flailingfrog

[flailingfrog]

Beauveria bassiana, pt 4

August of Whump day 4, blurred vision (343 words)

CW: BBU/BBU-adjacent setting, conditioning, dehumanization (not as present in this one), institutionalized slavery, panic attack

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You’re breathing tremulously by the time you reach your room, sun tinting the gray walls and pink sheets of the double bed purple. A grey dresser, a white nightstand, and a shaggy rug, and the room is complete.

Lexi coos at you. “What’s wrong, Mantis?”

You can’t answer, just keep panting, chest tight, tight enough you feel like you might die. You’re being a bad pet. You flinch away as her fingers come towards your face. Her fingertips follow, brushing it.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

It doesn’t feel okay. Tyler doesn’t like you, and he mentioned a Katydid. Something about it screams you need to run (though of course you’d never run, would never leave your owner, because you’re a good girl.)

Her words cut through your thoughts. “I need you to focus on what you can hear.”

You point blurry vision at a blurry her and don’t immediately do as she asks.

“Just focus on the sounds of the room.”

Your room doesn’t have much in the way of sound, but there’s the fan whirrs above you, the clink of its strings hitting each other, the air coming through the vents. Your breath, hers. Her voice as she says, “Good girl.”

She brushes her fingertips through your hair and says, “Now, I need you to focus on your breathing, okay? In… then out… what does it feel like? Just feel it. You can do that, right?” You’ve never been as cognizant of what a mess your hair is as you are with her fingers brushing through it.

But you’re riveted by your breath, on its in and out, the flutter, then pace as it grows stronger. Your vision starts to clear. Your chest hurts less. You can breathe. You can pretend, at least for a second, that everything’s fine. The fight isn’t in this room, after all. You’re safe. You press your head against her.

“There you go. Good girl. That’s my good girl.”

The words trickle down you like a balm. All you want to be ever again is her good girl.

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[flailingfrog]

Beauveria bassiana, pt 3

August of Whump day three: On display (793 words)

CW: BBU/BBU-adjacent setting, institutionalized slavery, conditioned whumpee, honestly a tamer part of the story

You come home rough, dizzy. Your owner’s a woman. She picks you up at the airport and presses a kiss to your head, calls you her sweet thing, and packs you into her car. Your name’s Mantis, and she loves you—she’s going to take good care of you—starting, she says, by getting some ice on those bruises. You thank her, even if you think it’s too late for that to help. Sitting hurts.

She curves you around in a u-turn as you enter the house, into the living room, and settles you on her couch, though you’d much prefer one of the emerald green chairs that catches the sun perfectly, especially with how smooth and hard the leather of the couch is, and wraps you in a knit cream blanket thrown over the back of it, crowds you with pillows covered in moths and beetles, and puts an ice pack to your face, a heating pad to your lower back. Your entire body jitters. You’re supposed to take care of her, not the other way around.

The room’s quiet in a new way, not like those of the facility. There’s no buzzing. All around you, insects in cross-stitch line the walls, real ones line the shelves, both of the faux-fireplace and the bookshelves the same pale wood as the floor.

You ask, “What do you want me to do, Miss?”

“Call me Lexi, hon. And don’t do anything. We’ve just got to fix you up, okay?”

Lexi isn’t a name fitting for her short dark bob and fine dress. “Okay, Lexi.”

“When my husband gets home, you’ll love him. He’s going to be so surprised. He’ll love you, too. Let’s get you something to wear. You have to be cute for him. It’s important we’re both always cute for him.” She winks at you, and trying to read into her words leaves your brain hairy. Your heart’s beginning to rocket.

You’re still dizzy in the dress, the world not on right, and the blue’s too bright for you, washes you out, but she tells you you’re adorable, that you’re her gorgeous little Mantis. She talks to you for hours, maybe more at you, though you don’t think the difference matters when you’re hers. You’re even in less pain than when you came in. You’re so lucky to be here.

When the sun paints the house in orange hues through the open windows, there’s the sound of a key in a lock. Her entire demeanor shifts as she stands, alert, someone who wants something, and she grabs you by the arm and drags you off the couch and towards to him. You shovel down the way your jaw threatens to set, eyes harden, the tightness in your chest, and replace it with how loved you are. Lucky, you are so lucky, she loves you so much and you are so lucky. She can drag you if she wants. You’ve certainly been dragged before.

She drags you past her long walnut table and into the kitchen, the peach backsplash the only pop of color against grey walls and white cabinets and countertops to the mudroom in a blur, just in time for him to peek out.

