I finished this semester at college working with four other incredible people on a game for our game class for our final project.
This game is Introspect, a game that explores some of the basic traits of Dr. Markus Saunders, a psychiatrist who one day receives an anonymous note that makes him slightly distraught. You explore a surreal landscape that helps you learn more about Dr. Saunders.
It would mean so much to me and my team if all of you could take some time to play through it. The average play time is a little under 10 minutes, but 15 if you want to take the time to listen and enjoy the mood of the game. I worked on all of the music in the game while three wonderful artists ( @endernach ) put the visuals together and one incredibly talented programmer made it all work (I have no idea how he did it, but he did). We spent an enormous amount of time understanding how we wanted this game to feel and how we worked together as a team. For our very first game, I think it turned out pretty damn great and I think my teammates would agree with me!
You can play Introspectfor free here. Full-screen mode and earphones/headphones are highly recommended! (As a music side note, in three of the rooms you will enter, there are two versions of each track. Feel free to hang out in each room both at the beginning and the end to listen to them!)
Hurt/Comfort is such an interesting thing. It’s basically an entire genre of fanfiction. I’d argue it satisfies a very basic, vital need–the same way that horror satisfies the basic need to be scared in a safe, controllable space.
And yet it doesn’t really have an equivalent outside of fan culture. "Tearjerkers” can sometimes come close, they’re probably the closest thing to a mainstream hurt/comfort genre that there is. But those types of books and movies don’t usually focus on the “comfort” aspect in the same way, and don’t make use of tension and release.
I think every good hurt/comfort fic makes use of tension and release just as horror does,
whether the writer is consciously aware of it or not. Though of course the tension and release in h/c comes from different sources than in horror. Instead of anticipating something frightening, you anticipate the intimacy and/or validation that comes from the “comfort” part you know is eventually coming. That’s what provides release of the tension built up during the “hurt” scenes.
I could write a goddamned essay about this it’s so fascinating.
This is a great definition/analysis of it! I’ve been interested in this too. It’s always been my favorite fanfiction genre. It’s to the point where reading just angst is not enough, there is something left unfulfilled if the character does not have the ‘tension and release’ and just remains under whatever stressor at the end. I think part of the reason I like it so much, is often in mainstream media characters DO NOT have that ‘healing moment’, shall we say. Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened. Which is not realistic as we all know, so I think the hurt/comfort genre in fanfiction is a kind of a response to that. The “filling in the blanks” of when a character needs a moment of healing or validation to continue onward, because that in a sense is more relatable then the “super hero” character who can move through it like nothing damaged them.
Well this explains a lot. (It’s always been very important to me and kind of my go-to thing for catharsis/therapeutic expression/comfort.) Like, I joke about “ahaha I love pain” but like, nah, the pain isn’t enough or what it’s ultimately about. I need a healing component too, and I love seeing people look at the psychological basis of why.
let me just cut to the chase. Sportacus has a Number 10 on his shirt, a small detail that most viewers will probably forget. However, it has stated that the Number Ten means something, but I’ll get to that later. Let’s start with the first episode of LazyTown. A brief summary of it is that Stephanie, the main character, moves into LazyTown to visit her uncle, Mayor Milford Meanswell. She meets other kids in the town, Trixie, Stingy, Pixel, and Ziggy, who’s personalities are identical to their name. Robbie Rotten is also there in his secret lair, keep note of this, He looks around the town to see weeds, an abandoned basketball court, and other very polluted things. He seems content about this, proclaiming he will keep LazyTown the laziest town on the world. Later on, Stephanie talks to her uncle about how none of the kids want to go outside to play. Her uncle then tells her that there was a man with a Number 9 on his shirt, who made kids active. Wait, 9? But Sportacus has Number 10 on his shirt! Was this careless mistake? Or something more different? Stephanie makes a letter to said person, and goes to the mailbox to send it. She finds a cork inside the tube and tries pulling it out. Robbie is then shown stopping in his tracks and is visibly distraught about this, meaning he knows what is going to happen when she sends that letter. She pulls the cork out and puts the tube like envelope into the pipe, and it soon gets launched into the sky, and is received by Sportacus. Sportacus jumps down to meet Stephanie, she asks him if he is Number 9 and he responds with that he is Number 10. Robbie than says “Another one?” Confirming the fact that there was a Number 9, and Robbie fought him aswell. Think about it, at the start of the episode Robbie already has his signature secret lair. However, he doesn’t use it for evil, he doesn’t terrorize the citizens of LazyTown, he likes the citizens how they are, lazy. So, why would he have this lair, unless he had to use it against Number 9? Then the question remains, where is Number 9? Did he leave? Did he accomplish his goal, move away and then Robbie made it lazy again? Or did Robbie Rotten beat Number 9? Think about it, why would he use the schemes he uses on Sportacus and friends if they didn’t prove successful against Number 9? So we got that Robbie Rotten beat Number 9 and made LazyTown lazy, but that also strikes up another question. Are there more numbers? Are Number 9 and Sportacus apart of a group that ride blimps and help make kids exercise and play outside? Now are you ready for the biggest stretch in this entire theory?
Robbie Rotten was the first Sportacus-like member of this group. Why so? Well Robbie admits it himself.
In a little known song called “We Are Number One.
Mashups and Exports 