fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2852 ]

[ SECRET POST #2852 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2852 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Harold and Maude]

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03.

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04.

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05. [ SPOILERS for Blood of Olympus ]

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06. [ SPOILERS for The Walking Dead ]
[ WARNING for rape ]

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07. [ WARNING for rape ]

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08. [ WARNING for suicide ]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #407.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hurt/comfort where everyone still acts in character rather than being reduced to cliches. Not every character is going to act the exact same way when something bad happens to them, and while trauma might irrevocably change a person, it's won't change someone beyond the Standard Trauma Blob that ends up getting inserted into 99% of H/C fic. Likewise, not everyone who's filling the 'comfort' roll is going to be good at it, and when I do see depictions of people fucking up the comfort roll, it's usually in a very similar way.

Worldbuilding that takes into account how people interact with the world and how it shapes them. BtSDLb is my favorite worldbuilding fanfic because it takes the time to consider what an alien culture might be like, and how people growing up in that culture might think.

Romance that isn't ideal, where all the problems aren't worked out and both/all parties reach a happy compromise, but where they still stick together because they're either codependent or because they value the relationship over whatever the problem was.

Oh yes, seconding on the in-character hurt/comfort!

So much yes on the first one. I mean, what's the POINT of hurt/comfort if it isn't used as a way to explore unique characterizations and relationships? Doesn't have to some masterpiece of elaborate meaningfulness, but I don't get the point of hurt/comfort without concrete personalities.

Maybe people write H/C because they want to use some very specific tropes or something, or because they don't know very much about the sort of hurt that they're writing about. It's a shame because H/C is what I'm here for.

Personally I want more of the comforter screwing up, or cracking under pressure, or something. Different people have different limits, and no one is quite as loving and tender as the fic will make it out to be.

Hurt/comfort by its nature is OOC and cliched. If it wasn't then it wouldn't be hurt and comfort.

Why do you say that?

Uhhhh...no? Do you even know what hurt/comfort is? It's a story about one character getting hurt and another character comforting him or her.

You know, like what happens ALL THE TIME in real life. And even more all the time in original canon fiction.

You could say that all the hurt/comfort fic you've seen is OOC and cliched, but "by its nature"? That doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense.

Unless the canon is focused on people doing nothing but cuddling and ooo-ing over boo-boos, then it is inherently OOC.

1. Not all hurt/comfort is people cuddling and oohing over boo-boos. It's usually people comforting their friend after getting shot or raped or otherwise seriously injured or emotionally devastated.

2. Um, what? So, if a canon isn't 100% focused on nothing but romance, a romantic fic in that fandom would be OOC? If a canon isn't 100% focused on comedy, a comedic fic in that fandom would be OOC? If a canon isn't 100% focused on characters dying, a deathfic in that fandom would be OOC? What is wrong with writing a fic about the 5% or 10% of the canon dedicated to someone supporting an injured friend?

I'm hoping you're trolling, because I really don't want any human being to be THAT idiotic.

Oh, I see, you're a troll. Welp, never mind :)

This is my point. I want more H/C that doesn't do this, but this is what a lot of it is, regardless of what the trauma itself actually is.

Like, there's more to comfort than ooo-ing over boo-boos and stuff, and I want to see that explored rather than reading a story that's entirely based around the soppy, gushy parts. I don't want it soppy, I want characters reacting to fucked up things in their own in character ways, and their friends supporting them - but also in character!

Unfortunately, it's very, very hard to find, hence why I said I'd like it to exist.

da

It's...really not very hard to find. Good h/c exists is very large quantities. Gushy, soppy h/c is the bottom of the barrel stuff that's usually easily ignored. Maybe you're just in the wrong fandoms?

Both sorts exist in massive quantities, and while easy to discern from summary, it gets depressing to be trudging through page after page after page of h/c gooshing to try and find something that isn't. Its drowning out everything else just through sheer volume ratios. Especially on AO3 where the out of control tag problem has resulted in H/C, usually of the skeeviest sort, turning up in every search no matter how unrelated you try to make the search terms.

....

The only way I can make head or tail of this comment is to assume you've a) never in your life watched or read a story in which a character comforts another hurt character AND b) no one in your life has ever comforted you when you were hurt and you have never in your life ever comforted another person who was hurt.

"by its nature"?

Are you saying it's unnatural and unrealistic for a human being to comfort a hurt person, especially a hurt friend or loved one?

How can hurt/comfort be OOC when it happens to the characters in the original work itself? Like, Chewbacca was hugging and petting Han Solo after he was tortured in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, so how could a fic where he does that in a different scenario be OOC by its nature? Wouldn't that be very much IN-character by its nature, because it's directly inspired by character behavior that explicitly happened in canon?

This comment makes no sense.

Since he didn't spend the entire Empire Strikes Back doing it, then it would be OOC to see it in a fic too. Hurt/Comfort fics spend so much time on the hugging and petting that there was no way for the characters to actually get hurt and in all likelihood would have starved to death long before the fic began due to the inability to do anything else other than pet and hug.

Okay, so you DON'T mean they are OOC "by their nature."

You mean that all the hurt/comfort fics you personally have happened to read so far were crappy melodramatic ones.

Thanks for the clarification.

Also? Try to scrounge up just the teeny-tiniest bit of imagination and understanding of the difference between "some stuff I read" and "the inherent nature of everything that involves a certain activity", because wow, dude. Wooooowwwwww.

Wait, are you implying that every fic ever written should be the same length as and be a perfect replica of all the elements that went into canon?

Um, how about no.

Also, there's a big difference between "hurt/comfort" and "shitty hurt/comfort."

Yeah, the volume. And with every search result being dominated by the latter so that it is drowning out anything other, and it being a real PITA to have to wade through a dozen pages of it to get a gen fic, due to tag abuse it is more than fair to say that H/C of any variety is a cancer at the heart of fandom. Its made AO3 virtually unusable unless you are a (bad)H/C fan. I know AO3 was always more for writers than readers, but even so, it is getting out of hand. It is far too easy to write less than 300words of cuddling, label it h/c, and slap it up on AO3. Sometimes there are more tag-words than actual words.

"cancer at the heart of fandom"
"Its made AO3 virtually unusable"

GREATEST HITS ANON YOU CAN BANG OUT SOME MORE C'MON DO IT

Thanks for showing up the problem with AO3 in a nutshell. Its supporters think the site can do no wrong, any criticism or discussion of what doesn't work is written off as trolling. AO3 is virtually unusable because of the massive tag problem and its low barrier to posting. It has a problem, it is not addressing that problem, and worse than that, the AO3ers brand any attempts to even bring up that problem as trolling.

I agree with you somewhat.
However it's difficult to include everything in one fic - the drama, action, humour and so on. So a fic usually focuses on one thing. Sometimes it's h/c. It doesn't give the same feelings as canon, but it provides a fic writer's vision and in many cases it's enough.

That is something fun to shoot for! I'm trying to write scripts for comics like this, but it's hard to do. The challenge makes it worth while though.

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[ SECRET POST #2852 ]

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