He’s a tall man, almost tall enough to hit the top of the door. It’s the most noteworthy thing about him. He’s in slacks and a striped shirt, and the first words out of his mouth are, “Oh, Lex, not again.”

Not the answer you were expecting, nor the answer she was hoping for. You rub your palms together.

“What do you mean not again? Don’t you like her? Isn’t she just the cutest?”

He sighs, steps into the house and ignores you. “Yeah. The cutest. Even cuter than Katydid.”

“You don’t have to bring her up. It’s hurtful.”

“What’s hurtful is you spending my money on pets.”

“I earn my allowance. Besides, my side business makes some cash, too. It wasn’t just your money.”

“You’re supposed to talk to me before you make purchases like this.” You’re starting to breathe heavy. He doesn’t like you, was probably doomed to never like you. Why did she think he would like you? You’re tuning out of the conversation, but that’s not allowed, so you try to focus in, only grabbing bits and pieces of them arguing, arguing like—

Your mind goes blank.

Lexi grabs your arm and again begins to drag you again. “Just—whatever, Tyler. Me and Mantis will be in her room.”

“Her room.”

“Her room, yes. She gets her own. No need to be nasty.”

As she squirrels you away, you stare back at Tyler, watch him huff, cradle his face in his hand, other on his hip, and try not to take it personally.

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[flailingfrog]

Beauveria bassiana, pt 2

August of Whump day two: sold off, bleeding heart (232 words)

CW: BBU/BBU-adjacent setting, institutionalized slavery, dehumanization, ableism

Alexis likes box babes, specifically likes the kind of box babes that get listed for clearance. The kinds you know a handler must have fucked up on because when they come to her, the damage festers. She likes trying to fix them, wrapping around their hearts and expecting them to do the same. Sure, she’s never had much success fixing a boxie. That’s just how they are, she figures: frail and unfixable. Still, it’s a fun pet project. Gives her something to do until Tyler says they can have kids.

The clearance section is where she finds just what she’s looking for. The babe’s a heavy-set thing, with pale skin and a sad face, dark hair and dark eyes. Wat’s wrong with her could be any number of things, but it turns out it’s traumatic brain injury, a more mild one, bringing cognitive and behavioral issues. She likes that a lot, sure as always she can manage it.

Fantasizing about helping this girl become something functional, she looks around her living room. Them sitting on the rich leather brown couch, next to her moth pillows, her dusting Alexis’s insect collection. It’d be like having a new best friend who can’t leave. Tyler keeps saying she needs more friends… and she’s been lonely since Katydid’s absence.

She moves her to her cart without consulting her husband, already spinning names.

Mantis. Mantis sounds good.

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Masterlist

[flailingfrog]

Masterlists

Nikole and Kit/Fissuring

After her mother dies, Nikole expects to get everything. And... she does. Kind of. On the condition she take care of her mother's boxbabe, Kit, for the rest of her life. The only problem is Nikole has hated Kit for the last 20 years and isn't about to stop now.

Beauveria bassiana

When you were damaged during training, it could've been the end of things, but luckily for you, you were placed on Clearance and you new owner's a bleeding heart... except maybe she doesn't have much as much patience for your needs as she likes to pretend.

Inhospitable

TBA

[flailingfrog]

Beauveria bassiana (August of Whump 2025) Masterlist

Recurring content includes a BBU-adjacent setting, ableism, abuse, and disability. And, you know, the institutionalized slavery and dehumanization and conditioning that comes along with being even adjacent to BBU :P

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

[flailingfrog]

Inhospitable

Typically features BBU-adjacent, institutionalized slavery, creepy/intimate whumper, themes of mental illness including psychosis, obsession. It is additionally an omegaverse kinda-sorta wingfic setting. Occasional NSFW, including but not always NSFWhump.

Snippets

Whumpmas in July 2025 Day 15: Breathless

AUs

Whumpmas in July 2025 Day 28: Fill someone else's prompt from Day 4 -- Swap whumper and whumpee's roles

[flailingfrog]

Beauveria bassiana, pt. 1

August of Whump day one: heavy (500 words)

CW: BBU/BBU-adjacent setting, institutionalized slavery, dehumanization, conditioning, head injury, training sequence

Surrounded by dull walls and a finished concrete floor just wide enough for you to lay down and not touch both ends, you train.

Handler Newman judges you. He said it’s very important that you stare at red dot he points at the wall silently, intently, posture proper, until he’s satisfied, but you’re growing tired, aching to fold back into a more comfortable position.

It’s early in training: the Drip hasn’t made you forget much yet, your old name still rattling around, irrelevant in here, and you know no one outside will ever ask you to stare at a red dot. The purpose of the exercise lost on you, maybe you aren’t taking it seriously. You haven’t yet learned that everything in here is serious, though you’ve had lessons.

