Theories on why people write Hurt/Comfort Fic

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Title:	Theories on why people write Hurt/Comfort Fic
Creator:	thelana
Date(s):	January 17 , 2006
Medium:	LiveJournal
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External Links:	Theories on why people write Hurt/Comfort Fic; archive link
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Theories on why people write Hurt/Comfort Fic is an essay by thelana.

Introduction

I got inspired by [this post] on metafandom about h/c and misogyny in Master/Apprentice respectively age difference pairings. Which got me thinking about the different reasons why people write Hurt/Comfort. To me H/C is pretty much everything which features a main character getting hurt as *the* central plot point and trigger of events. So, I made a list. Because I love lists. Long preferably pretty exhaustive lists.

Please note that I'm not the biggest fan of h/c, so if some parts sound sarcastic that's just me.

Also note that while all of these are clichees [sic], the point of clichees is that they are used so often because they get the job done. And on occasion they can inspire great stories. It's only in those cases where the clichee sticks out too openly as agenda driven that it turns into real badfic material.

I have to say I'm usually not too hot on Hurt/Comfort fic because they usually, even the well written ones, feel to me like they take place in a weird bubble universe centered only around the two main characters. And/Or that the character developments hinge too much on the triggering effect rather than coming from the characters internally. Often making these stories less memorable in my eyes.

The Essay

Reasons why people write Hurt/Comfort fic

Feel free to remind me of anything I might have overlooked.

Getting characters together who would not interact with each other normally: H/C is an excellent tool if you want to pair two characters who do not really have much of a canon foundation to build on. For example Lex/Chloe, Sucre/T-Bag, Spike/Xander. Have one of them fall sick/injured and the other taking care of them, they for the first time have a serious conversation, realize how much in common they have and tadaaa instant pairing.

Admit your love dammit: Two characters have some sort of relationship, but not necessarily a realized romantic one. One of them falls sick, the other one is worried and finally realizes/admits their feelings when confronted with the horrible possibility of losing the other person forever.

Making passive characters active: Can be seen as exactly the same above (a character who was silent on their feelings being forced to admit them due to crisis) but also in the variation of character A being raped, injured or otherwise put in danger, so character B jumps up, kills or tries to kill all the evil guys, thereby proving his/her love and being therefore worthy of A's love.

Bringing a strong character down: Sometimes authors like to take a characters who is strong and in control in canon and put them in a situation where they lose that control and become weak. Can be done for angst purposes, to show the character in a new light, to have the intended romantic partner see them in a new light and feel sorry for them and hook up with them.

Punishing a character: The author thinks that character A has been a bitch in canon and needs to be knocked down. So he/she gets raped or injured, repents and never is the same again, forever thanking character B for helping/saving/healing them.

Nailing down a character: Character A is notoriously flighty (for example in a romantic sense). He/she gets raped or injured and literally becomes tied to the bed and to the comforting character B. Of course he/she realizes in the end that that's what they always wanted and repent their flighty ways.

Power Fetish: Character A is tied to the bed and totally dependent on character B. Author enjoys fantasizing/writing about this absolute power. Might give into various fetishes mostly unintentional babyfication of character A or the inclusion of gross medical details as a way to showcase B's dedication to A.

Medical Kinks: Author enjoys medical kinks (such as sex while having a disability).

Medical Details: Author has vast knowledge of medical details and loves to show them off and explore the psychological dynamics of traumatic (physical or psychological) events. Usually recognizable for having lots of medical detail and/or reading like a text book version on a certain illness.

Personal Experience: Author has had personal experience with that illness and decides to use her special knowledge. Can be seen as the author having a special asset he/she is using or the author using their fic and characters to exorcise their demons.

Realism: On tv, received injuries are often glossed over. Wounds heal quickly, scars disappear, character are still running around after receiving multiple gunshot wounds. Some people get annoyed with that and want to sit down and write a more realistic representation of how these injuries would affect a character's life.

Waaaangst!: Author loves wangst and lets something traumatic happen to her character so he/she can wangst and be all deep and meaningful and tragic.

