Meta of +2 Happiness

[sholio]

So let's talk about something fun for a while: h/c.

Working on my latest SGA WIP, I wrote a *ton* of Rodney angst in the most recent chapters, and then cut it, thus inflicting much annoyance on my poor betas, I'm sure.

This got me thinking about the difference between what I like to read, and what I actually write. In a general sense, of course, I always write what I want to read: friendship-driven, fairly plot-oriented hurt-comfort and action-adventure fic. And the tendency to subdivide it further has never really occurred to me until recently, because I've never spent this long in one fandom before, and certainly not in a fandom that catered to my tastes in the way this one does. I mean, usually, if I wanted h/c I had to write it for myself, and being exposed to enough h/c to start figuring out which flavors float my boat is something that had never happened to me before.

Then along comes SGA, the promised land. Over the last year or so of heavy-duty fanning, I've started figuring out specifically what my h/c triggers are -- which situations, which characters, which friendships.

And I've realized that I tend to shy away from writing the specific things that trigger my happy-warm-fuzzies the most. Here's the crux of it: If I start sensing the goo-puddle feeling coming on, then I figure I've gone too far and start chopping out h/c content. Hence, I wrote a couple of fairly h/c-heavy chapters in the WIP and then cut them heavily. I've done that in other stories, and in fact seriously considered cutting the whole hypothermia subplot in "Killing Frost", but eventually decided to leave it in because, well, I am weak, and lifesaving snuggling in a sleeping bag was just too much temptation for me to fight off. But in general, if I'm faced with a plot decision like that, usually I'll err on the side of "cut more" rather than "indulge more".

And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm realizing that SGA isn't the only fandom I've done this in -- looking back on my earlier fics, I can see that I would often steer clear of doing the "comfort" thing with the character that I most wanted to see in that position, instead deflecting attention onto somebody else. I wouldn't exactly say that I *planned* it this way; the injuries were a direct outcome of the plot. But I'm the one in charge of the plot, after all. And for a given partner-pair of characters, there does seem to be a general pattern of me putting the hurt on the one who's *not* the target of hurt and comfort in my private fantasies for the same series. It's not like I'm depriving myself, or anything; it's just that I seem to regard the really hardcore fannish-goo-puddle area as a sort of danger zone where I can't trust myself to be objective enough about the goals of the story. I don't want to see the h/c (pleasant though it is) warping the threads of the plot in around itself, and for that reason I'm a lot harder on myself when I start treading on the territory that *really* pushes my fan buttons.

I find myself feeling oddly guilty about things like the presumed-dead/hypothermia subplot in "Killing Frost", where I feel that the story would probably be stronger if I'd been able to be more objective and cut it out. Or, same thing with the anaphylaxis scene in "Running on Empty". I feel like it shouldn't really be there, because it doesn't really serve the plot; it's basically just in there because the whole idea gave me warm fuzzies. Well, I guess the anaphylaxis scene *does* have a plot purpose, but it's mostly grafted on, because I realized while I was plotting out the story that it could be a trigger for John's memories. But that's really just a rationalization to have that scene in there; I could have done the memory thing a different way. It's really just there for purely personal reasons, and as such, I feel like I should have cut it out -- but mmm, the warm fuzzies, I loved writing it so!

Right now, most of my stalled-out SGA fics are ones with a very heavy h/c plot. I think I just got to the point where I felt like I was going too far with the "hurt" and didn't feel like there was enough plot to justify it.

I also find myself reading stories that go a lot farther with the "hurt" than I'd be willing to go, as a writer; and there's a definite guilt to it -- kind of like porn; I guess it's emotional porn for me -- but I still read them anyway. Although ... it's not really the hurt that gets to me, anyway; it's the comfort. The hurt is mainly effective as a prelude to the friendship/family comfort aspect of the story.


So here are your discussion questions, for the hurt/comfort fans among you:

When you write (or read) h/c, do you consider the story more about the person who is being hurt, or the one who is giving the comfort, or both? That is, if you consider yourself a fan of (x) character, would you rather read (or write) a story in which (x) is injured and pretty much out of it for most of the story, while character (y) takes care of them and acts as the POV character? Or would you consider such a story to be more (y)'s story? For example, if John gets shot in the opening scene and most of the story takes place with John in the infirmary and Rodney angsting over him, is it John's story? Or Rodney's?

As a writer, if you sense yourself drifting into your specific h/c "trigger" territory, do you take that as a sign that you need to back off -- the way I do? Or do you keep going? (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just curious if other people do the same thing, or react differently.)

Do you like reading stories that push the limits of h/c farther than you, personally, would feel comfortable doing as a writer?

Do you enjoy the hurt by itself, or do you mostly read for the "comfort" part?

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Huuuuuuuunh. This actually explains a lot. Er, please don't take this in a bad way or anything! But I've wondered about your fics before (only vaguely and subconsciously, or I actually would've asked you outright), and this answers it. Because I know from talking to you that you're as hard-core an h/c'er as myself, and our tastes converge to almost scary extents on a lot of things, enough that I am always eager to look into anything you recommend because I can be certain it will at least tickle my own buttons, if not pound on them repeatedly with a delightful mallet (...or, in the case of SGA, avoid like a plague because I WANT TO KEEP MY SOUL HOMG. ...the little teeny shreds that haven't been hostilely taken over by LexCorp, that is.)

Anyway! Given this, your fic somewhat surprises me, because it never goes over the top, and maybe never quite hits the peaks of h/c I might expect. It tends to keep to the level of an h/c-strong novel, with the corresponding complexity of plot one would expect of a 'real' story. Which makes for a very enjoyable reading experience, but at the same time...I'll find myself craving just the little bit more, same as I tend to with novels or TV shows. This is contingent on a lot of things, the mood I'm in, how much the scenario is hitting my buttons, etc...and it's not that your fic is unsatisfying! But...hmmm. It doesn't make me squirm, usually. I think as an h/c'er yourself you might know what I mean, that special tickle in your gut...(h/c addiction is a parasite! or possibly an alien about to be birthed...)

Which means I feel more comfortable actually rec'ing your fic to people (especially non-h/c people) as genuinely good stories, and will probably think it's better written overall, because I tend to associate that squirming with an over-the-topness akin to the cheese of harlequin romance, though with a different trigger...but sometimes...I like to squirm! (and am very curious to read your SGA, as it seems to have a higher h/c quota than your anime fic?)

At the same time, I can understand the self-limiting impulse. I have a dicey relationship with writing h/c myself. I will at times shy back from the more extreme stuff...when I first started fic'ing, I was downright embarrassed to write any of it down, at least where anyone but me could read it. Part of the reason I got over that is because gnine (little sisters make the best writing cheerleaders) is possibly a bigger h/c'er than me, and will always want more if I'm willing to write it. I also do get concerned with staying IC, so a lot of my stories tend to get very long just so I can rationally bring the chars to the point that they make me squirm, and yet still be recognizable (Seven Deaths (http://www.xmagicalx.net/anime/op_7deaths.html) is probably my favorite example of this of my own fic.) I actually have no idea if people consider my fic over-the-top, or under, or just right. I'll warn when a story is totally self-indulgent (well, really they all are, but some are written just-for-me more than others) but I guess it doesn't worry me much, because I know I'm not alone in my tastes; I figure if I enjoy it, someone else probably will, too...

I also have gotten pickier about my h/c as I've gotten older/have read more of it (really don't know which factor it is!); things that used to make me squeal with delight now might make me roll my eyes. (Though I'll probably still take guilty pleasure all the same.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

(extra comment, because I had a bad feeling I'd run out of room what with my essaying above) another discussion answer:

I write h/c for the pairs, definitely (in a platonic or romantic sense; when it comes to h/c it's not about the sex anyway, so it's pretty difficult to distinguish, anyway) There often will be one char I prefer to hurt, but it tends to vary from fandom to fandom without much rhyme or reason. As a general rule, if one char is more expressive about their feelings for the other char, I tend to want to hurt the expressive one, as it gives the inexpressive one a chance to prove how much they really do care even if they don't say it. This isn't always the case, though.

And it's all about the comfort, for me. I admit there are certain varieties of hurt that appeal to me (some of them I prefer to watch rather than read, a lot of boys and actors are, hmm, awfully pretty in pain...) but if there's no comfort eventually there's no point, ultimately. And I much prefer writing the comfort side, to the point that I'll often find way to write around it (again, see 7 Deaths!).

This is also why I tend to prefer emotional/mental torture to physical; unlike some h/c'ers who enjoy going into the (literally) gory details, medical h/c doesn't do much for me. (drugs, now, I have a terrible, terrible weakness for drugs, overdoses, poisons, hallucinogens, etc...) I'd much rather the focus be on the feelings than the physical pain...

[ratcreature]

I'm far more into the "hurt" than the "comfort" part (actually I also read "hurt" without any "comfort" as long as there is an ending that allows a happy outcome), and I read for the character I like being hurt. I prefer them to be conscious while suffering though, and I'm less into illness than into torture and the like for inflicting hurt, and while I can enjoy it from the POV of the torturer I think I prefer the victim POV. Generally I like psychological pain and humiliation more than pure physical hurt, though admittedly I do have a kink for "sensory loss", i.e. inflicting things like blindness or deafness on a character.

