We hurt the ones we love the most.

[kohaku]

A recent entry in lotrips_finders reminded me of something I wondered about for quite some time now:

Why is there such a huge demand for stories where our boys get injured or hurt or suffer in any way? Why do readers want to read about it and why do writers feel the need to write about it?

I have seen those stories in all of my fandoms, and except for Deathfic I did read some of them too. I don't mean to judge those stories, I just want to know if there are essays about it. I have read so many good essays on the subject of fan fiction, but haven't found any theories whatsoever on this particular subject.

So. Please help me. Are there essays, or do you have opinions, thoughts? Anything really. :)

Comments

[jb_slasher]

I think.. I'm not sure why.. but I'm one to read such stories. I think it might be because of my living situation. I need them hurt and getting comfort. I can't explain it. I think it's that I can somehow relate to them that way. Though I'm not really hurt, I just want comfort.

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

I love your icon.

That said: those stories appeal to me too, don't get me wrong. I just don't understand why I like them, at least not on a fully conscious level. Everytime I want to find another reason except: But they are so pretty, I fail.

Maybe it is the h/c that is appealing. You know, the comfort part, like you said. Maybe it's the "no matter what went wrong and how much you were hurting, I'm here to make it alright. And I won't leave, even if you break down in the middle of the night." Maybe it's really just that.

Thanks for your opinion, love. <3

[llanowar1977.livejournal.com]

I haven't read these story's but I would say that the reason
for the hurt thing is, that nearly everyone got hurt in his live
and knows the feeling to well.
Mostly there is someone who then comfort you and it is such a
nice and warm feeling to know there is someone who cares.

And I think that every time you read about it you get the feeling
again and can relate to it as jb_slasher said befor

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

Strangely, and maybe sadly, hurt is the one feeling everybody knows, can relate to and can relive if wanted. Hurt helps us to learn, that's why our brain remembers it more clearly (and much much longer) than happiness. It prevents us from making the same mistakes over and over again, at least that's the plan.

Sad but true.

I wish I could find essays about it. *laughs* It's just so damn interesting. Especially since I read through the Chuck Palahniuk books!

[telleer.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm willing to discuss this to any length, since this obviously crosses the line between fandom and psychology, and I have endless interest in both. *g*

One question, though - are we talking about actual *violence*, non-con type of suffering, or the BDSM type of scene where the hurt comes from a mutual understanding?

I write a *lot* of stuff where people get hurt. But I've never written a fic where someone has been hurt against their will. My fics have a tendency for an undercurrent of s/M.

The simplest answer? Some people are just so pretty when they're broken. But there must be more to that.

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

See? That was my first thought. This whole "pretty when broken" (I actually find the word "broken" itself, the idea behind it sexy in a way without knowing why), "pretty when crying" thing that comes up in a lot of LJs, and on a lot of icons.

That was my first answer too. But I'm not satisfied by that. I want to know why. Especially since I like it myself.

When I made the post I didn't really think about non-con violence vs mutual painpleasure. I tend to the mutual part, since it's not the non-con stuff I'm interested in. However, I have seen posts in communities like lotrips_finder where people actually were looking for non-con. Hurt by a stranger, comfort by a friend.

Both concepts are very fascinating as long as I discuss them theoretically. Whenever I want to cross the line of just talking, and consider it (even if just for a story) I have to say that it's the S/M that interests me most.

So. I hope it's alright if I pass the ball back to you so soon. Since my only reaction so far is "pretty", and I really want to learn and discuss.

good question

[barefootatkheb.livejournal.com]

and wish I had a good answer, I'm just a sucker for hurt/comfort..not sure why thou *shrugs*

Re: good question

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. But I'm taking the next step and will explore the why!

*snugs*

Thanks anyway, love!

[fractal-moonshi.livejournal.com]

Recently, you linked to the lj of a cartoonist named Kyle in one of your posts. I looked at his lj, and found a brief essay or speech by author Kurt Vonnegut, on advice for fiction writers. One of his rules was: Be a sadist. Torture your characters to show what they are made of.

I have had the same thought about h/c in fanfic. My first fandom was XFiles, and there was a significant sub-fandom of writers who wrote stories about Mulder suffering severe medical trauma. There was a site called Muldertorture, which was an archive for fic that went way beyond angst.

