I’m not sure how many people realize that there’s a way in which hurt/comfort is actually very kinky, because at its core you’ve got this emotional power exchange fantasy where one character is vulnerable and helpless and the other takes care of them. In the case of stories involving grievous injuries, where someone is bedridden for a long time, you often end up with two characters in a 24/7 total power exchange relationship without a safeword. It just doesn’t involve as many whips and dog collars.
Imagine if trauma could be transferred instead of just multiplying. Being able to heal yourself by returning the trauma to sender. Feeling yourself getting mentally and physically better by traumatising your parents right back.
Cure your PTSD in one afternoon with this one simple trick: Chase your dad around the house with an axe.
oughhhh the sinking visceral horror of "I did it all for you" when what they've done is appalling. the look of fierce devotion with their hands bloody, standing in the sickening viscous mess they've made. "I've done everything for you" oh god
“Fight.” You ask. You demand. I am standing guard, my sword at the ready, and yet when I turn to swing there is nothing but an empty field.
“Fight this.” You yell. I am searching desperately for what it is I am meant to pierce, what I am meant to bloody.
“Fight for me.” You cry out.
But it is only me here, frantic and aching. Shall I slice into mine own skin? Carve these trembling, dirtied hands? Dissect my bleeding heart and hand it to you?
I couldn’t fight. There was nothing to fight. I kneel, broken, in the mud and rain… I would’ve fought, had it not been ghosts and words you wished for me to battle.
Confessions on the brink of death a character accepts out of kindness because it won’t matter soon anyway, but then the other person doesn’t die, the other person expects them to carry through on their promise to love them and gets angry when they try to back out. Blackmail held over someone’s head just to force them to flirt and make romantic advances on another person, so it looks like they wanted this relationship. Talks about marriage and happily ever afters together as a threat. “I love you, I love you, I love you” as a violation that you’re expected to smile at and be grateful for, because you’re supposed to want to be loved. noncon romance.
adding to this: feeling love against your will. love forced on you by some power beyond you. love that you know you wouldn’t feel if you weren’t blessed (cursed) by it. love that you don’t want and is ruining you and that everyone keeps praising you for feeling. love that everyone around you gets mad at you for rejecting anyway. love that’s made so overpowering that it wipes out any semblance of “you” that there is to make way for a thing that will love someone back.
funniest part of this post is how many people reblog it tagged something like “this sounds aromantic” or “op not to derail but aromanticism” and like well guys you’re never going to believe why i find forced romance such a horrifying concept-
Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.
You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.
starting a new fuck/marry/kill called aro/crack/attack where you take three characters and decide who you're making aromantic, whose egg you're cracking, and who you're doing grievous bodily harm
"why can't they just be friends?" not in the homophobic sense, but in the "in your need to center romance in everything you are missing the whole point of the media in question" sense
he would not fucking say that, but with disability.. he would not fucking be able bodied. sick n tired of characters walking away from multiple life changing injuries without a scratch. let’s get some natural consequences in here.
give that knife/sword fight survivor nerve damage. give the character who was shot in the gut a stoma. give that fire survivor lung damage and an oxygen cannula. give that leg injury survivor a cane. give that starvation survivor gastroparesis. give that spinal injury survivor a manual chair or powerchair.
while we’re at it, give your characters congenital disabilities too, just because. give them intellectual and development disabilities. give them acquired and postviral illnesses. dare to make somebody bedbound. for me.
The other girl in the basement has more chain, and never talks to you. You tried, of course, when you first woke up shackled to the wall. Screamed at her until you went hoarse. You didn't have enough leash to get anywhere near her, or do anything besides lay down. She went about her day, cycling between calisthenics and reading a stack of books next to her nest of cushions. She was probably in her late thirties, and must have been a fitness nut before this.
The captor, because she never gave you any other name, never interacts with her in front of you. She's younger, and talks absentmindedly, but rarely seems to expect or want an answer.
Once every day, she comes downstairs with cattle prod and hood in hand, and takes you from the claustrophobic basement up the stairs, right turn, five paces, into another windowless room. It has only a treadmill and a chair. You refused, at first, and learned exactly how badly a cattle prod hurt. You swore to never eat meat again after your escape.
The captor demands nothing else of you, and answers no questions. She takes the other girl at different times, for far longer, and she returns with deep bruises, sometimes bloodied. You try to be grateful.
Each day you run, as fast as you can, for however long she makes you. The pace ticks up, day over day, and your heart rate settles into a comfortable spot. What had once left you gasping and pleading to stop, spurred on only by violent threats, is now an easy jog.
You couldn't say how long it had been, the day the routine changed. The captor took the other girl, and then came down again for you. Up the stairs, left turn, ten paces, down two short steps and… a breeze?
The hood comes off, and you're outside. It is late afternoon, and you furiously blink away tears. Your prison sits in a small clearing, a cabin with woods sprawling on every side of it. The air, fresh after so long, is thick with pine and so delightfully green.
The other girl is there too - without restraints. Standing, tight as a whip, staring into the woods.
The captor gestures to the treeline.
"Run. You get a five minute head start."
The words take a moment to register. You're weightless, giddy. You have no bearing, but you loved the woods as a child, and the captor does not seem dressed for the chase at all, in a long dressing gown and slippers. You bolt into the trees, the taste of freedom on your lips.
At a hundred yards, you realize the other girl did not start running with you. She had not been staring at the trees. She was waiting, impatiently. The realization sinks like a stone in your stomach, but you press on. Brush whips at your legs, leaving stinging cuts.
You hear her start. The first sound you've ever heard her make, an awful, baying howling. And then deathly silence, in comparison to your clumsy fleeing.
That's the problem with an exotic pet, you know. It needs live prey.
