H/c musings and a poll

lotesseflower's post on h/c and character identification got me wondering. She (correctly for many cases, I think) identifies the trauma/hurt in a h/c fic as the "point" of the fic, the way that orgasm is the "point" of a pwp. And I was nodding and agreeing, because h/c without the hurt isn't h/c at all--just smarm, which is a different kink entirely.

Then she presented her thoughts on character identification within h/c fics, which is where her take on it and mine kind of diverge.

I want to experience not Sam's pain but Dean's reaction to it. I want to be in Dean's head. Sam's in pain, and I gt to be Dean and heal him and love him. --lotesseflower

Personally, when it comes to h/c, I'm almost the opposite--I'm far more likely to put myself in the hurt character's head while reading, even if the scene isn't from their pov, and for physical h/c at least, I often like to have the scene from the hurt character's perspective. There are some kinds of emotional h/c where I do actively want the scene to be from the other character's pov, but that's generally because I identify strongly enough with the hurt guy/girl that I need some distance in order to get through the scene. Not because I want to be the one healing and comforting, but because I don't want to look that closely at that kind of pain. [insert anecdote about clinging to a stuffed animal and sobbing while reading Civil War: The Confession here]

When writing h/c, the stakes are a little different--when I'm writing a scene, I have to put myself in the pov character's head, so I identify with whomever I'm writing at the moment (as well as with the hurt character--it's an interesting kind of mental gymnastics that requires me to put myself in two people's heads at once).

However, the rule about not wanting to get too close to some kinds of emotional hurt gets even stronger when I'm writing. There are a couple scenes in the fic I'm currently co-writing that seanchai and I agreed from the get go were flat not going to be from a particular character's point-of-view, because it felt too much like emotional voyeurism to let the reader see the inside his head at that particular moment (and also because people in the midst of nervous breakdowns make highly unreliable narrators).

( Poll )