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Somehow it delights me to find out that S.E. Hinton (of The Outsiders) writes Outsiders fanfic (under a pen name), and also wrote to her favorite Outsiders fanfic author to tell them that she liked their work. ("It took her a while to believe that it was really me." I'll bet.) So in case you're in that fandom, the author is probably reading your fic, and some of the fic you're reading might be by her, too.

I finished a writing project today (a side story planned to be a mailing list extra ... though I might end up incorporating it in the main book; I'm not sure now) and I'm feeling somewhat at loose ends, so - you know what I love talking about and haven't talked about lately? Hurt/comfort. :D

If h/c is not your thing, no worries. If it is your thing ... or if aspects of it are ...

What are your favorite things in hurt/comfort? And is there a type of hurt/comfort you love that nobody ever seems to write?

... you know what I've been thinking about lately that you never seem to see in fic anymore? Comas. This was such a huge trope in '80s TV - it's on my mind because there's a great example in Wiseguy. And I remember a little of this in SGA fic, which was so huge it had everything. But I can't really ever remember seeing it anywhere else, even in White Collar which was a very h/c-intensive fandom that did basically everything to Neal - there MUST have been coma fic, but I don't remember any.

Possibly one reason for this, I guess, is that a realistically written coma isn't actually that much fun, because the recovery is so arduous and the likelihood of permanent, severe long-term health effects is so high. But, then, that's also true of concussions and a bunch of other things fandom really loves.

So yeah. #bringbackcomas2K20

It has also occurred to me that nobody ever writes altitude sickness. The only fic I've ever read that deals with it is the one I wrote; it's not even a canonical tag on AO3. And yet it's so perfectly tailor-made for it! It's debilitating, miserable, and life-threatening, and yet, with the right treatment it's easily curable with no lingering after-effects: get oxygen, go back to normal. If you were going to custom-design a fictional disease for hurt/comfort writers, you couldn't really do better. C'mon, fandom, don't leave me all alone here.

Anyway, favorite things - there's a lot that I love, but I think for me the best-of-the-best really comes down to the general categories of "woozy and out of it", and "desperately worried." And therefore, things that produce one or both of those conditions: head injuries, fevers, and drugs (among other things) in the first case, and for the latter, just about anything really life-threatening: getting shot, getting stabbed, being stranded far from medical help, drowning, heart attacks, etc.

(Oh yeah, that last one is another one I really would enjoy reading more of. Heart attacks. It's another one that rarely seems to get written, but has symptoms that lend themselves excellently to h/c. White Collar did have some, since Peter has one in canon.)

I think I like both of those classes of things because ... well, partly because sometimes you just like things and clearly I am wired that way, but there's just so much you can do with it from a character perspective. They both involve a sort of emotional stripping down of barriers -- pushing people to reveal a little of their inner selves without actually being pushed by the people they're around, if that makes any sense.

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I'm also quite fond of sheer exhaustion as h/c, someone working themselves way past their limits, but when it shows up it's usually as part of some other injury.

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I think the last time I read this was (once again) in SGA, where there was an entire sub-subgenre of fic about Rodney (and occasionally other people) working themselves waayyyyy past their limits, taking stimulants to stay awake and then crashing, etc. I remember multiple fics where the plot was just Rodney getting loopy from lack of sleep and then crashing.

It's kind of interesting other fandoms don't have more of this, because it is totally a thing for any military/medical/first-responder characters. Everybody in WWII took a shitload of stimulants for pretty much the entire war! And they're all workaholics! I ... I should definitely write this.

Yes, those SGA fics were a treasure and a delight. :D

I ... I should definitely write this.

I will gladly enable in any way I can. :D :D :D

Oh yes! Those were some of my favourite Rodney fics!

I also love the magical varient of this with characters draining themselves into collapse. I have written that *a lot* lately.

*looks at Tony and that one ybeb chapter* XD

This is definitely a thing in fandoms with scientists/geniuses because it is a thing in MCU :) I've even semi-written it. (Well, Tony was not just exhausted he was also hurt from all the Avenging on top of it, but you get the idea. XD )

Haha. OF COURSE IT IS. Tony is exactly the person who would get that ...

