Dreamer Easy

Parasexual. Neat word. I wouldn't call h/c a sexual turn-on for me necessarily, but I do sometimes get emotional reaction that spills over into physical. Your description of your reaction to it rings true for me.

I think your reviewer thinks he's so smart for pointing this out -- duh, all your h/c fan readers have known on a more complex level for some time -- but point him at Niven or Heinlein and he'd probably be blissfully, wankingly ignorant of their para/sexual quirks.

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eponymous-rose.livejournal.com

Nah, I've never found it to be a particular turn-on, per se, but I do definitely get that "sublimated parasexual thingumy" explanation. I am currently waiting for someone to clue into the fact that, in every single one of my stories, at least one of my favourite characters will wind up bashed around to some extent - and for h/c to have the most impact on me, just as with any sort of highly emotional scene, it should be happening to the characters with whom I identify the strongest. It's never occurred to me that this sort of thing could be considered sadistic (or, I suppose, masochistic, depending on how strongly you identify with these characters), because I've never seen it in a sexual light - but there must be something there that goes beyond sheer storytelling.

It's never something I've particularly wanted to think too carefully about, but knowing that a significant portion of the (generally) female fanbase has the same thing going, it's nice to do the whole I Am Not Alone thing.

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dameruth.livejournal.com

Sexual or not? I'd say it depends on the *nature* of the h and the c. Speaking from a fanfic-writer perspective, I think h/c is a useful device for easily ramping up character identification and emotional content, getting inside your characters heads' and really rooting around for the deep stuff, etc.,etc. It can be done in an entirely non-sexual way -- as in, say 42, to use a DW example given above -- but since the c half of the equation usually involves emotional opening up/release, it's also a fab way to introduce sex into a story if you're so inclined. *Shrugs*

Is liking h/c sexually based? Jeez, I dunno -- for me, not particularly (I seem to respond on a "root for the underdog" basis more than anything), though there's nothing stopping me from liking a good solid h/c sex story, either. But sexuality is such a wide open playing field, I couldn't even begin to judge how it works for others. I have been known to describe the really extreme versions as "victimhood pr0n," which is how they read to me (whether or not there's actual pr0n involved).

It *does* seem to be more of a "girly" thing, based strictly on my own informal observations, but that may be partly because women are more open about liking and using the trope.

As a random DW comment, is it just me or is RTD starting to overplay the "hurt" card with the current Doctor? I was watching VotD, and thinking, "Dude, you're gonna have to get to the comfort pretty soon, or you're gonna start hacking off your viewership . . .!" 'Course, he's a pro and I'm not, so I hope he knows what he's doin'!

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jvowles.livejournal.com

Past comments about chocolate sauce aside...(wow, does that take me back)...

The Doctor's generally been an emotionally distant fellow, as a rule; obviously this stems from the original characterization of the first Doctor, who did soften a bit but whose age and concerns about propriety meant he kept companions at arms' length. Once Ace shows up and you've started writing about them, the relationship is clearly more of mentor/student, and by then the extent to which the Doctor cares for his friends is much more at the fore -- again, I'd chalk this up to evolving trends in TV and in society. It was much more acceptable by the 90s for men to be emotionally engaged, and even in the TV show it was clear that the Doctor, schemer and mask-donner that he always has been to some extent, cared deeply and felt strongly. He just buried it and hid it away.

I think the new series has largely corrected for this (arguably a little too far for old-school fans), and in particular Tennant has a gift for the angsty stare and immediate gear-shifting that clues us into the Doctor's real feelings versus the act he puts on. And increasingly, the companions he chooses tend to be able to see right through him. Donna won me over purely on that insight in her goodbye scene in Runaway Bride; that's clearly the hook that makes her worthy of the Doctor's efforts. She's not important, and not particularly clever, and certainly not well informed -- but when forced to confront her life choices, she gains some insight into the Doctor's as well.

You say that your heart goes pitter pat, not that you get all riled up sexually. That's because you've long seen the Doctor as the most wonderful friend you could have, and you always wrote him that way. But as a writer, and as someone who wants the Doctor to perhaps be more emotionally accessible, you have tended to use the "strip away the character's accoutrements and make them confront the emotional core of the issue" approach.

