Hurt/Comfort Exchange 2019

[telm_393]

I try not to be too effusive in my exchange letters, but omg I’m so excited for this exchange!!! Seriously, I’m totally and completely over the moon here, so please forgive this letter for being all over the place.

But first, some clarifications:

In the end, the tags are the prompt, but also within those mini essays I wrote for all the fandoms, there are definitely prompts. Still. The tags are the prompt, and if I didn’t expand on a tag you want to use, or I expanded on it in a way you didn’t like, just know that if you write about it, I’ll still love it.

Go for any of the groups I chose, and dream up any premise you want if you want to write about a more specific freeform—is a character getting held back so as not to hurt themselves because of torture? Delirium? Something I haven’t thought of? You choose! Make it as twisted as you want, I dare you! (A lot of this letter has to do with ostentatious mental whump, I’m not gonna lie.)

Some fandom sections are way, way longer than others. It is notable. This is not a sign that I want one fandom more than another, just that I think that the tags speak for themselves and it turned out that I really wanted to ramble about those particular fandoms today. I chose these fandoms and these character combinations because I will reach quite frankly embarrassing levels of excitement if I get anything for any of them. Also, most of this letter focuses on the comfort, but you can go as hard as you want with the hurt as long as the comfort is still a big part of the story.

If you want to use more than one tag at a time (including group tags), feel free! If you want to write an Eldritch fic with all of the tags I chose for a fandom, go for it, and if you want to write a fic based around just one tag, go for that too. And anything in between. If there are several characters in a certain group tag and you’d prefer to just focus on a few as the comforter, that’s cool too.

Write something you love! I will love it too! Actually, even if you hate it, I’ll still love it! I’ll love it enough for both of us!

(One last thing: if you have different interpretations of the characters and groups than I do, I am totally open to that and you should characterize the characters however you think is best.)

Likes:

- hopeful/bittersweet endings, or endings that are not completely bleak, though I am not closed to unhappy endings

- mental health issues

- sanity slippage

- mental breakdown

- characters never completely recovering from their trauma, but adjusting to a new life and being supported by their friends/family

- characters being confused about what’s real and what’s not and their friends/family having to reassure them

- characters standing by their friends (or family, or brothers-in-arms) no matter what

- caretaking and caretaker fatigue

- crying

- hugging (especially hugging and crying—make stoic characters cry, find some reason for characters who don’t cry to cry)

- friendship

- comforter having their own issues unrelated to the comfortee too and having to deal with them

- give and take between the comforter and comfortee/comfortee helps the comforter too

- loyalty and reluctant loyalty

- feelings of obligation

- aftermath of traumatic experiences

- bonding and reconnecting after time apart

- grief

- delusions and hallucinations, especially delusions

- characters in denial of their trauma

- canon divergence that allows characters more time to breathe and hurt and comfort

- characters watching other characters to make sure they don’t hurt themselves (again)

- characters having complicated feelings about each other and maybe even resenting the hurt character

- I’d prefer no total woobification, but breaking characters is A+ and I am actually quite into psychological regression if it's periodic/doesn't go into full 100% infantilization

- actually, characters becoming more violent when they’re hurt is A+

DNWs:

- smut/PWP/explicit sexual content

- shipfic/fic based around romance/gen groupings changing into romance groupings

- character bashing, ship bashing, fandom bashing, kink bashing, any bashing at all

- unrequested AUs (though canon divergence AUs are always fine)

- genderswap/always-another-gender/suddenly-another-gender

- gender headcanons

- fic with a strong focus on a character’s sexuality

- autistic headcanons (canonically autistic characters are not included under this in any way, to be completely clear)

- characters schooling anyone, especially each other, on social justice issues

- first person POV

- guro/extreme gore

- non-canon kids

- pregnancy of all kinds

- chatroom fic

- oviposition

- scat

- crossovers

- interactive fic

- poetry

FANDOMS

The Good Place

Groups:

Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop (hurt Jason)

Tahani Al-Jamil & Jason Mendoza (hurt Jason)

Tahani Al-Jamil & Chidi Anagonye & Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop (hurt Jason)

Freeforms:

- Character bottling up emotions is coaxed into expressing them

- Character Doesn’t Understand That They Were Abused

- Character Will Never Be the Same After Traumatic Experience

- Characters Find a New Normal After Trauma

- Comforter Helps Hurt Character Get Out of a Physically Abusive Relationship

- Deceiving the Other Character for Their Own Good

- Memory Loss

- Mental Breakdown

- Hurt Character Clinging to Comforter

- In denial about being hurt

- Lied to by friends for character’s own good

- Memory Loss

- Mental Breakdown

- Mind Broken Character Believes Life Before Torture Was An Illusion

- Past Abuse Revealed

- Wanting to Help Hurt Character But Not Knowing How to Do It

- Unresolved issues from their past

I would love fic set in season two or season three, including some random reboot we don't see or only see for a second and especially that year long gap in season three. Canon divergence AU at any point is fine. Everyone’s human and alive/mundane AU, also fine. And also my pet AU where people actually do end up in the Real Good Place and that’s where they go.

