressing to have them feel a lot of angst throughout the entire story. It ruined Harry Potter for me. He was being tortured too much and I got tired of it.

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Brainfre3ze_93
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26 Nov 2010, 9:31 am

Same here, whenever someone writes a character with so much angst. Nothing ever gets done story wise, I'm fine with a little struggle because it gives the character a personality.

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Giftorcurse
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26 Nov 2010, 10:45 am

Shinji Ikari, anyone?

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Bunneth
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26 Nov 2010, 12:07 pm

I agree, too much angst shoved down your throat (usually with accompanying sad orchestral music to ram the point home) just makes me stop caring about the character. But I'm the same with relentless happiness in fiction; it just becomes monotonous and loses all impact after a while because you become desensitised or bored with it.

KyleTheGhost
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26 Nov 2010, 12:11 pm

Bunneth wrote:

Good point. Too much of anything is bad.

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26 Nov 2010, 1:09 pm

Giftorcurse wrote:

Shinji Ikari, anyone?

Ah yes, the poster boy for angst. He's quite the depressing character. To my understanding, most Evangelion fans seem to find him to be pathetic rather than pitiable.

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27 Nov 2010, 6:33 pm

Brainfre3ze_93 wrote:

Same here, whenever someone writes a character with so much angst. Nothing ever gets done story wise, I'm fine with a little struggle because it gives the character a personality.

True.

There is a fine line between enough angst/struggle to keep things interesting and so much that it becomes annoying and you stop caring (or, worse yet, start thinking "Why don't you just KILL yourself and put everyone out of YOUR misery?!?").

Hope that didn't sound too harsh. :oops:

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Bunneth
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29 Nov 2010, 5:32 am

conundrum wrote:

Brainfre3ze_93 wrote:

Same here, whenever someone writes a character with so much angst. Nothing ever gets done story wise, I'm fine with a little struggle because it gives the character a personality.

No, I've felt that a few times when watching a film (most obvious example that springs to mind is Garden State, I really hated Zach Braff's character for the first 2/3 of that movie).

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20 Dec 2010, 7:14 pm

Wobbly-headed Bob ruins angst for me. No sell.

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20 Dec 2010, 7:21 pm

I don't care if somebody is tortured, suffering or not, I don't sympathize to fiction.
But when I read/watch something and one character is dooooing soooomethiiing veeeryyy loooong, talking about it*, I think dammit, man, just do it and shut up!

*How do you think, why I'm gonna kill you? Listen to my sad story blablablabla...
or so I decided do destroy the world... destroy... blablablabla...
and other situations when they want, but can't, so they waaaaait.

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