There's a certain feeling that you've been privileged to see the Doctor with his emotional transduction barriers disabled. The easiest way to get anyone to that point is to stress them physically, and it's something we can all relate to. So there's emotional resonance and physical sympathy both kicking in to produce the effect. And watching the Doctor (or anyone we care about) suffer through and rise above such challenges -- no matter how exaggerated or contrived by the story they might be -- gives people hope that they might do the same, as well as a model for perseverance.

It's just that whole catharsis thing, really. Not a fetish, just a human reaction wired deep in our pack-mentality brains.

If you find yourself dwelling on the pain/torture aspects for their own merit, THAT is when you need to worry. If you're punishing the characters -- perhaps punishing poor SylvDoc for betraying Ace's trust? -- then that's something quite different to the strutural crutch of removing all hte Doctor's support mechanisms and reducing him to his core.

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If you find yourself dwelling on the pain/torture aspects for their own merit, THAT is when you need to worry.

How do you tell? I think the only time you need to worry is when you get off on real (non-consensual, non-BDSM) pain and torture. If there's a visceral parasexual reaction to fictional depictions only, why does the deeper meaning matter?

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dameruth.livejournal.com

Donna won me over purely on that insight in her goodbye scene in Runaway Bride; that's clearly the hook that makes her worthy of the Doctor's efforts. She's not important, and not particularly clever, and certainly not well informed -- but when forced to confront her life choices, she gains some insight into the Doctor's as well.

Word. I'm really looking forward to seeing Donna in S4 for just that reason. I think the Doc could really use a Companion who has a clue about how he "works" but who isn't madly in love with him . . .

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lferion

Oh, it's absolutely an emotional trigger/hook/grab me by the insides and pull thing, but it isn't sexual, even though it can have physio-emotional effects. (That *particular* squeezy sensation in the chest for example). So it is a turn-on, but not a *sexual* turn-on, if that makes any sense.

It sits side-by-side with things that are or can be sexual fantasy-fodder, though. I can go with parasexual. But it's more than a fascination.

Characters I care about (and the Doctor, in all incarnations, is one) in peril or in pain (The Sontaran Experiment is actually one of my guilty pleasures -- and that moment in Warrior's Gate with the burning time-winds. All of Castrovalva) is a sure-fire way to get me to totally suck me into a story. And this has been my experience since long before I had any conscious sexuality or sexual identity at all.

Stopping now. :-)

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And this has been my experience since long before I had any conscious sexuality or sexual identity at all.

Me too. Forgot to add that bit.

Where do you draw the line between sexual and parasexual and just plain gets-the-blood-going? Fiction can make you angry or fill you with joy to the point where it's a physical sensation. Are those parasexual?

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Where do you draw the line between sexual and parasexual

When you get an actual girlie hard-on.

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good point...my experience has been largely the same, especially the pre-sexual-awareness bit. i think you could argue that emotions and sex drive go together, though (ie, the one drives the other, especially in women), so that any emotional turn-on gained from the hero in pain/peril isn't really that far removed from a libido-based response.

it's like in the once and future king, where lancelot doesn't actually start to fall in love with guenevere until he hurts her feelings...ie, until he realizes her feelings are capable of being hurt, and that even though she's a queen, her heart breaks just as easily as the rest of us. in that case his emotion was what fueled his libido.

it's kind of a strange chicken-and-the-egg question, i know, but i definitely think the two aspects are related somehow.

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sophieoohie.livejournal.com

I wouldn't feel guilty if I were you. I just came in here looking for Sontaran h/c, so you're less twisted than some of us.