Probably the ur-Muldertorture fic is "Oklahoma" (gen) (http://x-files.bytewright.com/arcO/Oklahoma.html, http://x-files.bytewright.com/arcO/Oklahoma2.html), which is an interesting read if you've got a chunk of time. It's set before the show starts. It's almost a whole MB of plain text. I read it in one 12+ hour sitting in 1997, when I first discovered online fandom.

This story, and others by Amperage and Livengoo, who were among the more powerful writers, esp. towards the beginning of XF's online fandom, made a big impression on other writers. I believe the horror story was part of the genre template they drew from, and they visited horrors upon Mulder. I think they, more than any others, drove the idea that Mulder had been severely abused as a child into "fanon". By the time I was reading XF fic online, it was so commonly assumed, that I thought it must have been taken from the show.

I recall being on a newsgroup once, and someone posted a similar question, but with a more pointed sense, ie, what's wrong with these people who like to imagine all these awful things happening to our hero, Mulder? And someone answered back, oh, you mean like Chris Carter? Other people concurred that the many traumatic events that happened to Mulder on the show inspired similar events in fic. I've not seen LOTR or sequels. Does a lot happen to the characters in them, that would cause authors to cast them in more trauma?

In mysteries and sci fi, there has to be some kind of problem that must be fixed, eg, the murderer discovered and caught, the alien invasion beaten back. Along the way, the hero usually must overcome obstacles, such as injuries, betrayals, getting captured by the bad guy, etc, and the author illustrates the hero's superior will, creativity, selflessness, etc by having him/her solving these problems and overcoming these obstacles.

I haven't read a romance novel in quite a while, but there seems to be a variation on the theme. By stoically enduring suffering, the heroine earns the right to be loved. I suspect the heroines are "pluckier" than they used to be, but I think the heroine finally being rescued and nurtured by Mr. Right is hardwired into the genre. The movie "Secretary" is a twist on that, ie, Lee "earns" Edward's love by suffering, but it's the suffering itself that appeals to her in the first place.

In detective novels, the hero doesn't cry, even when the bad guy has cracked his skull, locked him in a basement, and abducted his girlfriend. I watched a crime drama last night starring James Spader, where his character runs around fighting off bad guys a day after he got shot in the shoulder. In romance novels, on the other hand, the heroine cries, but she never gets snot and runny makeup all over her face doing it. She manages even to look adorable crying.

Continuing my post from above

[fractal-moonshi.livejournal.com]

I think non-genre fiction has more trauma in it than it used to, as well. I recently read a discussion of "Young Adult" novels (read by 12-14 year olds). There was a quote from someone in the business, complaining about the amount of severe problems the characters in these novels faced, eg, incest, abuse, rape, drug addiction, etc. The critic said that in the name of "realism", the authors had created a body of literature where daily life was filled with gothic horrors, that ignored the good in life. But, really, where is the drama in a story where everything is going well?

The first two non-genre recent novels I can think of: can't remember their names. I didn't read them, but I read a number of reviews/excerpts, as they were bestsellers for quite a while. In one, a family suffers when their youngest child disappears from a hotel lobby. In the other, a woman is imprisoned for murder after a neighbor's child she was watching drowns on her farm. She is eventually exculpated, I think, but she and her husband lose the farm, and have to move to Milwaukee.

So, where am I going with all this? There are a lot of examples of hurt, if not always hurt/comfort, in modern literature outside of fanfic. So many authors may be inspired by their favorite original-fic authors. But in a book written by a professional writer, the trauma is usually secondary to other conflicts that arise in a larger plot. Plotting is the hardest part for many fanfic writers. So they may punch up the trauma to create the conflict to be resolved, without relying as much on the whodunit aspects.

Sometimes I've seen fans criticize h/c works as "feminizing" or "infantilizing", because the character cries and falls apart in a way inconsistent with their behavior in canon. But I think part of the appeal may be reading about a character who writers and readers identify with being allowed to break the taboo against expressing dependency. But the trauma must be extraordinary to allow them an exemption from the norm of self-sufficiency.

There is an extra angle when writing slash. Men are not supposed to express emotional or physical vulnerabilities to another man, except in narrowly defined circumstances. Physical or emotional trauma is often used to knock down one or both of the men's normal reserve. Eg, one of them is shot, and they wind up confessing their love to each other in the critical care ward, which they would never have done had not one of them almost died.

I have a Jake/Heath story almost done, and I realized that Jake's breakup with Kirsten was the "hurt" part, that made him open to comfort from Heath in a way that he otherwise probably wouldn't be. Without that, I had a hard time imagining how they would overcome the normal walls two guys put up when dealing with each other.

