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

[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.