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Overwhelmingly, the winner of the YA Agony Award is Susan Beth Pfeffer's depressingly realistic apocalypse novel Life As We Knew It. I am not sure that actually reading it was a moredepressing experience than reading my other personal top contenders, Out of the Dust (you burned your mother to death) and Taylor Five (your brother is dead and your family failed to save the orangutans), but it's certainly in my top three as well.
I think it won for the combination of scope of catastrophe (entire world), personal element (your own mother asks you to commit suicide), and, for people who actually read it, realism and plausibility (it feels like it really could happen-- and it would be depressing.)
Regarding the runner-up, highlight to read spoilers for what it was and also more depressing details. Though actually, I am pretty sure there's more than one YA novel with that plot. Guy Burt's The Hole. Several teenagers tell their parents they're taking a trip somewhere else, but actually hold a slumber party in a WWII bunker. One of them locks the others in. This seems to be told retrospectively, after they've all escaped, but it turns out that they all horribly starved to death in the cold and dark, except for the narrator, who was the sole survivor after two weeks of torture and horror locked in with corpses as her friends died one by one, and is now understandably insane in an asylum. Since the boy she blames for locking them in turns out to not exist, either she did it herself or she is still so terrified of him that she disguised his identity-- so he's still out there. The real murderer and motive can never be known. Oh, and one of the boys raped her while they were all locked in. Cheery!
But all that made me think: what is the difference between depressing and angsty? They are not measures of quality! Good and bad books can be angsty or depressing, or both. Though in my opinion, depression beats angst: a book which is both angsty and depressing produces an overall feeling of depression.
To me, depressing books are ones which you put down feeling miserable, and do not return to unless truly stellar writing draws you back-- and even then you have to brace yourself. And you keep hoping the hero will suffer less, because you don't want to read about all that suffering.
Angsty books are ones in which you finish feeling wrung out but exhilarated, or pleasurably sad, or just plain pleased. You return whenever you feel like it. And while you may want the hero to suffer less, you probably also want them to suffer more so you can see them react to it. "Beautiful suffering" is often a feature of angsty books. Perhaps the best illustration of the search for angst was the person who posted to a Supernatural fanfic-finding community, "I'm looking for stories where Dean gets beat up. Or tortured. I mean more than he does canonically. I just love Dean."
There are other factors which tend to give the impression of "angsty" or "depressing," but are not surefire signifiers.
Depressing books are more likely to involve current or historical social problems or tragedies. The historic weight of truth adds to the reader's depression. A writer intending angst must swim against the tide to not make a book about historic tragedies or contemporary injustice depressing-- and it may feel cheap and trashy if they succeed.
Factors which may be used either way: realism, believable characters, stock or archetypal characters, happy or unhappy endings, focusing on or not focusing on the hero's emotional reactions, the hero being active or passive, the hero as a victim of circumstances or the hero as the maker of their own agony, misery, or woe.
I don't think I've ever read a book where I felt that a dead pet produced more angst than depression, either in the characters or me.
How do you draw the line between depressing and angsty?
Please use examples from any media-- but clearly label them for spoilers in the subject heading!
Put any relevant spoilers behind spoiler code, as not everyone has watched or read everything. Sample code to cut and paste-- which I can't get to show up, damn. You can find it and copy it from this post: http://rilina.livejournal.com/429684.html
Sample code:
Spoilers here.
Spoilers here.
I think it won for the combination of scope of catastrophe (entire world), personal element (your own mother asks you to commit suicide), and, for people who actually read it, realism and plausibility (it feels like it really could happen-- and it would be depressing.)
Regarding the runner-up, highlight to read spoilers for what it was and also more depressing details. Though actually, I am pretty sure there's more than one YA novel with that plot. Guy Burt's The Hole. Several teenagers tell their parents they're taking a trip somewhere else, but actually hold a slumber party in a WWII bunker. One of them locks the others in. This seems to be told retrospectively, after they've all escaped, but it turns out that they all horribly starved to death in the cold and dark, except for the narrator, who was the sole survivor after two weeks of torture and horror locked in with corpses as her friends died one by one, and is now understandably insane in an asylum. Since the boy she blames for locking them in turns out to not exist, either she did it herself or she is still so terrified of him that she disguised his identity-- so he's still out there. The real murderer and motive can never be known. Oh, and one of the boys raped her while they were all locked in. Cheery!
But all that made me think: what is the difference between depressing and angsty? They are not measures of quality! Good and bad books can be angsty or depressing, or both. Though in my opinion, depression beats angst: a book which is both angsty and depressing produces an overall feeling of depression.
To me, depressing books are ones which you put down feeling miserable, and do not return to unless truly stellar writing draws you back-- and even then you have to brace yourself. And you keep hoping the hero will suffer less, because you don't want to read about all that suffering.