For your example story, of John being shot at the start, I'd rather he had to drag himself through the wilderness while wounded for a while or whatever, and not get any reprieve or comfort at all until his breaking point only to manage to get home to Atlantis towards the end of the story, and then the story only hints at the comfort for a happy ending without dwelling on it. But that's because like I said, I read that kind of story for wallowing in the hurt, and find the comfort rather boring in contrast.

[sholio]

*grins at your icon*

This is very fascinating to me because I'm the exact opposite -- the hurt is mostly interesting to me as a prelude to comfort. I read, and write, the hurt mostly in anticipation of comfort to come later. But of course the differences are what makes a discussion like this interesting, and this is exactly what I wanted to do -- to scope out what other people are seeing when they view the same fics I'm seeing.

Having said that, though, I do relate quite strongly to what you're saying here with the "survival against the odds" thing. I think generally, the type of stories I *don't* like are the ones where the character simply capitulates and has to be rescued. Even if rescue is eventually needed, I like to see them try to get out of it on their own, whether it's a physical situation that they need to escape or a mental dark place.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

Re (x) and (y) as a writer. When I was little *g*, I wrote dreadful pastiches inflicting grievous bodily harm on my favourite x and then y would look after him. I have a hard copy, original series BSG where Apollo goes through the wars and eventually falls into a coma and Starbuck had to look after him. And darn if it didn’t get a little bit boring with my favourite character simply lying there as an inert lump. Starbuck (slowly) took over, both becoming a more interesting character and the comfort became paramount. What I then realised and acted upon, when I dabbled in the ‘Due South’ fandom and then in ‘The Sentinel’ fandom was that, for me, that liking x and y (and z) is necessary to write in a fandom, i.e. it has to be their story.

Re: h/c – the hurt side (I’ll define it as inflicting hurt) as a writer and reader. I prefer a short sharp shock i.e. an accident, a shot, an attack. A sustained focus on hurt, such as unrelenting torture or debilitating ongoing disease is not my cup of tea. Partly, it makes me question a) why I like h/c (we’re inflicting pain on characters/people we supposedly like) and b) it gets in the way of the comfort. So yes, I’m more invested in the comfort side when x or y is vulnerable.

Re: the trigger as a writer. The h/c often allows a degree of closeness in stories where the characters aren’t in a close loving relationship. That this is necessary is a topic for another discussion. Physical barriers are often broken, illness and injury necessitates physical contact (even if our heroes deny it at the next commercial break). My triggers are then character based within the situation, for example, Rodney recovering from a serious head injury will only passively accept the comfort for a finite portion of time and then he’ll bite off Carson’s hand. John would cajole and insult Rodney who is relearning to walk, help him if he fell over, but beat a retreat if Rodney accidentally soiled himself and Carson was there.

[sholio]

It's probably just as well that I didn't know about fanfic until relatively recently, because I shudder to think at the awfulness that I would have inflicted on the world in my younger days. *grin* It's bad enough looking back at the emo-fic that I wrote with my original characters when I was a teen, where they were having failed suicide attempts and drug overdoses and generally every cliche in the book.

Oh, BSG was one of my first big fan "crushes" on a character friendship; I still remember with incredible vividness the episode where Apollo died and the aliens/angels/ascended Ancients *g* brought him back. BSG was one of the shows that made me consciously start realizing that I was specifically watching for this stuff, even though I had never heard of h/c and the Internet and organized fandom was still quite a few years in my future.

for me, that liking x and y (and z) is necessary to write in a fandom, i.e. it has to be their story.

Oh YES, absolutely! I think one of the reasons why I phrased the question above the way that I did, is because I'm always very surprised to come upon h/c writers who admit to not liking one of the characters in the pairing, or at least having a very strong preference for one of them. I'm not here to point fingers or bash anyone's preferences, but to me that's hard to fathom, because the characters as a unit, the pairing, the friendship, is what it's all about for me. They have to interest me both as individuals, and as a twosome, in order to really draw me in.

Rodney recovering from a serious head injury will only passively accept the comfort for a finite portion of time and then he’ll bite off Carson’s hand. John would cajole and insult Rodney who is relearning to walk, help him if he fell over, but beat a retreat if Rodney accidentally soiled himself and Carson was there.

*nods* As much as I love comfort, having characters provide comfort far beyond where they would be willing to go in canon ... that kinda squicks me on the character's behalf, unless the writer does a lot of work to set up a scenario where it could logically happen.

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

The weight of the POV determines whether the story is X's or Y's or both. A story with X and Y doing their H/C thing could even be about someone else entirely. This boils down to authorial intent, what the writer wants to say in terms of the story's larger themes.

As a writer, I use H/C as a way to express a point or show something about relationships. It's not purely gratuitous, so I go as far as the story dictates. My writerly inclination is to make both the H and the C logical, natural outgrowths of all the other stuff I'm trying to explain. For that reason, I do "back off," as you say, to prevent the story from becoming about the whump and the angst.

Reading more graphic stories than I would ever write is part of my diet. Six servings a day, at least, just like the Fanfic Food Pyramid recommends.

As for your last question (I feel like I'm sitting across from my therapist or something!), hurt by itself does not a balanced diet make. The same with comfort. And both ought to have an intimate connection with the story themes in order to have meaning. Thus, I read H/C for both aspects, but a really satisfying read is more about the story as a whole.

[sholio]

Thus, I read H/C for both aspects, but a really satisfying read is more about the story as a whole.

Yes! The stories I love the best are usually the ones that work on all levels -- where the h/c develops naturally from the plot, and also has a function within the story rather than just being all about the pain. And that's what I try to write, as well. Still, there's that guilty-pleasure reading; I'll dive with both feet into a fic that I *know* won't be much good, and that I'd even be embarrassed to "favorite" on my ff.net page (which amounts to a tacit endorsement), but I'll still read it anyway for the emotional porn. However, the ones that I remember and favorite and rec are the ones where the different aspects of the story are well integrated -- and I often find that the more rare and restrained h/c carries more of an impact than a story that is all about the h/c. Your "Known World" has several moments like that; the Rodney/Ronon hug, for example, just about undid me, because I really wasn't expecting it at all. It was not in any way over-the-top, at least I didn't think so, but it carried an amazing amount of emotional punch.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

hmmm. interesting post. I don't consider myself a hard core h/c fan, so take my answers with a grain of salt.

I liked iamrighthere's comment about the h/c arising from and being "natural outgrowths" of the plot. As a reader, gratuitous whumping irritates me. And it always seems that h/c writers "always hurt the ones they love", so that their favorite character is usually the whumpee, at least if that person's conscious to feel the pain. I prefer to read stories where the author restrains her/himself with the whumping (as you do) rather than where they go "over the top", which kind of irritates me and will often make me stop reading the story.

As far as the balance between hurt & comfort, as a reader, I'm all about the comfort, baby--bring on the backrubs, the cuddling, the warm blankies!

[sholio]

I don't consider myself a hard core h/c fan, so take my answers with a grain of salt.

Then I want your POV all the more! *grins* I think you nailed one problem with really overt h/c, which is that it'll drive away people who aren't reading for that, or even are actively squicked by it. Of course, you can't please all the people all the time, but the more you cater to a specific segment of the audience, the more narrow your audience will be ...

[kodiak-bear.livejournal.com]

This is going to be a long post, and then I'm cutting myself off to actually go and get work done.

So, yeah, you know I'm big into the h/c genre. For a while I felt a little guilty that *every* story was in that category, but then I had a kind of epiphany of 'this is what I'm doing to relax, to give to the other h/c fans'. Now I don't freak out about writing h/c almost exclusively but I do try to be aware of what springwoof mentions, that gratuitious whumping that's *just* there and does nothing for the plot. I've indulged in some of it but mostly I've tried to steer away from it.

For me, my favorite h/c is where the hurt happens but the character(s) have to keep on going. There's still a crisis, a story, and they've got to get through it, but the hurt is always there in the background. Nothing annoys me more than a writer having xx character hurt and then it isn't mentioned again until the end of the story, almost as an afterthought. And if the hurt is there and they've got to work through it, then the natural extension is the comfort taking place along with the hurt. I don't like stories that are 99% hurt and 1% comfort. I don't even like it when it's 80/20. I need the comfort component to be as much as and preferrably a little more than the hurt component.

One of my favorite things to do is to write a story from another POV (other than John's) and yet, have the story very much *about* John, and also, the other characters. John Sheppard is my character of choice and he's unabashably, front and center, in almost every story I write, but I've also found a lot of enjoyment in writing team fics where John might get just that little bit more, but there's plenty of everything to spread with the other characters in the story. That I think is a sign of my growing as a writer, learning to mesh others and write them all with strength. I think that is something that fledgling writers don't often have at the beginning.

Stories written about x from y's POV, can very much be about x.

