#either way Whumper has something personal to Whumpee and they have no problem using it against them

[letitbehurt]

Intimate Whumpers who discover Whumpee’s deepest fear and dig their fingers into the wound.

[transmasc-wizard]

psssst psssssssssstttttt

talk about the ableism and saneism in the writblr community. it needs to be talked about (i would help but wordnt)

thank u for the motivation!! also i hope 1) wordn't becomes wordy, and/or 2) u have a pleasant time while wordn't

anyway

god where do i start. This is probably going to be messy and angry and not the super convenient nice happy disabled person but GOD i'm so fucking tired lmao

starting. starting. Ah! i'll start with this: I am autistic, and the people who diagnosed me also generally agreed I have some form of anxiety. (I'm also currently figuring out if I'm struggling with depression.) I don't have first-hand experience with being physically disabled, and I am not every neurodiversity ever.

So, that's the standpoint I'm coming from in regards to first-hand experience; talking about disabilities I don't have will just be me repeating what I've seen around, as well as me taking experience of my own and applying it to similar situations (e.g. the demonization of low empathy hurts autistic people. I know why, as an autistic. Similarly, it hurts pwPDs).

With that out of the way, let's continue.

WHUMP

I'm just gonna say it. I fucking hate the wider whump community on writblr. I follow a few whump accounts and I like them, but most of the whump community is a toxic, saneist, ableist hellscape.

I have seen whump prompt blogs call characters who don't speak "perfectly broken". What do they think of nonverbal autistics?

I have seen them treat PTSD like a wonderful thing to inflict on their characters. What about the people with c-PTSD and PTSD who are reading that?

I have seen them describe sexual assault and the trauma disorders it can cause in one of their "fun whump prompts" lists--completely untagged with any sort of warning that, you know, REAL PEOPLE with REAL TRAUMA might have backlisted to avoid it.

I have seen something that was literally just the description of an autistic meltdown, minus any reference to the word autism, and say "this is so satisfying to write". (From an allistic person.)

I have seen whump blogs use physical disability as a perfect method of torture, treating blindness, deafness, amputated limbs, & chronic pain as the perfect curse to inflict on their characters--I don't know who has to fucking hear this, but physically disabled people are not some pitiable animals. They're people, and they're on tumblr, and they can read what you're saying about their disablities.

Additionally, the way people describe their whumpers sometimes... delusional, psycho, psychotic, sociopathic, narcissistic, "void of empathy", etc etc etc. DID YOU KNOW THOSE ARE REAL THINGS THAT REAL PEOPLE ARE. There are people with ASPD, psychosis, low empathy, and NPD on tumblr. They don't deserve to see that shit.

& like. @ whump blogs. Do you post your stories in the touch-averse tag? If so... stop. Us touch averse folk don't need our tag invaded by horrific stories and prompts about touch aversion being ignored and abused. Find another tag.

All in all, the whump community has a giant problem of treating mental illness, trauma, and disabilities like either 1) nothing but imaginary scenarios to put whumpees through, or 2) perfect traits for their evil, abusive whumper.

THE REST OF WRITBLR

I wanted to highlight a couple of my issues with whumpblr specifically, but the rest of writblr is by no means exempt from this bullshit.

First of all, the "describing your antagonist as unempathetic/psychotic/sociopathic/a narcissist/crazy" thing is Not something that non-whump writblrs are immune to. I'll put it simply: I am hypoempathetic. I do not experience empathy. If you equate hypoempathy to being a fucking serial killer or some shit, I am blocking you. Same with the things I don't have.

Next: trauma and depression.

I won't pretend that every joke about traumatizing your OCs is evil. Neither is joking about giving them depression (less common but still there). But the overarching trend of treating trauma & depression itself like a joke, about treating trauma and depressive disorders like fun little things that come with the plot and not like actual things people live with, is harmful.

I have struggled with depression. I am an autistic teen. 60% of autistic adults have PTSD just from growing up autistic, because it's often such a traumatizing experience. I do not feel safe in a community that treats depression & trauma like a joke.

now: "character flaws"

literally please stop calling obvious ND traits "character flaws". It is not that hard. "paranoid" "blunt" "odd" "unempathetic" "crazy" (what the fuck does that even mean to you) "hyperactive" "bad memory" straight up "hallucinates" and "depressed".... shut up, shut up, i hate you, shut up.

