A few thoughts on h/c in fanfic

[silverwhistle]

I was discussing this with a friend earlier. What I've never really 'got' is people wanting to inflict new damage on a character in order then to repair him/her. For me, it's always been about wanting to save characters I love from damage the original writers have imposed upon them in canon: over the years, I just got very annoyed at the fact

Comments

[reggietate]

It can seem a bit odd, I suppose. Personally, I do like to break my favourites occasionally, purely for the pleasure of putting them back together. Mainly because you get to see what they're made of, how strong or weak they are, what they'll do under extreme pressure or suffering.

Most often, though, it's just a kink for most, which doesn't have an explanation as such - it just happens to push some people's buttons.

primeval_denial makes a speciality of saving the characters the creators (also sometimes known as The FuckWits In Charge) love to kill off. Then we sometimes break, mangle and otherwise hurt them in a variety of ways, but rarely fatally. It's just to see what they're made of, in the end.

But pure fixits are very popular. Why kill off all the pretty men?

[silverwhistle]

But pure fixits are very popular. Why kill off all the pretty men?

Indeed (and women)!

From this week's Sunday-coffee-and-chat-in-Starbucks, I think Elma and I are essentially 'fixit' people. From childhood, we've never liked the fact that authors/film-makers have a knack of killing off or damaging the characters we like best. In terms of "seeing what they're made of" (which I can understand in many ways), that doesn't require inflicting further damage, as far as I can see, because the canon has done more than enough damage already. Indeed, the hardest part can be working out how to save them: in some cases, having to go AU to wind back events a little!

[raissad]

From childhood, we've never liked the fact that authors/film-makers have a knack of killing off or damaging the characters we like best.

Don't even bother with George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice & Fire series then. You'd want to put your head in an oven.

[silverwhistle]

I won't because I don't tend to read lengthy book-series; but when authors do kill off or damage characters, it just makes me plot to rescue them, so no, it wouldn't have that effect on me!