When the Hurting Stops

Zine
Title:	When the Hurting Stops
Publisher:
Editor:
Author(s):	Lynn C. Lorton
Cover Artist(s):	Teegar
Illustrator(s):	Teggar
Date(s):	1994
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Star Trek: TNG
Language:	English
External Links:
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cover by Teegar

When the Hurting Stops is a gen Picard-Riker h/c 81-page Star Trek: TNG novel by Lynn C. Lorton.

It was edited by Janna Stocckinger.

Reactions and Reviews

When the Hurting Stops: The tender story of Captain Picard's regression to infancy and Riker's ongoing battle with plastic pants and petroleum jelly. Author Lynn C. Lorton has gifted us with a novelful of bathroom accidents and filled-to-capacity pampers...page after page after page. All in the ugliest and most viral detail.

Tell me, does fandom really need passages like: "He gagged at the sight of the wet fecal mess soaked into the diaper and covering Picard's groin"? Lynn is most helpful to those readers who cannot imagine what a bowel movement smells like, describing the odor with such cheery authenticity that those who like to read at the dinner table will most likely go hungry to bed. Nor does she neglect that part of her audience who would rather experience urine. Really, that whole Montague-Capulet fracas doesn't approach the intensity of this woman's love affair with piss and shit.

The exact cause of the captain's withdrawal into babyhood is sketchy. Only a few pages are allotted to the kidnappers who appear for no other reason than to steal him away to a dark room and subject him to unnamed and horrible tortures. It is in a diminished condition that they return him to Riker, who has also been taken, "laughing wildly as the door banged shut." Yes, the story contains actual, bona fide Evil Laughter. This particularly subtle device, from the teachings of Ed's Writing School and Ail-Night Tire Store, may be Lynn's sly way of hinting that the two kidnappers are, in reality, Snidely Whiplash and Ming of Mongo.

Back aboard ship, neither Chief Medical Officer Crusher nor Counselor Troi is at all curious about what the Misters Ming and Whiplash did to bring about such a dramatic change in their captain. Instead, these two health care professionals turn him over to Riker, who abandons all of his other duties, apparently trusting whoever is driving the ship not to run it into a tree. The Enterprise's second-in-command then spends the next seventy-odd pages patting-and sometimes spanking-Picard's bottom and cuddling him on his lap. After sponging away those wet fecal messes, that is.

When Picard suddenly snaps back to himself, is the reader reprieved from further descriptions of his elimination processes? Nope. Seems that the captain's bowels won't stop behaving as though his formula were spiked with Ex-lax, so, although he can now shuck his starship captain-size footie pajamas, he is still confined to diapers. Cloth ones. And, since Starfleet Academy apparently doesn't offer courses in how safety pins work, he must return to Riker every time he needs changing. Okay, okay; Lynn doesn't actually say "safety pins," she says "fastenings." And maybe it's more of a blessing than I thought that a captain who can't figure out how those little dealies work is kept from monkeying with a bridgeful of toggles and switches.

Riker keeps up the kissing, cuddling, and bottom-patting even after Picard's all grown up again. The touchie-feelies are accompanied by stern lectures to his captain about the great psychological harm he is bringing upon himself by denying his need for physical affection, and a promise is extracted that when Jean-Luc needs a hug, he will ask for one. It's all just as precious and darling as a marshmallow Easter chick. The kind with the piss-yellow sugar coating.

So that her readers won't leap to the erroneous conclusion that the two guys are (ick!) gay, Lynn does include a number of reassuring statements that Picard's sexual tensions can be relieved only by feminine touch. Or jogging. Whew! No undue significance should be attached to the fact that they continue to share a bed and call each other "Sweetie." To the skeptics still lurking among you, I call attention to the page and a half at the end of the book, wherein Picard abruptly shifts his attention from Riker to Crusher. The ensuing scene of moans and caresses is calculated to erase the severest doubts.

There's so much shit in the world already, it's hard to give When the Hurting Stops even a single tree. But I magnanimously hand over one scraggly sapling for a clean production, decent cover art, and a writing style too good to be squandered on endless descriptions of bodily wastes.