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'the hero must suffer' is a rule that goes back as far as storytelling itself, as is h/c - you mentioned jesus, who's just about the biggest h/c woobie in the anals of religion.

i think it's a myth that h/c appeals mostly to women, though - it's true that women in our culture are conditioned to be rewarded for suffering in silence rather than actively changing their world, so i can sort of see how the martyr aspects would have some appeal. but h/c appeal is most definitely NOT restricted to one gender - just ask any silent movie heroine who's been tied to a railroad track, or any b-movie actress who's been molested by the monster in the rubber suit while screaming for the hero to save her.

i think one of the best explanations for h/c's appeal came from our own frank pembleton, in homicide's best-ever episode (the subway episode): ie, that pain is the only thing that unites us. it's the only thing that all human beings have in common. we may not know how it feels to live in luxury or to have superpowers, but we sure as hell know what it feels like to suffer, to bang our shins, or to have our hearts broken. invulerable heroes are boring. but if they suffer a bit like the rest of us mere mortals, then they've earned our respect.

as for the kink aspect - cleverer folk than i have written extensively about the very real physical and psychological links between sex and aggression, pain and pleasure, and domination and submission. i love me a good bondage scene, but i think that's mostly due to the lead character's submission, and because there's usually nekkidity involved. real pain is a definite turn-off. abstract bondage torture is okay, like if you're zapping them with a laser or something, but any time a character is in real, recognizable distress it always makes me want to change the channel. so i suppose you could say some forms of h/c are a turn-on for me, but others definitely aren't...tied up and nekkid = yum; but i really don't like to hear people screaming unless it's in a good way.

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!!!

*suddenly notices an extremely freudian typo in what i just wrote, and considers correcting it...but, upon relfection, decides to leave it just as it is*

*snurk*

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dameruth.livejournal.com

Thank you. I appreciated it -- to the point of spitting coffee on the keyboard, but that's my fault, not yours. XD

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just ask any silent movie heroine who's been tied to a railroad track

See, I'm not sure that's the same kind of thing. That's suspense, where you wonder if the rescuer will get there in time. Also, for me, at least, an important component of h/c is that the suffering serve some purpose -- the hero is being tortured because his withholding of information will save lives, or he got an injury or an ilness from doing some kind of good deed.

A female hero can certainly do all that, but it's not common. Most female suffering in movies is done quite specifically to make pain look like sexual pleasure. (I remember a woman-written video game review site where one of their benchmarks was how much female characters sound like they're having an orgasm when they die.)

I'm not sure which is your Freudian typo. Woobie? I don't even know what that means or what you were trying to type. ^^;;

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See, I'm not sure that's the same kind of thing.

i'd say it is, because h/c is all about the experience of the viewer/reader. in silent films and b-movies, the heroine/woobie (ie the object of the male viewer's sexual desire) is made to suffer - thus the Hurt - until she is gloriously rescued by the male viewer's self-identification character, the hero - thus the Comfort.

woobie n. (also adj.) originally meaning a child's security blanket (see Linus: Peanuts), has since been adopted by fanfic writers to describe the cute, cuddly, and usually obligingly helpless character in a story who gets most of the suffering and hurt/comfort heaped upon them...generally for the gratification of the writer, the hero, or the audience. (see Dickens: Smike, Little Nell, Oliver Twist, etc)

and that wasn't the typo, btw...i accidentally wrote 'the anals of religion', whereas most persons not pleasantly distracted by slash fiction on a daily basis would recognize the more correct spelling of 'annals'. but the typo rather amuses me, so i decided to let it stand. :)

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It made me laugh.

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Ooh... so you're sort of saying that pretty much any adventure story, where the audience is meant to identify with either the victim or the rescuer, is h/c? That's an interesting thought.

Woobie is an excellent word. I have usually referred to such characters as my whipping-boys. ^^

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the genre doesn't really matter; in fact i think it just overcomplicates the issue. h/c can exist in adventure stories, scifi stories, fantasy stories, religious stories, regular prose stories, or any kind of story at all. the definition i've always used for h/c is when a vulnerable but attractive character is made to Hurt in the course of the story, and is then Comforted by the audience's (or usually the author's) self-insertion character. the identification is almost always with the hero/Comforter, although i hadn't thought about possible audience identification with the victim...interesting.

btw, 'whipping boy' works fine too, imo. :)

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That is really interesting, because my identification is almost always with the victim. The important elements of my fantasy are that the hero makes the penultimate sacrifice (i.e. suffers but doesn't die) in the name of doing something good, and then is rewarded afterwards with an escape from the pain (which generally has to be provided by a character who is emotionally close to them, either a lover or friend, doesn't matter which).

