Some concerns about hc_bingo

[sasha_feather]

Or, Why I'm not participating in hc_bingo / hc_bingo

Here is a list of the h/c (hurt/comfort) cliches used for the cards. Warning: many of these are upsetting and offensive.

Here is the fanlore wiki page for hurt/comfort for anyone unfamiliar with this fan fiction genre.



1. Ableism

Many of these "cliches" listed are real disabilities and problems that affect real people. Many of them are triggering. Many of them are lifelong, difficult issues and many of them are wrapped up in people's identities. The potential for problematic portrayals of disability in this challenge seems especially high. If you are participating, please do your research, and please be respectful. Consider writing from the point of view of the person with the disability, rather than the caretaker. Consider what it's like to have that disability; maybe read some blog posts.

Disabilities, in my experience, are most often not cured but instead lived with. Hurt/comfort stories seem to rely on a trope that love and/or sex can "fix" or greatly resolve the problems created by the disability or traumatic event. I get that this is romantic, but it is not realistic. People live with disabilities on a long-term basis and are people are not magically fixed by relationships. Even "comfort" as is it thought of (physical affection, food, sex, etc) may be unwanted in these situations. People may want to be alone or may not want to be touched.

I also think it's weird to use a disabling event as a catalyst to bring to characters together. What I think might be more interesting? Take two or more characters who are already disabled, give them interesting well-rounded lives and relationships, and have them talk to each other about what their respective disabilities mean to them. Have them care for each other in the same ways that able-bodied people do.

2. Format

The "bingo" format, taken from kink_bingo, levels and equalizes the squares, so that if you are participating, you may find yourself writing stories or making art for the challenge in ways that surprise you. In this case, a bingo card serves to equalize such things as "brain damage", "wings (always there)", "body hatred", and "zombie apocalypse".

Unlike kink_bingo, I cannot find a wiki or other education materials meant to elucidate what the squares mean. These are difficult subjects, and it's a long list of cliches. Making information available about each category doesn't seem to be a priority.

3. Triggers and Warnings

From the FAQ:
"I am triggered by sexual trauma prompts and don't want them on my card. What do I do?
The mods recognize that the nature of a hurt/comfort challenge has potentially triggering content. If you would like a card without sexual trauma based situations, please note that when you sign up so we could give you a card avoiding this area altogether.

"I am triggered by another prompt that isn't listed as sexual trauma. What do I do?
Please either note this in your sign up comment or email the mods. We want to make sure everyone has a good time so we will work with you to make sure any triggering prompts are not on your card.
Besides that, given the specific nature of the prompts, you can look the list of cliches the cards are made from before signing up and veto from one to three cliches that would be triggery/uncomfortable for you to write about, without penalty." (emphasis mine)

Why one to three? You know, maybe the bingo format, or the chosen prompts, just doesn't work that well for this challenge.

From the rules post:
"14. Even if it is in the prompt you are still required to warn for rape/non-con, dub-con, incest, character death/suicide, or graphic self-harm. The other warnings are left to your discretion, though we do encourage you to warn as fully as it's possible."

I understand that there is not currently a fandom-wide warnings policy, but this rather light warnings policy, especially given the nature of the prompt, leaves a lot of readers in the cold.

---

Comments not needed in my blog:
"You shouldn't be offended"
"Stop harshing our squee"



Important ETAs

The hc_mods are revising their trigger and warnings policies and have said they will be hosting an open discussion about prompts for their next round.

Please also see damned_colonial's post on this subject.

Comments

[rhivolution]

Thank you for this post, it expresses a lot of things I was thinking too. If I end up writing a post, do you mind if I link to it?

[sasha_feather]

I'm fine with links to all my public posts.

[laceblade]

As someone who doesn't read a lot of fic, this stuff is weird to me too, but so is something like "questionable/dubious consent" or humiliation, which I think are part of kink bingo?

[sasha_feather]

Sure. kink_bingo now has a kink_wiki which gives an explanation and example of each square. Kink bingo also has a clear political purpose: a sex-positive agenda, normalizing sexualities that have been marginalized by society, and education towards this is part of the community's goal.

I suppose reading and writing "hurt-comfort" stories is in itself a "kink" in a certain sense, and therefore I support the right of these stories to exist. But the challenge still bothers me for all the above reasons.

[damned_colonial]

Probably also worth noting that kink bingo has explicit information about consensual non-consent, filling squares using characters' fantasies rather than physical acts, and non-sexual/asexual uses of the squares. I would feel a lot better about hc bingo if they took similar steps to address possible concerns.

[rhivolution]

Agreed on the consensual non-consent issue--very important distinction that really, really isn't being made in the h/c case, I fear.

[j00j]

Thank you for writing this.

[laceblade]

Ahh, I see. That is a pretty huge distinction.

[sqbr]

I was just thinking about this, about how I wouldn't do kink bingo since it would squick me, but the hurt comfort bingo would be more likely to really crush my spirit. I'm still quite upset about a story I read some time ago which used symptoms very similar to my chronic illness as a magical curse for a h/c fic that had everything suddenly and unconvincingly fixed by deus ex machina at the end and was just...blech.

