Musing on hurt/comfort

[elspethdixon]

Sparked by reading the responses to morgan32’s hurt/comfort poll.


I’m a self-admitted h/c junkie—I’ll read almost anything where a character is tortured/injured/frozen-in-the-snow/afflicted-with-ptsd/what-have-you. I like watching characters go through the wringer, watching them be made vulnerable, watching them bleed. I liked that sort of thing in published fiction long before I ever discovered fanfic, as witnessed by my longstanding devotion to Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series (for those of you who haven’t read it or watched the movies: if a book goes by without Richard Sharpe getting beaten up, shot, or sustaining some other kind of injury, he has been a very lucky rifleman indeed). It wasn’t until I got to fandom, and began seeking out more of my own particular narrative kink that I began finding h/c stories that I didn’t like.

They felt ooky. They felt overly touchy-feely. They oozed mush all over my nice character torture. They felt weirdly like emotional voyeurism. They felt, in a word… smarmy.

And I felt conflicted. Much like when I read Wurthering Heights for English class, I felt that I should like these stories, but just couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm. They contained h/c, my particular kink, and were often well-written, but I just couldn’t get into them.

I couldn’t figure out what it was about these stories that turned me off. For a while, I thought it was because the writers were making the characters all co-dependant. Then I read C.S. Freidman’s Coldfire Trilogy and re-watched Starsky & Hutch and remembered that I like them co-dependant. It wasn’t because of the high h/c levels, because I like h/c. Next to long, well-plotted epics, it’s the best thing going.

After reading the responses to morgan32’s hurt/comfort poll, however, I’ve finally decided that it might be as simple as the fact that I like the hurt part of the h/c equation, while smarm writers appear to prefer the comfort.

The more I read my way through the post’s comments thread, the more it began to seem like people’s answers were falling into two distinct camps regarding h/c. To quote (without permission, natch) two of the ones that seemed to best articulate the divide:

“I also admit to enjoying the hurt; as I said, I've always been attracted to the weak sides of my heroes, the display of vulnerability. Can't explain exactly why - especially as my favorite characters tend to be the badasses; I like them to be strong, but I also enjoy the, hmm, challenge, of breaking them believably.” - xparrot

“To me H/C is about the C rather than the H. Or at least I don't like them to suffer tremendously 'on-screen' so to speak.” - nakeisha

Some posters, like xparrot (who writes wonderful h/c and wonderful gen fic in general, btw), admitted to liking the “h” part of h/c at least as much as the “c.” One or two commenters even admitted to liking it more. They cited the universal appeal of watching a character struggle to overcome adversity, the thrill of seeing a usually strong character made vulnerable, the almost physical pang one feels when sympathizing with the injured character (I told you it was a kink, people). A happy ending was preferable, but the comfort did not have to outweigh the hurt, and in fact was often best when delivered in an understated manner—a “less is more” kind of thing. In short, the whole “pretty when they bleed” aesthetic that defines much of the appeal of h/c for me.

Other posters, like nakeisha, stressed the comfort part of h/c, often saying that they found the gritty details of blood/pain/injury secondary to the greater appeal of seeing characters display their love and concern for one another, seeing a usually undemonstrative character take on the role of nurturer. The best part of h/c, they argued, was the care-taking, the affirmation of the bond between characters, the thrill of seeing one character tend to the physical or emotional needs of the other, often setting aside his own angst or discomfort in order to do so.

After reading everyone’s opinions on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that hurt/comfort isn’t one single kink, but two (or possibly more) intertwined kinks. One can have comfort!kink without onscreen hurt, or hurt!kink without comfort, or one can have both at once; real “Hurt/Comfort.” A fic that is heavily weighted to one kink or the other is likely to appeal more strongly to fans of that particular kink than it will to the average reader, just as a pwp written to fulfill a particular kink may leave readers who are not fans of, say, cross-dressing or bondage scratching their heads and wondering what exactly is so hot about Jack Sparrow in a corset, or Sirius Black in a collar.

Take camp two’s “comfort” emphasis, ramp the emotions up a notch, and add a bit of character infantilization (what slashers may recognize as “weepy uke syndrome,” and which can show up all too often in gen fic, too), and you’ve got smarm. Of course, taking camp one’s “hurt” emphasis too far can result in out and out over-the-top character abuse of the most sadistic sort, so neither half of the equation is really superior to the other. In fact, the best h/c fic is generally the sort that lives up to its genre label and uses elements from both sides of the equation.

But it is an equation, something that combines multiple variables to produce a result—not a single quantity.

I can and do enjoy fics by the smarmier brand of writer once in a while, but generally these are well-laced with snarky banter, stick pretty closely to canon characterization, and tend to be on the restrained side when it comes to weepy out-pourings of emotion.

When it all comes down to it, I’m really here for the angst and blood. And gunshot wounds, and diphtheria, and concussion, and hypothermia, and dehydration, and fever, and broken ribs, and stab wounds, and cruciatus curses, and floggings, and…

*troops off to look up defibrillation for her current wip*

Comments

[melannen.livejournal.com]

After reading that poll and the responses this morning, I would have said that I fall firmly into the "comfort" side of the equation, because all of the H/C fics I can recall that I really, really liked did not go into too much detail on the hurt; in many of them, in fact, the hurt was well in the past, and only described as neccesary for the comfort.

Now that I've read *your* thoughts, though, I think what it really is, is that I don't really have an H/C kink at all: because I don't particularly like my hurt and comfort to be all mixed up together. If I'm in the mood for healing through codependency - which is really what the C in H/C usually is - I don't particularly care to know the details of the hurt; I just want to see the characters bond. And if I'm in the mood for hurt - for seeing somebody get systematically broken - then I don't particularly want the codependency - I'm in it for the *character*, making them into just half a relationship is a let-down. And hurt *not* followed by detailed, sloppy, romantic bonding-through-healing gets classified in my head as darkfic, not H/C, even if there is some hope at the end. So maybe it's not so much that I like comfort better, as that I think the detailed comfort, not the hurt, is what makes a fic H/C.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Useful distinction.

(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."

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Take camp two’s “comfort” emphasis, ramp the emotions up a notch, and add a bit of character infantilization (what slashers may recognize as “weepy uke syndrome,” and which can show up all too often in gen fic, too), and you’ve got smarm. Of course, taking camp one’s “hurt” emphasis too far can result in out and out over-the-top character abuse of the most sadistic sort, so neither half of the equation is really superior to the other. In fact, the best h/c fic is generally the sort that lives up to its genre label and uses elements from both sides of the equation.

Absolutely. But just to note-- the character infantilization isn't really a part of the comfort!kink itself, since that would focus on the emotions of the comforter. Right? (I'm trying to understand your definitions of the terms).