No, I'm not saying these things are all perfect and harmless and fun traits that never impact anyone. But flaws are traits that you're supposed to dislike about a character. A character having a paranoid anxiety disorder should not make you dislike them. A character being "odd" via displaying autistic traits should not make you dislike them. Flaws are things like being cheap, cruel, ignoring the needs of others, being a liar, being bigoted, etc. And... yeah! Some things you can list as flaws are also ND traits! Bc not all ND traits are that great! But like... lots are not flaws, they're just unusual to society. Something like "isn't NT" is not a character flaw. It's just not. Being neurodivergent is not something a character should have to make up for.

(bonus points (/s) to lists that give things like "always tired" and "difficulty moving quickly" as character flaws! You've managed to hurt physically disabled and/or chronically ill people, too <3)

coding villains as/making them canonically disabled, and/or just straight up ignoring the existence of disability

the writblr community is really diverse with their characters, and that's nice. But disability is... often hard to find? in abled people's work? Either they'll have the token ADHDer, one vaguely pitiable dude in a wheelchair, or the horrifically stereotyped autistic, or they'll code their villain as some sort of neurodivergent/chronically ill.

No one has to make disabled characters. Your story is your story. But it feels shitty to be left out of everything unless fellow disabled people made it.

Example for the coding thing: if your villain has difficulty connecting to people, is blunt, doesn't lie very well, is monotone, has "unsettling" or blank facial expressions, is awkward in the way they act, dislikes people, has very rigid thought patterns, is extremely stubborn, follows their personal set of rules to a T, is a loner, is very very intent on their goal/main interest, and seems to have trouble socializing "typically", or hits a lot of those things, congrats! they're autistic. That is a person I would 100%, without a doubt, think "oh, that's me" about. (That's just one neurodiversity; I see a LOT of villains coded as having antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder in particular.)

There's also, like. if your villain uses a mobility aid, has scars, is canonically ND, etc and is the only one out of your cast who is, that's ableism. You should feel bad. Full stop. It's not hard to keep yourself from connecting disability & mental illness to villainy.

Also, side note. People's autistic characters often tire me. Because they'll have one profile of a character they say isn't ND and they're like "she's an artist who's OBSESSED with her craft, she's pretty socially awkward, she calms down in dark lonely spaces, she has difficulty communicating, she doesn't really understand social norms" and then their autistic character will be Sheldon Cooper 2.0.

using outdated/wrong terminology

maybe i'm just in the wrong circles but like. "asperger's" "multiple personality disorder" "person with autism" "psychopathic" literally what. stop that. no. (In order: autism, DID, autistic, antisocial personality disorder.)

fetishizing, romanticizing, stereotyping, and generally misrepresenting

your anxious character isn't an uwu sad small bean (like, literally stop, anxiety is hell). depression doesn't make good art. the autistic character does not have to be a super genius. your character in a wheelchair isn't a tragedy. blind people aren't super-wise sages. Etc, etc, etc.

in conclusion (not actually concluding)

i'm not done, i'm just feeling my weak grip on words slowly starting to slip away. Wordn't is coming upon me, too. hashtag quirky autism things!

Anyway, if other disabled people want to add on--ESPECIALLY those with personality disorders, psychotic disorders, and physical disabilities--i'm saying please do. I want to hear other people's experiences.

I love writblr, but it's very, very common for me as an autistic mentally ill person to feel uncomfortable with the way characters are treated & handled.

Just... listen to us? please?

that's all for now, i guess.

[kim-poce]

Mute - New blindfold

Just want to be clear, Yoshi is not a pet whumpee, there is some info dump in the tags.

CW: Condionated whumpee, blindfold, low self-esteem, brief fear of death, fear of abandonment, past abuse.

Mute - Masterlist

========

Yoshi was kneeling nervously, hearing Rue approach, he kneels a lot now that he has the energy too, Rue has yet to torture him, sometimes she acts as if she’ll never hurt him and this thought terrifies Yoshi.

Being hurt is the only thing he can do, is the only thing he can do right. What if she wants him for something else and ends up disappointed? what if even so, she doesn’t want to punish him? Will he be thrown away? Will he die? Why is she so cruel? Why doesn’t she just hurt him already? It took him so long to learn his place, the lessons and punishments were always so harsh, why can’t she just use him in the way he was painfully trained to?

“Hi!”, Rue said softly entering the living room, Yoshi flinched when he heard her getting too close, he swallowed hard, it’s the bad part of having too much energy, he can’t flinch all the time.

