Why hurt/comfort?

[yourlibrarian]

When I saw that Fanhackers had reblogged this post about hurt/comfort, I thought it would make a great discussion topic.

This is not a trope I myself seek out or read, but I found the discussion quite interesting:

"I think part of the reason I like it so much, is often in mainstream media characters DO NOT have that ‘healing moment’, shall we say. Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened. Which is not realistic as we all know, so I think the hurt/comfort genre in fanfiction is a kind of a response to that. The “filling in the blanks” of when a character needs a moment of healing or validation to continue onward, because that in a sense is more relatable then the “super hero” character who can move through it like nothing damaged them."

For those who do or don't read/write the trope, do parts of the discussion there match what makes it compelling to you?

Also, just an aside, for those who are interested in acafan content, Fanhackers can be read here on Dreamwidth by subscribing to its feed.

Comments

[malurette]

I... guess it's true?
I would have said that to me, it's about vulnerability--I'm also a fan of whump, ie hurt-without-subsequent-comfort--and now that I think about it, especially the part more relatable then the “super hero” character who can move through it like nothing damaged them."? I realize that I exclusively inflict it on male characters? so maybe it's about cracking the façade of toughness and not showing any weakness and allowing them to be more human and not repressed machines?
OK so I have no definite answer but it gets me thinking, yay thinking and analizing fannish stuff!

[yourlibrarian]

Yay thinking indeed!

[tei]

Hm! I think it's hard for me to distinguish whether I've read a lot of this trope or not, because I tend to encounter it mainly in the context of longer fics, where a bad thing happens to a character because... well, that's that "plot" is, and the ramifications of that follow naturally in the story. And I think it's true that fanfic does tend to focus more on a character recovering from whatever happened and finding healing, which... yeah, I could see that as being a genre thing? Fanfiction tends to be really good at zooming in super-close to one moment or aspect of a character's life, so it makes sense that "recovering your equilibrium after an unsettling or traumatizing event" would be one of the oft-neglected moments that gets special attention.

[yourlibrarian]

I think if you're not aware of it, the answer is no. I mean, I think there are h/c elements in a lot of stories, as you noted. But ones that stand out to me are ones where characters are perpetually ill, or ones where they're abused as a long-running part of the story, or where there's grievous harm.

I've seen ones where characters develop disabilities characterized that way as well which I can't really agree with. It may be because so often in these stories the disability is reversed or healed or the character is "reset" in some way by the story's end which I particularly dislike. To me, personally, having characters either "born deaf" or develop blindness or another disability in a story is another form of character alteration like age regression stories or age difference stories, etc. because it's just getting to know the character under different circumstances. Which does not really tie into more common types of h/c.

[killclaudio]

I don't read that much hurt/comfort, because I only really enjoy the comfort part and not the hurt. So that's actually a pretty good description of what I like, which is when canon conveniently provides the hurt so I can just roll around in the comfort.

I'm curious if the hurt in canon is satisfying to people who like both parts of hurt/comfort? My gut reaction is that the hurt in fanfic is different, but I can't put my finger on how. Fanfic hurt is... more visceral, somehow? More about the character's experience of pain and less an inconvenient thing that happens to them for plot. But then most of my canons are at the police procedural/action movie level, where the violence isn't very explicit.

[sabotabby]

For me they have to do both well or I nope out. The pain has to be real (canon hurt is...typically not), but also the comfort has to be true to the characters and can't just be them crying and saying "I love you" for 10 pages.

[killclaudio]

Yeah, making it true to the characters is the most important part! And the toughest. I think fanfic writers are often better than canon at identifying what will cause the most pain for this specific character.

[yourlibrarian]

That makes sense to me because I imagine that it can be both more visceral and more ongoing because fic has none of the pressure to "move along" that most canon sources do.

[killclaudio]

Yes, exactly! I like how much more time and space fanfic has to explore the emotional side of things.

[melannen]

There are definitely people who are satified by the hurt as much as, if not more than, the comfort - both "hurt without comfort" and "whump" are popular in their own right! Sometimes I'm even in the mood for them.