As a writer, I'm far less comfortable writing things that I'm willing to read. There are times I will absolutely indulge in reading a gratuitious whump fic. But I don't want to write one. But there are still some places I just don't want to go, reading or writing. I adore John Sheppard, and I might do a lot of h/c, but I can't do the serious damage. The closest I've gone is Autumn and Dear John, and that's as far as I'm interested in going and even those two stories were requests. It wasn't somewhere I would've gone otherwise. But with that said, I do think it gave me new perspective and I view every story as an experience to learn from. I've taken something away from almost every story I've written.

***continued below, stupid post limits!******

[kodiak-bear.livejournal.com]

*****cont. from above****

I had to learn to not put myself into the story in regards to the comfort. When I first started, I went OTT a lot. I had to learn to stay in character, to realize that the characters wouldn't go that far. And also, h/c can become very serialized. A writer has to do different things and work harder to be original in the h/c genre. There's only so many times I want to read (or write) about John getting shot. Therefore, there's a burden to make the hurt as a true consequence of the story and not make the story a mere frame for the hurt.

I had a good friend of mine admit that the ending part of The Last Survivor was maybe a little much, but then I explained I needed that to really throw Mawani off balance. Here she was going to Atlantis for the first time and I wanted her arrival to have extra impact, extra drama, and her thinking Sheppard had died after all they'd been through, was the device I used. It tied together with *how* it all unfolded, including the tie up of the last Wraith. But I got what she was saying. Maybe it could've been done without that last hurt to John, but I wasn't all that interested in looking for that other way. And that's probably a shortcoming I should work on.

Do you like reading stories that push the limits of h/c farther than you, personally, would feel comfortable doing as a writer?

To specifically answer this...yes and no. Ha! Well, the yes should be qualified with a 'infrequently'. It's more no than yes, definitely. Every now and then I'll get a yearning for something really gritty, dark and painful, but there is often an inability for me to even finish it.

[margec01.livejournal.com]

H/C was the first thing I discovered that I love about fanfic almost 25 years ago. I found the writers who like h/c as much as I did and read their stories a LOT. Although I now read slash--also a lot!--I've realized that a good h/c story is still my alltime favorite type, over and above almost anything else. Yes, I am 5 years old, I guess.

I understand your worries about going to far with the h/c, because I agree it should fit in with the story somehow. And I agree with kodiak_bear that the best h/c is when the characters still have to keep going, fighting through the pain, and overcoming the hurt. Fainting in the infirmary and periods of extended unconciousness bore me for the most part. I want to see the protagonists working together or talking or caring about each other. It's okay to show them worrying about each other in the infirmary, and revealing this worry to others, but extended scenes about only one of them are usually too long for me.

I say USUALLY about much of my comments, because I know many writers who can make me love anything and everything because they write it so well. I may have some ideas about what I do or don't like in general, but I'm always willing to follow a writer wherever she wants to take me, and often enjoy the journey more than I thought I would.

That being said, there is one thing I REALLY, REALLY dislike, which is a story of hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, comfort. Or occasionally, no comfort at all! (What's the POINT?) I really do read for the COMFORT part of the story. When the hurt gets to be too much, especially when our hurtee is alone--such as torture scenes, or excruciating pain while alone in the woods--I tend to tune it out or skim the worst parts. As much as I love whump, it turns out I'm not a sadist, and sometimes the whumping goes too much OTT, even for me.

Common Ground is a perfect example here. Many fans LOVE this episode because Sheppard gets tortured, over and over again. The scenes where everyone back in Atlantis worries about him--okay. But the torture was a bit too much for me--with absolutely no comfort payoff at the end. Thank God for fanfic, which "fixes" all that for me, where you wonderful authors show the consequences of Sheppard's torture (both physically and mentally), and you have people caring for him, and helping him, and making ME feel better. (g) It's BECAUSE of the fanfic that I really like this episode, not for the episode itself per se.

[sholio]

Ah, that's exactly my problem with Common Ground, too! I'm in it for the comfort, not the pain, pain, pain. And while I understand that different people groove on different things, hurt without comfort doesn't float my boat. Like you, when I'm reading a fic I'll generally skim the hurt when it starts to get outside my comfort zone. I don't begrudge a writer for writing what gets *them* off, not what gets *me* off -- but page after page of detailed descriptions of everything the character is suffering is just not what I read for.

I say USUALLY about much of my comments, because I know many writers who can make me love anything and everything because they write it so well. I may have some ideas about what I do or don't like in general, but I'm always willing to follow a writer wherever she wants to take me, and often enjoy the journey more than I thought I would.

Oh, this is a good point. A good writer can sell you on just about anything. I have quite a lot of squicks for various things, but a sufficiently skilled writer can make me overcome nearly any of them.

[margec01.livejournal.com]

I meant to agree with Kodiak Bear in my post above. I must have spelled it wrong.

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

drive by posting, just commenting on this question: For example, if John gets shot in the opening scene and most of the story takes place with John in the infirmary and Rodney angsting over him, is it John's story? Or Rodney's?

it's Rodney's, because it's about Rodney. Unless Rodney gets into John's brain and starts fighting John's demons for him. Then it's about John.

Or, for example, there's an SGA story out there that keeps getting billed as a "Carson" story. It's quite well written, and a good story on many levels. But the story is about Carson accidentally taking John's place in some Ancient pre-Ascension device that is supposed to purge a person of their fears--and so Carson is taking a walk through JOHN's past and facing his demons for him. And therefore it's NOT a Carson story, even if it was written for someone as a Carson story. It's a story where Carson is a plot device used to explore John's backstory and demons. It's not about Carson at all. If it was about Carson, it would have been about Carson's fears and Carson's demons.

And I've seen that happen other places, too, and yes, these are mostly Carson stories because he's my favorite and I am protective of him--and also because I think people honestly want to write him in as a character at times, but they can't shift their focus enough consciously to him. So they wind up making him the observer/plot device for their story about Rodney or John or both, and because he's the POV character htey then call it a "Carson" story. Nope.

Oy, must run, late for coffee with writing partner. Then I'll come back and try to actually read your post and reply cogently, instead of just skimming and knee-jerk reacting. ;-)

[sholio]

it's Rodney's, because it's about Rodney. Unless Rodney gets into John's brain and starts fighting John's demons for him. Then it's about John.

I probably made the situation a little too clear-cut in my example. *grin* This is something I've really been wondering about a lot lately, because for h/c people, "you always hurt the ones you love" seems to be the overriding theme; in other words, John whumpers whump John, or whatnot, even if it means that the favorite character is then out of commission for most of the story so someone else has to save the day. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone or trying to criticize the way people write their stories; it's just curious to me to read stories by self-described John fans in which the story is actually about John's friends rescuing him and worrying about him.

This came up for me a few times while I was doing the ficathon stories, because someone would request a story about (x) character and in the course of trying to fulfill the prompt, I'd run into the problem of not being sure how the recipient would want me to interpret it. The big one was the prompt for the story that turned into "Shattered Things", because she'd requested Carson/Rodney friendship with Carson whump and h/c. This put me in kind of a bind with the plot I ended up using, because one person was going to be very badly hurt and unconscious for most of the story, and the other one didn't get hurt at all. I wasn't sure whether she'd prefer to have Carson in the "active"/viewpoint role or to be the one who's being protected and comforted. I ended up making him the whumpee (because Carson-hurt was specifically what had been requested) but it was sort of a lose/lose situation, because no matter which way I did it, it ended up not being quite what she'd asked for.


So they wind up making him the observer/plot device for their story about Rodney or John or both, and because he's the POV character htey then call it a "Carson" story.

*blinks* But doesn't that sort of contradict what you wrote earlier? I mean, I'm not trying to be difficult, and I can definitely see what you're saying with the Carson-in-John's-brain story. But, see, this is exactly the minefield that I'm trying to navigate with stories like "Shattered Things". If I'd gone with a Carson POV in that one, where the whole story was largely about Carson trying to rescue Rodney, would that still have been a Carson story? To me, it felt more in line with the prompt to switch them, but that did mean that we spent most of the story in Rodney's head, getting his outside-observer impressions of a largely unconscious Carson.

There are definitely some situations where it's pretty clear-cut. Still using me as an example, "Old Soldiers Die Hard" is pretty definitely NOT Annie's story even though she's the viewpoint character; it's an unreliable-narrator look at the hazards of the Pegasus Galaxy through the POV of someone who has no clue what's going on. On the other hand, then using that same guideline, the "Rodney watches John sleep in the infirmary" story actually *would* be more of a John story, an outsider's POV of him.

*brain melts*

I suppose to some extent, it's just an "I know it when I see it" and "Your mileage may vary" sort of situation...

[ladyflowdi.livejournal.com]

Here's the crux of it: If I start sensing the goo-puddle feeling coming on, then I figure I've gone too far and start chopping out h/c content.

