Let's chat about h/c today!

[frith_in_thorns]

To go with naye's lovely post about comfort tropes, tell me your favourite kinds of hurt for your fictional characters! Do you have ones you like to read but not write, or vice versa? Are there some you will read endlessly in any fandom you're in? Are there some h/c tropes you can bash out a 2k oneshot for at the drop of a hat?

Also, do you find you're equal-opportunity with your hurt, or do you hoard it all for one particular character or character archetype?

I'll start, and say that I'm really into hurt resulting in altered-state, as provided by many things but especially concussion/drugged/fever etc. It's something I find endlessly enjoyable to write -- the vulnerability caused by the skewed perspective, and how that plays out in character interactions, but also I... just like... the hurt bit itself *gg* And currently I have a definite Thing for Shen Wei magically exhausting himself and coughing blood and stumbling in a floppy way and having to be supported by Zhao Yunlan. (I don't suppose this is a revelation to anyone. But I'm so glad to know that I'm not alone!)

Anyway, please share your own likes! And recs!

(This is a positivity-only post. Very uninterested in hearing how h/c is OOC or a moral failing or how some people write it badly or whatever, thanks.)

Comments

[sholio]

WOOHOO H/C, I've been looking forward to contributing to this post all day when my daily writing was done. XD

Altered states is a big one for me too -- concussions especially, because the dazed/woozy/out of it aspect also goes along with splitting headaches and the other person worrying that there's real, lasting damage. But also drugs, fevers, hypothermia, poison ... anything that makes them dizzy and floppy and unable to walk about without help. ♥

Presumed dead is another huge one for me; it's got all the desperate angst and worry plus a basically instant recovery period once the person turns out not to be dead -- I mean, depending on what's wrong with them, but it usually means you can get instant emotional comfort for the person who thought they were dead plus the presumed-dead person realizing how much they're loved. (Or 20 chapters of avoiding talking about it, depending ...)

Shooting/stabbing/drowning -- really any kind of acute, don't-die-on-me!! h/c also Does Things to me. I recently discovered altitude sickness is tailor-made for h/c and yet, no one ever writes it! But it combines woozy/sick with the possibility of escalating to lethality before anyone can do anything about it (so, desperate worry gets in there) but is also quickly and easily treatable with the right supplies.

I also really like scenarios where they're stranded far from help, or have to get out of a difficult situation where no help is coming, and particularly if both people are hurt in different ways and have to rely on each other. I'm fond of prisoner/torture scenarios, characters trapped places, that kind of thing.

I've also noticed an increasing fondness recently for emotional h/c. I mean, I've always liked it, but I don't think I ever realized it's actually a really big happy button for me until recently -- characters being comforted after nightmares, phobias, or panic attacks; characters being able to talk about their trauma with each other and feeling safe with someone else; hugging/touching for people who aren't used to it; emotional comfort for the person who was distressed in a presumed-dead scenario ...

This is a lovely topic, and very inspiring for Whumptober; thank you for bringing it up! ♥

[clevermanka]

I've also noticed an increasing fondness recently for emotional h/c. I mean, I've always liked it, but I don't think I ever realized it's actually a really big happy button for me until recently
Mmmmm, yes. Welcome to the club! The emo knives are absolutely what finally sucked me into the Guardian fandom. I would've probably continued watching the show and liked it fine, but without the Truly Outstanding Angst I don't think I would've been motivated to write for it.

[frith_in_thorns]

I like emotional h/c but only if it's really very... dialled up to 11? Like, I'm not massively into reading gentle comfort about someone having a distressing day, but calming someone down after a panic attack or someone being completely in shock from a traumatic event are GREAT. I mean, in general I'm mainly into dramatic, genuinely life-threatening h/c much more than any other sort, I'm just not a very restrained person in fiction!

All the other things on your list, absolutely! :D You are so right about altitude sickness, I don't think I've seen it done in a fic either but it has so much great potential.

And yes to concussions being a favourite. Headaches are my least favourite things in real life, I don't really know why they're so endlessly fun to read about in fic! And of course the confused/blurry aspect of it is always wonderful. (I just tried to think of how many concussion fics I have written in my fannish life. I don't think I'm remembering all of them. It's A Lot XD)

[sholio]

Yeah, it's basically the "dialed up to 11" kind for me too. It's okay if the dialed-up events are in the past -- like, someone having a nightmare and opening up about a horribly traumatic thing that happened to them 5 years ago totally does it. And even the gentle "having a bad day and someone being nice to them" thing can do it for me, but usually there needs to be a subtext of "... but no one is EVER nice to them like this and they think they don't deserve it and they're so SHOCKED that anyone would".

Everyone needs to write altitude sickness; we need to make it a thing. :D (I did write it once so far in my current fandom, which was what made me realize that I've never seen anyone else do it prior to that. WHY IS IT NOT A THING. It's such good h/c.)

[alexseanchai]

Vathara gave Toph altitude sickness in Embers. But I would not recommend reading Embers just for that, since it's well into the story, not a terribly significant plot point, and a 760K Avatar: the Last Airbender AU.

I recommend Embers for many other reasons, though. So!

