writers-wayward-works

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I feel like this concept would be really good with a literal Pet Whumpee. Like a whumpee who’s been trained to be submissive and dog-like, so bc of the “holy shit I bought a fucking human” thoughts the guilt of that eats at the caretaker. So caretaker tries to de-program whumpee out of guilt and- as you know- de-programming is not clean, it’s disorienting and scary for the whumpee even if a caretaker knew what they were doing- which this one absolutely doesn’t- so caretaker feels like they’re making everything worse and it’s just a horrible feedback loop of stress, tears, and self loathing

TW: suicidal ideation

Depressed whumper who gets a whumpee in much the same way that real depressed people are told to get a dog - they'll be motivated to get up in the morning and stay alive if they're responsible for feeding another creature. Emotional support whumpee! Bonus concept: it all backfires when they gradually realize how wrong it is to keep someone captive, and start to become infinitely more suicidal out of guilt.

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I want to see whumpees suffering the aftermath of a night of drinking. It’s so mundane (in my social circle at least) but it’s just so versatile. Bonus points for it maybe being accidental or whumperless. No this has nothing to do with my current raging hangover, not in the slightest. So here’s a list of just some possibilities:

Nausea, vomiting & stomach upset

Headaches

Muscle pain & weakness

Dehydration

Photosensitivity & noise sensitivity

Exhaustion

Strained personal relationships

Irritability, agitation & apathy

Insomnia & hypersomnia

Chest pain

Drastic appetite changes

Heartburn & acid reflux

Low body temperature

Dizziness, spinning vision & vertigo

Intense food cravings

Hangover shakes

Shortness of breath

Hallucinations

Nicotine (or other drug) cravings

Heart palpitations

Waking up drunk

Hangxiety & Sunday Scaries

Vivid dreams & nightmares

Brain fog

Blackouts & memory gaps

Waking up somewhere they didn’t go to sleep

Symptoms persisting for days at a time

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Hey fellow whump artists!

No matter your skill level, thank you for bringing to life the scenes and characters that mean so much to all of us. Thank you for showing us a glimpse of your inner world. I feel something wonderful when I see whump imagery in front of me: the joy of knowing that somebody devoted time and care to imagining the details of what suffering looks like, and what vulnerability looks like, and what recovery looks like. Somebody gave thought and study to depicting the human form at its lowest points and didn’t flinch away from showing the messiness and even the gore. Somebody held this little character tenderly in their mind’s eye and is now putting them in front of us and is asking that we do the same. I think that’s incredible. Keep it up.

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Writing Prompt #3061

It was easy to ignore the ache most days. It had simply become part of my life. Maybe that was why it hurt so much more when it was noticeable.

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- Reader Inserted -

This is not my usual content. TW: Surreal depiction of dissociation during sex - I mean really surreal, there are no descriptions of acts, only abstract, euphemistic descriptions, like a dream. Reader is sex repulsed but pushing through that by choice for a partner’s sake. Reader and their partner are both gender neutral and nondescript.

There’s someone standing outside your window. On the 20th floor, knocking. “I’ll let you in,” you keep saying. “I want to. I promise…”

You’re mostly afraid that you won’t be able to do this, but partly afraid that you will. There’s no latch. You’re just slamming an office chair against the glass again and again and again, while the someone looks at you and you don’t look back because what the fuck will you see? You don’t know when gravity will start working again and it will all be too late. You don’t know what demon’s pitchfork they licked to get this high, you just know what you’re consciously trying to do and what if you can’t do it, what if they drop to their death, what if you’re closed off and a murderer by manslaughter, so don’t be such a coward, just open up, just. Open. Up. 

It’s not working. The glass is too thick. You look up finally. “I can’t - you better fucking help me, you need to push through or you’re not getting in.”

A knife glitters in the sun, the kind they sell to break car windows from the inside if you drive into a river. It was made for this. It strikes the glass and the beams burst through and the building is no longer divided from its outwardness. It’s in the room, and every surface has turned to wood and there is no inside and no outside. 

A shadow cometh on four paws. A shadow with jet fur and jaws inside its jaws like a moray eel. A great beast is circling. 

But…circling what? It enters the room, not you. There is no you! Hahaha, you aren’t even there! It can’t have you. It can’t have what doesn’t exist.

You’re safe. You’re so safe that the beast can go anywhere it likes and be free. Anyway you always wanted it to be free, because it’s a good beast really, this thing that enters. You’ve done it, just as you meant to. You think about the phrase “it’s more afraid of you than you are of it.” And it has nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.

