(Forgive me for what I may or may not unleash next. I ramble too much to contribute comments to polls like this in a useful way, so I inflict it on my friendslist instead, on the basis that I have my claws piercing at least a few layers of flesh.)
I like the h and the c to be in balance, or maybe skewed a bit toward the h. I don't, however, care much about the gritty details of the h. I'm not squeamish, and, hell yes, there's something compelling about seeing Richard Sharpe bloody, limping, and spitting fire, and something equally as compelling about that kicked-puppy look Sean Bean can whip out on a moment's notice, but someone getting kicked around or beaten or bleeding in great detail gets repetative quickly. Extended scenes of mental torture bore me unless they're exceptionally well-done (George Orwell levels of well done).
What I'm interested in seeing is someone becoming mentally fucked up (or more fucked up) by trauma and learning to cope with that. Cuts and broken bones mend the same for everybody; I know how it works and can read a textbook if I'm hazy. The mind, the emotions -- those are different.
Coping is the operative word. A bone might heal cleanly enough that you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of the break even in x-ray, but a person never returns exactly to a pre-trauma state. Healing in this case doesn't mean that everything's as good as new; it means that what's there can be dealt with, learned from, compensated for.
I like the hurt to affect the comforter, perhaps as much as, though differently from, the comfortee -- two fucked-up people feeling their way through life together is pretty much my perfect romance, platonic or sexual. The comfort should include a decent element of "Quit your bitching," regardless of whether that's an appropriate or sensitive attitude for the comforter to take. I cannot stand watching someone endlessly wallow in her own misery and getting nothing but coddling for it, again regardless of how much coddling may be deserved. I need for the hurt person to be able to grow past the hurt, for good or for ill, than to be mired in that hurt -- this is why I don't like the hurt person to be mentally incapacitated by the hurt.
For a concrete example: I adore the Apollo/Midnighter scene in your WIP. (I adore the Jack/Angie scene as well, but while Jack is a mess of a human being, I see Angie as the hands-down sanest member of the team, so the pairing doesn't hit my fuck-up/fuck-up buttons.) Apollo and Midnighter are two deeply messed up people. They will never be right in the head, they will never have a normal life, and they're fully aware of and okay with this. They were both hurt, physically, in the battles with Sliding Albion, and they were both hurt emotionally as well: Apollo, suspecting he was about to die, and later finding out how close Midnighter came to death; Midnighter was too close to certain Apollo would die, and the realization that he couldn't beat Regis -- could barely stand against him -- shook him deeply. And how you have them handle it? Perfect. Sex, to reassure one another that, yes, they're alive and well. Snark, to show that, yes, they're both cognizant and aren't planning to break down. And honest admission of fear, because if they cannot be honest with one another, absolutely and without shame, then they have a problem a great deal worse than amnesia and physical altering at the hands of a psychopath ever was.
This is also the sole thing I don't hate about how Mark Millar handled Apollo being raped in canon. Midnighter breaks down crying in public when the first shock of it hits, which, damn, man. It's right. The person who is not the center but the balance of his universe is hurt more than he thought Apollo could be hurt. That is not the time for macho bullshit. Afterwards, though, their recovery (what we see of it ... DROPPED BALL, MILLAR, DROPPED BALL) is equal parts "I love you, thus I snark at you" and "We're going to settle this debt."
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Date: 2006-05-17 10:52 pm (UTC)(Forgive me for what I may or may not unleash next. I ramble too much to contribute comments to polls like this in a useful way, so I inflict it on my friendslist instead, on the basis that I have my claws piercing at least a few layers of flesh.)
I like the h and the c to be in balance, or maybe skewed a bit toward the h. I don't, however, care much about the gritty details of the h. I'm not squeamish, and, hell yes, there's something compelling about seeing Richard Sharpe bloody, limping, and spitting fire, and something equally as compelling about that kicked-puppy look Sean Bean can whip out on a moment's notice, but someone getting kicked around or beaten or bleeding in great detail gets repetative quickly. Extended scenes of mental torture bore me unless they're exceptionally well-done (George Orwell levels of well done).
What I'm interested in seeing is someone becoming mentally fucked up (or more fucked up) by trauma and learning to cope with that. Cuts and broken bones mend the same for everybody; I know how it works and can read a textbook if I'm hazy. The mind, the emotions -- those are different.
Coping is the operative word. A bone might heal cleanly enough that you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of the break even in x-ray, but a person never returns exactly to a pre-trauma state. Healing in this case doesn't mean that everything's as good as new; it means that what's there can be dealt with, learned from, compensated for.
I like the hurt to affect the comforter, perhaps as much as, though differently from, the comfortee -- two fucked-up people feeling their way through life together is pretty much my perfect romance, platonic or sexual. The comfort should include a decent element of "Quit your bitching," regardless of whether that's an appropriate or sensitive attitude for the comforter to take. I cannot stand watching someone endlessly wallow in her own misery and getting nothing but coddling for it, again regardless of how much coddling may be deserved. I need for the hurt person to be able to grow past the hurt, for good or for ill, than to be mired in that hurt -- this is why I don't like the hurt person to be mentally incapacitated by the hurt.
For a concrete example: I adore the Apollo/Midnighter scene in your WIP. (I adore the Jack/Angie scene as well, but while Jack is a mess of a human being, I see Angie as the hands-down sanest member of the team, so the pairing doesn't hit my fuck-up/fuck-up buttons.) Apollo and Midnighter are two deeply messed up people. They will never be right in the head, they will never have a normal life, and they're fully aware of and okay with this. They were both hurt, physically, in the battles with Sliding Albion, and they were both hurt emotionally as well: Apollo, suspecting he was about to die, and later finding out how close Midnighter came to death; Midnighter was too close to certain Apollo would die, and the realization that he couldn't beat Regis -- could barely stand against him -- shook him deeply. And how you have them handle it? Perfect. Sex, to reassure one another that, yes, they're alive and well. Snark, to show that, yes, they're both cognizant and aren't planning to break down. And honest admission of fear, because if they cannot be honest with one another, absolutely and without shame, then they have a problem a great deal worse than amnesia and physical altering at the hands of a psychopath ever was.
This is also the sole thing I don't hate about how Mark Millar handled Apollo being raped in canon. Midnighter breaks down crying in public when the first shock of it hits, which, damn, man. It's right. The person who is not the center but the balance of his universe is hurt more than he thought Apollo could be hurt. That is not the time for macho bullshit. Afterwards, though, their recovery (what we see of it ... DROPPED BALL, MILLAR, DROPPED BALL) is equal parts "I love you, thus I snark at you" and "We're going to settle this debt."