“Keep staring.” It’s more threat than encouragement. Always more threat than encouragement with Handler Newman. He means it, but without a point behind the exercise, it just grates. The impulse to tell him he should lose the shitty beard, that it keeps distracting you, itches, but that didn’t go so well last time, and you’re hoping to avoid a repeat performance. “You’re better than this. We both know you are.”

You don’t think you’re better than this. That is, in fact, why you signed up. You let yourself look away, eyes aching from your task.

A hit to the back of your head sends you splaying across the ground. There’s a moment of blackness, and when your vision comes back to you a moment later, you’re putting together the moments before the hit like shattered pieces of a mirror. They don’t puzzle together right. You blink rapidly, try to steady your vision. Your head aches, dull and throbbing, on the back. He hits you again, barely a slap, but still enough to send your vision spiraling.

“I hope you’d do better than that for your owner.” He kicks you, your head still echoing from previous contact, and at the lack of proper response, he kicks you in the head. It takes you a moment to realize the noise you hear accompanying the burst of pain is you. “Nothing to say?”

Your body’s sinking into the floor. You want to go back to your apartment. But it’s gone, isn’t it? Why is it gone? Did he hit you that hard, that you can’t even remember this?

His hand crushes down on your head and you whimper. You open your mouth and try to say, “Sorry.” Your slur’s worse than usual, bad enough the word’s barely intelligible.

He tugs away from you like you’ve burnt him.

For a second, all he does is stare at you as your brain rattles around. Then: “Fuck.” Peeling back. “Fuck!”

Out of the room, metal door slamming too-loud behind him, you on the floor, body’s weight bearing into the ground. It seems like as good a time as any to shut your eyes, even if something in the back of your head says that’s a bad idea.

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[flailingfrog]

i am so normal about parasitic fungi (<- is lying)

[flailingfrog]

August of Whump Update

I finished the rough draft yesterday! Yay!!!

It's currently a lot thinner than I would like, but I can always flesh it out, especially because it's more thin in the latter half than the front.

I ended up procrastinating a couple days after some personal stuff happened, but then I got it together yesterday and wrote a three sentence story for a longer thing I'm working on for AO3, the story that posted today, and like... the last 12 days of August of Whump haha! It ended up a lot easier than I thought it'd be!! No matter what, I'm proud of myself for finishing the draft :)

Things shifted in ways I wasn't expecting but I think might end up benefiting the story. I do have to work on one character to really solidify the ending into what I want it to be, but I think I can figure out how to balance him right.

I took today off, but tomorrow I'm reading everything and taking notes about what I want to change and making an editing plan, and then I'm working through everything chronologically to get it polished in time to hopefully get it queued up the way I want it, but I've never edited like this before, so! We'll see!!!!

[flailingfrog]

Day 28: Fill someone's whump prompt from Day 4

Filling for @newbornwhumperfly's prompt "switch your whumper and whumpee’s roles." It feels silly when I am still editing and haven't posted these two's main story but this grabbed me by the throat I fear. It's bad enough I wanna write something from Bear's perspective now hahaha

CW: BBU/BBU-adjacent setting, dehumanization, conditioning, not mentioned in post but setting is omegaverse and features avian hybrids/wingfic including POV character, not actually very whumpy in this snippet but it's BBU we all know the whump is there, creepy whumper (IMO) but certainly not intimate

You are now someone else.

And that someone else is tired. Work ran long, has been running longer and longer recently as more and more people quit and aren't replaced. Not them, though. It’s never going to be them, because as tired as they are, they love this job. It was either training dogs or training boxies, and training boxies pays a fuck of a lot more.

They open the door and there’s their little guy, more guy than little, cleaning the light switch of all things as he turns to look at them. “Hey, Bear.”

He’s all adoration when he looks at them, and there is not an ounce of that unwanted interest anywhere on his face, though they’re sure it has to be in there somewhere. Maybe it’ll even come back to bite them in the ass one day. “Hey.”

The casualness was a trained aspect, the lack of their name a purposeful thing. They’re tired of hearing him say it. They lock the door to their house, and out pads old Mr. Pickles as they do, sleepy as ever.

The best thing about Bear is probably that he gave them someone to help take care of a dog. It just wasn't feasible when it was just him. “You and Mr. Pickles have a good day?” they ask as they scritch behind the beagle’s ears.

“Always.”