A wind blows through the yawning window, through the skeleton scaffolding around a barren skyscraper. Under the city, the subways roar their tunnels. Above it, the sun bleaches consciousness away.

The sun plunges through its cavernous dark, falling and falling, but it is not the only star or the central star. Sparks roll through the places in nebulas which move with glitter-strewn tides. On distant worlds, aliens kill each other, some almost intelligent enough to form words. A thing like a rabbit, grey and purple, eats rocks and photosynthesizes the spurts of a pulsar. There is neither intention nor regret, yet all is going according to plan.

It’s regular now. It’s easy. You aren’t there, but the universe sighs in relief, so endlessly relieved that everything is easy and functioning as it is supposed to. Inspectors move through a factory floor full of light. Is it a holiday in this factory? Ribbons hang from the rafters in blue and pink and yellow, in celebration of fertility. The production units make their soft squeaks, and ecstatic gasps for air, and spurt volumes into buckets. They’re drenched in heat and steam. The sweat rises. When they grow thirsty, someone puts a bottle to their lips, and they whine and writhe joyfully, and keep converting water into product. Tonnes and tonnes of it ship out in great metal canisters each morning to other factories, lower order factories. The machines pump tirelessly. They’ll never stop, they’ll never run out. Abundance reigns.

There’s so much, forever and ever. A bottomless breakfast buffet at 6 AM. Strawberries. Eggs. It just is a fact and if somebody prepared it, that person is unknown and unseen. 

The ground pushes upward against stumbling footsteps, against human collapses. It carries the people who want to be in rooms, right to where they want to be, diligently, since feet press down and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Feet press down on the floor, and the floor responds as it is supposed to. The floor rises and rises up the levels of a hotel, up the dingy red and blue carpet, up the vending machines when you can never quite get your fist but now it’s up there just fine, getting and taking, up with the morning sun crawling through the Marriott curtains and the key prying open the door to where you lay. 

Your skin is made of ash. A quicksand clutches at the inside of your veins. You can’t move and the feeling inside you is too heavy for tears. The blanket weighs hundreds of pounds but at least it’s warm. You’re filthy and still two inches to the left of your own body. You did what you meant to do.

There’s a figure at the window, half nude and smiling. “I think you went into subspace.”

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “I guess so.”

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OR- and hear me out bestie- do everything in your power to keep them alive even if they’re in terrible pain bc their suffering will be like angels and wind chimes to your ears :)

fucking make that asshole immortal just so you can make them suffer

alternatively-

You were the healer—the last light of your party. But now your final ally dies in your arms, and there’s no one left to save. The enemy jeers, calling you useless. You look up, eyes hollow and black. The light is gone. The Void answers. You're no longer a cleric. You're something far worse.

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“Her return to consciousness was sluggish, her mind thick and foggy, as if the pain radiating from her head wound had wrapped around her thoughts like a dark shroud.”

I have no one to tag tbh

Last Line Tag Game

Thank you very much @treedaddypuff !!

I didn’t close my eyes - I didn’t want to miss the last moments of her face shadowing my view, even though I am unworthy of her blade.

I shall tag... @bluelolblue @kavalyera @paingoes @writers-wayward-works and anybody else who wants to play!

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i think we kind of underutilize how terrifying stalking is in whump. like usually when a character is stalked in a story its moreso just a detail in the background leading up to the main story where they’re abducted. but stalking in itself, especially when the whumper is good enough to not be caught, but still wants to be noticed to some capacity (leaving notes, stealing, etc) is absolutely terrifying and i think should be expanded upon more. just the complete invasion of privacy, the never-ending paranoia, all of it.

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i am a Sucker for scenarios where someone encounters their younger/other self and has the opportunity to give them the compassion and understanding they haven't received.

but I am also, and possibly even more, a Sucker for scenarios where someone encounters their younger/other self and uses it as an opportunity to externalize absolutely horrifying levels of self-loathing

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Whump ABCs Round 3

The K trope group won! And now... we vote to determine the final winner

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Guard dog type character watching over someone who doesn't reciprocate, who doesn't actually want them there. A stray dog tying themselves to whoever feeds them, even if said person doesn't give them a second thought.

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I've seen an idea going around a few whump blogs that if you support whump or other darkfic, you also have to support pedo fic. This rings clearly false to me, but the problem is these people will only accept logic, not feelings, and I can't explain it beyond "sexuallizing minors is wrong, duh." You're one of the few people I've seen with well-thought-out takes on this kind of thing, so I was wondering if you might be able to help explain the underlying logic of this principle? (and especially how it's different from other kinds of darkfic/whump) (No pressure tho!)