However, I am happy with fic set anywhere, at any point in time.

The Good Place is seriously one of the shows of my heart. I love it so, so much, and I love Jason especially, and any of these tags related to him would make me so happy. His naïvete, his genuineness, and how he understands (or doesn’t understand) things in his own particular way is catnip to me, and I think that a lot could be done with that.

He’s easily manipulated! Lynyrd Skynyrd High School was a thing! I’ll bet he’s gotten into plenty of extremely unfortunate situations before, there’s definitely space for unknowing revelations of trauma. Even just playing straight fucked up things he says in the show could totally work.

I also like how the others kind of go with Jason. They understand him even when they know they’re not actually understanding him—they just kinda follow his logic. They listen to his stories. They’re more patient with him than plenty of people would be, even when they really need a break. They appreciate him.

But I also think that they definitely have trouble if he isn’t happy and “normal”, and that if something really bad happened to him they would stick by him but also be kind of afraid to push. Maybe if he’d lost his memory about something bad—something that they may have witnessed—they might just…not tell him. Even if he’s showing signs of trauma. Or if he’s in denial, they might just…still not push.

For example: trauma after rape would be amazing, especially with the possibility of victim self-blaming and his friends being super awkward. Or he gets sent to the Real Bad Place and the others don’t, and then…comes back. Or something very bad happened in his past and he didn’t realize it, and now he’s starting to. I just think that Jason in a breakdown/broken would be super interesting. And also memory loss! Maybe his memory gets wiped completely, or overridden with bad memories?

(Also, protectiveness would be amazing.)

Tl;dr: Jason whump, friends out of their depth.

 

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Groups:

James “Bucky” Barnes & Sam Wilson (hurt Sam)

James “Bucky” Barnes & Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson (hurt Sam)

Scott Lang/Sam Wilson (hurt Sam)

Freeforms:

- Character A Lives With Character B While B Recovers

- Characters Find New Normal After Trauma

- Canadian Shack

- Character Will Never Be the Same After Traumatic Experience

- Details of hurt not revealed to other characters

- Forcing medicine/treatment on someone who doesn’t want it

- Hurt/sick character isn’t quite lucid

- Long road to recovery

- Mental Breakdown

- Mind Broken Character Believes Life Before Torture Was An Illusion

- Rescued after torture

- Restraining Someone to Keep Them From Hurting Themselves

- Sharing a Bed

You know how a lot of the time Sam is written as the together one who helps the others with their issues?

I want the opposite of that. I want the tables turned, man. I want hurt Sam Wilson so much, just—hardcore whump, go wild. Steve and Bucky and Sam in a Canadian Shack, but this time Sam’s the one who’s broken! Seriously, broken Sam with Steve and Bucky or just Steve or Bucky would be totally cool, with Sam’s issues actually testing Bucky and Steve’s relationship. Steve’s more broken up about how Sam is different now than Bucky is because he can’t get past the guy he used to know, but it’s easier for Bucky to get to know this Sam.

Sam and Bucky against the world, with Bucky being the one who has to take care of someone, plus snark because Sam is not capable of not snarking at Bucky. They don’t get along, but Bucky can’t just abandon him. (Maybe Steve is dead in this situation. Oooh, Steve should totally be dead in this situation.)

And Sam/Scott is my OTP, the ship of my heart, and, I dunno, a canon divergence where something terrible happens to Sam during his time on the run and he ends up with Scott for some reason and Scott helps him would be awesome. Or a post-Civil War AU where Sam is targeted in terrible ways in the Raft and doesn’t come out feeling like himself and Scott takes care of him. (That would also work as a plot for anything with Steve and/or Bucky.)

Or maybe Sam just ends up knocking on someone’s door, and it slowly but surely becomes obvious that he’s really not okay, but no one knows what happened.

