#I would be genuinely interested to know what the overlap of the whump community and true crime fans is bc they seem similar to me sometimes

[whumpty-dumpty-doo]

Omg, so ever since I found out about the whump community I've been reading whump stories and...

!!!!!

Some of the situations you guys write and put your characters in are so freaking brutal and messed up. (I say this with both distraught horror and affection)

Absolutely don't get me wrong, I eagerly await all of the new chapters people write and hungrily gobble them down when they're posted, but oh my god. Sometimes I read stuff and am just aghast.

I took a "what kind of whumper are you" quiz a while back and my result was "lmao you're a caretaker, not a whumper". I sat there was was like "How could that be?! I can whump characters! Come on!

And then I proceeded to realize that half the time I'm so invested in people's whump fics it's because I desperately hope for a happy, comforting ending for these poor, poor fellows and I want to see how they cope with/get out of their situations. Put them through hell, but ohhhh my goodness I just want them to be happy again in the end (or if not happy, then at least some semblance of safe/okay.)

Idk man, late night whump thoughts I'm just shouting into the void. I hope you all keep writing because I really do enjoy your works, even if I'm costantly reading them looking like this:

[practically-an-x-man]

Talk Shop Tuesday for how you approach whump in your writing?

Ooooooh, good question! Thank you!

Talk Shop Tuesday

The first part of my answer is going to be that I've been interested in anatomy and biology since I was a very young child. I mean, for a while my favorite book at my grandma's house was a kid's anatomical encyclopedia! Not to mention, I was a forensic anthropology major before I dropped out of college. It's genuinely fascinating to me.

So a lot of my whump fics play off of that - anatomy, medicine, forensics, et cetera. That's kind of where I anchor my writing when it comes to whump. As soon as I know what I'm going to try and convey (such as the severe hypothermia in Deep Freeze), I do a bit more research to brush up and take note of certain symptoms or effects that I might be able to use in my writing. I may take certain liberties here or there, especially when it comes to superpowered characters who may not have an "ordinary human" reaction to the stressor, but I feel like basing it in that genuine reality and anatomy as much as possible makes for a more compelling piece.

The other thing I need to remember is that I have a much higher tolerance for gore and other dark subjects than most people might. I've got that interest in anatomy and forensics, I read a lot of horror books and watch a lot of horror films, I work in special effects and have to research a lot of gruesome injuries for that, and all of that means that I'm fairly desensitized to those touchy subjects. I just... don't get grossed-out the way other people might. And while I do try to convey any darker subjects in my writing in the most respectful, grounded light I can, I struggle with knowing how much I can really write about them before it becomes a trigger for someone (yes, I tag my fics thoroughly, but it's still a worry of mine).

So the second thing I try to think about, once I've decided what I'm basing the fic around, is how to find that balance between "this is compelling whump and I enjoy it" versus "this is torture porn and it's too much" - which is funny, because I only ever watch "torture porn" movies (like Hostel or the later SAW movies) when I'm curious about the special effects, I'm not really compelled by it as a genre.

I just don't know, in the general fanfiction climate, how my heavily horror-inspired whump might stack up against what others might want to read. I'm sure that logically there's a lot of overlap in those communities, and I know that properly tagging my fics is really the important thank and I can write whatever I want when it comes down to it, but it's tough to determine where those lines fall when I'm just posting these works to a faceless audience on the other side of a computer screen.

I guess I would say, as a whole, whump comes fairly easily to me as a subject because of my combined interests in anatomy/forensics and the macabre. Once I've got a good prompt or concept, it's pretty easy for me just to let things flow and I generally don't need to do much deep planning. The main struggle is just finding that point of temperance, where it can be a enjoyably-dark fic without just being needlessly graphic.

It's like... taking a literary biopsy - you're slicing up these characters in the hopes that you find something interesting, and sometimes you might not find as much as you hope, but there's a purpose behind whatever pain you might cause. Not every whump fic has to involve character development, but I do think they're much more compelling when you can dig into the introspection and understand the characters rather than just torturing them for the sake of grossing out your readers.