I love H/C, love it, and it's the one thing I can't write because of this exact thing. I start writing a scene where, say, John and Rodney have been in a puddle jumper crash (my most recent attempt at H/C) and my characterization goes to hell. Rodney starts bawling, or John starts declaring his love while tenderly carressing him to keep his mind off the wounds, and I get sick to my stomach and scrap it. It's odd, because like I said -- I love H/C possible more than is healthy (heh, get it? Get it? healthy? Oh, I crack myself up), but I just can't write it and still have the plot be believable.

[sholio]

LOL. Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes, as in the above example, I'll actually *write* the over-the-top stuff and then cut it down.

[cybersyd.livejournal.com]

Those are some tricky questions to answer.

I agree with iamrighthere - the weight of the POV depends on whose the story is.

In terms of pushing the limits of h/c... I read old Due South fics I wrote years ago, and they occasionally make me squirm, because the stories frequently focus too much on the 'comfort' part of h/c, to an extent which would not be seen in the show itself (given that the two leads are emotionally reticent). However, I do prefer fics that I both read and write to give more time/plotting to hurt/comfort should it take place - unlike in the episodes (e.g. Grace Under Pressure, and the lack of comfort for poor ol' Rodney!).

I do read fics which depict more hurt than I would choose to write myself. Mostly I think this is down to the desire to read h/c fanfic - if the fandom is going through a dry spell, I'll be more liberal in my choice of reading material.

I read for the 'comfort' part more than the hurt. I'm quite happy to read or write a fic where the hurt happens off screen. What draws me more into a story, however, is the emotion resulting from the h/c - angst, guilt, etc. My last fic only had one or two chapters depicting the 'h/c', although it was referred to in later chapters. The h/c event was merely a plot device to explore the emotional impact it would have on the characters and their relationships. In the same way I agree with the folks above - if a character has to ignore their 'hurt' and carry on, fight against it to survive or for a fellow character to survive, then I love that sort of fic - because the focus is on the emotion, not the hurt.

[sholio]

The h/c event was merely a plot device to explore the emotional impact it would have on the characters and their relationships. In the same way I agree with the folks above - if a character has to ignore their 'hurt' and carry on, fight against it to survive or for a fellow character to survive, then I love that sort of fic - because the focus is on the emotion, not the hurt.

Ahh, you make some good points here. I'm largely about the comfort, but the way you describe it here -- focus on the emotions, not the hurt -- helps me understand why sometimes I'm more content with the "hurt" parts of a story than others: sometimes it can be satisfying to me even without overt comfort, while other times the hurt just does nothing for me and I need the comfort for the story to be complete. And I think that the emotional tone of it probably has a lot to do with that. The other characters don't necessarily have to be present for that emotional connection to be made. I've read a few SGA stories that scratched my "comfort" itch with a character (usually John) going through some kind of catharsis while alone, or soldiering on to protect someone who's unconscious or not around to give/receive comfort -- and normally this wouldn't quite hit my particular "kink", but depending on how it's presented, the emotional resonance can still be there even if the other character isn't.

[ldyanne.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, I've done a lot of thinking about h/c because that's my favorite genre to read, too.

I discovered that it had a name when I found SG-1 fan fiction online but I've always been a fan of my favorite characters being hurt and having to overcome the odds to survive or being nursed back to health by their best friend or partner.

As a writer, I find myself writing h/c a lot. It's a way to put characters I love into stressful situations and seeing who they truly are. I really, really like seeing John being the one injured and Rodney having to save them both because it switches up their role. Rodney has to become the caregiver, and John has to depend on someone else to take care of him. It makes them both grow as characters. The trick is, as someone said, is to make sure they stay in character. I've hit the back button so many times when Rodney gets all compassionate in his care and John becomes tractable and willing to let Rodney take care of him. It's just not the way they operate. I'm working on a h/c fic right now where I keep thinking the boys are going to be all sweet and tender in a scene and then they remind me that that's now who they are.

I like the h/c the best that shows the characters as they are and makes it completely warm and wonderful and John and Rodney are completely themselves anyway. Am I making any coherent points here?

I have found some fics that go beyond the limits of what I'm comfortable with. Oddly enough they're not the ones that involve abuse that would make most of us break and end up staring at the walls the rest of our life, it's those stories that see how much they can do to a character. I've been dealing with that in my current fic also. There are so many more things I could do to John and Rodney, but at what point do you say enough's enough? I've read stories where literally there was concussions and broken bones and snake bites and a fire and I think the characters also fell into a river (okay I *may* be exaggerating just a little *holds up thumb and finger scant inches apart* to make a point. But at some point the hurt becomes so much that it's hard to believe there's ever going to be any comfort to the story.

I admit it, I do like the hurt. I like watching the character struggle and the other person hurting and angsting. But I need the comfort in the end. I need to know that everyone's going to be alright and these people I love are going to be back another day. Not necessarily in a neatly tied up kind of way. Some stories just wouldn't work like that. But even if John's been crippled, that he's learned to deal with it and he's found a new place on Atlantis to fit in. Or if Rodney's lost his sight that he's figured out other ways to compensate and moved on, he's just as brilliant as ever and Atlantis would not be able to do without him. As a writer and as a reader I need both parts (not in equal measures though, it depends on th story) to make the story complete.

[sholio]

One of the reasons why I think of h/c as a "kink" (along the lines of slash or anything else like that) is because most of the h/c people I've talked to, like me, seem to have loved it from an early age. I craved h/c and sought it out long before I knew there was a word for it or that other people liked it.


I like the h/c the best that shows the characters as they are and makes it completely warm and wonderful and John and Rodney are completely themselves anyway. Am I making any coherent points here?

You make perfect sense. That's exactly what I read for -- fic that keeps the characters their prickly, snarky, emotionally repressed selves, and yet still pushes the emotion buttons. Which is hard to do!


There are so many more things I could do to John and Rodney, but at what point do you say enough's enough? I've read stories where literally there was concussions and broken bones and snake bites and a fire and I think the characters also fell into a river (okay I *may* be exaggerating just a little *holds up thumb and finger scant inches apart* to make a point.

LOL. I joke about these kinds of fics; they're the ones where after a while it just becomes sort of impossible to swallow the idea that one person could have THAT much bad luck! It always makes me think of an anecdote one of my writer friends told me about a fantasy story she wrote when she was about 12 that involved her heroine completely incapacitating herself trying to climb over a fence -- I can't remember the details at the moment, but the fence-climbing part of the story just went on and on and ON, and ended up with the hapless character getting black eyes and broken bones and so forth ... trying to climb over a *fence*. It makes me giggle, then, when people do things like have John come down with an ordinary cold and then end up in the infirmary with pneumonia. I mean, if the characters were really as fragile and accident-prone as they sometimes are portrayed in fic, Elizabeth would never let them offworld again!

But I need the comfort in the end. I need to know that everyone's going to be alright and these people I love are going to be back another day.

Yeah. I have a hard time dealing with stories that don't end happily. Fanfic is my happy place, and dark/depressing stories leave me feeling unsatisfied and hollow. There are times when they work, and in fact, I've read and loved some absolutely *brilliant* fic that is very dark. But it doesn't usually get me in my h/c warm spot, which is a very fluffy place -- even if there's quite a lot of darkness in the fic that scratches my h/c itch, it ultimately ends happily ... or at least in a way that indicates everything is going to be all right.

[titc.livejournal.com]

I've written a few h/c in a Kirk/Spock series, but since it was a few years ago I can't really call myself a writer. Although I'd like to write in SGA, I can never find plots/ideas... that seem good enough to ppush me to write, so I just indulge in h/c, my beloved guilty pleasure, as a reader.

Just like you, although I LOVE reading "hardcore" h/c I could never bring myself to go to far when writing, and while I love reading Spock getting hurthurthurt (and Rodney getting hurthurthurt - or angsting like mad, which counts as suffering!! - etc) I tried to even things out a bit as a "writer".

I also need my hurt to be followed by if not comfort, at least a hint that things get better. I like reading hurt, and too much heavy comforting (which can easily become OOC, and I guess that's one of the big traps of h/c) can overload my sappy-meter, but hopeless stories get me depressed for days and I want to have at least a glimmer of something better at the end, albeit a reunion after death if it's a death story (lots of those for Kirk & Spock thanks to the katra things of Vulcans - saved! ;-)

I love seeing them having to overcome the hurt, though - which is not exactly "comfort" - such as learning to live after torture, the consequent low self-esteem... and in that case picking up post actual hurt is fine - there's plenty of angst anyway, and the potential for reliving said hurt.

& I much prefer it when it's part of the plot, even if the plot is all about getting to live with it. When pointless or gratuitous it can quickly become annoying, unless I need a fix.

[sholio]

I think that having written some Kirk/Spock qualifies you as a writer. *grin* We're all just amateurs and hobbyists anyway.

I love reading Spock getting hurthurthurt (and Rodney getting hurthurthurt - or angsting like mad, which counts as suffering!! - etc) I tried to even things out a bit as a "writer".