[ranalore]

Your list is probably closest to my top favorites, though I'm less of a fan of the splitting headaches aspect of concussions than the woozy aspect. Too much rl experience with severe migraine syndrome. And yet, weirdly, I adore sleep dep h/c, which is also a thing I've experienced a lot of in rl. Go figure.

To hypothermia, I would add heat exhaustion, heat sickness, and extreme dehydration. Any hurt resulting from exposure to extreme climate/temperature, basically (except sunburn).

I'm a huge fan of magical exhaustion or superpower exhaustion or scenarios where characters burn through their reserves because they have a particular, unique skill set that is really needed, but then they flop over. For the really intense h/c feels, this needs to be in a context in which they have a primary relationship with someone who has likely been pushing not only for the character to pace themselves, but has been taking those around them to task because there are alternative ways of doing things, and the possibility of prioritizing tasks in such a way that they don't use up their "resource" like this (likely put in those terms with bitter sarcasm). One of my fandoms was actually founded on a variation of this, with one of the main pairing stealing the other away from a kind of hidden world in which he was a ruler and wasn't actually in danger of dying from his responsibilities, but the weight of everybody's reliance on him and expectations was doing massive psychological damage. This is one I really love in Guardian because canon does give us indications Shen Wei's vulnerable this way, and my god, is he gorgeous when it does. But it's more whump in the canon, and if we want the h/c, we have to create it ourselves.

I love imprisonment, and the extra hurt that usually goes along with it. Frith's "Threads Pulled Tight" is a phenomenal example of this, plus altered states. For a canon that does this perfectly for me, with body horror and experimentation by evil scientists thrown in, there's CA: TWS. Bucky Barnes is the world's oldest living POW, tortured and tormented and mind-wiped and brainwashed into a dehumanized weapon, and it was complete and utter catnip to me. The canon follow-up was not to my taste, to put it mildly, but wow, did that movie itself get the hurt right.

Chalk me up as another one interested in recovery from noncon. Hell, write me up in permanent marker. It's one of the many, many (many) things I love about FayJay's fantastic "The Unexpected Legacy", which also has near-death bodily trauma, volunteering to take punishment in another's stead, and various other h/c tropes shared fairly equally around the main three characters. It's also something that interests me in the fic for Yami no Matsuei. The canon gives us the rape, and the...well, "survivor" (it's complicated) seeking vengeance as a result, but kind of glances off the emotional fallout, otherwise.

I'll go ahead and state the obvious; I have a marked preference for Shen Wei being the hurt one in my h/c, though both is also good! Just, at different points, so Zhao Yunlan is available to caretake Shen Wei. And it's not that I don't think Zhao Yunlan hurts beautifully, or that I'm not interested in seeing the cracks in his carefully crafted persona, but I really do feel like we got some great examples of his hurt and Shen Wei's comfort in canon, where we only got a tease of the reverse that was never followed up onscreen (bring me aaaaaaaaall the post-ep. 33 fic).

I wish there was a hurt trope I could just toss of 2K words of. I wish there was any kind of trope I could do that with. The closest I come is I can usually produce a drabble or so of a decent kiss to a prompt of a word or phrase. And honestly, as much as I love the h/c tropes I love, I frequently feel like an imposter in h/c discussions, because I have so many hard nopes--a combination of triggers, squicks, and just the fact my brain is still so recalcitrant when it comes to giving me words right now--that I could never sign up for something like H/C Bingo or the Hurt Comfort Exchange.

[indywind]

De-lurking to second basically your whole last paragraph (well, I don't feel like an impostor exactly but not sure whether I fit enough if you see what I mean) so you know you're not alone in this experience any more than is everybody who thought they were The Only One who was into their unique fave trope.

Especially, a lot of my triggers/squicks are right up next to my id-candy, so if I'm trying to read someone else's work I have to take a risk to get a (maybe) reward. And if I'm writing, myself, it's even odds whether my brain will actually let me pin down those slippery id-things in words and let anyone else see what they can use to poke me in a tender spot.

[ranalore]

Hmm, I think that's more what I mean by imposter. Like, do I fulfill enough of the requirements to actually claim to be an h/c fan, rather than a fan who likes select h/c tropes? Is there really a difference? Though it's funny that I should be asking myself the question at all, given I can be downright obnoxious in my affirmation that nobody gets to gatekeep these things in fandom.

Especially, a lot of my triggers/squicks are right up next to my id-candy

There is definitely some of this going on around some of mine, too, and it's one reason all the tropes are very much dependent on the fandom and the characters in the scenario. There's no trope I can really make a blanket statement about liking, and even in fandoms and with characters where I like it, it can easily be written in a way that hits the NOPE for me. That's just squicks and things that leave me cold unless written a certain way, though. My triggers are more easily separated from what works for me, and just knowing the characters involved will usually tell me if I'm likely to be triggered, even if it's a trope I might love with other characters.

There have been a few blowouts over the years that hit my triggers involving certain fannish behaviors, so anyone wanting to hit me where it hurts already knows where to aim. They just need to be prepared to be scourged from hell to breakfast for the privilege.