Rue didn’t punish him, but she didn’t like it either, Yoshi is sure, and each time Yoshi behaved badly he feels as if he is a step closer to being thrown away, it would be so much worse than anything Whumper ever did, Whumper at least knew he can’t survive by himself, they knew exactly how useless he is, they knew Yoshi just knows how to be hurt.

“I brought you something”, Rue said, kneeling in front of him, he could hear her breathing, and for the first time Yoshi hoped it was something that hurts, he needs to feel pain, “I’ll take the blindfold off for a bit, okay?”

Yoshi closed his eyes shut, swallowing hard, he knew he was trembling, he hoped that Rue at least liked this, if she likes to watch him in fear he can do that, he forced his head closer to her, praying that she likes to see him struggle against his own instincts, it the only reason he can think of for getting the blindfold off.

Yoshi could feel the air on his eyelids, he felt exposed without it, he took a deep breath, he doesn’t like it, which means Rue must like, so it’s okay, he is pleasing her, he is being good, he just needs to keep his eyes shut.

“I’ll put a new one on”, Rue said and Yoshi felt the soft fabric against his skin, “But I need you to be sincere with me, so if you don’t like it we can go back to the old one, it would be fine either way.”

Yoshi didn’t understand, the blindfold was almost part of himself now, he never thought about preferences, but he understood as soon as he opened his eyes with the new blindfold and saw Rue. It was still dark, but he could see shapes and light.

“If this is too much I can put the other back on”, Rue said, her face just I front of him, she was tilting her head, it was weird, look at a person was weird.

He didn’t like it, he was not supposed to see anything, but this much was bearable, it wasn’t worth going against Rue for such a matter, and it’ll be easier to walk around the house when ordered to.

“So, want to keep this one?”, Rue asked softly and Yoshi failed to remember the last time he had choices, he nodded weakly, it felt wrong, not only to choose but to reply, it was past the be quiet and take pain duty, past the hear orders and obey duty, it was something new.

Yoshi flinched when he saw the shape of a hand coming closer, it only touched his hair gently, and he decided to keep his eyes shut, he wasn’t meant to see the blow coming, just to feel, he just needs to feel the pain.

Maybe Yoshi was showing too much fear because Rue tried to calm him down, “It’s okay”, Rue said with a slightly off tone, her hand was still caressing his hair, “I won’t hurt you.”

I know, Yoshi admitted to himself, swallowing hard, that’s the problem.

========

Taglist: @temporary-username, @cupcakes-and-pain, @wolfeyedwitch, @whumpcreations

[luckgods]

Why all the white guys in whump?

I got Inspired by a post asking that question, and here we are. Warning: long post ahead.

I think it’s due to a combination of factors, as things frequently are.

The preference for / prevalence of white male characters in fandom is well-known and has been examined pretty thoroughly by people already.

What’s worth noting for discussing this tendency in whump in particular is that the ‘whump fandom’ itself is not a ‘fandom’ in the traditional sense of being made of fans of one single source narrative (or source setting, like a particular comics fandom, or the Star Wars extended universe) with pre-existing characters. Although subsets of traditional fandoms certainly exist within the larger whump fandom, a lot of whump is based on original, ‘fan’-created characters.

So, given the tendency of ‘traditional’ fandoms to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters due to the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc), if we say hypothetically that the whump fandom is split say 50/50 between ‘traditional’ fandom works and original whump works, you’d expect to see a higher number of works focused on white men than the demographics of the ‘traditional’ fandom’s source work would predict, but not as extreme of a divergence between the source material & the fanworks as the one you’d see if whump fandom were 100% based on popular media.

However, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. Whump stories and art remain focused on overwhelmingly male and frequently white characters, which means that the tendency of the fandom to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters cannot be ONLY explained by the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc).

And, having established the fact that whump writers & artists presumably have MORE control over the design of their characters than writers & artists in ‘traditional’ fandoms, we have to wonder why the proportions remain biased towards men, & white men in particular.

—

The race thing is pretty simple in my opinion. Mostly, it’s just another extension of the fanbase’s tendency to reflect the (predominantly US-American, on tumblr) culture it exists in, which means that, in a white-centric culture, people make artworks featuring white people.

