A request for the Hurt/comfort and fan history people

[wickedwords]

Hiya!

As many of you know, I am helping with Fanlore, and one of the things we talked about at our last meeting was how we wanted to bring in more fandom-related history. And personally, I can't think of anything more 'fandom' related than the history of Hurt/comfort fandom.

Unfortunately, since it's a panfandom metafandom that has existed since the dawn of time (i.e., back when media fandom first broke off from science fiction fandom), it's way the heck too much for any single person to do. Seriously, if I were the type of person to work on a phd in media studies? This could be my dissertation.

So I'd like to get some people to work on the History of Hurt/comfort fandom. Things I'd like to know would be: What were the big Hurt/comfort stories in your fandom? Did any of them have huge impact? Can someone talk about 'brain damage' stories, and 'illness hurt/comfort'. The Teddy Bear stories in Highlander, "Gentle on my Mind" in Sentinel and it's follow-up by a different author. What was Hurt/hurt called back in the early days? Was it really 'get 'em'?

All I have is oral history, man. And y'all know my memory is crap.

Comments

[copracat]

Fanlore is reminding me of the littlest things I had forgotten! The Pros library mailing list used to label H/C stories with H/C emotional and H/C physical! Sadly, the hatstand archive doesn't replicate these old categories, which included first time, episode related and death.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Enterprising women has a whole section on h/c; I'll look it up and get that in there. (As I remember it, it basically thought all slash was h/c, or only saw slash that was h/c, or something.)

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I think Angst took over for H/C emotional, but that is a great tidbit of information to add. Awesome.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That would be awesome. I think it was that H/C was a replay of our woman-pain, and the absolute secret, guarded core of fandom. It was the real reason we had gatekeepers.

Or something like that. Like I said, memory. Huh.

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

You might consider contacting Leslie Fish who wrote "The End of the Hurt Comfort Syndrome" This was early Original Trek fandom and the story exposed the slashy sub-text in much hurt comfort. It caused a fanish wing-ding in the day (...though offering it to "Contact" may not have been the most politically sensitive move). I expect Paula Smith could weigh in on the subject, as well.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

What I want, I guess, is the stories that you think had an impact on the fandom or something? Not just 'good stories to read'--in fact, not necessarily good stories at all! But ones where a trend or idea or something really came through and stuck with the group.

"Snake Oil" by Martha in Sentinel, for example. I'm going to wimp out on you and say 'you tell me what you think or feel was important.'

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

It's funny, but I hated that book the first time I read it-I was offended. And rereading it recently, it didn't bother me at all!

[executrix.livejournal.com]

A lot of Blakes7 stories are referred to as "BUARA" (Beat Up and Rape Avon), which I believe is the B7 equivalent of a "Get-Spock" story.

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

You know, I was just thinking about that story. And a bunch of the other old classic Trek stories.

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Contact a H/C Trek zine. It was put out by Bev Volker and Nancy Kippax in the 70s and 80s. There were a couple of other's, too, weren't there?

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Wow, it sounds like you could add a story or two, since you know about a controversy involving contact. You could just add it. *g*

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I haven't reread the book lately. but I had been talking about her with someone--probably you--and I feel much more mellow about it as well. Weird, huh.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

With the wiki, all you have to do is sign up and then you could enter the data. I think this would be a fascinating segment on the Due South page. I am all for more of our stories about what we have done.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent! Go add that to both pages. I don't think either the B7 page or the H/c page lists it.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Cool! You should go add some of what you remember. *g*

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Man, my brain has wiped those sectors, which is why I am begging for help. Anything that could be added is awesome.

[grapefruitzzz.livejournal.com]

I'm a Lee/Kara fan, which seems to involve canonical hurt/comfort for the wacky pair. Except in that case it's more like 75% emotional torture/20% actual physical assaults/5% manly handshakes once a season.

From my distant youth, I remember a lot of pain in "Battle Of The Planets" but I think that's because I fancied the lead boy.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Ah! You beat me (no pun intended!) to the reference.

