Arctic Light

I had a discussion on this topic maybe 5-6 years ago, I think, which introduced me to the interesting and startling realization that some people just do not like this thing that I like. This is obviously completely valid, but since there are a number of new people around now, I think it's time for a repeat just to check in on changing tastes and whatnot.

The question is: If you like h/c, do you like h/c with groups, or just with two people?

My shocking realization in the previous discussion was that many people do not, in fact, like group h/c, which is one of my favorite types! (Obviously all opinions are valid here.)

By group h/c, I mean things like: two or more people taking care of the hurt person, the canon's central team/group protecting someone, the person realizing they're accepted into the group *as* the comfort, the whole group/team getting hurt together, and that sort of thing. Many people are very specifically into h/c just with their ship or two particular blorbos, and introducing more people to the dynamic makes it not fun anymore. I support this as a completely valid choice and do indeed read a lot of h/c of the "two blorbos" sort, but how do *you* feel?



Feel free to elaborate or discuss this in comments!

Edit: Cursed once again by DW's inability to edit a poll once you've posted it, I just want to mention that 'all hurt together' is also a valid option here, not just groups with one person hurt. Actually it'd be interesting to know if that makes a difference.

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?

( Some nattering )

When rachelmanija was here, we talked about hurt/comfort a lot (as you do) and the special frustration of being emotionally engaged in something where the author is clearly not into the hurt/comfort aspects nearly as much as the reader (me). The Matt Scudder books are like that -- it's not that nothing bad ever happens to him, the books are in fact an endless spiral of bad things happening to him, but it's handled in a way that usually doesn't quite get to where I want it to get to. The author is clearly not into it in the same way as I, for one, am into it.

I was thinking about it again recently because I was reading a long fanfic in which the author was clearly Not Into It in a similar kind of way, and it made me think about what it is that gives that Not Into It feeling. It's not that h/c has (or at least it doesn't have to have) endless descriptions of injuries and tending wounds -- in fact, a lot of it doesn't really deal with the details at all. But what it does have is that there's some kind of emotional crux or catharsis associated with people getting hurt. They don't just get hurt. Even if the getting hurt isn't the point of the story, as it is in a lot of h/c fanfic, it still reads as important. It might be used as an excuse for one character to realize how much they care, or just to freak out about the other one getting hurt; it might be the catalyst for an emotional conversation. But basically characters being hurt, physically or emotionally, is flagged as "important" in the text.

And being as it's something that I'm into, this is why it can be so monumentally frustrating when you have the setup for it and not the follow-through, because it feels like there's something missing; the emotional importance/crux-point/follow-up isn't there. I guess a similar situation might be the way that characters having sex is usually important to a relationship, so it would be like getting the buildup for sex, and then the sex happens off-camera and nothing actually changes; the characters just get on with their lives.

Which you can totally do, obviously! It just depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell. It's not a bad writing decision; it's just a matter of narrative focus and what the person writing it is into. But in the same way that lack of romantic follow-through on a romantic setup is frustrating to people who are specifically engaged in the romance aspects of the story, I think the lack of emotional "beats" hitting on the h/c is what's frustrating for me in fiction that has all the setup but doesn't quite follow through on it. It's not that I expect or even necessarily want detailed descriptions of injuries and healing; it's that I want emotional catharsis, and you can even have something that would be satisfying from an h/c standpoint but not have it feel quite right if the emotional beats don't hit in the right way. And on the flip side, you can have stories that give that hurt/comforty feeling in which nothing much injurious actually even happens, or is really dealt with, if there's still some kind of emotional crux or catharsis surrounding whatever does happen.

I just need to mention that rachelmanija and I have been having IMMENSE fun with the freeform tags in the hurtcomfortex tag set.

Part of our delight is coming from the way the tagset window lists freeforms. You get them in sets of 30 or so, and the top-level listing is the tag range indicating what tags are in the group. For example:

"Anaphylaxis → Blindness"

This is leading to some absolutely delightful tag pairings, suggesting stories which are variously wonderful, appropriate, and/or plausible:

Character voluntarily takes job that will shorten lifespan → coughing up blood
Comforter Rains Down Retribution On Hurt Character's Behalf → Defenestration
Blaming Themself for the Other Being Injured → Character crying in their sleep
Bar Room Brawl → Canon-Typical Violence
Keeping the hurt secret → Miscommunication
Terminal Illnesses → Withdrawal
Injury Due to Other Character's Incompetence → Loss of Trust
Magic Curses → Non-Consensual Bondage
Stuck in a Trap → Treating wounds with unconventional materials

... suggest a story I would dearly love to write ...
Mistakenly Believes the Other is Dead → Physically Injured Character Comforting Emotionally Distressed Character
unexpected tenderness → Withdrawal
Collapsing from exhaustion → De-Powered
Hurt in enemy territory → Loss of Identity
Healer Directing Operation On Self → Impaled by Debris
Self-Loathing → Substance Abuse (hi Ward)
Character being protected isn't used to being cared about → Cold bath to bring down fever
Suicide Attempt → unexpected tenderness
Drowning → Fever

... not sure I would write but would absolutely read ...
Monstrous/Powered Character Frightens Partner But They Love Them Anyway → Orphans
Other Character Tries To Help But Can't → Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Electrocution → Feeding someone hot soup
Publicly repudiated by family → Self-Hatred

... plausible as something you might see in hurt/comfort and yet hilarious ...
Common Cold → Drinking to Cope
Spanking → Torture Victim Comforts Distressed Friend/Loved One Who Was Forced to Watch
Childbirth → coughing up blood
Corporal Punishment → Drinking to Cope

... or just suggest one of those stories where the author is clearly marching to the beat of their own id.
Drowning → Forced Prostitution
Sex to Distract Character Who's Afraid of the Dark → Swordfighting
Child Loss → Corporal Punishment
Hate Crimes → Hyper-sensitive skin
Soulmate Separation → Tattoo Gun Accident

Check out the full tag set here!

I am currently at Rachel's (we both have brightly dyed hair at present, and have now had two different people ask us if we were sisters - see visual evidence here), and last night we came up with the idea of putting all the H/C Exchange prompts in a text file, printing it out, cutting them up, and pulling random prompts out of a hat to generate our own combinations, then writing them. We put the entire prompt list on a text file and took it to a 24-hour Kinko's ... only to run into problems trying to get it to print on the copy machine, so we had to take it to the attendant and have her print it. This was followed by a conversation which went something like this:

Attendant: Which file is it?
Us: ummmmmm. The Word file?
Attendant: Could you be more specific?
Us: .... *contemplating how to describe it in the most non-specific way possible*

On the one hand, I think Kinko's attendants probably have seen FAR weirder things than two women with technicolor hair trying to print out a document containing things like "Alternate Universe - Prostitution" and "Being a hyperspace pilot shortens your lifespan and addicts you to a drug". On the other hand, I feel that there is a distinct likelihood of us featuring in some anecdote about Those Weirdos at the Late-Night Kinko's.