There’s also the issue of artists being hesitant to write works that dwell heavily on violence towards people of color due to the (US-American) history of people of color being violently mistreated. I’ve actually seen a couple of posts arguing that white people SHOULDN’T write whump of nonwhite characters (particularly Black characters) because of the history of actual violence against Black bodies being used as entertainment, which means that fictional violence against Black people, written by white people, for a (presumed) white audience, still feels exploitative and demeaning.

I'm not going to get into all my thoughts on this discussion here but suffice to say that there's probably an impact on the demographics of whump works from authors of color who simply... don't want to see violence against people of color, even non-explicitly-racialized violence, and then another impact from white authors who choose not to write non-white characters either due to the reasons stated above, or simply due to their personal discomfort with how to go about writing non-white characters in a genre that is heavily focused on interpersonal violence.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a decent proportion of Japanese manga & anime being used as source material for whump, and manga-styled original works being created. The particular relationship between US-American and Japanese pop culture could take up a whole essay just by itself so I’ll just say, there’s a long history of US-Japanese cultural exchange which means that this tendency is also not all that surprising.

—

GENDER though. If someone had the time and the energy they could make a fucking CAREER out of examining gender in whump, gender dynamics in whump, and why there seems to be a fandom-wide preference for male whumpees that cannot be fully explained by the emphasis on male characters in the source text.

I have several different theories about factors which impact gender preference in whump, and anyone who has other theories (or disagrees with mine) is free to jump in and add on.

THEORY 1: AUTHOR GENDER AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
 Fandom in general is predominantly female, although these days it might be more accurate to say that fandom is predominantly composed of cis women and trans people of all genders. However, pretty much everyone who isn't a cis man has had to contend with the specter of gendered violence in their real personal life. Thus, if we posit whump (and fandom more generally) as a sort of escapist setup, it's not hard to see why whump authors & artists might willfully eschew writing female whumpees (especially in the case of inflicted whump), because (as in the discussion of people of color in whump above), even violence towards women that is explicitly non-gender-based may still hit too close to home for people whose lives have been saturated with the awareness of gender-based violence.

THEORY 2: SICK OF SEXY SUFFERING.
 Something of an addendum to theory 1, it's worth noting that depictions of female suffering in popular media are extremely gendered (in that they specifically reflect real-life gender-based violence, and that said real-life violence is almost exclusively referenced in relation to female characters) and frequently sexualized as well. There's only so many times you can see female characters having their clothes Strategically Ripped while they're held captive, being sexually menaced (overtly or implicitly) to demonstrate How Evil the villain is, or just getting outright sexually assaulted for the Drama of it all before it gets exhausting, especially when the narratives typically either brush any consequences under the rug, or dwell on them in a way that feels more voyeuristic and gratuitous than realistic and meaningful. All this may result in authors who, given the chance to write their own depictions of suffering, may decide simply to remove the possibility of gendered violence by removing the female gender.

THEORY 3: AUTHOR ATTRACTION. 
I'll admit that this one is more a matter of conjecture, as I haven't seen any good demographic breakdowns of attraction in general fandom or whump fandom. That said, my own experience talking to fellow whump fans does indicate that attraction to the characters (whether whumpers, or whumpees) is part of the draw of whump for some people. This one partially ties into theory 1 as well, in that people who are attracted to multiple genders may not derive the same enjoyment out of seeing a female character in a whumpy situation as they might seeing a male character in that situation, simply because of the experience of gendered violence in their lives.

THEORY 4: ACCEPTABLE TARGETS.
 The female history of fandom means that there's been a lot more discussion of the impacts of depicting pain & suffering (especially female suffering) for personal amusement. Thus, in some ways, you could say that there is a mild taboo on putting female characters through suffering if you can't "justify" it as meaningful to the narrative, not just titillating, which whump fandom rarely tries or requires anyone to do. This fan-cultural 'rule' may impact whump writers' and artists' decisions in choosing the gender of their characters.

THEORY 5: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MAINSTREAM MASCULINITY.
 Whump fandom may like whumping men because by and large, mainstream/pop culture doesn't let men be vulnerable, doesn't let them cry, doesn't let them have long-term health issues due to constantly getting beat up even when they really SHOULD, doesn't let them have mental health issues period. Female characters, as discussed in theory 2, get to ("get to") go through suffering and be affected by it (however poorly written those effects are), but typically, male characters' suffering is treated as a temporary problem, minimized, and sublimated into anger if at all possible. (For an example, see: every scene in a movie where something terrible happens and the male lead character screams instead of crying). So, as nature abhors a vacuum, whump fandom "over-produces" whump of men so as to fill in that gap in content.