[fractal-moonshi.livejournal.com]

I did a little googling, and found this site, which has lots of entertaining-looking reading material:

The Fanfic Symposium: Columns by Topic
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/coltopic.html

These are four articles on the site that I read, that are relevant to your question. Some of the others may be, as well.

Hurt/Comfort: a Confession and a Celebration by Renae
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp55.html

We Always Hurt the Ones We Love by Lucy Gilliam
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp13.htm

Why On Earth Rape Fics Exist by Emmuzka
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp109.html

You're a Spiteful Bitch! Why I Hurt the Ones I Love by Cyndiana
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp145.html

[telleer.livejournal.com]

In the h/c genre I think the answer why we like them hurt is obvious: we like them comforted. Throughout my short life I have been hurt far too many times, and I've rarely received the comfort I've needed. So, basically, I like the genre because it makes me feel comforted as well.

When it comes to the s/M scene, things get more complicated. In real life, some of the answers are simple - how your body can actually find pleasure in pain etc etc. Besides that - s/M is about control. The dom, so to speak, has, for once, all the control in the world, while the sub can, for once, truly let go, s/he doesn't *need* to be in control of anything, s/he knows nothing bad will happen, because the dom won't hurt him/her too badly. This, I think, most people find truly liberating.

Apart from that, fanfic writers are just people. They experience a lot in life; everyone does. And when they hurt, it's sometimes *so easy* to take it all out on character that, even when we're talking about RPS, are fictional to us. It's a way of re-living that pain, going through it and looking for peace of mind.

I also enjoy the concept of being "stretched to the limit", like, where the sub is given precisely as much as s/he can take and is then allowed to rest. I think it maybe reminds me of situations where people ask me almost too much - but unlike me, the character I play with gets satisfaction out of the whole thing.

Hmm, so, as you can see, this is mostly me analysing myself =) And since I'm not at my most coherent, it might not make much sense... And I think it shows that I grew up in a family where psychology was a part of the daily diet. :)

As for why they are pretty when they're broken - well...pain is something fundamental, something *real*, isn't it? It is physical in the same sense that sex is physical. I think this is the link between them. Also, say someone has an icon where they're favourite celebrity is bleeding - it also gives us fangirls certain power over them that we would never have in real life.

Hmm. Feel free to disagree on anything!

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

Sadly I'm at work now, and can't read them but THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I love love love your comment(s) about the subject itself. I haven't really thought about the concept of hurt in common fiction. Maybe because a novel normally is longer than the average fan fiction, and therefore the hurt does not seem to be so severe or "concentrated". In fan fiction, a lot of hurt is inflicted during a very short period of time. I remember that kidnapping stories were very popular once. So there really happens a lot, while in a novel it might take a few chapters.

Do you know The Hero's Journey, as Joseph Campbell describes it? If you don't, it's basically you have described when you talked about the hero having to face obstacles to reach a goal. Campbell's writings about the Hero's journey in world literature is fascinating, if you do want to look it up however, the book is called "Hero with a Thousand Faces."

You made me realise the different ways in which I consume fiction (as in novels) and fan fiction. With fan fiction I don't expect there to be character development in the sense of a history of the character. In novels this "history" or pre-story not only helps in understanding a character or in creating a believable character, it's also some kind of foreshadowing of what might happen later on.

Maybe that's why the violence in fanfiction always strikes me as harder.

I'm curious about your story and I'm looking forward to reading it. The hurt you're protraying is of a more realistic kind, as opposed to hurt inflicted randomly by total strangers. I'm also looking foward to reading the story you linked and the material in the comment. <3

Thank you so much!

Re: good question

[barefootatkheb.livejournal.com]

if you find any essays about it, send it my way? :)

*snugs*

Re: good question

[kohaku1977.livejournal.com]

*snuggles*

I will check the essays/ articles/ thingies fractal_moonshi linked to tonight :) So, I guess I will tell you once I read through them. *snuggles*

I'm glad I started this thread. <3 It's nice to discuss fanfiction in a non fandom kind of way.

*loves you*

Re: good question

[barefootatkheb.livejournal.com]

*cuddles*

So, I guess I will tell you once I read through them
thanks, that would be great <3 <3

It's nice to discuss fanfiction in a non fandom kind of way
yes, it's nice without the drama :)

*loves you back*