From: B7Morrigan@aol.com
I agree that the comforter can be a surrogate for the writer/reader but I don't agree with your other points, Neil.
Fair enough, you just need more persuading.
Basically, A-C or A-V h/c fic is about the symbolic death of a cold, arrogant, supercilious bastard and his symbolic rebirth as an
understanding
nice guy.
Interesting that you should think so. I don't see how that would come
about
unless Avon were the comfortee. Of the h-c I've read (and I claim no
great
experience in this area though I'll admit to both perpetrating and reading the genre) where Avon is the one hurt, he gets to lie about in terrible
agony
(looking marvelous) and does not appear to be changed at all by the experience.
I've already made the point that the injury is generally made to be one from which the Patient can (and does) make a complete recovery (not terribly difficult with Liberator's medical facilities). However, my idea of the Patient also undergoing some kind of pychological change (or growth) might be offbeam. Where Avon is the Patient (and in most of the h/c I've bothered to read, he usually fills that role), he goes from being a strong, intelligent, active character, *inaccessible* to the Nurse (ie writer), through a phase of weakness, insensibility and passivity, and then re-emerges as a strong, intelligent active character who is now emotionally accessible to the Nurse/writer.
Or as you put it:
- forge or repair an emotional bond between the characters that might
more
accurately portray the emotional bond between the author and the hurt character
Make that 'desired emotional bond' and I'd agree (assuming as I do that h/c is a form of vicarious wish fulfilment, though I suppose you could say that for almost any fanfic).
and 2) elaborate all of the sterling qualities of the character who has been
hurt
Those qualities being the ones that made him inaccessible to the writer in the first place. He starts off a hunky he-man, he ends up still a hunky he-man, but the kind of hunky he-man the writer wants him to be.
In other words, h-c can be a bit of a soapbox for the author.
Not so much soap as flannel, IMO.
Neil