THEORY 6: AMPLIFIED BIAS.
 While it's true that whump fandom doesn't have a source text, it's also true that whump fans frequently find their way into the fandom via other 'traditional' fandoms, and continue participating in 'traditional' fandoms as part of their whump fandom activity. Bias begets bias; fandom as a whole has a massive problem with focusing on white male characters, and fans who are used to the bias towards certain types of characters in derivative works absolutely reproduce that bias in their own original whump works.

—

I honestly think that there is greater bias in the whump fandom than anyone would like to admit. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems as though whump fans avoid introspection and discussion of the issue by bringing up the points I talked about in my previous theories, particularly discomfort with depictions of female suffering for amusement.

However, I think that, as artists, we owe it to ourselves and one another to engage in at least a small amount of self-interrogation over our preferences, and see what unconscious or unacknowledged biases we possess. It's a little absurd to argue that depictions of women as whumpees are universally too distressing to even discuss when a male character in the exact same position would be fine and even gratifying to the person making that argument; while obviously, people have a right to their own boundaries, those boundaries should not be used to shut down discussion of any topics, even sensitive ones.

Furthermore, engaging in personal reflection allows artists to make more deliberate (and meaningful) art. For people whose goal is simply to have fun, that may not seem all that appealing, but having greater understanding of one's own preferences can be very helpful towards deciding what works to create, what to focus on when creating, and what works to seek out.

—

GENDER ADDENDUM: NONBINARY CHARACTERS, NONBINARY AUTHORS. 
Of course, this whole discussion so far has been exclusively based on a male-female binary, which is reductive. (I will note, though, that many binary people do effectively sort all nonbinary people they know of into 'female-aligned' and 'male-aligned' categories and then proceed to treat the nonbinary people and characters they have categorized a 'female-aligned' the same way as they treat people & characters who are actually female, and ditto for 'male-aligned'. That tendency is very frustrating for me, as a nonbinary person whose gender has NOTHING to do with any part of the binary, and reveals that even 'progressive' fandom culture has quite a ways to go in its understanding of gender.)

Anyways, nonbinary characters in whump are still VERY rare and typically written by nonbinary authors. (I have no clue whether nonbinary whump fans have, as a demographic group, different gender preferences than binary fans, but I'd be interested in seeing that data.)

As noted above with female characters, it's similarly difficult to have a discussion about representation and treatment of nonbinary characters in whump fandom, and frankly in fandom in general. Frequently, people regard attempts to open discussions on difficult topics as a call for conflict. This defensive stance once again reveals the distaste for requests of meaningful self-examination that is so frequent in fandom spaces, and online more generally.

—

TL;DR: Whump is not immune to the same gender & racial biases that are prevalent in fandom and (US-American) culture. If you enjoy whump: ask yourself why you dislike the things you dislike— the answer may surprise you. If you create whump: ask yourself whose stories you tell, and what stories you refuse to tell— then ask yourself why.

[sola-whumping]

Febuwhump: Mind Control Essay

Introduction

One of the best methods of whump, in my opinion, is mind control. There’s so much you can do with it and so many ways it can be used. When people think of mind control they might think of the normal blank stare and unfeeling protagonist being controlled like a puppet by the villain, but there is so much more that can be done with it. So today, we will be getting in to all mind control has to offer, or at least a few methods.

Introduction 2

To begin I’ll be going over some of the ways you can induce mind control in a whumpee. The four main ways (that I can think of) would be superpowers, tech, manipulation, and magic. Each come with their own uses and strengths and have a slightly different style of putting your whumpee under. Rather then going though each and every way you can use it in detail like I usually do with Whumper Weekly, I’ll instead list a few that would work well with each style and make a series on mind control later since it is such a big topic.

Body Paragraph 1

The first method of mind control I’d like to start with is using super powers. There’s many ways to go about this, looking your whumpee in the eye to activate it, having your power be activated by touch, or even being able to induce a trance by being in close enough proximity would make your whumper powerful and fluid enough in the use of it that they can pull it off without anyone else noticing. This method is the easiest to use for kidnapping your whumpee on the fly by convincing them to follow you or to alter their mind and memories to become a hazy fog, letting you control their actions. I find that this method is the best for making your whumpee betray their friends since it provides a disconnect between them and their actions.