(Meanwhile I just had to comfort two friends who though they were reading h/c until they got to the last chapter and... just h. no c.)

I think the hurt in hurt-heavy hurt/comfort fanfic tends to be... more essential/internal/something? Like, I feel like for a good h/c fanfic, it's not enough to hurt them physically, it has to have fundamentally damaged in their sense of *self*, too. Beat them up, kill their dog, fine. Beat them up, kill their dog and convince them they're a worthless failure and their entire life has been a lie - ah, that's the sweet spot for the comfort.

Or maybe that's just my personal taste in h/c, idk.

[geraineon]

"Beat them up, kill their dog and convince them they're a worthless failure and their entire life has been a lie - ah, that's the sweet spot for the comfort."

Yes. This calls to me!

... Hm, initially I thought I only go for h/c that addresses the recovery canon glosses over but now that I think about it, I like this very much as well. Just have less time to read them now because they tend to be extremely long.

[killclaudio]

Oh yes, I read a bit of whump in my SG-1 days because it was so common (poor Daniel!), and it can be very satisfying, but I'm definitely guilty sometimes of skipping to the cuddling.

I think you've put your finger on it, fanfic definitely damages their sense of self more than canon does, and it tends to be more...traumatizing, maybe? As much psychological as physical, anyway. Even fics where one character has overworked themselves to the point of exhaustion (which is a kind of hurt I do enjoy), it's usually about them letting their guilt/fear/anger etc drive them, rather than about the physical symptoms by themselves.

[sabotabby]

That's definitely part of it.

I went on a rabbit hole from the link and there were some good links on that about the appeal, which both resonated. I'm not sure. H/c has been a guilty pleasure for me since as long as I've been reading/writing fic, but it got jacked up to 11 after I almost died and went through a long period of the worst pain I've ever experienced, followed by recovery that took forever, followed by trying to rebuild a disrupted life and I really crave stories that echo it, but like, once removed. Basically giving badass characters the space to be vulnerable when I couldn't really express that vulnerability.

[yourlibrarian]

I remember hearing from someone else once that the appeal to them was because they were hospitalized a lot growing up so I think the personal identification can be a big reason ::nods::

[geraineon]

"Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened." <- this resonates with me. I immediately thought of Persona 5, where the main character had a pretty traumatic experience and the game just rolled with it like nothing happened. Went straight for all the hurt/comfort fics I could find after that. Same with Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I just want to see my favs heal/recover from trauma or have their hurts acknowledged by other characters.

[mindstalk]

My gut respects fics exploring canon hurt more than it respects fics that inflict new hurt for the sake of then having comfort.

[firecat]

"Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened."

I will in fact nope out of a show where this happens too often. (I'm looking at you, 24.)

[geraineon]

Same. It's like a sneeze that's stuck in the nose, and refuses to happen. Very unsatisfying.

I gave 24 a pass. I guess that was a good decision!

[thewriterinpink]

I'm too emotionally vulnerable for stories like these. I stay away from fiction that'll remind me of Bad Times because it just drains me and makes me feel terrible. I can understand why it can be cathartic for other people, but it doesn't do anything positive for me. Still, I do enjoy the concept of heavy comfort in response to some sort of emotional pain, but I get the sense from the other posts that true hurt/comfort is different than that and the experience is heavy on both sides. If that's the case then, nah, I'm not much of a fan of it—sometimes I find characters who can pick themselves up and move on with their head held high like nothing happened inspiring for someone like me who struggles with a lot of mental health stuff. But that's just me, I guess. I don't care much for realism. I don't need it.

[yourlibrarian]

I suspect I'm in the same boat. I don't want anything reminding me of illness or hospitalizations either, and I prefer skipping anything where characters suffer. I'm also not a caretaker by nature so I don't enjoy that part of stories either. I already find canon far too unrealistic in how it deals with injuries or physicality in any way, so I would appreciate fic actually ramping down rather than up in terms of making the outcome of actions more human in scale.

