PINK KHAKI - THE STARGATE SG-1 ONLINE MAG

The question of why I enjoy reading and writing stories in which my favourite character is thoroughly 'whumped' - either physically or psychologically - is one that exercised me a great deal before I found the internet and realised I wasn't alone in my passion. To those who don't understand the appeal of such stories, hurt/comfort style stories can be inexplicable. But I believe that there are sound and long standing reasons why a compulsion towards such stories exists for so many of us.

There are several factors to consider, and the first of these is the nature of love itself, particularly as expressed towards someone with whom we have no realistic hope or expectation of experiencing a satisfying relationship. That includes celebrities, sportspeople, and of course, fictional characters. In my case, it is the fictional character of Daniel Jackson whom I 'love', and therefore about whom I write and read hurt/comfort fiction. To painfully paraphrase and probably mangle the theories of Carl Jung, the object of our affection - the Other - is someone who both completes and reflects our Self. We take them into ourselves as part of our identities (which is why so much debate within fandom and between fans is so heated. It is deeply personal). The whole concept is best represented in the notion of 'Love me, love my dog'. That to which we have given our affection becomes an expression of a part of ourselves, so to criticise it is to criticise us. And it is a part of us that is profoundly vulnerable, being both a representation of some deeply felt lack within ourselves, and an aspect of ourselves that is out of our control. I cannot, for example, do anything about it if Daniel Jackson is shown doing something monstrous. In a way I am being exposed to judgement through Daniel and must trust that the character will stay as I wish him to. I cannot, also, help but feel his pain as he experiences it in the fictional world of Stargate SG-1. So why would I look to increase that pain, through my writing or the searching out of fiction that allows this?

I think !he fact that this question even exists shows how completely out of touch Western civilisation is with what is most soulfully true. Our ancestors understood the power and reality of pain in a way that our current preoccupation with rendering life as banal, homogenised and painless as possible totally ignores. Catharsis - from the Greek 'to purge' - was a ritualised way of life in all ancient cultures, as far as we know. 'Katharsis' was � 'importantly, the tears of lamentation through which we sought to purge ourselves of the grief instilled by some calamity' (Young, 1991, p.219). Ancient cultures used a variety of rituals and sacrifices to enact and express the pain of existence, the grief that sweetens life. They employed scapegoats - literally, goats or bulls - upon which they piled their sorrow and shame and anger and grief before driving it to perish in the wilderness or ritually murdering it. Catharsis was sought and found communally, and as such kept internal individual pressures at a socially acceptable level. We, on the other hand, do grief badly. We hush it up, isolate it, deny it, sublimate it - do everything and anything but accord it the time and respect it deserves. So how do we deal with the pain of life on a daily basis? Where is our scapegoat?

For some, it remains a religious matter. It is no accident that suffering and grief play such dominant roles in Christian doctrine. Christian texts are explicit - Christ suffered and died for us, for our sins. He is the human representation of the scapegoat, alluded to in such texts as Leviticus: "And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited," and artistically expressed by painters such as William Holman Hunt (Clark, 1977, p.103). But long before Jesus of Nazareth appeared, other religions were bringing suffering to their own gods - Woden, Inanna, Osiris. (The fact that Woden and Inanna were both hung on trees, died, and rose again from the dead after three days - long before Jesus's time - is probably something for another discussion!) No one accuses Christianity of sadism in its depictions of Christ's suffering - they are intrinsic to the whole fabric of the Church, and meet a deep psychological need. Followers of Christ in many countries inflict suffering upon themselves until they find an ecstasy of spiritual affirmation. Given that similar scenes of suffering were played out in earlier religions, one has to consider that the desire to transform oneself and find the sacred through pain is an impulsion common to the human condition.

For those of us for whom Christianity holds little reward, our scapegoats all too often tend to become our-selves. I have a life that could be described as holding in its past more than its share of traumatic pain, but I come from a culture that encourages 'battling on' and looks askance at the indulgence of grief in any but the most 'civilised' manner. Certainly, the notion that pain and grief linger forever within the soul, in one way or another, is anathema to the Australian communal consensus. We may safely express enthusiasm and excitement and tribal passion through sport together, in massive crowds; but the idea of coming together to express our sorrow on a yearly basis as earlier societies did is something that has almost gone. (I say 'almost' because the dawn service of Anzac Day, when we remember our war dead, is becoming increasingly well attended. A moment of 'katharsis' indeed).