Torchwood is developing a "Beat Up and Rape Ianto" sub-genre, but I've never heard anyone call it BUARI. And Ianto is a lot more of a fandom woobie, too; I suppose the thing about BUARA is that Avon so obviously is an (the?) alpha male of the show.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'd argue that, absent or present, Blake is the alpha male of the show, although Avon is far from cheerfully accepting of being subordinate.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

The story exposed what *Leslie* considered the "slashy sub-text"--which is not the same thing as saying hurt/comfort could only be regarded in the light of slashy sub-text. And, as I recall, that theory was in circulation before Leslie's story, so it wasn't her story per se that caused the "wing-ding."

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

I've read ENTERPRISING WOMEN multiple times since it was published, along with Henry's book, as those two were the major analyses of fandom up to that point. I read through Henry's book nodding my head in agreement all the way and read through Camille's book shaking my head in disagreement. Didn't like it then, still don't like it. She did not write about fandom as I knew it; Henry did.

Frankly, I would not source her writing as an authority on h/c.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were called "get" stories--as in get-Spock, get-Kirk, etc. (also known as "get 'em" stories).

Similarly, the earliest versions of what would today be called "het" fiction were called "lay" stories--lay-Spock, lay-Kirk, etc. (And some of the earliest Mary Sue stories also were lay stories.)

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

That's corrrect. "Contact" was dedicated H/C. If I recall correctly, Bev, Nancy and Martha Bonds together wrote at least one major story that could be considered anti-slash -- Kirk's career is destroyed by rumours of a homosexual affair with Spock.

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

Your milage for 'wing-ding' may vary. It was obtuse of Leslie to offer the story to the editors of "Contact," a dedicated H/C zine

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

I'll second that emotion!

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

I'm not disputing that this was an issue in fandom. I'm just clarifying cause and effect--that it did not happen as a result of Leslie's story, as this was a theory put forth by other fans as well.

And CONTACT, hurt-comfort and all, did publish a no foolin' K/S story in #3 (with the editors emphasising that they wanted "to look at the diverse sides of the Kirk/Spock relationship," so it really wasn't totally illogical that Leslie submitted her story to them.

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you knew or not, but Nancy Kipax died recently (her memorial service is in Baltimore this Friday). Until very recently, she had been keeping an lj as njpax and documenting her history in fandom -- you might find it a resource.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

It's like Avon's answer to "lead, follow, or get out of the way" is "No."

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

My general memory/impression is that pretty much all Starsky & Hutch fic of reasonable length is h/c of the old school variety.

There's a decent sized selection of S&H zine fic here (http://starskyhutcharchive.com/stories.php?zinet=zine&genre=gen). One of the major stories written recently in the fandom in terms of impact is Flamingo's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," (slash, similar plot to The Children's Hour but with a happy ending) but it's emotional h/c rather than physical h/c, so I'm not sure if it would count to a purist.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

"The Rack" (written under the pseud of "J. Emily Vance" and published in CONTACT #4 in 1977) created quite a stir, for its premise, its characterization, and its ending. The story prompted sequels--both their own ("All the King's Horses, All the King's Men") and stories by other fans (both authorized and unauthorized).

Eventually they reprinted the original stories in a collected volume. As explained in the editorial for that publication, the story was written "to show the danger of rumor--whatever the reason, of bigotry and personal prejudices, especially if they occur in places of authority."

Of course, authors' intentions and readers' conclusions often are miles apart, so maybe some fans did take it as anti-slash. I never got that from it, myself.

Interestingly, the editorial for #4 states, "CONTACT seems to have become known as the 'get-em' zine of fandom. It abounds with pain and the hurt/comfort syndrome. This was never our original intention. Granted, we all have that masochistic streak that loves to see our heroes suffer . . . but four issues of ONLY this may have run its course."

They go on to encourage potential contributors to explore other facets of the relationship, in hopes of generating enough material for another issue (in fact, they published through #8, with two special Christmas issues as well).

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

Bev, Nancy and Martha together wrote at least one major story that could be considered anti-slash

Heh. That's pretty ironic, don't you think. *g*

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

It totally is.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

This is very cool to learn, and I may use some of it on Fanlore. Thanks!

