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so, i like hurt/comfort as much as the next person, usually. i mean, that depends who the next person is, but i have something of a weakness for hurt/comfort, anyway. i like it! but i need to have it sold to me, just a little, which isn't, like, a criticism. i mean, i want to buy it.
let's take an anonymous something that i read once upon a time. in this story you have the protagonist wounded, unconscious for what must be several minutes and bleeding out the entire time--even though the slash interest has been applying pressure to his wound for, presumably, a couple of minutes at least. and despite this, he's able to get turned on because the aforementioned slash interest is straddling him, the better to apply pressure--to his bleeding abdominal wound. which is, yes, still bleeding, although we're told that it's not bleeding very fast, that it's not that serious. we do get a little bit of panic, and the protagonist telling himself he shouldn't be thinking those sexay thoughts while bleeding to death, but you know--that's not enough for me.
i know that writing h/c is really writing to a kink, and i'm willing to grant allowances on that basis. but i need a slipcover of believability over my sofas and armchairs of kink, okay? i still know that underneath it is made of nubbly, pilly, mustard-coloured fabric, and that the stuffing of shame is oozing out through the cat-claw rents of eagerness. but i want to be able to sit on it and pretend it is actually upholstered in the respectable, clean, and solid-coloured twill of believability and coherent narrative.
a bleeding abdominal wound, in the world of the writer and the reader, is a social situation, because the bleeding abdominal wound is the slipcover, the plot, the coherent narrative. the core of the story itself, the stuffing, is h/c, and has a lot more to do with themes: caring, and partnership, and how relationships and people change under fire, and, well, comfort, and how nice it is when someone is hurt. but let's not confuse our world with the characters' world, because in their world, the logic of the plot has to fit in with the logic of the universe. for us, the hurt might be something we have to sit through before we can get to the comfort. for him, i'd like the hurt to be real. don't devalue the hurt! because then you devalue the comfort as well!
and that concludes today's, um, installment of the meta through cracked-out interior design metaphors lecture series.
let's take an anonymous something that i read once upon a time. in this story you have the protagonist wounded, unconscious for what must be several minutes and bleeding out the entire time--even though the slash interest has been applying pressure to his wound for, presumably, a couple of minutes at least. and despite this, he's able to get turned on because the aforementioned slash interest is straddling him, the better to apply pressure--to his bleeding abdominal wound. which is, yes, still bleeding, although we're told that it's not bleeding very fast, that it's not that serious. we do get a little bit of panic, and the protagonist telling himself he shouldn't be thinking those sexay thoughts while bleeding to death, but you know--that's not enough for me.
i know that writing h/c is really writing to a kink, and i'm willing to grant allowances on that basis. but i need a slipcover of believability over my sofas and armchairs of kink, okay? i still know that underneath it is made of nubbly, pilly, mustard-coloured fabric, and that the stuffing of shame is oozing out through the cat-claw rents of eagerness. but i want to be able to sit on it and pretend it is actually upholstered in the respectable, clean, and solid-coloured twill of believability and coherent narrative.
Isilya: I have a thing for prolonged and uncomfortable erections
cim: if they were mentioning how it was omgpain, and he had an uncomfortable prolonged erection that he didn't need, i could maybe buy it
cim: instead of acting like the bleeding wound is some kind of social situation that makes his arousal "inappropriate", but not any less likely.
a bleeding abdominal wound, in the world of the writer and the reader, is a social situation, because the bleeding abdominal wound is the slipcover, the plot, the coherent narrative. the core of the story itself, the stuffing, is h/c, and has a lot more to do with themes: caring, and partnership, and how relationships and people change under fire, and, well, comfort, and how nice it is when someone is hurt. but let's not confuse our world with the characters' world, because in their world, the logic of the plot has to fit in with the logic of the universe. for us, the hurt might be something we have to sit through before we can get to the comfort. for him, i'd like the hurt to be real. don't devalue the hurt! because then you devalue the comfort as well!
and that concludes today's, um, installment of the meta through cracked-out interior design metaphors lecture series.