But that brings up another interesting-to-me point, which is the way that certain kinds of h/c get written about certain kinds of characters. It's the obsessive genius types who get the exhaustion h/c (and there's certainly nothing wrong with that!) whereas you don't tend to get it for, say, military/police/medical characters, even though I think based on my experience with both kinds of people that they're actually MORE likely to do that to themselves or have their job do it to them.

Glad to hear it's alive and well, though. :D

*contemplates writing for Agent Carter*

I mean, to be fair, it is very hard to have a super-soldier be "tired" in a regular way considering the "science" behind super healing. So I am not surprised that certain characters don't get the same treatment due to, well, in-universe logic. (That said I did read some fic for Steve with this trope as well)

But I think you're overall right and certain characters are more likely to be written into certain situations, because we basically stereotype the hell out of them and project "i want this iddy thing to happen" onto a character it can plausibly work with. :)

Yeah, it's interesting because contemplating "pushed to the point of exhaustion" for, say, Peggy or Jack feels slightly off-trope, even though it totally isn't - they're exactly the kind of raging workaholics who WOULD work themselves into a state of exhaustion! But it's not the version you normally see, whereas in the same canon, writing it for, say, Howard working for 3 days straight and then collapsing is entirely on trope, but Peggy doing the same thing doesn't really feel like it would be.

I mean, to a certain extent I think it could work, but with Peggy it likely wouldn't be mental work. Not because she doesn't do mental work, but because I feel like she's the sort of person who'd recognize "this is bad" red line about mental exhaustion and step back, recharge, dive in when refreshed. Whereas if you put her in a combat situation, say, I think she'd have a much harder time recognizing her own limits.

With a character like Tony (or Rodney) the thrust of his "issues" is that he were given these brains for a reason and so if he is not using them to save people at that exact second he is not a good person who could have saved someone. That is literally his trauma, the whole responsibility thing, so for him it makes perfect sense to work himself to death because it's part of his character arc to do so.

Whereas for, say, Steve, even sans superhero serum, part of his character arc is selflessly living for everyone else and then not knowing what to do with his own life when he's not being Cap. It's not specifically working himself to exhaustion, it maybe breaking his knuckles on a punching bag and not knowing how to answer Sam as to what else he could do with his life. Basically, I'm saying, his trauma is different.

Someone like Neal, yeah, you could send him working himself into exhaustion, but it would probably have to stem from some sort of trust issues or loneliness, because his character arc isn't about using his gifts to exhaustion it's about trust.

Someone like Jack Thompson, yeah you could send him working himself into exhaustion, but it would probably need to have something to do with facades (ie. exhausting himself from being always "on" at political parties would work for Jack) because his trauma is in the way his facade does not match the inner self.

So my point is, I think that it makes sense that people write certain characters into certain tropes, corresponding to the specifics of their character arcs. :)

At least that's my "hmm, I rambled about it" take on it.

Hmmm, I think these are really good points! I do think the basic "stays up for 3 days trying to save somebody/fix a problem" issue is something that just about any really driven character could do - e.g. Peggy not sleeping because she's trying to, say, find Daniel or something. But it'd have to be something really dire. As opposed to just something that people like Tony or Rodney might do as a matter of course. (Although, do they actually do it in canon? I guess there's that one time when Rodney and the other scientists are taking stimulants because the city is literally about to be wiped out by Wraith, which I think is where a lot of the "Rodney stays up for 72 hours straight and starts hallucinating" fanon comes from, but that's also a situation in which the military would most likely end up in the same condition too. idk.)

Anyway, I do think it's true that it just "feels" right for characters like Rodney or Tony to do this, where it doesn't "feel" right in the same way for someone like Peggy. I don't really have a better explanation though, because when I think about it I can totally see Peggy pushing past her physical limits like that -- I mean! She does it in canon, with say, going to the fundraiser when she's suffering from an abdominal wound. But with just staying up for days trying to solve a case, it doesn't fit in quite the same way. I think you're right that she'd take naps or something because she doesn't feel like she has to be "on" all the time.

I also really like the idea of Jack working so hard to maintain the facade that he works himself into a state of collapse. :D