Everybody cry for my character now: Author falls for a sidelined canon character. Author feels that side character is treated unfairly by canon or the other canon characters. Author writes fic of lots of bad, angsty things happening to said characters so (1) all the canon characters cry and feel bad and apologize for having been so mean to sidelined character before or (2) all the readers cry and realize what a deep, tragic and meaningful character sidelined character is.

Giving a couple something to do: I have successfully established my couple. They have kissed, sexed, declared their love for each other. Now my problem is that I don't have anything for them to do. So I just keep having my characters getting injured, help, snuggle and comfort each other as they keep declaring their love for each other over and over again and have lots and lots of healing sex.

Fluff: Focusing on the "comfort" aspect rather than the "hurt" aspect, setting up a situation where the characters can act cute and fussy around each other. Closely related to domestic!fic.

Fan Comments: At the Post

[thelana]:

Some of the really long, really, really detailed hurt, hurt, hurt and then comfort stories make me think that the authors have some really weird mothering complex towards the characters. The way they go over the top detailed with those things. It's not that I don't enjoy angst and character torture (card carrying member of Mulder Torture Anonymous), it's just that sometimes it develops into something that feels too self involved.

Though the problem with BAD hurt, hurt, hurt, comfort is that it too frequently devolved into characters crying every 5 minutes which goes into babyfication or girly-fication of male characters which is another point of not like for me.

[almostforgiven]:

I have an intense irrational thing for hurt/comfort fic. It's just so... cute. And romantic. In the whole way that it is. (Bleh. I clearly can't articulate very well...)

However, it gets really, really, really excessive sometimes.

I cannot begin to count the number of fics in QAF land that deal with Justin getting sick/in a plane crash/bashed again/brain tumor/something like that. And then Brian acts all so OOC etcetera... as if enough bad things don't happen to Justin in the show anyway...

lol Whatever. I still read them all. :P

[thelana]:

Well I more dipped in and out of watching soaps, but I hung out at the soap opera fandom for a while, so I have a vague knowledge of most soaps. But yeah, I think having watched soaps and actually having read corny romance novels cause me to want to claw my eyes out when I see those type of clichees anywhere else.

It's not that I don't enjoy romance and big gestures (Hello? I watch Bollywood movies and cry like a baby during most of them when the heroine begs her daddy to let her go just as her beloved is on a train about to leave the station or the high hearted fiance heroicially gives up the heroine so she can be with hero) I just think that they have to be properly set up and be used in moderation.

[clex monkey89]:

Punishing a character

Is character-bashing on a physical level and punishing people you don't like with rape is just... Infantile.

Nailing down a character

I... Don't know if I have the words for this hatred. When you want to change a character this much you're much better off just doing Character A/OC.

Power Fetish

See, I just... I don't know. I... That's fringe-realm BDSM and it's close enough that most of the time I end up glossing through the fic once I get to the part with the bondage.

Medical Kinks

I... to each their own really, that just doesn't do it or me. I like reading about disabed [sic] characters but not really... If it's a good fic and it has sex in it then that's cool, I'll read it. But if it's a PWP where one person is made disabled just because? No. Not my thing.

Medical Details

Author has vast knowledge of medical details and loves to show them off and explore the psychological dynamics of traumatic (physical or psychological) events. Usually recognizable for having lots of medical detail and/or reading like a text book version on a certain illness.

I for one can say that sometimes that happens without trying. I know a bit about medical details and sometimes I get a bit overboard and have to be smacked back by friends because medical details and police procedure and things like that are interesting to me and I forget that it bores most people out of their minds. That and it gets very easy to say things like "Well in this instance if Mr. Bunny was never caught before then his previous crimes would only be hearsay and thereby not admissable [sic] for testimony so I would be forced to give him something not the maximum sentence and fine for this particular crime." And yes, that was abiout [sic] Bugs Bunny and yes that was for a fake class in an RPG. Sad.

Personal Experience

See, I know they say to write what you know but... Dude, you have to know where to draw the line. Take inspiration from your things, don't tell us your life story.

Realism - On tv, received injuries are often glossed over. Wounds heal quickly, scars disappear, character are still running around after receiving multiple gunshot wounds. Some people get annoyed with that and want to sit down and write a more realistic representation of how these injuries would affect a character's life.