Now that’s the answer they like to hear. (That’s the only answer they hear, unless Mr. Pickles seems unwell or Bear has been sick a couple of days—that’s the way they wanted it.) “Good. We can watch a movie tonight. I’m feeling Disney. You wanna pick?”

“Yes, please.”

“Great. I just know you’ll pick something I like.”

[flailingfrog]

[flailingfrog]

Just to clarify, there's a bill that would STOP credit card companies from controlling who's allowed to spend money on porn or "risque" (read: queer) content. If you don't think big business should be able to tell you what to spend your own damn money on, call your senators and reps to let them know! It's the Fair Access to Banking Act, H.R.987 in the House, S.410 in the Senate.

[flailingfrog]

Current writing advice I'm seeing on TikTok and Insta is telling authors to stop using em dashes in their work because, "AI uses em dashes so people will think you've used AI."

Y'know, the AI that was trained on the stolen work of real authors?

Anyway, I will not be doing that. What I will be doing, however, is adding a note at the start of all my books that no AI was used in the creation of my work because I, the author, did not go to university for four fucking years to study English literature and linguistics only to be told I can't use proper grammar because someone might think a robot wrote it.

Fucking, insane.

[flailingfrog]

Opinion on… merfolk whump? I’m generally trying to get it more attention or at least talk about it hehe 🫧

~ @fishtankwhump

STRONGLY AGREE!!! God I love merfolk whump I'mma ramble for a sec.

Mers can go in SO many situations!! And it's so entirely dependent on the type of mer too!!! Easy one? Saltwater mer in freshwater and vice versa!! Fuck that fish UP. and oooh mer whumpees caught in a net or having a fishing hook through the tail <3 <3 And those are just the /human/ sized ones. I have an oc named Cod, who's a deep sea mer [VERY] Large who was kept in an aquarium when he was young and it temporarily stunted his growth and made him very, very sick.

And ON that note!! Tiny little mers!! Mers sold in commercial pet stores in betta cups or overcrowded tanks with nowhere to hide! Mers as decoration in some fancy aquarium, never allowed to be anything but a pretty pet and unable to escape even without any restraints because the odds of getting to the ocean before drying up or being recaptured are so, so low.

[flailingfrog]

Day 21: Tears

CW: Mind control, bad ending, creepy/intimate whumper, hand torture

You’re an ugly crier, the kind of crier with a face splotchy from the blood pooling beneath skin, snot that oozes out your nose, cheeks covered in a tear-sheen. You drool from your tears’ intensity. And you never cry a sprinkle—if it’s going to rain, it’s going to pour.

Today, you’re crying. It happened as soon as the first nail dug its way into your palm, stuck you firm to the board beneath you, body still in unnatural looseness where you sit cross-legged.

They’d traced another up that same hand—none on the right, none on your dominant—aggravating the piercing threads of pain, pulsing and white-hot, left you hyperventilating before they dug in another. And then they’d done it again. And again. You’ve lost track of how long you’ve been here, nearly forgotten they were your friend first, that you’d come over a baker’s dozen times before their lips parted and directed you to walk down into the basement and sit on the board there, that your limbs had belonged to someone else then.

They press a kiss to your jaw, and you flinch back finally (a flinch allowed, just like the crying’s allowed, because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to do it,) enough to send a sharp twist of hurt shooting out of your hand and up your arm.

You wail.

They kiss your cheek this time, and it smacks how doting it is, like they aren’t hammering nails into your hand, like they haven’t kidnapped you. “You’ve always been such a pretty crier.”

Predictably, your wailing worsens. (You hope they kill you soon, but you don’t think you’re that lucky.)

[flailingfrog]

Well... I spent part of my date night today picking out which prompts I'd use, plotting out some basic idea of the story I'd tell--even put it on the Kanban board with a pretty picture selected to represent it. Dare I say it might end up happening hahaha. Looking forward to where this goes :333

So I've... gotten this idea for August. Because, you know, there's an event in August, and... what if I did one of those connected story things basically? Just told a complete story with the prompts over the course of the month? It'd be BBU but I think it'd be fun :333 I'd be brainstorming tomorrow, and stories would probably be flash fiction, but it'd be an entire lil arc done by the end of the month (or at least, that's the idea :P) If you have thoughts on the idea, lemme know!!!

[flailingfrog]

So I've... gotten this idea for August. Because, you know, there's an event in August, and... what if I did one of those connected story things basically? Just told a complete story with the prompts over the course of the month? It'd be BBU but I think it'd be fun :333 I'd be brainstorming tomorrow, and stories would probably be flash fiction, but it'd be an entire lil arc done by the end of the month (or at least, that's the idea :P) If you have thoughts on the idea, lemme know!!!