Body Paragraph 2

Tech is what we see in a lot of sci-fi movies. It’s the mind control buttons or the pins or clips. Things that stick to skin and clothes and take control of the neural network and use it. They are always built by someone clever, you perhaps, and used on those beneath them. Sometimes that tech helps the creator to advance to something akin to a God, controlling cities at at time. And other times it’s specialized to control one specific person, which in and of itself is an art. It’s a form of complete control that can shift loyalties or change a person completely, or even just suppress who they once were to reprogram their thoughts and opinions. Whatever it’s used for, it’s sure to be clever.

Body Paragraph 3

Manipulation is a tactic almost anyone can use- if they’re good enough. For this method inducing the trance is key, you must have a good introduction and a fluid transition to pull your whumpee under, as well as the right word choice to lull them into a sense of security or to trick them into giving up control. This is the kind of mind control street magicians will use for shows and tricks but it can also be used to slowly alter someone’s perspective. There’s a bit of psychology behind manipulation and whether it’s conditioning or something else it can be very useful to develop behaviors and beliefs in other people.

Body Paragraph 4

Magic is very similar to powers but it can also be vastly different in its uses. Any kind of magic needs either an item or a person to work and direct it, though, there have been cases where it has come alive on its own. An enchanted stone necklace could be used to control a whumpee as an example of an object. Or a sorcerer could enchant an enemy into bending to their will, an obvious example of a person controlling magic. Magic can even reside in a place that causes anyone to enter it to be subjected to control which is a lovely portrayal of sentient magic on its own. It can even be triggered by touching a magic gemstone that takes control of the protagonist, though this sounds a bit more like the game holds magic in itself and can be linked to our first example. Whatever method of magic you use make sure you read through the books on it and study it’s art well. Magic can be dangerous, wild, and untamed. Make sure you control it and control it well or it can kill you.

Conclusion

The creativity of any of these methods is up to the user and the user alone, the mind is infinite and has no limits aside from the ones you set for yourself. Be free and make sure to use your control over others well. Just make sure you don’t lose yourself in the process. Absolute power corrupts absolutely- though, that is a problem for the future. For now you are young and powerful with the world at your fingertips. Make sure to use it. (Call to action)

@febuwhump

✨Masterlist✨

[heartlesslywhumping]

Any mindcontrol whump prompts? I have a few characters that need some..Inspiration =)

You can use this for noncon elements but if you’d like prompts for that, let me know and I’ll put it in a seperate post :)

My faaaaaavorite mind control trope is forcing them to physically hurt a loved one. Whether that’s for a short or prolonged time period is always amazing. I cannot recommend this trope enough )but that’s mostly because I love those kinds of stories shhhh)

TW: mentions of self-harm/suicide elements. Prompts based around someone being forced to hurt or attempt to kill themselves

(Prompts below the cut for lengthy post)

Force them to be completely compliant and docile around their team/family/friends. The team doesn’t realize anything is wrong which leads to further hurt on the whumpee’s part because how could the team not realize what was going on? Does the team like them better this way? Are they better this way? This could be especially potent if the whumpee is set apart in some way, (only half-breed, only robot, only mythical creature, only human, related to the villain, share a race with the villains, has a dark past they’re insecure about, stuff like that)

The whumpee is forced to spy on their friends/family/team, all the while acting like everything is normal. They’re screaming inwardly, trying everything they can to warn their team but they’re being controlled to act normally. Everything they do the whumper can see so the whumpee can’t write notes, can’t give facial hints, can’t do anything to warn their team. They’re forced to watch, helpless, as their team is hurt over and over (losing battles, missing allies, getting kidnapped, getting attacked on the street, getting stalked etc) and it’s because of them.

A significant other is forced to break their SO’s heart  (a caretaker or whumpee figure would be excellent for either role). This one alone has so many options depending on the relationship between the two characters. Does one rely on the other for something important? Is one insecure in their relationship? Play with those emotions here and it makes for sweet, sweet whump.