Guilty. I'm one of those people. But! In my mind either it's small mentions here and there, like character A bitching about crutches after hurting a leg, or the main focus of the fic, not big huge uncomfortable parts that are completely out of place in the middle of the story.

Everybody cry for my character now

Dude. It's this dumbass thing that people do. I personally have a soft-spot for Tweener but really? Forcing people to love them give you Lana Syndrome. They hate them even more because Your Pet Character becomes a Mary-Sue of Tragedy.

Giving a couple something to do

Again with the hate. So much lazy writing. ARGH!

[thelana]: Wing!Fic is crackfic too. Totally pointless, but I occasionally like them for the pseudo poetry. I read them mostly in the pop fandom where you could always pretend that they were a weird metaphor for innocence. Somehow I just have a much harder time buying them for fictional characters.

[thelana]:

Take inspiration from your things, don't tell us your life story.

It's a double edged sword because some stories can be really good and really show characters reacting to things in a realistic way. But in some cases it can either be that you slowly get the impression that the author is writing about something else altogether and making it about their own reactions. Because the cool thing should be taking the characters and imagine what they would do in a situation like that (like one the author knows intimately) rather than too obviously veering into what the author's personal reactions were.

It's a thin line. Because I do think some of the greatest stories and ideas can be when you include real life situations. Part because it means that you have the passion for those moments and part because it's the biggest firmest case of "write what you know". The key is hiding it so well that it looks like the characters' experiences and the origin is untracable [sic].

At worst these kind of fics can go into "issue" fics. Like the author has issues with I don't know PETA, religion, a certain illness and centers the fic around that issue using their characters and examples and mouth pieces for their opinions. But again, these can work depending on how interesting the underlying issue really is.

And sometimes you can't underestimate the "learned something new on a topic I wasn't aware of earlier" factor to make things worthwhile.

[mooyoo]:

I really enjoy H/C if it's done well. Whether it's an emotional or physical injury I think it can be an interesting catalyst (re: plot device) to force characters to interact in a way that they may not have before, or put two characters together who might be interesting but have never done much together before. Or really, pretty much everything you listed. But there are so many writers who go way overboard with the hurt and with the comfort. Characters are beaten to hell in order to satisfy the author's need to hook up a couple or create angst or give someone they like a fantasticly [sic] tragic background.

I mean, this could be said for all fic genres, but especially with H/C it seems like many authors fall into the trap of (as you and others said somewhere upthread) writing characters the way they themselves are or would like to be. I'm all for people writing whatever the hell they want, whatever fantasies come to mind, but tough guys who suddenly break down to their love because they had an oh so sad childhood, or happy, sunny girls who are raped and beaten nearly to death just so that their arch rival can nurse them back to health and they can suddenly realize how deeply in love they are are not fics I'm really interested in reading unless there's some damn good development over the course of a long story.

The biggest problem seems to be that writers want to act out their own vitimized [sic]-girl-is-rescued-by-a-great-hero, bad-boy-is-reformed-through-the-love-and-support-of-a-good-woman (or man, if it's slash), etc etc, whether or not it fits with the characters or the story.

[lilybaggins]:

I must give you another reason---and a strange one, I'll admit---for writing h/c. I'm sure not too many people actually have this one, but it's my thing, and that's having a medical fetish.

I'm not talking about having sex while being disabled or sick or ill---I'm not talking about sex at ALL. I'm talking about people who really do get off on reading about medical procedures being performed on characters, especially intimate medical procedures. Yes, there are some of us out there. :) Not many, but some, who enjoy seeing their favorite characters receive completely professional invasive exams or embarrassing procedures simply because we see a certain sexual component to it. To me, reading about such things is a huge kink, and I'd take them over an NC-17 sex scene any day.

I know many people in the world at large get off on "playing doctor," I should say, and I think this is sort of the fanfic version, but without the sex---though sex may of course come later in the fic, when the ill character is well or recovering.