Yeah, that's what I do when I write, too. I'll shamelessly indulge in angst-fic that I'd never dream of writing. If it's too terribly OOC it'll chase me away, but depending on my mood, it can take a LOT to get rid of me. And sometimes I'll just keep reading to find out how awful it's going to get. *hee* I have various quotes files on my hard drive, where I save lines from various fics and books and whatnot that amuse me, and I saved the following line from a John/Rodney preslash train wreck that I read the other day:

“John…come here.” Rodney coaxed softly with both words and touch, pulling John closer so he could kiss those tears away.

*dies*

I love seeing them having to overcome the hurt, though - which is not exactly "comfort" - such as learning to live after torture, the consequent low self-esteem... and in that case picking up post actual hurt is fine - there's plenty of angst anyway, and the potential for reliving said hurt.

Yeah, and this is a good point too. Hopeless woobification doesn't really appeal to me, generally; even though I love emotional h/c, I don't want to see my favorite characters turned into soppy puddles of woe who need to have their friends hold them round the clock. *shudders* It was actually a fic very much like that which ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back that drove me away from SG-1 fandom. (I was falling out of it anyway, but that one story, which I still remember with all too much vividness, was just the cherry topping on the sundae of disinterest.)

I like to see them get through it with the help of their friends, but I still want to see them portrayed as people with enough emotional strength that they *could* make it on their own if they had to. It's just easier with someone to lean on.

[parisntripfan.livejournal.com]

I suppose I am one of those people who likes to hurt (and at times even kill) the one I love and see how the other characters respond.

But I don't want to just physically hurt a character, at times I also want to shake up his/her world view and how he/she views himself/herself. In some ways I like emotional h/c then physical. But I will read either type.

Now in SGA I like to read fics about say Rodney getting hurt because I like the idea of Teyla, Ronon and John showing they care for him by their efforts to save him because they aren't going to say it to him. That and because I tend to view all three of them as Protectors and Warriors and it is fun to play with that by having Rodney be the one that is hurt and have them deal with it. On the other hand, it could be just a fun to have Rodney be the one who has to take care of the rest of them because it is just something he is not comfortable doing.

[sholio]

Now in SGA I like to read fics about say Rodney getting hurt because I like the idea of Teyla, Ronon and John showing they care for him by their efforts to save him because they aren't going to say it to him.

*grin* As far as characters getting hurt, my own preference above all else is for Rodney-caretaking by the other characters, for just this reason -- because he's so abrasive, such a hard person to love, and yet they do, and I *love* seeing that.

But I don't tend to write it all that often, which was basically what prompted my meta-ing above, because if I love Rodney-whump so, then why do I tend to write Rodney saving John more often than the reverse? And I think it's precisely *because* I love it so ... I feel as if I have to back off from it or I'll accidentally turn it into the "woobie Rodney show".

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

For me, it's the hurt more than the comfort that gets to me, that produces that special tickle in the gut (as xparrot said above; nice to know I'm not the only one who gets that! I'd wondered for a while).

And in addition to the hurt, it's... the stripping away of the façade, I guess. Where the hurt wears them down to their underlying personality, shows what kind of people they really are, and what they're willing to do for others. The scenario I constantly come back to in my imagination (based off an ep from Due South, probably, though it may have been in my head before that) is the one where two characters are stuck in the woods; both are injured, one more badly than the other, and the one character (generally my favorite) must carry the other through the woods, valiantly ignoring their own injury... etc, etc. Or, exhaustion is another good one.

It works best for me when (if it's two characters in the situation) the characters normally have a bickering relationship. And it's crucial that they at least keep up some semblance of that bickering; they can't just suddenly go all mushy on each other, because then I cry "OC!" and flee to the hills. I think this is why I come back to xparrot's OP fics when I need a good dose of h/c; they manage to consistently hit all my kinks while staying in character.

On the other hand, the hurt can't go so over the top that I'm left there going "how on earth is this person still alive?! And I'm not a big one for fics about people getting disabilities; I want the characters to be able to go back to how they were before hand, maybe with a few more scars, maybe a little bit wiser, but still the same essential character I fell in love with from the show.

As for the comfort, it needs to be there in some form or another, but it's not really the point. Continuing what I was saying, about the hurt wearing down the person's walls... the comfort is the part where I want them to get built back up again. Have maybe one moment of sappy comfort, okay, but after that get those boys up and bickering again. I really don't have any desire to read ten chapters of character (x) taking care of character (y), sitting by his bedside and angsting, etc: it bores me to tears. I think I'm in something of a minority in this respect, since I hear a lot of people saying that they want the comfort just as much as the hurt.

That is, if you consider yourself a fan of (x) character, would you rather read (or write) a story in which (x) is injured and pretty much out of it for most of the story, while character (y) takes care of them and acts as the POV character? Or would you consider such a story to be more (y)'s story?

I would consider it (y)'s story. But I wouldn't read this story in the first place, because *yawn*.

When writing h/c... I do tend to write to my own triggers. But that's because I'm writing it for myself, and those fics will rarely (if ever) get posted for public consumption (I write way, way more than I ever actually post). They aren't generally fully-fledged stories, anyways-- they're just fragments. When writing something for posting, I do back off from going too far, because it just devolves into wallowing, and if I go down that route I get distracted from where the story is actually supposed to be going.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Er, "OOC", not "OC".

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

I love smarm (h/c's close cousin). Love love love. But I have never been able to bring myself to write much of it, or finish and post the bit of smarm I've written.

Most of what I write does contain a bit of h/c; and the one part of my smarm/h/c kink I let into my fic is when a normally-in-control character is pushed into giving up a bit of autonomy by circumstances. The most extreme example I've written is one in which Jim Ellison has fallen about 20' and semi-impaled himself on something while chasing bad guys and Blair convinces him that any good Jim would be doing by trying to move is more than offset by the risk of compounding his injury. So the story isn't really about the hurt or the comfort, really (though there's a bit of both) so much as Jim letting Blair assume control of the situation.

I've also written fics where Jim Ellison is dealing with the long-term effects of the bullet he takes in the last episode of the The Sentinel; and part of this involves him accepting the bit of comfort and assistance that Blair is able to offer.

Looking at your questions...

When you write (or read) h/c, do you consider the story more about the person who is being hurt, or the one who is giving the comfort, or both?

Both, when I write - I'm really interested in the relationship and how it responds (and, hopefully, grows) when stressed.

As a writer, if you sense yourself drifting into your specific h/c "trigger" territory, do you take that as a sign that you need to back off -- the way I do?

I don't much write the sorts of stories that would lead to my triggers. I want to read about extreme physical/mental stress and its abatement, but I want to write, mostly, relatively fluffy what-ifs, post-ep comfort (I end up writing very few of these, though), and slice-of-life connection stories. I think part of the reason is that I don't want people to know how much I crave smarm/comfort scenes, and also that I want my stories to stand alone - yeah, I'm stealing the characters and setting, but I'd like them to be recognizable as short fiction by a random non-fan reader (though I don't put in the character descriptions that would really allow this.)

Do you like reading stories that push the limits of h/c farther than you, personally, would feel comfortable doing as a writer?

Emphatically yes.

Do you enjoy the hurt by itself, or do you mostly read for the "comfort" part?

I often skim the hurt part, unless there's comfort intertwined.

Oh, and I really don't like the comfort to take place in a hospital/infirmary; that's practically cheating!

- Helen

[sholio]

Mmm, smaaaarm. *grin* That's probably what my preferences come down to; it's not really about the hurt, it's about the comfort and the relationship between the characters, the emotional connection.

I really don't like the comfort to take place in a hospital/infirmary; that's practically cheating!

*laughs* Oh, I'm SO glad to hear you say that and to know it's not just me! In most h/c situations, as soon as the characters get themselves to professional medical help, my interest in the story just tanks. I think it's because at that point, someone else is in charge. The burden of protecting/saving/comforting is now on the doctors and nurses of the infirmary staff, and they have full medical resources at their disposal. Trapped in the field, forced to rely on meager supplies and each other, with no knowledge of whether or not help is coming -- that's really the sort of scenario that works best for me. Once they're in the hospital, there's no reason for the other person to really be there much at all, except as a bystander or hand-holder.

[bramble-rose.livejournal.com]

First of all, thanks for not cutting the lifesaving snuggling in Killing Frost, it was PERFECT!

I prefer comfort over hurt, and warm fuzzy moments are a good thing for me. Mano-e-mano comfort is ok. And even though I realize the author is trying to extrapolate behavior from a TV show, which as a rule are notoriously stingy on the comfort, I like it to be believable for the character.

Death fic is right out.

I will occasionally read a fic that utilizes hurting over and over and over, but again, prefer comfort.

POV: Doesn't matter. Injured person's pov, caregiver pov, outsider pov, multiple pov. All work for me.

And I really really like medical-speak. Someone who can hit that with some level of accuracy has my enduring love and respect :-)

[sholio]

First of all, thanks for not cutting the lifesaving snuggling in Killing Frost, it was PERFECT!

Thank you! I'm glad it wasn't too over-the-top. I tried to rein in the emotionalism by keeping it as uncomfortable for both of them as possible. *grin*

And even though I realize the author is trying to extrapolate behavior from a TV show, which as a rule are notoriously stingy on the comfort, I like it to be believable for the character.

