~~the sad reality in escapist fiction. heh.

zahra called me the `eternal optimist of h/d' and... well... yes. i've read entirely too many fairy-tales and somehow, someway, there's some meta way for everything to actually be ok even if it isn't. there's always a lesson to be learned and there's always tomorrow. and there's always the small things, for me. if you can't have this, you can have that. if you can't have your true love, you can fall in love again. if you can't have love, you can have writing. if you can't have writing, you can have running, and tasting, and smelling, and painting, and swimming, and hugging, and dancing, and dreaming. you add up all the first flowers of may and all the times you look out the window and see blue mountains in the distance, and all the times you taste pear juice and hum with pleasure, and all the times you're surprised that an old friend still wants to keep in touch-- and it's sort of ok, even if your heart is broken.

i suppose the world could blow up tomorrow and i could go blind and deaf or just really depressed... and i suppose some things go away and never come back again. things hurt a lot. people are stupid. taxes are annoying, but not as annoying as one's relatives. and so on.
    i read grail's `immortality', on penelope_z's rec, and yes, it really packs a punch. in a way, it was almost beautiful and right, the way it all came together. on the one hand, i thought clark was being a bit on the heavily unbalanced, semi-psychotic obsessive-compulsive messiah-complex-gone-amok side of things, but...

( ...there's just something about the worst happening that seems to make sense on a purely emotional level... )

    penelope_z's other point about the Perfect Story, and how there would be no need to write if one could only find it....yes. i suspect that there would -always- be reasons to write, no matter what, but... there -is- definitely something to the `perfect story' idea that is endlessly attractive. ever-elusive and yet if only.... if only. in a way, it's sort of that same dilemma. if only things could go just right, then life wouldn't quite have to -happen-, would it. in a way, if things went right, you can't really believe that life could happen, though (or love for that matter). without that dissatisfaction, that need for -more-... it just wouldn't be real.
    it's really interesting how this plays out, for a writer compared to a reader. in writing, you are both escaping and recreating, trying to merge the two and yet only really wanting to -feel-. to feel alive, and real, and -there-. it doesn't really matter if it's pain-- pain stays longer than pleasure, in a way, it's still pleasure, the way we chase after it, the way we're addicted. when reading, the emotions are evoked, and when writing, you are evoking them, since you already have them, so naturally it's more fun to read.
    i think another thing that stays with you as long as sadness is wonder. also, a new level of understanding. a greather depth. hopefully, a story has rearranged some things in your head. hopefully, maybe you even feel like -you're- different for reading it. that's probably what i wish for the most. not just a strong emotional response, but also a deeper sort of thing-- something to capture my imagination. something to make me believe in another way, another world even. it's that story that you read, and then you're never quite the same. it's not necessarily angsty or happy-- it's just... a mix. it feels real, and yet is different from what you always thought reality was, in subtle and hard-to-trace ways. it's that story that not only speaks to you of yourself and what you know, but of what could be, and what might be, if only. it seems to emcompass the past and the present and point towards the future. it has a mythic resonance, and taps into that deep, endless well of hope and wonder that is so intrinsic to human nature.
    this is what's beyond angst and fluff. and this is why i read mythic fiction, i think.

EDIT - ivy is so good she makes me want to cry. guh. aww, who cares, angst ist goot, and break-up fics are usually all tied up with the angst and the hopelessness and despair, but this is more subtle than that, more real, more insiduous even. because you can't always depend on love to make it all better... you have to change, and that... that doesn't ever come easy, and mostly, people don't want it to.