Your "Medical Details" reason rings true with me, also... but maybe for different reasons based on what I wrote above. I wouldn't say I have a vast knowledge of medical details, but I have an above-average knowledge, and I do love to read and write h/c to explore the way characters react to being helpless and dependent when ill or injured. But even more, I LOVE to read about my favorite characters being completely embarrassed and humiliated to be so dependent, so that of course my other favorite character---the caretaker---can be reassuring. That's another element that for me, is a bit sexual and therefore, a kink.

Strange, I know, but there it is. :)

[thelana]: I think in my mind I somewhat covered that under "Power Fetish" absolute power combined with gory medical details. :) Maybe I should have stressed that it's more about the one side being powerless/humilated [sic] and dealing with that humiliation than about part in control (who after all doesn't necessarily have to be the intended partner; since there are both the gory detail type of "hurt" the one where the villain is doing it, or where it's part of the healing process and the well-meaning partner is doing it).

Somebody should totally try to do a meta on the "We love them, so we hurt them" mentality :D (that is after all like the most prevalent drive for a big part of fandom, whether it goes into H/C or just of fashioned angst).

And the other side of course could be a power fantasy to (for the reassuring character), like a particular idea of purity. That on one hand suffering is considered pure and on the other hand being healing/patient/reassuring is considered pure as well. So in a weird way those authors are trying to showcase the purity of the characters/relationships. (not sure if "pure" is the right word, but I can't think of a better one for now)

I think the problem with downright sexual kink fic is always that the kink usually becomes more prevalent than the characters. Nothing wrong with that, it just means that it kind of leaves the people who are here for the characters and do not share the kink out in the open. It's not just a problem of BDSM, it's basically the problem of any kink, whether it's BDSM or a kink for fluffy happily ever after with dozens of children. It leaves more neutral readers out when they feel that it's too obvious that the characters are being bent just to satisfy a particular author need/kink. Not that is usually a problem because the community for the kinks in question tend to be big enough to generate enough attention/feedback anyway.

I guess it boils down whether you write a kink story who happens to be starring those characters or if you write a character story which happens to have certain elements of hurt. Mileage may vary, obviously (and people are probably going to violently disagree whether a certain fic now qualifies as a kink or as a character fic).

I also think that there probably is a difference in how people relate to characters on a tv show (which stresses the ongoing and being unfinished aspect) as opposed to the characters from a movie (where you probably have a considerably bigger amount of freedom).

[cyberducks]:

Another reason why imo people write/read Hurt/Comfort is because the genre is oddly comforting. Life can be difficult - lots of stress, heartache, etc., and writing/reading a favourite character having terrible travails can be comforting - "My life sucks, but not in comparison with character X being raped and tortured".

[justacat]:

Sometimes authors like to take a characters who is strong and in control in canon and put them in a situation where they lose that control and become weak.

You get another take on this if you change weak to vulnerable. For many of us, there is something very appealing - a fundamental appeal of slash, in fact - to seeing tough, hard, competitive guys (my fandom is Pros, for example) ... laid open, laid bare, brought to their knees, so their normal hard-guy defenses come crashing down, they are made vulnerable. These aren't guys who break down, show their bellies, readily - for this type of guy, some sort of extreme duress, pain or loss or whatever, is really the most believable impetus for that kind of lowering of defenses - which makes the occasions when they do all the more moving.

I've heard it described as the "emotional can-opener" effect (actually, it was a Brit who said it, so it was "emotional tin-opener," but whatever! *g*). Vulnerability isn't the same as weakness; I don't want the characters made into weak, simpering ninnies - for me their strength is a huge part of their appeal - but I do want that glimpse "inside," I do want to see that way down deep they're human and vulnerable too, particularly when it comes to their partner ....

If that makes sense!

[japanpeterpan]:

Interesting list, and so comprehensive!

I was wondering... is it considered a "h/c" fic when the hurting and the comforting is done by one and the same character (in a dark, psychologically damaging relationship, obviously)? More like h/c/h/c/h vicious cycle? Because sometimes I just love that stuff. I don't know if something's wrong with me. I'm a nice person at heart, I swear :)

Fan Comments: Elsewhere

A very nice listing that include many/most of the reasons people write h/c. I certainly fit into most of these categories! LOL