Yeah, that's one of the things that makes it tricky to write fic. TV is necessarily limited in certain ways -- they can't have the characters cuss or behave in certain ways; they can't show most of the in-between and ordinary-daily-life moments due to time constraints. So in writing fic, we have to extrapolate how the characters would behave if those constraints were removed.

[ga-unicorn.livejournal.com]

It had no name at the time (I think), but I discovered I liked h/c while watching Starsky and Hutch. And then I kept the embarassing secret to myself until I discovered fanfic had moved from only being in self-printed fanzines to the internet.

What I like to read/write... I am a shallow, shallow woman. I like gunfire and explosions and I like it when my favorite guys are hurt physically or emotionally) and then - darn it! - I want to see them reacting to the hurt and offering comfort and support to each other. If there is only the hurt then, for me, it is not a "complete" story. I confess to reading over-the-top, whump only and often stories (usually when I'm in one of those moods), but they do not get put on the favorites/to be read again list.

Anyone who has read my stuff knows who I like to write about: Sheppard and McKay friendship. They are my favorite stories to read also, but I will read just about anything if it is semi-well written and holds my attention. I do tend to perfer things stay close to canon.

I write stories about my favorite characters because I'm lazy and they are the easiest for me to channel through my muse. Self-indulgence? Much. ;-) Seriously, when I write just for my two favorites I have a much easier time hearing dialog and knowing how they will react. Bringing in the other team members, or god-forbid Weir (sorry, not a big Weir fan), slows down the process for me and makes it much more like work instead of a hobby that makes me happy. I do try to not be too self-indulgent. Usually. Kind of.

Do I back off on triggers? I haven't written a lot of stories (since I started writing fanfic again), but I have noticed that I seem to be backing away from overly descriptive "hurt" in recent stories and tending to spend more time on the "comfort." At least, I think I have. When I outline, I still plot grievous injury, but most of it gets left in the planning stage.

I'm perfectly willing to read much more violence than I am writing. I do have a squick factor that changes with mood (although rape and child abuse is always blech, along with sharp, pointy objects being stuck in eyes *shudders*), but I can always skim over graphic detail if I'm not in the mood.

So, to sum up: the POV determines who the story is about, be they the hurtee or the comforter; I write about my favorite characters; I'll read just about anything, but I like the hurt because it (hopefully) brings about the comfort.

[sholio]

It does seem like most of the people I've talked to about h/c (and this is certainly true of me) have a long-standing love of the genre going all the way back to childhood. Whatever mental twist makes us love it, is definitely there from an early age!

I confess to reading over-the-top, whump only and often stories (usually when I'm in one of those moods), but they do not get put on the favorites/to be read again list.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I am. The ones that I love and fave and rec are the plotty ones where the h/c is believable and IC and not too overwhelming. But if it's got Sheppard and McKay and owies, I'm so very there, even if it's not very good. *grin* (And of course, this depends on what fandom I'm in at the moment; SGA is nearly all I've been reading lately, but get me in the right mood and it might be something else.)

slows down the process for me and makes it much more like work instead of a hobby that makes me happy. I do try to not be too self-indulgent. Usually. Kind of.

*nods* I've appreciated the ficathon stories and the challenges for getting me to write outside my comfort zone; I really do think that it makes me a better writer to do that. But on the long ones? Comfort zone all the way! I mean, fanfic is for fun; there's really no other reason to write it. So why write something if you're not enjoying the process?

long with sharp, pointy objects being stuck in eyes *shudders*

Oooh. *shudders along with you*

Due to my general fanfic-as-escapism approach to reading, I'm willing to tolerate a lot less squickiness from fic than from published fiction. I shy away from torture fic, or at least skip those parts, for precisely that reason. If I'm choosing novels, I would read one that's about overcoming child abuse or one where you know the main character will probably die in the end, but for fic, I'd rather not.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

I should be sleeping. Seriously, I'm going on 8 hours in three days. But, that being said, though I could be sleeping right now...I'm not. I'm on the internet. I hate myself.

ANYWAY...

I just skimmed folk's posts up above, and there were some very cool points made. Still, because of the tiredness factor, rather than trying to comment on everything above, I'll just carte blanche this baby and answer the questions....since you asked.

When you write (or read) h/c, do you consider the story more about the person who is being hurt, or the one who is giving the comfort, or both?

Depends on the nature of the hurt, and the purpose of the story. Most of the time, If the hurt is such that the one who is injured is unconscious, then it is probably about the person who is left behind. Alternately, if the person who is injured is awake, it's more likely to be about the injured person. There are exceptions, of course...

I hate to use my own stories as examples, but they're all I can think of right now (did I mention the lack of sleep?). Anyway, in More Than Pretty Faces, Rodney's unconscious for just about all of it. To my mind, that story was not about Rodney. It was about the others relying on their own skills to get themselves out of a situation. Conversely, in Down Came a Spider, Rodney was frozen for most of it, but that story *was* about Rodney. It was about watching the others deal with his potential loss, and, at least for me, my goal was to show that Rodney and Carter are equals. I wanted them to find themselves on even ground (and I wanted Carter to see how much Atlantis cared for Rodney. I'm a sap, I know).

As a writer, if you sense yourself drifting into your specific h/c "trigger" territory, do you take that as a sign that you need to back off -- the way I do? Or do you keep going?

I back off all the time. I think that's why I've been labeled as a less than sympathetic writer. I'm very aware of canon's lack of overt h/c, so putting it in fics feels like wading into dangerously fanonical territory. Yet, it's what fic is ostensibly for. To actually see inside the character's heads, which means getting more emotional. Oh, but it's a fine line, because I still think too much ends up being too fanon. So, if I have comfort, I try to limit it to physical actions -- wrapping someone in a blanket, resting a hand on a shoulder, showing a smile of relief at someone's not being dead. I know people want the words, they want the "you are my light" kind of statements, but if there's dialogue, I prefer it understated. I don't succeed myself. Lord knows, my first few fics were filled with cliches. Regardless...it's tough, and I totally know where you're coming from.

And I'm cutting here because LJ says I wrote too much.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

And here's the second half...

Do you like reading stories that push the limits of h/c farther than you, personally, would feel comfortable doing as a writer?

Yes and no. Yes, because I do crave some head hugging (as my cohorts call it) every so often, and no, because, when it goes too far, I just hate it. I wasn't kidding about the "you are my light" bit up above. I read that in what was actually a really good fic...up until that point. The moment one of the characters said that out loud, I face palmed. There's h/c, then there's smarm, and the two often get scarily blurred.

Do you enjoy the hurt by itself, or do you mostly read for the "comfort" part?

Um...both. Honestly, I like the adversity that comes with pain. I'm an action person (hee-like that's not obvious), and I love people fighting against the odds, and that includes overcoming injuries. Of course, I should note that I am much more of an immediate pain person, not a lingering pain person. Slow diseases and months of agony I really can't stand (especially ANYTHING to do with parasites. No bugs under the skin, please! For the love of Pete! I get all squirrely thinking about it. LOL!). I'm more of the gunshot, knife, fast-acting poison, fall from great heights, explosion, bone breaking, punch to the gut type of person. (heh)

BUT, with that, there must be comfort. I just don't need (or want) my comfort to be full on, reality show confessional, comfort. Subtle makes me happy. At the same time, I also like that comfort to be constant. From the moment the pain begins, that comfort needs to be there for me, even if it's in the background. And, again, subtle is better for me than overt.

I know "cave-in" stories were made fun of up above, but they really create one of the most ideal of h/c moments. I could see, for example, Rodney or John being hurt and immobilized, and the other providing a constant stream of banter. Not once in that banter would the comforter need to mention the injured person's health. The entire conversation could be about which was better - DC Comics or Marvel. And that, to me, would be providing comfort.

So...I know I didn't explain it well, but if you understand the analogy I just gave, then you understand the sort of h/c I love.

And that's all. Because I so have to go to sleep.

[sgatazmy.livejournal.com]

For me the story is about both the person injured and the person being cared for, because both are trapped in a situation and both have to struggle to get through it with their own burdens. I like hurt that people can grow from, can learn from, and can be strengthened by. Hurt for the sake of hurt bothers me. I need comfort and I need hope and I need people to fight. To be willing to make it through whatever they need to fight through.

That said, I'm not so sure I always succeed in writing this. I often start out with more hurt then I expected and have to make sure there is a reason for it, that it's not just there for the sake of being there.

I've also noticed that I've become very particular on which stories I read because so many of them sound the same. I need a unique plot or development written in a special way. Same old same old doesn't really cut it for me. And yet I feel my writing falls into that trap more often then I care to admit.

[sholio]

Thank you for the response! I particularly resonated with this:

I need comfort and I need hope and I need people to fight. To be willing to make it through whatever they need to fight through.

In fanfic or original writing, I *hate* stories without hope, stories where not only are the odds so overwhelming that the characters can't win, but they don't even try. I think this is why I loathe suicide fic so much. I love to watch a character struggle to succeed, and I also love the anticipation of not knowing whether they will succeed (which means that the writer sometimes has to have them fail, in order for that anticipation to be there). But, yes, I crave the struggle and the inner strength that comes out of it.

