Hurt/comfort
From Fan History Wiki
Hurt/comfort A piece where one character is hurt and another character comforts or protect the other person. These pieces tend to be dramatic and explore areas of character where the character is made vulnerable.
Contents |
[edit] Historical Definitions
The following definition dates to 1997 in the Transformers and science fiction fandoms:
- Hurt/Comfort Stories: A type of story [...]in which one of a male-bonded pair of protagonists gets hurt while the other has to give comfort. The hurt can be physical, and it can be excruciating, while the comfort can be direct medical aid or psychological assurance.
- Hurt/comfort stories can be grimly realistic when it comes to medical details; on the other hand, they come perilously close to slash in their depiction of the interaction of the male characters.
- An interesting note: Although most of these stories are written by women, they rarely deal with female characters. Often the men are depicted as reacting to each other in so-called 'female' terms, providing nurturing, and so on. (Rogow, 158) [1]
The following definition dates to December 26, 2001 in media fandom:
- H/C - Hurt/Comfort. Fanfiction in which a character suffers some trauma to the body, soul or ego, requiring another character to tend to them. A popular introduction to minor or radical shifts in relationships, which in turn lead into 'ship, or possibly even slash fiction.
- A specialised form of H/C is Stargate: SG-1's 'Danny Whumping', in which Daniel Jackson, the sensitive member of the team, gets beaten up or put through the emotional wringer again. [2]
The following definition dates to May 2003 in the Combat! and Nash Bridges fandoms:
- h/c, H/C: hurt/comfort -- a style of story in which one character is harmed (physically or emotionally) and another must save them, make them feel better, or both. Though not often seen in comic fandom, this one's been around since the original Star Trek 'zines and is often used to encourage a hopeless romance or set the stage for slash. In Sentinel fandom, stories of this type are jokingly called "owwies." [As are Emergency! stories. Usually referred to as Johnny-owies, or Roy-owies.] [3]
The following definition dates to September 2005 in the Stargate fandom:
- Also referred to on the internet as angst stories, although angst stories can just be emotional anguish and no physical hurt. H/C stories usually involve physical or emotional injury to one character, which is then followed up by comfort from another character. [4]
The following definition dates to June 12, 2006 and was written by Jane Leavell:
- H/C: "Hurt/comfort." One or more characters will be hurt (physically or emotionally or mentally), and one or more characters will suffer angst over this and try to comfort the victim. This is a popular category within fanfiction. [5]
The following definition dates to media fandom in December 2008:
- hurt/comfort:
- A story in which one of the characters is physically or emotionally hurt (injured, sick or tortured) and the other character (before or after rescuing them) has to comfort the first one. This form of story goes across many fandoms, and certain characters are favourites for making the victim of the author's sadistic whims. Blair from Sentinel, Daniel from Stargate SG-1 and Avon from Blake's 7 to name a few. Also called h/c for short. [http://www.katspace.org/fandom/fandef#HurtComfort
[edit] History
The use of this term predates 1981. In the Star Trek fan fiction community in 1981, the hurt/comfort genre became more established with the release of such stories Diane King’s Captives.
[edit] LiveJournal
Hurt/Comfort continued to be a popular genre of fan fiction in the 2000s and a number of communities were created on LiveJournal to cater to fans of it.
- On October 10, 2005, a general discussion of and posting community for hurt/comfort was created at hurtcomfort. [6]
- On April 15, 2006, a Stargate: Atlantis Sheppard hurt/comfort community was created at sheppard_hc. [7]
- On June 17, 2006, the community 10_hurt_comfort was created with the idea that people would write 10 hurt/comfort stories. [8]
- On June 3, 2007, a hurt/comfort rec community was created by shoes_with_soul on LiveJournal. [9]
- On March 20, 2007, a Harry/Draco hurt/comfort community was created at hd_hurtcomfort. [10]
[edit] External Links
- Hurt/comfort: FanWorksFinder
[edit] See also
This section needs more information.