A caretaker is forced to abandon their whumpee friend. They tell the whumpee that the whumpee is too broken for them, too needy, too much work. They say that they’ve lost all their freedom, that the whumpee is too expensive, the whumpee has too many nightmares, the whumpee whines too much, the whumpee is taking too long to heal (physically and/or emotionally). The caretaker never gets to do anything they want to do anymore, they’re always stuck taking care of the whumpee. What about the caretaker’s feelings? Does the whumpee think that they enjoy sitting around at home, waking up in the middle of the night, constantly worrying over every little need the whumpee has?You can tailor this to specific worries, insecurities, things mentioned in confidence, lingering trauma and so on to make this worse. For example, let’s say that the whumpee has confessed that they’re afraid of being too much for the caretaker. The caretaker honestly said that it’s not a problem and they want to be there for the whumpee. Now the caretaker says that was all a lie and did the whumpee honestly believe that? It’s all too much and the caretaker really thought the whumpee would be gone by now instead of still here like a leach. Stuff like that.

The whumper forces the whumpee to be beautifully obedient and compliant with anything they say. The whumpee gets themselves into restraints, fetches tools, stands still, gets into stress positions all while expressing gratitude and not trying to resist. This could be especially harsh for a defiant, rebellious character.

The whumpee is forced to hand over their friends/family/team to the whumper. (Or if one of them has their own whumper, hand the person over to that whumper)

Force them to do something they’re afraid of

Force them into a trap to use as bait against someone else. They’re kept still and unable to get free.

Force them to act as the villain on behalf of the whumper (kidnaping, robbery, attacking allies etc)

Force them to humiliate themselves (consider having them do this in front of a loved one because they’re being used as leverage)

They are made to stay with the whumper and tell their friends that they are happy there

Force them to destroy something important to them

Quick, tried and true prompts:

Force them to torture a loved one

Force them to attempt to kill a loved one

Force them to torture themselves

Force them to almost kill themselves

Some specific options:

Forced to torture:

While showing how desperately the whumpee does not wish to do this.

While the loved one assures the whumpee that it’s okay, they’re going to be okay, they love them, they know the whumpee is being forced, it’s okay

While the whumpee is blacked out and only realizes what they’ve done when they’re released

While the loved one doesn’t realize what’s happening and begs and pleads for the whumpee to stop. This isn’t them (the whumpee), please, what happened to them?

While the whumpee verbally assaults the loved one, insulting them, degrading them, generally being cruel.

Forced to attempt murder:

While the loved one does the bare minimum to fight back

While the loved one doesn’t fight back, unwilling to hurt their friend

While the whumpee is inwardly begging for the loved one to fight back

While the loved one spreads their arms (not knowing what’s happening) and tells the whumpee that if they truly want to kill them (the loved one) then they won’t stop the whumpee.

Surprise the loved one, re-appearing out of nowhere and attacking suddenly

While the loved one is recovering from a wound

While the loved one tries to break through to the whumpee, desperately pleading for them to come back and stop

Subtly, threatening and attacking the loved one in private but acting normally in front of their friends. They use poison, sabotage, traps, electronic “glitches”, etc

In a slow, painful way

In public

In a way that the loved one is afraid of

Forced to almost kill themselves as leverage:

In a way that the loved one knows the caretaker is afraid of (if they’re afraid of deep water, force them to almost drown)

In a way that would be slow and painful

Force them to plead and beg for the loved one to just give in and give over whatever is asked of them.

Keep them expressionless. Not begging, not afraid, not cruel, nothing. Perfectly blank and unable to sway the loved one either way

Control only their body and leave them to express whatever they want. (This particular option is wonderful for any of the other prompts as well)

Allow them to scream, gasp, struggle, but keep them unable to stop

[whumpity--whump--whump]

Psychology in Whump: Conditioning

OKAY, some of y’all know nothing about conditioning, so I’m gonna clear some things up. Don’t feel bad, these are common mistakes. I’m basing this off of everything I learned in AP Psychology, so I know what I’m talking about more than the average person. If you ever have a psychology question, you can always send an ask and I’ll be more than glad to answer.

Classical Conditioning

Ever heard of Pavlov? This is what he did. Essentially, this is call and response.

There are four things: Unconditioned Response, Conditioned Response, Unconditioned Stimuli, and Conditioned Stimuli.

Let’s use Pavlov to explain this. Pavlov was a doctor doing experiments on dog salivation and accidentally made a huge psychological discovery. Essentially, he would ring a bell every time he was bringing food to the dogs. Over time, the dogs would salivate when the bell rang, even if there was no food.

The Unconditioned Stimuli was the food, and the Unconditioned Response was salivation in the presence of food. Dogs do not have to be trained to salivate when there’s food. That is an innate biological response.

