I don't want to die

This time I'm addressing the sort of fanfiction that deals with Yamato being depressed and/or suicidal.  The reason for this is simply that I find these fics annoying.  Although Yamato is a dark person at times there is far more to his character than that which authors sometimes don't pay a lot of attention to.  I think it's out of character to portray Yamato as a character that is always depressed and always brooding about something.

From what we saw in 01, Matty boy was a pretty depressing guy.  Always throwing those dark looks, always hiding things, always fighting with Tai... although that might not have so much to do with his depression.  Yamato never says much out loud but a lot of the time you get the idea that there's more going on with him than meets the eye.  There is a darkness within him, we can see that - what I'm not sure about is why he was depressed in the first place (note the use of past tense - was).

He's very protective of Takeru, we can see that.  We also know that he hasn't had much practice at being a big brother as their parents are divorced.  Which brings up another point: could it be the divorce that got him all depressed?  Quite possibly, although I don't think that that on its own would be enough to unseat your average 11-year-old (and let's please remember that he is only 11).  Either there's something else in his past or he's extremely sensitive.  I don't know which to believe but I don't think that it really matters.  Because no matter how terrible his depression was and how great the darkness inside him was, he escaped it all in the end.

Late in the Dark Masters saga, while Yamato was busy 'finding himself', he got stuck in a long, dark tunnel, what we now know as the world of darkness or the Dark Ocean (although we didn't see any ocean in 01).  We know that people can only reach this world if they carry a great darkness with them, which Yamato must have had.  When he was inside the tunnel he barely noticed what had happened to him, although Gabumon was quite upset.  Yamato, at one point, began to radiate darkness as the place was amplifying the darkness inside him (bla bla bla).  But then Gabumon managed to get him to snap out of it and the darkness left him so that at last he woke up to where he was and was able to escape the darkness.  This isn't just another obstacle overcome, it's symbolic; it shows how Yamato excorcises his personal demons and gets on with his life.  It shows how he got rid of that depression and that darkness.  That's why he isn't depressed anymore, because that day he left his dark past behind.

Of course, in fanfiction you can always ignore that little fact.  Obviously a lot of authors do as they're still writing him as a depressed and sometimes suicidal guy.  I don't mind it if yous set these things earlier in Yamato's life so that they don't contradict the dark hole thing, but setting them after then, after we've seen him a perfectly happy guy in 02?  Unless the author provides a specific reason for him becoming depressed again (preferably not the death of another digidestined) post 02 depression fics just make me want to tell that guy to get over himself!  Yes, I know I'm probably sounding insensitive and old-fashioned.  In a lot of ways, I am.  But the insensitive, old-fashioned, get-over-it-because-you-won't-get-any-sympthy-if-you-just-mope-around ideals can sometimes be much more helpful and productive than taking sitting around complaining and being buried in pity.  IMHO, the best way to get over something is not to think, talk and worry about it but to get out and do something useful.  Many people find it quite therapeutic.

But that's a whole new story.  Anyway, Yama ain't depressed.

So, if Yamato isn't depressed anymore then why do authors still write him that way?  I don't know, because I don't write him that way and I don't really understand, but I'm going to offer a few possibilities.

1.    It's a lot more interesting to write him like that.
Fair enough.  I can't come up with any decent argument to this.  Readers seem to find it more interesting too, so there's nothing wrong with it, I suppose.  My only possible complaint would be that Yamato has a lot of other interesting traits that would be nice to read about and that tend to be forgotten in suicide fics.

2.    It makes a better setting for a romance fic.
*shrugs*  If you say so.  I've seen plenty of fics that work fine without the depression part, but a lot of Ishida romances (particularly Taito) play on the 'dark' theme.  Don't know why.

Okay, and here we go, number three.  I don't even know if this is true.  I certainly hope not because the idea of it makes me sick.  Okay, here we go:
3.    People find him more attractive when he's all angsty.
Let me just clear one thing up for you: angst is not attractive.  If truly deep depression could be made visible to the human eye then it would be one of the ugliest things on the damn planet.  You have to differentiate between depression and things like sadness, for one thing.  Sadness, though painful, is a healthy emotion; depression is not.  Time can erase sadness without help from anywhere else; time, when unassisted, just makes depression worse.

Depression eats out everything inside you until you are little but a shell.  It destroys in a way that nothing else can.  A depressed person is a black hole of emotion; any hope you try to give them is squashed down, smaller and smaller, until it barely even exists.  Often someone who is depressed doesn't look for a way out, they just get worse and worse until they feel that things can't get any worse.  They just keep going until they die, whether they stop eating or choose to end it quickly on their own (ie suicide).  Don't see the attraction there.

And if depression itself it terrible then loving someone who is depressed is a nightmare.  Can you imagine watching someone you care about suffering from something you can't even see?  Watching them crumble away from the inside and knowing that as much as you love them and as much as you want to help them there's absolutely nothing you can do?  What would you do if the first thing you did when you woke up in the morning was to wonder if you'd see them that day or if they'd finally gone and died?

Can you imagine what it's like when they miss a day of school?  You sit at your desk, going about your normal day when suddenly it hits you: what if they've killed themselves?  What if today was the day they finally did it?  What if they died not knowing how much you wanted to help, how much you really loved them?

Would you be able to stand it?

I feel sorry for Taichi or whoever else is paired with Matt in the depression/suicide stories.  Sometimes people can't help the situations that they get themselves into.  Both being depressed and loving someone who is depressed are hell.  Why put your characters through that if they're no-one's depressed in the first place?  Although I suppose by the end of what I've described everyone'll be pretty depressed anyway.

Ah, what am I saying?  Don't take my words to heart, make up your own mind.  You can read many accounts of Yamato's death (and a few other things as well) at fanfiction.net.