 

The Umbrella Academy

Groups:

Allison & Diego & Klaus & Luther & Five & Vanya (hurt Five)

Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves & Number Five (hurt Five)

Luther Hargreeves & Number Five (hurt Five)

Klaus Hargreeves & Number Five (hurt Five)

Number Five & Vanya Hargreeves (hurt Five)

Freeforms:

- Caretaking

- Character bottling up emotions is coaxed into expressing them

- Characters Find a New Normal After Trauma

- Stoic character breaking down

- Trying to help stoic character without hurting their pride

- Character being protected isn’t used to being cared about

- Character’s Secret Feelings Are Exposed Against Their Wishes

- Collapsing from exhaustion

- Comforting someone stuck in a nightmare

- Downplaying Trauma

- Eating Disorders

- Forcing Exhausted Character to Get Some Sleep

- Hurt/sick character isn’t quite lucid

- Meltdown

- Mental Breakdown

- Mental Health Issues

- Past suicide attempt is revealed

- Reluctant Comfortee

- Self-Harm

- Sick/confused character attacks comforter

- Wanting to Help Hurt Character But Not Knowing How To Do It

- Long Overdue Breaking Point

- Hallucinations

- Forgetting to eat

- Forcing medicine/treatment on someone who doesn’t want it

- Fevers

Okay, so, in many of the other sections in this letter, I have characters having a mental breakdown for reasons. Here, I don’t need that, because the show did it for me!

So I’m quite frankly all about abnormal child development, mental health issues, mental breakdowns, massive trauma, just...all of that is my jam. And then The Umbrella Academy came along with a deeply emotionally scarred fifty-eight year old who essentially stopped even communicating with other people when he was thirteen and is now back in his thirteen year old body, and I was thrilled. And a literal assassin? Violence? Seeming detachment until sudden emotional lability? Too much drinking? I’m here for that!

And then the show had him having flashback hallucinations and full conversations with a mannequin he’s convinced is actually communicating with him and also nearly dying because he’s so single-minded about his mission, and my joy was immeasurable.

Not only that, but there are sibling interactions and characters who I love and so much potential for awkward comfort and difficulty connecting and reconnecting. Like, Five’s siblings really haven’t experienced what he has. They don’t know his trauma! He’s a matryoshka doll of issues, they’re always learning new and terrible things!

In this situation, I guess I’d prefer post-canon, but if you can fit something in during canon, mad respect.

I just like the idea of weirdly domestic Hargreeves fic where they have space to breathe and try not to process their trauma and either share a mansion or apartments or hotel rooms. So, like, an AU where the apocalypse actually didn’t happen, or just post-canon with a mission that allows for some more breathing room (but also space for missions where characters can get hurt and refuse to help themselves). So basically, diverge from canon or go with canon, I just have one DNW for this fandom: I do not want fic where the adult-bodied Hargreeves were also de-aged.

Other than that, yeah, go wild. For most of the “never be the same” tags and “trauma” tags and “finding a new normal” type tags, I’m thinking of the trauma/hurt just actually being living through the apocalypse and the events of the show and the new normal just being post-canon, but if you want to pile whump on whump, I am not going to stop you. Sending an already mentally fragile character over the edge because of torture or something? I’m down!

Also, psychosis, and incompetent, emotionally stunted comforting coming from people who really, genuinely care about each other and are trying to reconnect but also are very much out of their depth. And quite frankly getting kind of frustrated with how much of a handful Five is turning out to be, what with the constant refusals to accept help and the snippiness and the violence and all. He spent decades alone and/or murdering people, and that’s…pretty much what he can do.

And now that things have slowed down, it turns out that the non-post-apocalyptic world is confusing and dangerous, even more so when you can’t always distinguish between reality and delusion. In a situation where they did go back in time and were thus still trying to stop the apocalypse, but it’s slow going, I could definitely see Five nearly working himself to death or nearly getting himself killed on missions. Just generally being bad at self-preservation. And then also there could totally be issues with his new/old body because he’s not used to the smaller body that definitely can’t have as much alcohol as it used to be able to…

I also really enjoy how he acts with Delores, like—he believes she’s totally real and he seems completely rational about her and there’s really no outward sign that she’s not real when he talks to Klaus about her. I like to think that that’s how he’d be about just about any delusion. Just completely matter-of-fact. And if you want to write about the other characters interacting with Delores, I will eat that up with a spoon.

(Also, one last prompt: there is a scene where Five digs an actual tracker out of his arm. Please consider his getting the delusional belief that, actually, there is still a tracker in him, and he has to get it out. With knives.)

Tl;dr: Five seems fine and surprisingly functional overall—his usual unpleasant self—but that’s more of a façade/literal delusion, and in reality he’s so floridly fucked up that even his siblings are worried.