[valleya.livejournal.com]

Hurt/comfort? Do I like it? Hell, yes! Do I read fanfics with it? Ditto. Do I write it? Yep, yep, yep!

Great topic for discussion! I read your entry and the replies that followed with great interest last night, but didn't reply until today because I was thinking long and hard about the points made during the discussion.

I'm working on a story that has all kinds of h/c, and not just to Sheppard or McKay. I'm an equal opportunity whumper! LOL! Seriously, I've done this before in another fandom and I love to spread the hurt around. Probably a little too much. That's why I stopped to think about what I really wanted to do in my current story.

I've been hung up on the ending for a couple of months and I've now decided it's because I went too far on the h/c thing. I'm going to have to peel back Sheppard's injuries somewhat so that I can finally do the ending.

And there's been other things brought up that have stuck with me. I really enjoyed your 'review' on Exogenesis. I made a few changes in my story after reading it. Keep having interesting discussions like these and I might actually finish that danged story! LOL!

Thanks for sharing!

[sholio]

Thanks for the input! *grin* at the equal opportunity whumper comment. I'm equal opportunity as long as it's Sheppard or McKay *laughs* which of course makes me not equal opportunity at all, but so many people in SGA fandom are either McKay fans or Sheppard fans that I sometimes feel a bit weird about admitting that I really don't have a preference for either of them. Rodney's got an edge in certain areas, Sheppard in others ...

*ahem*

Anyway, one thing I really enjoy in fic is feeling that the author isn't focusing too narrowly on a particular character. There are certain writers who, when you read their story, you know you're going to get a story that almost entirely revolves around (x), and while that predictability is good if you like (x), it kind of wears on me after a while -- I want a writer to shake things up a bit, do something different.

I've been hung up on the ending for a couple of months and I've now decided it's because I went too far on the h/c thing. I'm going to have to peel back Sheppard's injuries somewhat so that I can finally do the ending.

I've actually found with my latest fic, as odd as this sounds, that it's working to write the h/c really over-the-top and then cut out a lot of it. The big example of this is the Rodney angst with finding out that Doranda was inhabited, because I'd written this Angst! Puddle of Woe! version of the scene, and then basically chopped all of that out and distributed the angstier scenes through the next chapters -- and you know, not only does it read better now, but I think the more understated comfort/worry is at least as powerful as the Woeful!Rodney scenes that I had in there originally, if only because it feels more "real" for the character; I can envision it happening on the show more easily, I guess.

I really enjoyed your 'review' on Exogenesis. I made a few changes in my story after reading it. Keep having interesting discussions like these and I might actually finish that danged story!

Thank you! You know what ... I find that sometimes, I actually learn at least as much about writing from reading really *bad* books as from good ones. Sometimes you just need a really glaring example of the horrors of going overboard on anything. For example, I'd never realized that I tend to start my original fic with an infodump until I read a couple of really bad books that used that technique, and realized how incredibly annoying it can be. Then I went back and cut out the infodump parts, and found that the story not only was just as comprehensible, but much smoother and easier to read.

[alipeeps.livejournal.com]

Interesting discussion. Some good things to think about there. I'll have a go at answering your questions (though I fear I lack the clarity of insight into my own writing process that you seem to have discovered). The first question is the really tough one. I mean, obviously I am a fan of Shep and he's the one I like to see hurt... and to be honest I have written both kinds of stories.. from Sheppard's POV and from someone else's POV. I think which way I write it just depends on the story and how it takes me and where it leads me. For example, my fic Infirmary Blues: the idea behind it was to write a tag fic filling in the time between Sheppard in the infirmary undergoing treatment to reverse the retrovirus and Sheppard turning up in the gym, "100% John Sheppard again" to talk to Teyla. Now obviously I had to start the story in Rodney POV because Sheppard was in a coma to begin with. Somehow I just absolutely got caught up in Rodney's voice in that fic and what I ended up with, once the fic was completed, was a story that was as much about McKay as Sheppard. Possibly, in fact, more about McKay than Sheppard. Sheppard's injury/H/C became almost the background setting to a Rodney McKay internal monologue on friendship and his relationships with people. I actually loved how that fic turned out but (I've not really looked at it objectively like this before) it wasn't necessarily my intent to write that sort of story when I started and I never really realised up until now that it probably is actually more a McKay fic than a Sheppard one. But a McKay fic that spends an awful lot of time musing about/ansgting over Sheppard! :lol:

Actually, thinking about it, I am constantly surprised in writing Sheppard H/C fic just how easy I seem to find it to write McKay's voice.

I think in writing H/C fic it is a constant dilemma over what POV to write in.. as obviously the element of hurt means that you can't always (depending on the nature of the hurt) write in the POV of the character getting hurt. I actually quite like playing around with things like that and trying new ideas.. I did that with Fever where the fic started off Sheppard POV and then, following his collapse and lapse into unconsciousness etc, progressed through the POV of each member of the core cast. That was a deliberate structure choice for the fic and turned out quite interesting.

I do find at times the requirement to write in someone else's POV a tad onerous... in An Ill Wind That Blows I found myself getting impatient with how long I was having to spend describing events from Teyla's POV just to get to a point where I could have Sheppard starting to wake up again (and give me even the possibility of writing his POV). That admittedly is partly down to the style of the story where I had been trying to let the action develop more organically and have more of a build up, rather than just jumping into the whump as I usually do! ;)

As for writing the H/C... I pretty much started writing my own H/C fanfic after having read everything out there of a decent standard and being desperate for more... so I do write for myself, in a way, for what I want to see... but yes, I think I do moderate what I write, at least a little. I want what I write to be enjoyably H/C, yes, but I also want it to be believable. And so I think I do instincively hold myself back from going too far with the whump... much as I might, in the back of my brain, love to see the extreme whump, I feel in my own writing that I don't want to be.. um... I dunno... melodramatic? I think it's that I don't want my fic to be *just* a whump fic... I want it to be a good story that happens to be about whump. Am I making any sense here?

There are stories out there that I have read, and quite enjoyed, where the whump just gets piled on and on and on and I can't help feeling that, in reality, John would be dead by now! :lol: Or just that it has gone beyond the limits of believability and that for me does kind of limit my enjoyment of the whump.

As for the hurt or the comfort part? I love both. Possibly equally. I do definitely enjoy the hurt part, the struggle to cope with pain and danger.. and, if I'm honest with myself, I possibly enjoy that bit a teeny bit more than the comfort part.

[alipeeps.livejournal.com]

Wow. I sure did waffle! I overloaded the LJ character limit for a post and had to edit! :lol:

Thanks for an interesting discussion and for making me take a good look at my writing.

[gaiaanarchy.livejournal.com]

Okay, a little late to the debate. I had to think a lot about this one.

For me, because I slash and h/c always holds an element of deeper relationship for me, I'm highly confused on the subject. I won't lie, in SGA, John is the one I like to see hurt and I like pretty much anyone on the team to be doing the comforting. He's certainly the character I find the most physically attractive (other than being a little too skinny and sometimes too white, he's pretty much the definition of my 'type') so I think there's an element of sexuality there too.

But in McShep stories, he's also the character I identify the most with. He's pretty much a guy version of me, with a gun. And Rodney is the kind of guy that I like to date - smart and geeky and a little bit awkward, but also willing to completely put me in my place.

So, if h/c is a sex thing, then I'm whumping the guy I'm attracted to. But if it's about comfort, than I'm saying that I'm the one who wants to be comforted. Except when I've had serious surgery, I think I got up and hid because I didn't want to be comforted, so who knows?

Because I don't have that much preference for who's doing the comforting, I guess I'd say that the story is about the person getting hurt. But I tend to search out infirmary scenes, so I feel like comforting is also important.

So I guess in the end, it's about both. The hurt part is a bit of a sex thing (I'm convinced its tied to BDSM-type tendencies, at least for me) and that disgusts me a lot of the time. I think its the reason I read h/c, because too much comfort makes me bored. But I think angst is different than comfort, and at least in SGA, I have very specific kinks as who who gets to angst and why. Ronon and Teyla never get to angst. Elizabeth gets to doubt, because I think she embodies a lot of my own doubts about policy-decisions. Rodney gets to worry - I really like to make him worry. And John is only allowed to a)pine over Rodney b)be troubled about his past.

So I guess, if I was looking at your analysis of your own stories, I might say that a lot of the buddy stuff you do is really an angsting and worrying between the two friends and not necessarily pure comfort.

As for what I allow myself to do - you're right. I never write my own triggers. I let them slip in (when they aid the plot) but I never write anything close to the level of h/c that I like to read, because its too drawn out. The story become about the h/c and not about the relationship (or even what I call the angsting between two characters when they're worried about each other). I still let myself hurt John, but I always force it back from the main story, or refuse to write the joking with team --> action/adventure --> h/c --> infirmary stay plot, because it's not the best story I have in me.