So how do I express my pain? How can I purge myself of my grief? I have several options; self-pity and depression; suicide; or through the catharsis of a shared experience of pain through writing. I choose the latter, battle with the former, and try and avoid the second option (turned out I was no good at it anyway). I can take my 'other', my extended, idealised self, and put him through the kinds of pain that expresses my feelings of the terrible betrayals and hurts I have suffered. I can see him struggle, succumb, and then ultimately triumph over the emotions that have claimed me in the past. And it will have real meaning for me because I have chosen to attach myself to, and absorb into myself, this character. In doing so I understand completely the boundary of what is and isn't 'real', to use its most shallow form, but I also understand the reality of the psychological and spiritual healing that comes from such catharsis.

This is neither particularly neurotic nor unusual. It is, in fact, the basis of what we call 'drama' (and why drama based upon post-modernism is such a soulless and ultimately barren art form). Drama as we know it has as its origins such rituals as the bouphonia of ancient Greece, and the driving theme or motif of earliest drama was the punishment due to transgression of the sacred. The drama therefore expressed shame, grief, guilt and reparation. It was an expression of things once ordered becoming disordered, and the penalties that must be endured before order could once again reign supreme (the link with the story of Christ is obvious). Good drama has at its core the terrible ideals of sacrifice, good and evil (or order and chaos, as the Greeks would have it). It is impossible to think of any great dramatic story that did not have suffering at its heart, and this is true of every culture of which I am aware.

'Whumping' Daniel Jackson, or whichever character it is that has engaged your soul, is part of a long tradition of dramatic structure and purpose.

The reasons for choosing Daniel to bear my pain and find my healing are complex and have little to do with how he looks. He has the right balance of male and female aspects to his character that I need; he is the polyglot I always dreamed of being; he has a courage that is both physical and moral. He is flawed enough - with my flaws! - to be recognisable. My soul sees him and claims a mate. He is both the idealised form of myself and the person I could never be, and as such he is the perfect character to take my sins, suffer for them, and find salvation by overcoming them. Others will find this attraction in Jack, or Sam, or Teal'c. It is instantly obvious that discussions of which character is better become nonsense. To claim one is more appealing than the other is to say "I am more appealing than you"; and whether we'd like to believe that or not, the honest person recognises the insecurity for what it is, smiles, and lets it go.

So there you have it. Those who, like me, have trodden a dark path will always look to make our 'gods', and therefore ourselves, suffer. We understand the need for the darkest parts of our pain to find expression. Those who have been spared the worst that life can bring may also find themselves treading the hurt/comfort road.

As Margaret Attwood, the brilliant Canadian writer has said, she writes unhappy families because her own childhood was so happy. She intuitively understands the need for the balance of light and dark, grief and solace, order and chaos in our lives. Writing and reading hurt/comfort can bring us that.

� POSS / Pink Khaki 2002

Addendum by guest author Jmas

I've never liked the word whumping, it started out so innocently but has since devolved into a less complimentary term in some places, but I am an HC/angst writer with quite a few stories out there and I'd like to add just a bit more to Poss's excellent analysis.

I'm relatively 'young' in the online world of fanfic, or old I suppose if we simply take Stargate fandom as a jumping off place. But hurt/comfort, or rather the elements of it, is a type of fiction, film and entertainment I've actively sought for most of my life. I seek characters I empathize with, identify with, can understand on a philosophical and/or human level. Why do I enjoy reading about them suffering? Partly what Poss said, connecting with the character's conflict and pain helps us connect to something within ourselves.

As Poss said much better, in a very real way our world does not welcome strong emotion, does not encourage us to seek our own depths or to consider the depths of others' souls. I think that's very sad even as I understand the need to insulate. What I enjoy most about reading, writing, or watching the psychological and or physical 'hurt' of a character or characters is that it opens the door to our insulators and lets us feel empathy, lets us understand life, the universe, and maybe ourselves just a little bit more than we did before. I need to be emotionally engaged in order to identify with the characters. They have to be more than just cardboard cutouts going through the action with no independent feelings - I need to see depth *of* character within a character and HC and angst are the perfect vehicle for that.

The emotional depths, the thoughts and feelings of characters as they move through the conflict of the tale adds the element of humanity to a story. It helps us get in touch with our own emotions, our own empathy and our own souls. And for those who are open to the experience and choose to learn from it, I believe it can make us better people.

Some call it melodrama, I call it the human drama and for me it is a much more enlightening tale.

� JMAS / Pink Khaki 2002