[damned_colonial]

Another thing that occurs to me is that they renamed that square "consent play" this year, in response to concerns about using non-con/dub-con/rape as a kink.

The kink_wiki consent play entry lists a bunch of suggestions for participants to consider, including "various forms of consensual roleplay or fantasies about consent (like the consensual acting out of a rape fantasy, kidnapping fantasy, or blackmail fantasy, to name a few), with kink community concepts like metaconsent or consensual non-consent, or with enthusiastic consent as a form of dirty talk." It also talks about the problematic aspects of rape fantasies, etc.

[emceeaich]

Those are good arguments. Also, I have my own reasons for not being synonymous with hurt/comfort.

Dropping in from /network.

[jackandahat]

Agreeing very much with this. And the thing is... I like h/c. I even like h/c that involves certain forms of disability - speaking as a person with disabilities, I think it's my version of junk food. Not a guilty pleasure, but a little goes a long way.

This... I just suspect it will go horribly wrong. (Don't even get me started on how badly child abuse and male characters - because it is going to be mostly slash, it always is - is handled by fandom as a whole.) It's going to be a majority of able-bodied people projecting their ideas of what disability means, and what it means in terms of h/c.

I wrote fic a while back involving a character who was a cane-user getting a hand massage. Because canes can end up screwing up/hurting your hand. And most of the comments I got were "But isn't his leg the problem?" Yes, but. Even if something is related to your disability, it's not always about your disability. And people with disabilities can have the same needs as everyone else, dammit.

Which is the other thing that bugs me - outside of the disability-related squares, what are the chances that these will involve people with disabilities? Or that it won't just be "Disabled person being comforted by an able-bodied person". For example, what are the chances we'll get a wheelchair-using woman helping her able-bodied boyfriend deal with his abandonment issues, or a Deaf man taking care of a boyfriend with toothache? Not bloody likely.

...wow, I put my ranty pants on there. Ahem. Excuse me.

[cypher]

That square was already "consent play" last year! The challenge was already designed so that every square could be written as at least RACK if not SSC (that's Risk-Aware Consensual Kink and Safe/Sane/Consensual, for people who don't do kink acronyms).

The big change they made this year, that I think the hc_bingo people would really benefit from, was renaming some categories to make sure that all of the bingo kinks were about acts and not about identities.

...Honestly, I think probably the hc_bingo would have to scrap a lot of their existing list to achieve that goal, but I think it would be a better challenge for it.

[cypher]

Thank you for this post! I'm really grateful to see this stuff being brought up -- you've hit on a lot of things that make me uncomfortable about this challenge. Every time I see somebody's bingo card with one of my own problems on it, I get a little queasy and hope they won't write that one.

I hadn't really thought about how the bingo format would put these incredibly disparate things on the same footing, but that's a really good point. It does tend to suggest a mindset where "brain damage" is just as much of an unreal-to-the-writer experience as "zombie apocalypse," laid out like that.

[sasha_feather]

Yes! The acts vs. identities distinction is very important, and I'm glad to have learned that terminology from kink_bingo.

[sasha_feather]

G. said to me in chat, that the big difference is, kink_bingo starts from real kinks, lived experiences, and opens out into fantasies. hc_bingo starts from fantasies which have a problematic relationship with reality.

And there is no exploration or structure for engaging with that problematic relationship.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you for commenting!

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for commenting!

[sasha_feather]

That does sound upsetting. It can be really powerful to see disability portrayed well in fiction, and really hurtful to see it portrayed badly. Unfortunately it's usually the latter in my experience.

[sasha_feather]

"Synonymous"?

[susanreads]

I hardly ever read explicit fic and I'm not familiar with the h/c genre, but this really makes clear how not-OK that structure is for those topics. Thank you for writing it up.

Re: Dropping in from /network.

[sasha_feather]

Those fics you mention, where disabled people are the caretakers, would be great to read! But like you say, I doubt there will be many of them.

I've read and enjoyed, and even written, some fic that could be considered hurt/comfort. But I think the difference is that it's from the perspective of the disabled character, and it's not pretending that the relationship will automatically fix everything. The disability is just a part of the story. It can be done well, and maybe some fic will emerge from this challenge that *is* done well-- we can only hope.

[damned_colonial]

Ah, OK, I knew there had been some shuffling of squares and thought that was one of the ones that had got caught up in it. Thanks for setting me straight :)

[sasha_feather]

Thank you for reading! I will go back and add in a link to the fanlore wiki page for hurt/comfort for anyone unfamiliar.

Re: Dropping in from /network.

[jackandahat]

Now I'm wondering what would be written in that vein. Problem is that there just aren't that many good disabled characters to start with (I was complaining the other day that as a man using a cane, the entire of my TV representation... was House. Joy). But now I'm wondering. Hmm.

And yeah - there is a big difference between comfort related to something that's part of disability (pain, stress, tension, whatever), and pretending that it can all be "fixed" - and made to go away.

I'm honestly not sure I have the spoons and self-control right now to wade through looking for the good fic, but we'll see.