whump is such a strange thing for me. ‘oh im having trouble shouldering the burdens of daily life, let me play scenes in my head of someone getting the shit kicked out of them (fictionally), that’ll make me feel better’ and it DOES
I HAVE SCIENCE FOR THIS. because I got curious one day and went digging.
I was trying to figure out if anyone’s studied why people like angsty stories and hurt/comfort type of fiction so much (it’s me, I’m people).
It seems to come down to
We feel the same intensity of sadness when talking about a tragic story from our own life as when watching a tragic piece of media, but we feel way more anxiety along with it when relating our own story. So it’s a way to feel sadness without as much anxiety. https://www.verywellmind.com/why-do-we-like-sad-stories-5224078
Catharsis (access, release, and process feelings with less personal risk/stress)
Endorphin release (pretty big endorphin release with sad/tragic media! Even increases pain tolerance afterwards. Maybe I am just self medicating my chronic pain) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/21/watching-a-sad-films-boosts-endorphin-levels-in-your-brain-psychologists-say
Identification with characters for identity exploration and building resilience (didnt quite say resilience but i think that’s what the trait identification study’s extrapolation comes down to as well) https://www.verywellmind.com/the-effect-of-stories-on-your-brain-5118221
Increased appreciation for one’s own life/relationships (less common)
And also, fandom is therapeutic and relational: https://www.vox.com/22297792/fandom-escape-grief-psychology-complicated-lynn-zubernis-interview
It also occurred to me that this hits a lot of Judith Herman’s stages in her trauma recovery model!
1a. Healing relationship: Visceral identification leads to a sense of relationship with characters and vicarious experience of their relationships.
1b. Safety and stabilization: The alibi of fiction creates some safety, as does a more controlled environment in which to expose yourself to the contents of fiction (content warnings and expectation management of tags etc helps with this too).
2. Remembrance and mourning: Stories with trauma/angst exploration, whether or not there’s comfort/recovery involved, can be an aspect of rememberance and mourning especially if they resonate / reflect one’s own traumas (which are often relational), allowing mourning-by-proxy which again creates some safe distance to make it more bearable/less intense, especially since it doesnt have the anxiety level of engaging directly with your own trauma story so it’s less likely to lead to dissociation (impossible to process while dissociated).
3a. Reconnection with community: Maybe the least applicable, though I’d argue that fandom holds some of this.
3b. Connection with like others: The similarity of characters, and connecting with others in fandom who also relate to those characters and their experiences, is absolutely connection with like others.
