I asked this question on a long discussion last week, but having just spent a couple of hours replotting a fic I might never write and in the process making it about 300% more angsty, the question re-occurred to me.
Why do we write so much angst in the rumbelle fandom? There are so many fics out there where our babies are separated or divorced or plagued by other misunderstandings that force them apart, or are taking time out from the relationship, or one half is dead, or some other thing that prevents them from being together. I know. I’ve written a bunch of them. Generally, as a whole group, we LIVE for this stuff. We beg for it to be written.
Considering how much crap rumbelle go through on the show, you’d have thought that we’d have banned all fics where they’re not happy together because we get enough of that in canon.
But we still keep writing our angst. Myself included. Even though I hate myself for doing it. Why do we torture ourselves and our babies like this??
I think there’s a couple of reasons for it, and this is just my opinion and might have no basis in fact.
1) It’s spite. The show is supposedly ‘angsty’ but not usually for any good reasons, or reasons that make sense. There’s not much development there, they just repeat the same battles over and over. I mean I love the show a lot, please don’t get me wrong, but 6A especially was terrible for this in my opinion. I think that characterization was sacrificed for plot.
So what we do as a fandom is say “ok we see your angst, and we raise you some well crafted development, some actual consequences, some character soul-searching and a guaranteed happy ending” – it’s like taking what they dish out, and making it better in every way.
2) I think we’re relatively mature as a fandom. We know that life sucks sometimes. There’s some quote I think from somebody smart, and I mean like an actual person but I can’t remember who it was, that says we wouldn’t know the difference between good and bad, if we didn’t experience both. We go deeper into Rumbelle, and their happy endings are potentially more meaningful because they have real obstacles to overcome first.
Yes we have pure fluff fics (I have an entire verse) but there are some amazing angsty gems in the fandom, and the pay-off at the end, is enhanced because of the struggle. That is what real life is like, it makes Rumbelle real. Plus there’s nothing about Rumbelle that is superficial, which does make it more prone to deeper angsty fics I think.
I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s just what came into my head when I read your question 🙂