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that somebody is getting value out of my rants, haha. Okay, response below the cut. CW: discussion of ethics in writing, including violence and CSA

First, a definition: I'm defining "pedo fic" as fic that sexualizes minors or assault against minors, in the manner of smut rather than, for example, a traumatic backstory for a character who is now recovering.

Number one, just from a "liking things" perspective, you don't really have to justify yourself. If you don't like it, you don't like it, and you don't owe anyone an explanation. Most proshippers already agree with this, except they treat that as a pathology on your part - they would call it a "squick" or a "trigger." Sometimes it is, but in fact it can be opinion too, and you have a right to opinions as much as they do.

So okay, from a logical perspective, why would somebody hold the opinion that pedo fic is wrong but all or most other darkfic and whump are fine?

I've seen a lot of posts saying that "we are the 'torturing characters for fun' fandom," and like…that is just not a monolith. Some of us are torturing characters for fun, whereas others are comforting characters for fun, or imagining being tortured for fun. And what do we mean by fun? Some of us mean the satisfaction of seeing a conflict unfold, seeing character development, seeing general drama, etc. Others mean sexual pleasure.

I've talked about it more elsewhere, but sexual engagement with fiction is participatory. You aren't just reading or writing, you are doing an action. Not an action with a real victim, but an action within yourself: getting aroused, and getting off. The fact that there's no real victim doesn't negate morality. It still matters whether you are treating the concepts you're engaging with and the hypothetical characters you're engaging with in a respectful and consensual way, because you're a real person.

So okay, some of us are in the "getting off on torturing characters fandom." Let's think about whether it's possible to be respectful and consensual within ourselves while in that fandom. Guess what? It very much is possible! That is not a morally indefensible fandom to be in, because torture is not contradictory to consent! Getting off on inflicting physical pain or seeing someone in physical pain is okay - you will find people who enjoy that and have a great time. Getting off on inflicting mental pain is okay - you will find people who love to play with mindfuckery in the bedroom and this is what safewords are for. Getting off on loss of control is okay - there are plenty of people who willingly give up control in the bedroom (again, safe words are here for a reason.) Getting off on comforting people who are in pain or being comforted when you are in pain is okay - you will find lots of people who really enjoy that, even folks who consider themselves vanilla. Getting off on dark characters/villains is okay - you will find lots of people who have done awful things and yet deserve pleasure and forgiveness.

In all of these above cases, the thing you like is, at the end of the day, not contradictory to consent. It still respects other people as autonomous beings.

How about getting turned on by minors? Is that okay? No. There's no situation in which a minor can consent to being sexualized. If someone likes that, then the thing they like is not respectful to the autonomy of other living beings. That's…bad. I know that may be difficult to hear, and it may make people think we hate them, but I honestly don't.

Writing fic like this is not even good for the person enjoying it. Like yeah, there's no thought police, I'm not going to crawl into anyone's brain and arrest them for fantasizing about this stuff, nor do I want to. But they are hurting themselves, if no one else. They're alienating themselves from the full degree of connection that is possible between living people, of which consent is a vital part. To get sappy for a moment…respect for consent is a large portion of what makes love the extraordinary thing that it is. If you love someone (not just romantically but in all ways), you are willing to let them go and to consider what they want and what's best for them. Sexualizing them when they are a child is inherently contradictory to this.

"It's a coping mechanism/it's how I deal with my trauma" is an explanation, but the coping mechanism isn't healthy, so the next step from there is to challenge it, not indulge it. If you told me you hid yourself away in your house and daydreamed all day "as a coping mechanism," and you couldn't stop even if you wanted to, I'd say, "Well…you're not hurting anyone else, but you're hurting yourself. You're cutting yourself off from real relationships and putting all of your most passionate sexual and romantic energies towards fantasies that can't/shouldn't come true. It seems painful. Maybe it's worth talking to a therapist?" And I should know, because I've been stuck in maladaptive daydreaming. Believe me, it doesn't end well to cling to relationships that will only ever be possible in fiction. (Not say maladaptive daydreaming is equivalent, by the way - just making an analogy.)

So yeah, that's my argument personally. I hope that makes sense and I hope that anybody who may have felt attacked while reading this is okay and takes some time to think and take care of themselves. I always give this disclaimer, but I really don't hate anyone or want anyone to be hurt. If you're planning to use this in arguments with people…just make sure you're not pushing them to some point of awful distress, because that's just harassment and not likely to change anyone's mind even if it's well-meaning.

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Me when a character starts experiencing an agonizingly, Horrifically, painful transformation :

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An important conversation under a red umbrella as the rain patterns against the plastic.

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