I've also found I can be easily affected by some forms of torture that we see little of in canon because it's hard to portray and thus barely even depicted as torture, such as extreme isolation or the cruelty of neglect. I still have one story sitting with me from years back that was an unexpected gut punch and I wish I'd never read it.

[thewriterinpink]

Yeah, I have hyper empathy so everything bad is heightened too much for me to stomach. I'll still read a story tagged hurt/comfort but only if I think it's going to be mild and easy to handle. A lot of stories like these can be pretty intense though.

I'm also not a fan of crying for a story when I wasn't expecting it—often I tend to resent a story if it brought that type of emotion out of me.

[prettyarbitrary]

Oh, that's a great point. That's definitely something that drives me a little nutty about mainstream storytelling a lot of the time.

For me, though, the core of it is catharsis. For a character to go through lots of hurt, BUT THEN to get the comfort and healing that they badly need. To feel loved and safe after terrible experiences. When I read a good h/c story, I can feel the stress lift right off me as I go through it vicariously with them.

There's also a promise in h/c fic, that things will be terrible but that in the end they'll be okay. Living in a world where we don't get that promise, it's really soothing to be able to enjoy it sometimes in a story.

[yourlibrarian]

That's true, h/c is rather like romances as a trope that has a form of HEA.

[doranwen]

Oh, I *adore* h/c. And I think all the comments said the elements that I love about it - I like that it often deals with canon hurts that are glossed over (one canon that is particularly bad with that that I can think of is Rizzoli & Isles - I've written h/c for just that purpose at least a couple times - but Rookie Blue and Leverage have their issues as well as do others).

There's a part of me that finds the caretaking bits very satisfying, and yes, also the fact that it gets to a happiness that we don't always get in real life, and I also liked someone pointing out that the hurt has to affect the person's sense of self to be very emotionally engaging, because yes, that's something I think I look for when I'm reading or writing h/c.

I also do like fics that hurt the characters as long as it is plausible, and often as long as there's a plot element where the h/c could be seen as incidental - if it's *just* h/c for the sake of h/c, it can be a little less well-written.

[yourlibrarian]

It would be pretty interesting if someone did a study relating the quantity of h/c in a range of canons and comparing it to the way that similar events were dealt with in those canons.

[doranwen]

I'd read that!

[china_shop]

I'm missing the h/c gene, by which I mean that when I read h/c fic, I often end up feeling like I've missed the point. (me: What's the payoff? IDGI!) Which means in theory I just don't read it. (In practice, there's so much in my current fandom I keep reading it anyway.)

I realise this places me firmly in the minority. ;-)

I do like fic that explores fallout from things that go down in canon, and I like it when hurt people get what they need, especially from friends. But I don't enjoy rolling around in the hurt, or h/c in the context of progressing a romantic relationship. And I do not want to see my favs what-feels-like-gratuitously tortured or whumped, noooo! *covers eyes* *is a delicate flower*

From the linked post:

often in mainstream media characters DO NOT have that ‘healing moment’, shall we say. Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened.

To me, that's kind of who the characters are. Like, I can see digging in a little deeper and letting them feel it, but the stoic self-sufficiency is often part of what I like about the characters...

I'm interested that h/c has become SUCH a big thing, though. Maybe it always was. And every so often I have another go at trying to get my head around it. :-)

[yourlibrarian]

In practice, there's so much in my current fandom I keep reading it anyway.

Heh, this is pretty much me as well. I generally don't look at the tags when clicking on something, because at this point they are either off putting or just a baffling collection of descriptors. And I think what you describe as your preferences is pretty similar to mine.

I'm interested that h/c has become SUCH a big thing, though. Maybe it always was.

I think it probably was, but like you, I find it interesting that it is so very common, especially since this is something I see far more of in fanfic than profic. And while I've seen some "why h/c" posts (though far fewer than the evergreen "why slash") this one had some interesting explanations that I hadn't seen before.