My opinion: if a story has no suffering of some kind, the result will look suspiciously like any of the budget bills currently before Congress- or this sentence.

(I got two asks relating to my last metawriting entry on suffering, so I’m going to go ahead and count the as addenda to that entry. Here’s the first addenda.)

Well, I’m inclined to agree with the comment, but in fact, there are plenty of stories out there with little to no suffering. I would say that the greatest example would be the old Superman comics. See, Superman is an odd duck–effectively immortal and invulnerable by his very nature, to make him suffer causes a catch-22. The only way to inflict suffering on him is to rid him of his powers first (via Kryptonite or Red Sun or <insert MacGuffin here>) and then inflict suffering upon him, but by ridding him of his power, he is no longer Superman, and so the object of our suffering has changed and disappeared.

In the gold and silver age of comics, no one cared about this, of course. No challenge was too great for Superman, who could solve anything with his various superpowers (generalized as super-“X” where X is any English verb). Hell, the dude can even turn back time in the first movie. Now, are these stories dull? Perhaps. Still, they were popular enough to render Superman into the massive icon he is today. (No, I haven’t seen the new movie, before you ask, so if it has him suffering beyond the catch-22, good for them.)

So stories do exist without suffering. They generally aren’t good or compelling stories, though there’s nothing to say they couldn’t be so. Really, what these stories lack is character change. Superman (and most superheros) don’t need to change. In fact, change, to them, is generally the antithesis of their nature. They are meant to be bulwarks–the world is supposed to try and change them, and they resist. That can be compelling, and render certain kinds of suffering (see Batman in The Dark Knight). But in my stories, the characters are forced to undergo changes, and those changes beget suffering, and that suffering makes them interesting as horror.

There are porn stories which possess change and which have no suffering. They fall under the category of wish-fulfillment. Some character finds some MacGuffin which allows them to change themselves into their ideal with no repercussions. These are the MC/TF porn equivalent of Superman–empty, uninteresting, and yet annoyingly popular–at least in my opinion.