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ah, i see...i think i get what you're saying now. i tend to classify the sort of heroic suffering you're describing as more the requisite hardship the hero must endure to make them more fallible and identifiable to the audience, though - more 'noble sacrifice' than h/c.

it sounds like both our definitions here kind of hinge around whether it's the hero or a supporting character who suffers, and whether the audience identifies with that hero or supporting character. but i think the overall h/c definition is wide enough to cover both variations - sometimes the hero and the woobie can actually be the same character, and sometimes the audience might be meant to identify with someone who's not the obvious hero of the story.

for my definition of h/c, i'm thinking more in terms of dickens' model of the woobie/mary sue relationship: in his books, his identification or self-insertion character (the 'mary sue') doesn't tend to be the hero, but more often the hero's kindly benefactor (david copperfield being a possible exception). for example, in oliver twist, oliver is the hero/woobie and mr brownlow is dickens' self-insertion 'mary sue' benefactor; in bleak house, esther summerson is the hero/woobie and mr jarndyce is the 'mary sue' benefactor.

for a doctor who example, in '42', the doctor is the one who suffers - ie, the hero - but according to rtd, the character the audience is meant to identify with is the companion (so he thinks), and so martha the Comforter is supposed to be the one who we relate to.

so i think the blanket h/c term can be used to apply to all sorts of character variations...it's just that in my own experience, i've seen dickens' 'kick-the-woobie' model of h/c turn up in a lot more stories than the 'suffering/comforted hero' type of h/c, especially in scifi/fantasy fanfiction.

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Also: that's what I get for scanning too quickly. ^^

'Anals of religion' makes me think 'the back end of the Bible', some chapter that nobody likes to read, where the sun doesn't shine.

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outsdr.livejournal.com

You start analyzing this too deeply, and it's going to take you down paths that will end with you being even more messed up about it than when you started...

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Hopefully! >:-)

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outsdr.livejournal.com

Well then...

At it's most extremely Freudian, it could be seen as deep-rooted penis envy.

Or that you are expressing your secret shame for liking something so decidely un-girly as Science Fiction.

Or you are expressing your repressed anger at your father for marrying mommy instead of _you_.

Or you don't believe that you deserve pleasure in life, so you have to punish the character that brings you said pleasure.

Or you could be punishing the Doctor for not taking you away as a companion.

This has been "Tongue-in-Cheek Psychology Theatre." Thank you for watching; good night.

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There's nothing I envy more than a deep-rooted penis.

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outsdr.livejournal.com

There's nothing I envy more than a deep-rooted penis.

***HIGH-5***

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Talking of hurt and comfort: did yoou see Top Gear last night?

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Our TV reception is crap, but the segment was up on the BBC's site, and I watched it with pounding heart. Blimey.

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He is one lucky Hamster.

I screamed. That's what you get for working in a Rehabilitation Hospital, and doing the research on TBI.

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You want a loan of the book?

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Please. I will have to come and see you four (I'm counting the cats) before Frank forgets me.

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which episode was this...hammond's first one back in the saddle? if so then you really should see the whole episode...the bits they filmed before the actual crash are alarmingly ironic, and clarkson greeting a newly-returned hammond with a big burly man-cuddle is just about the sweetest thing i've ever seen on television.

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That's the episode. I have it on the set top box to watch again (also because the bit about fixing the local road in 24 hours was hilarious, and so wrong). Clarkson actually choked up when he introduced him, and Hammond's embarrasment at all the fuss was delightful. I am so glad that the Hamster made it.

kate if you're reading this, you can come over to my place to see it. I'll even pick you up and take you home.

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You're too kind! I have actually seen it (BBC site again). But we shall get together in any case so I can chuck the biog at you.

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You have to come over sometime and meet Trixie (ie the Fluffy Princess). i also vaguely remembering that I promised dinner to you and John (not sure on who's blog), as soon as I work out what to cook you.

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i'm so glad clarkson gave him that big manly bear-hug, because that's exactly what every single person watching at home and in the audience wanted to do, too.

'eeee, he's okay!' *glomp*!

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Then Hammond goes to hug May, who prefers a manly handshake... *giggles helplessly at the memory*

As for the bear-hug, never have I noticed the difference in their heights as much as then. I though Clarkson was going to accidentally throttle Hammond.

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"I don't want to go upside down."

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