>>45250014The armchair psychologist in me wants to say it's because it lets us feel bad things from a safe position and work through to the other side of it. When the world's as fucked as it is right now it's better to live suffering vicariously than to sit waiting in anticipation for it to slap you in the face. This whole pandemic has been like one big waiting game of despair and at least in angsty media we can choose to jump off the cliff for some catharsis. Works wonders for distracting you.
Under normal circumstances I think it's just an empathy thing, if a character I like goes through hard times then it strengthens my desire to see good things come to them. The raw urge to hold someone and tell them it's okay is the basis of plenty of characterfagging, and it's similar to rooting for a hero through conflict/drama; you feel their triumph with them at the end of it.
Basically angst is a direct hit to our emotional bonding that heightens the value of subsequent or prior fluff, and makes us appreciate everything in contrast with it. You can take any simple, bland thing and add a few decadent layers by claiming there's angst behind the smile, and now the smile is delicious. If someone makes angst with no happy ending then it fires us up because we need that turnaround, but that intense feeling of need is good in itself because we feel.
tl;dr, we're social creatures and we want emotional engagement.
>>45250930Milo's hat looks like someone gently flopping pizza dough.