And the three times that I've really gone that route, I've been able to justify it (one was the only way I could see to do convincing Sheppard/Kavanagh, another was about Rodney and Ronon trying to fight over John and bonding in the process and pretty much 100% about them and not about him at all and the third was during my very-Buddhist phase and was in such a spiritual headspace by the end, that people had to wheedle the comforting infirmary scenes out of me)

At the same time, I know that there are stories where, like you, I could've just cut out the h/c altogether and maybe had a better story (ohh, my SGA/HP WIP suffers of misplaced whampage), but I try to balance every indulgence with a story in which nobody gets hurt, there's a moral to the story, and the audience is suitably creeped).

[sholio]

So I guess, if I was looking at your analysis of your own stories, I might say that a lot of the buddy stuff you do is really an angsting and worrying between the two friends and not necessarily pure comfort.

That's an interesting distinction -- what, I guess, would you call pure comfort? It's interesting because I'd never drawn that line; I mean, to me I suppose there's a whole comfort "complex" with the worry and the angst and just generally the reactions of the *other* person as opposed to just the feelings and reactions of the hurt person themselves.

As much of a comfort junkie as I think of myself, if you look at comfort on its strictest level -- petting, touching, gentle handling, hugging and such things -- a little of it is great, but it can really quick slip over into "ewww, way too much" territory for me. Possibly because the characters that I cling to are such total, prickly non-touchers, and possibly because I really hate being clung to when I'm sick -- I'm a "crawl off into the corner and leave me alone" type of person, and I identify with that aspect of fictional characters, too. For me, I guess, the ideal formula is:

[lots of hurt, mostly off-camera] + [lots of understated worry] + [a little bit of touching]

*laughs* That's pretty much it, I think. The actual comfort itself (the hug or whatever) is like the chocolate cake dessert -- it's really the best part of the meal, but becomes completely overwhelming if taken in large quantities.

The hurt part is a bit of a sex thing (I'm convinced its tied to BDSM-type tendencies, at least for me) and that disgusts me a lot of the time.

I don't see what there is to be disgusted about. There *is* a definite BDSM element to h/c; it just doesn't stray over into overtly sexual territory (usually).

I do think it's possible that keeping it mostly about the comfort (and angst) is my own way of dealing with guilt about over-abusing a character. And I do get squirmy when I'm reading a story that really dwells on the hurt. It's mostly empathy (I've spent so much of my life in the hospital that it's just too damn easy to imagine what they're going through) but it may also be -- hmm, I guess I'd say, nervousness about over-sexualizing it and the potential consequences on my psyche? If that makes any sense?

I have very specific kinks as who who gets to angst and why. ... Rodney gets to worry - I really like to make him worry. And John is only allowed to a)pine over Rodney b)be troubled about his past.

Now that is *really* interesting. I don't think I've ever had anybody lay it out like that; however, I have noticed that people tend to write very specific kinds of trauma for certain characters. There are a LOT of physical torture fics involving John, but people almost never write torture scenes for Rodney. And there are a LOT of stories that center on Rodney's emotional hurt and self-esteem issues, but very very few that do likewise for John, which is interesting because his abandonment issues are probably just as strong as Rodney's self-doubt.

People often write AbusiveBastard!John, but very rarely write Rodney as an abusive bastard tormenting someone else -- even though, given the two characters' personalities, an emotionally abusive Rodney is probably a lot less of a stretch than it is for laid-back John!

I try to balance every indulgence with a story in which nobody gets hurt, there's a moral to the story, and the audience is suitably creeped

*nods* I try to go for a balance in my stories, if only because I don't like writing the same thing over and over -- although it is definitely colored by there being certain things that I prefer to write above others. For example, after doing "Running on Empty", which was totally John and Rodney-centric with heavy h/c, I wrote "Killing Frost" because I wanted to do a team/whole-cast story where everyone got to play a role. Of course, it ended up being all about the John and Rodney at the end. *sigh* But, yeah, even though I love writing them, I don't want to be all J&R all the time; I like doing smaller stories like "Man in Black" or "Postcards" that focus on other characters and have a different feeling to them.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

I'm catching up on my flist after about a week without reading LJ so I don't have time to read the entire discussion, but the H/C genre is something I've wondered about a lot since coming into this fandom.

I was only seriously active in one fandom before Stargate and the canon told the story of a group of soldiers during World War II - since the fics pretty much all took place, like the show, during the war (not pre or post), it was pretty much impossible to write anything that didn't deal with physical or emotional pain or death, and the soldiers helping each other get through it. I remember, when I first learned there was a H/C label, commenting that all of the stories in our fandom should be labeled as such (and then I had someone tell me that H/C meant someone gets hurt physically or emotionally and someone else cures it with sex and I got confused).

I know I read your "killer robot in the Ancient labyrinth" story back when I was just discovering SGA fic (I think one of the first 3-4 SGA stories I read) and came away from it thinking "this is the kind of good, solid, Stargate story I want."

When I read, I'm not interested in over-extreme hurt - I generally backbutton torture (there are exceptions to every rule though) - and while I'm fascinating with people working through physical pain to get out of a situation (your stories, or SG-1's "Solitudes"), I have a strict bullshit meter on how much is physical possible and I don't want the hurt for the hurt itself but for how it affects the situation and how the characters work together to make it through. It's the same for emotional hurt - I don't want it too extreme. And I want the comfort to be while it's going on - John and Rodney helping each other through a bad situation - the afterward I want to be short and sweet because I'll skim right through long melodrama.

When I write, it's a different story. I'm almost scared to really hurt the characters - sometimes I want to, but I have trouble writing it - I don't know if I'm worried I'll go to far or I'll get it wrong (I've got emergency responder medical training - I know how to deal with broken legs, but I've never experienced one myself - can I really write it?).

So, um, I read for both the hurt and comfort but prefer neither of them go overboard. My reading limits are much further than my writing limits - I wonder if I hit that "trigger" territory too quickly or something.

[sholio]

I remember, when I first learned there was a H/C label, commenting that all of the stories in our fandom should be labeled as such (and then I had someone tell me that H/C meant someone gets hurt physically or emotionally and someone else cures it with sex and I got confused).

*laughs* I can see how that would be confusing....

I've only slowly been learning about fanfic genres as I go along. Although the basic categories are similar, different fandoms (and individuals within the fandoms) differ quite a lot in how they break things down. In the beginning, I was only aware of "slash" and "everything else". In the early fanfics that I wrote, I never even thought about categorizing them. My first long fanfic, in fact, would probably be considered AU; it took place after the series ended, and included wild speculation on pretty much every character's fate (as well as taking huge liberties with their pasts). If I were writing it today, I'd probably hedge it around with all kinds of warnings -- AU, character death, het, torture, kidfic ... the whole thing was no more than a PG13, but I did a *lot* to the characters, and paired them off and gave them kids and put one character's mind in a different body and ... oh, just a million things that I'd really never do today.

I didn't know about the label h/c until a friend of mine told me about it, and while my stories certainly had h/c elements, I didn't really write it consciously until getting involved in a fandom with an active h/c subculture (SGA). I've been in other fandoms that had their h/c fans (SG-1, Invisible Man) but that was so long ago that I really wasn't even consciously aware of it.

I know I read your "killer robot in the Ancient labyrinth" story back when I was just discovering SGA fic (I think one of the first 3-4 SGA stories I read) and came away from it thinking "this is the kind of good, solid, Stargate story I want."

Oh, thank you! And you know what's funny about that one specifically ... it was written for a challenge, and it was the first story I'd ever written specifically for the hurt (the challenge was "loss of a sense"), and I felt like it was really short on plot because of that. Of the stories I'd written up to then, I was probably the least pleased with that one, because it felt like I was kind of pandering, and I wanted to do stories with more plot meat on them!

I'm almost scared to really hurt the characters - sometimes I want to, but I have trouble writing it - I don't know if I'm worried I'll go to far or I'll get it wrong

The getting it wrong thing is a concern for me, too. I've been told that I do good medical scenes, but the way I do it is by being as vague as possible! If I *have* to get specific, I'll ask someone; several of the people on my friend list have medical training of one sort or another. Usually, though, I just try to be incredibly vague about what's wrong with them. And medical situations *do* tend to be very confusing, with blood everywhere and not really being able to tell where you're hurt or how bad. I take full advantage of that in my fic, believe me. *g* It helps that I have a few minor pieces of knowledge that I've picked up from various places -- such as, CPR can't (usually) restart a person's heart, or wounds take a while to become infected. I prefer to err on the side of vagueness because it really knocks me out of a story when I run into something that I -- with my limited medical knowledge -- recognize as a factual error.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

I'll have to track it down. (Dad probably owns the issue in question, but it's in a box in a cram-full storage unit, so that's out unless I want to empty and repack the unit.)

Offhand, it seems to me that I like a lot of things in stories that I wouldn't like at all in reality, and the idea of fighting and never losing is something that seems really awesome when you're about five (and that some people never do grow out of being five).

LJ, you idiot, nest threads properly!

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

The above is meant to be in reference to the Spinrad essay.