striving-artist:

thedosian-cabbage:

You like hurt/comfort because you like the idea that someone will comfort you when you are in pain.

Hi. I write a lot of Hurt fics. and sometimes I even remember to write the comfort part. 

And let me just say that this is 1000000% right. 

But I’m going to talk about nuance anyway. 

Humans love stories because that’s just etched into our bones, but part of it is finding a reflection of ourselves. We love to see our favorites broken down and bleeding and suffering because it helps to know that someone we admire can reach that same place. And then? We get to watch them survive it. We get to see someone that is hurting just like we are, stand up and keep going, and fight through. We get to see them crawl out of the darkness toward a pinprick of light in the distance. We get to see that they survived the thing that is reminding us of ourselves. 

It’s the comic with the elves and the balloons I can’t find right now. 

I write brutally painful stories because I need to see that they can get through it, and I share them because I want other people to know that they can do it too. I tend to write people recovering alone because in my experience that’s how it happens. The comfort is knowing that people want you to recover, the actual work of healing comes from inside.