I've noticed that a majority of hurt/comfort readers are said to be female and prefer male characters. But I read hurt/comfort in a wider literary range than just inside fandom. Tolkien, for instance, has an exquisite grasp of h/c infrastructure that underlies the impact of most of his writing. Buffy is another good example; hardly an episode goes by without someone getting hurt and comforted, and there are enough female characters for that to include f/f action. So if you include canon examples, not just fanfic, that opens up more room for femslash or female friends in h/c generally.
One of my projects is a Poetry Fishbowl where I write poems based on what my readers request. It didn't take them long to start asking for returns of favorite characters. And the interesting thing? My audience leans toward female, and they favor female characters. I've got a bunch of series with female leads, and fewer with male leads. Yet folks like the hurt/comfort aspects, even with female characters in play. (Okay, they also like to help me beat up guys.) So there's variation across audiences, as there is across fandoms in some regards.
Among my most h/c series with female characters: Fiorenza the Wisewoman has an herbalist as the main character. Her whole job is about taking care of people, although sometimes she's more tart than sweet about it.
Hart's Farm is a relationship-heavy series with loads of characters in different combinations. It runs to emotional challenges, sprinkled with a few physical ones, and lots of fluffy comfort.
Path of the Paladins has two female leads, a senior paladin and her novice. Both of them have been roughed up by the wreck their world is in. It's a very gritty, "takes a licking and keeps on ticking" storyline.
Three totally different tones, yet all run strong on hurt/comfort and all generously supplied with female characters, by audience request. A big part of that is because people can ask for and get stuff they aren't getting from the mainstream entertainment.
Fandom does something similar in letting people self-select what motifs to feature and what characters to put into them. There seems to be a growing interest in femslash and female friendships: enough to have single-fandom and multifandom fests on those themes now. Sometimes you get audience clusters, where a bunch of folks like similar things and therefore feed into each other and amplify that. Other times it's the canon itself that provides the impetus, such as a show like Buffy or Birds of Prey with enough female characters to make f/f combinations easy instead of a stretch.
It's a subtly different itch to scratch, h/c with women rather than with men. One aspect of it is that whole stories that usually involve a man or men can happen just with women. That you don't need a man for that. Some fanwriters especially play that up if there is any kind of butch/femme split in character personality (think tough Zoe and elegant Inara, or slayer Buffy and witch Willow).
I like seeing the diversity that h/c can reach, across fanfic and canon, across m/m and m/f and f/f and all the other alphabet soup. It's not just a genre; it's a plot dynamic. There's a lot that can be done with it.
Hmm...
One of my projects is a Poetry Fishbowl where I write poems based on what my readers request. It didn't take them long to start asking for returns of favorite characters. And the interesting thing? My audience leans toward female, and they favor female characters. I've got a bunch of series with female leads, and fewer with male leads. Yet folks like the hurt/comfort aspects, even with female characters in play. (Okay, they also like to help me beat up guys.) So there's variation across audiences, as there is across fandoms in some regards.
Among my most h/c series with female characters:
Fiorenza the Wisewoman has an herbalist as the main character. Her whole job is about taking care of people, although sometimes she's more tart than sweet about it.
Hart's Farm is a relationship-heavy series with loads of characters in different combinations. It runs to emotional challenges, sprinkled with a few physical ones, and lots of fluffy comfort.
Path of the Paladins has two female leads, a senior paladin and her novice. Both of them have been roughed up by the wreck their world is in. It's a very gritty, "takes a licking and keeps on ticking" storyline.
Three totally different tones, yet all run strong on hurt/comfort and all generously supplied with female characters, by audience request. A big part of that is because people can ask for and get stuff they aren't getting from the mainstream entertainment.
Fandom does something similar in letting people self-select what motifs to feature and what characters to put into them. There seems to be a growing interest in femslash and female friendships: enough to have single-fandom and multifandom fests on those themes now. Sometimes you get audience clusters, where a bunch of folks like similar things and therefore feed into each other and amplify that. Other times it's the canon itself that provides the impetus, such as a show like Buffy or Birds of Prey with enough female characters to make f/f combinations easy instead of a stretch.
It's a subtly different itch to scratch, h/c with women rather than with men. One aspect of it is that whole stories that usually involve a man or men can happen just with women. That you don't need a man for that. Some fanwriters especially play that up if there is any kind of butch/femme split in character personality (think tough Zoe and elegant Inara, or slayer Buffy and witch Willow).
I like seeing the diversity that h/c can reach, across fanfic and canon, across m/m and m/f and f/f and all the other alphabet soup. It's not just a genre; it's a plot dynamic. There's a lot that can be done with it.