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Love that.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I came into slashdom in 2002, so I don't know what came before that, except from what I could glean from the Websites of that time. My particular "fandom," original slash, was just beginning to coalesce around then (unless there's a prior history to it that I missed) - by which I mean that original slash writers, rather than all doing things on their own, were beginning to form communities and archives.

Since the original slash community has been around for such a short time, there aren't a lot of classics in our famdom yet. However, I can think of two works that have had an especially big impact, and both of them, as it happens, have h/c elements.

Manna Francis's Administration (http://www.mannazone.org/zone/admin/index.html) series has attracted an abnormally large number of meta posts (http://community.livejournal.com/mannazone/). The pairing is between a sociopathic torturer and his strong-minded BDSM partner, which doesn't exactly sound as though it's the right set-up for hurt/comfort, but gradually the readers come to realize that the torturer is a lot more vulnerable than he appears on the surface, because of his mental illness. Probably the two most chilling stories in that series which explore the vulnerable part of the torturer are Gee (http://www.mannazone.org/zone/admin/fic/gee.html) and Caged (http://www.mannazone.org/zone/admin/fic/caged.html). And probably the most chilling aspect of the series (aside from the matter-of-fact manner in which the torture takes place in that society) is the fact that the torturer is limited in his capacity to accept comfort.

A more recent work, maculategiraffe's The Slave Breakers (http://maculategiraffe.livejournal.com/10338.html), has inspired what appears to me to be an unprecedented number of fan fiction works (or "friendfiction," as they've come to be called, since they're officially authorized by the author), as well as inspiring an entire multi-author fic comm, orig_slavefic. The series is pure h/c - in fact, it's so deceptively traditional at the beginning that I nearly set it aside, thinking it was the same old same-old. maculategiraffe told me in a post that she was trying to create the classic slavefic, but without the implausible bits that plague so many slave stories.that source material.

[Continued in the next post.]

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

It's hard for me to compare what's going on in original slash with what's going on in other fandoms, since I've only participated in a few. Original slash writers come from a variety of fandoms, and we have no canon to unify us, so there isn't any single fandom tradition influencing us. The trend in original slash, during the time I've known it, has been to divide along the lines of subgenre - that is to say, the original darkfic writers would get together, or the original slavefic writers would get together, and they'd draw upon the traditions in the various fandoms they came from to create original stories within that subgenre. So, for example, at the time I came into slashdom, Juxian Tang (http://juxian.slashcity.net/) - one of the most noted original slash authors then - was heavily influenced by yaoi stories, whereas I was reading lots of Phantom Menace tales . . . but we both ended up writing original slash darkfic, flavored by what we were reading.

Until I read your post, I hadn't thought about the impact that this multifandom background would make on original slash, but yes, we have no equivalent of this (http://www.loose-id.com/detail.aspx?ID=748) in original slash - that is to say, a storyline that is so familiar within the fandom that, if you tried to file off the serial numbers, it would still be immediately obvious that the person writing it came from our particular fandom (as opposed to the fanfic community as a whole - that much would probably be obvious). However, if more stories like "The Slave Breakers" catch readers' interest, we may find certain, distinctive original slash storylines recurring.

By the way, being a compulsive links collector, I collected every single original slash and original yaoi site link I could find in 2003, and I also wrote up a "state of the fandom" post for the slash-writers list around that time. If you folks at Fanlore ever decide to expand your original fiction section, I could pass on that source material.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Go to fanlore, set up your account, and then go ahead and start adding things. The wiki is supposed to be a shared resource, so please! go ahead and add your point of view to it. I don't want to hold up anything getting added to the wiki, simply because my RL or the newest shiny thing to me gets in the way.

And man, I remember Juxian! That's another entry that needs to be made.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I have got to get those two added to the H/C page. I need to do a section on fandoms, and tuck it under original slash. It is an excellent point that the tropes of H/c transcend the fandom, as well as the issue of gen-or-slash.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice, but I have a severe Internet addiction, and it's heavily fed by doing nonfiction historical research, especially for a multi-author project where I'd have to check on stuff like formatting. If you can't make use of the information yourself, feel free to toss it aside. (*Waves you off to your newest shiny thing.*)

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

No problem! I will be quoting from this on fanlore, though, just so you know.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

Great!