Angsty books are ones in which you finish feeling wrung out but exhilarated, or pleasurably sad, or just plain pleased. You return whenever you feel like it. And while you may want the hero to suffer less, you probably also want them to suffer more so you can see them react to it. "Beautiful suffering" is often a feature of angsty books. Perhaps the best illustration of the search for angst was the person who posted to a Supernatural fanfic-finding community, "I'm looking for stories where Dean gets beat up. Or tortured. I mean more than he does canonically. I just love Dean."
There are other factors which tend to give the impression of "angsty" or "depressing," but are not surefire signifiers.
Depressing books are more likely to involve current or historical social problems or tragedies. The historic weight of truth adds to the reader's depression. A writer intending angst must swim against the tide to not make a book about historic tragedies or contemporary injustice depressing-- and it may feel cheap and trashy if they succeed.
Factors which may be used either way: realism, believable characters, stock or archetypal characters, happy or unhappy endings, focusing on or not focusing on the hero's emotional reactions, the hero being active or passive, the hero as a victim of circumstances or the hero as the maker of their own agony, misery, or woe.
I don't think I've ever read a book where I felt that a dead pet produced more angst than depression, either in the characters or me.
How do you draw the line between depressing and angsty?
Please use examples from any media-- but clearly label them for spoilers in the subject heading!
Put any relevant spoilers behind spoiler code, as not everyone has watched or read everything. Sample code to cut and paste-- which I can't get to show up, damn. You can find it and copy it from this post: http://rilina.livejournal.com/429684.html
Sample code:
Spoilers here.
Spoilers here.
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From:
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I think I basically agree: it's the difference between 'actually upset' and 'wrung out but exhilarated.' There's a certain... I don't know how to say this without sounding critical (which I manifestly am not; I enjoy angst, but don't like depressing) -- but there's a certain over-the-top element in angst, an exuberance.
I'm having trouble coming up with examples, because most of my angst-diet comes from fan fiction. I think it's kind of... okay: depressing books focus on the horrible things that happen, and the characters' emotional reactions underline the horribleness. So in Bridge to Terabithia, Leslie's death is an exemplar and emphasizer of Jesse's isolation; it's the pain of misunderstanding and isolation that is frontlined. Or in The Yearling, the necessity of Flag's death seems, to me, to be used as an example of the pain of growing up and the loss of innocence. The pain is serious business; it's not a pleasure. I'm perfectly well aware that if either of those things happened to me, I'd be genuinely miserable, not ecstatic with grief.
In an angsty fanfic story, though, both physical pain and emotional anguish are means to explore (and wallow in, and even enjoy) emotional heights and depths. It's a safe way to feel that you love someone so much you want to die, or to have a sort of private empathetic pity-party for someone for whom nothing ever goes right. The point isn't a message or a theme -- there's no point except 'it feels good to feel these things, but at a safe remove.' I don't actually want to die, nor has everything gone wrong for me, but I can wade around in the feeling a bit, and then leave... and then come back if I want to, or not. (I'm sure I've read things that aren't fanfic that push this button, but I'm having trouble thinking of them off the top of my head. Probably the closest in terms of YA-fiction-of-my-youth are the Vampire Diaries-type novels, where it's not so much 'my boyfriend died' as 'my boyfriend is a tormented vampire soul who is torn between keeping me forever, but as a damned soul, and leaving me to be whole but alone.' Again, that sounds very dismissive -- but I really don't mean it dismissively.)
I've heard the term 'emo porn' tossed around, the vicarious pleasure got from reading about or witnessing extremes of emotion that most of us don't feel day-to-day (and usually, that it's a good thing that we don't feel). I think that's part of it. It's fun to feel strongly, within safe boundaries. But a truly depressing book isn't safe; it's scary. It says 'this really could happen to you, and you know perfectly well that, if it did, you wouldn't enjoy it at all.'
From:
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That said, in spite of all the heartwrenching break-ups and deaths, there's this vibe of hope, that in spite of the pain the story is really about the coping with the pain, and the support, and the growing up and moving on and - oh yeah, slaying horribly evil things in the meantime.
(The one time they really go for the gold, Newberry-style, is when Buffy's mother is diagnosed with a brain tumor in the fifth season, and how it plays on from this point out. It was depressing enough the first time; now dealing with my own mother being recently diagnosed with cancer, I can probably never watch that entire part of the series again.)
From:
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From:
no subject
Angst is gratuitous on some level, I think, and it is emotional porn in a way. You are right that angst usually provides a safer setting for dealing with painful things and often seems to distance the reader from the more agonizing aspects, or at least softens the blow somewhat. The reader can choose to empathize with the suffering character as much or as little as they like, and can usually 'pull back' a little bit if they feel they are getting too emotionally involved. I find that depressing stories don't really do this. You get the full brunt of painful experiences and emotions, without the emotional gratification or empathetic pleasure. I usually classify a story as depressing if it is relentlessly bleak, ends on a very grim note, and feels personal rather than empathetic.