On Sun, Feb 04, 2001 at 09:03:12AM -0000, Neil Faulkner wrote:
From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net
Kathryn Andersen asked:
what is it about Hurt/Comfort fiction that fans seem to pick certain characters most often to be tormented, tortured and hurt?
My take on h/c is completely different. I did an article on it in AltaZine 3, where I proposed that the Patient (usually Avon) is the actual character, but the Nurse (the comforter) was a surrogate for the writer/reader - a kind of Mary-Sue in disguise. I think this works (at least some of the time) for stories where the Nurse role is filled by Cally or Vila, at any rate. The dynamic here is one of levelling off - or reversing - a perceived imbalance of power to facilitate access to the Patient. Both Cally and Vila can be regarded as 'weaker' than Avon, until Avon is debilitated and needs to be nursed to recovery.
[snip]
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.
A-B is probably a bit different, because there is no imbalance of power to level off. There is, however, perceived to be a gulf of mutual understanding to be bridged (though personally I don't think it was all that wide or all that deep and neither of them wanted to bridge it anyway). Slash is one way of bridging the gap (if we take the sex in A/B slash to be at least in part a metaphor), h/c is another.
This is fascinating stuff, Neil.
However this doesn't fit the other examples I've seen in other fandoms, where the Nurse is the cold, arrogant bastard, and the Patient is the one who seems to have the "weaker" role to start with.
But again perhaps it is *still* about the symbolic death of a cold, arrogant bastard and his symbolic rebirth as an understanding nice guy -- but the person in question is the Nurse. His cold, outer shell is cracked by being forced to Nurse the Patient. Or, as someone else said on this thread in regard to Blake, the Nurse is someone who suffers by watching others suffer, and therefore the way to break down their barriers is to make their friend(s) suffer.
This actually fits the other examples, since the favourite Nurse characters are stoic types to whom personal pain and torture isn't all that much of a big deal, the type who will either endure, or spit in their captor's eye. Loyal types who care about their friends, but don't always say so...
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Life isn't all fricassied frog and eel pie. -Puddleglum the Marshwiggle