The Conditioned Stimuli was the bell, and the Conditioned Response was salivation upon hearing the bell. Dogs don’t normally salivate when they hear bells; Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to.

Classical conditioning works when Unconditioned are combined with the Conditioned. Over time, Pavlov’s dogs connected bells with food. They knew a bell ringing would mean food. So their salivary glands would jump the gun on salivation, and they’d salivate no matter what.

Classical conditioning can easily happen by accident, as was the case with Pavlov. It can also be done on purpose. To give a whumpy example, perhaps a whumper classically conditions the whumpee. The Unconditioned Stimuli could be whipping. The Unconditioned Response could be fear, panic, crying, begging, something along those lines. The Conditioned Stimuli could be AC/DC music that the whumper had on speakers while whipping the whumpee. The Conditioned Response could be being scared/panicking/crying/begging/etc when the whumpee hears AC/DC. Perhaps it was accidental on the whumper’s part, or perhaps it was intentional. Either way, upon learning this, I’m sure the whumper would enjoy turning on “Thunderstruck” and listen to the whumpee beg even though the whip is nowhere in sight. 

Classical conditioning can be broken, as can any form of conditioning. That means a whumper has to alternate between whipping and not whipping when AC/DC is on. If they go to long without the whip, it can dampen the conditioning. With some exposure therapy, a caretaker can also help the whumpee listen to AC/DC again. If a caretaker exposes the whumpee to AC/DC multiple times and no pain is involved, then eventually the conditioning will dampen or be gone entirely.

Depending on multiple factors, some things can be deconditioned faster than others. Pain is a big factor. I’ve classically conditioned myself to dilate my eyes when I hear my ringtone once for my psych class, but it lasted fifteen minutes. Because it wasn’t life threatening and no pain was involved. Your brain will latch onto things related to pain. So anything the whumper does will have a long lasting effect on the whumpee. Time is also huge. If the whumper has only whipped with AC/DC a couple of times before, the whumpee will be conditioned, but it will break fast. So a caretaker wants to rescue the whumpee fast to make deconditioning as fast as possible.

Actually, for another prompt, Pavlov’s experiment could work for a pet whumpee. Then there’s even more comparisons between them and a dog.

Classical conditioning, generally, is harmless, or even helpful. At most, generally, irrational (for example, dog bites you for once and now you’re scared of dogs). But usually it’s little things that don’t matter all that much (flinching when someone pretends to throw something at you) or helpful (fear of strangers). But give a whumper classical conditioning, and your whumpee is in for a bad time.

Operant Conditioning

“Michelle, I already know about positive and negative reinforcement!”

“Great, can you tell me about it?”

“Positive reinforcement is giving a reward for a behavior, and negative reinforcement is a punishment.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

THAT IS NOT WHAT NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT IS.

Repeat it after me.

Negative reinforcement is not punishment!

There are in fact four things involved in operant conditioning: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.

Reinforcement is meant to increase a behavior.

Punishment is meant to decrease a behavior. 

Positive means it is adding something.

Negative means it is taking away something.

Positive Reinforcement is when you give something to increase behavior. This is often called the “carrot.” Letting a whumpee sleep with a blanket when they are good is positive reinforcement. The whumpee is more likely to be good for the whumper and not defiant because they were rewarded for their compliance. Or it could be caretaker giving praise to the whumpee when they are recovering and don’t call caretaker “Master.” The whumpee is more likely to call the caretaker by their name than “Master” now that they’ve been praised for it. 

Negative Reinforcement is when you take something away to increase a behavior. This could be a caretaker giving whumpee ibuprofen for a headache. Taking ibuprofen takes away the pain, which makes the whumpee more likely to take ibuprofen for headaches in the future. A whumper taking away the whumpee’s mobility via restraints will make the whumpee stay where they need to be. In the future the whumpee will stay even when not restrained.

Positive Punishment is giving something to decrease behavior. This is the “stick.” Your average whump is positive punishment. Whumper beats whumpee for not being good? Positive punishment. A caretaker can also practice this theoretically (I’ll talk about healthy conditioning later). Caretaker could give whumpee a stern talking to for acting out. They’d have to be extremely careful though, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. 

Negative Punishment is taking away something to decrease behavior. The whumper can take away the whumpee’s shoes to decrease their behavior of trying to go outside. The caretaker can take away the whumpee’s collar to decrease any behaviors associated with being a pet. 

Some of these can be kind of two at once. For example, the caretaker taking away the whumpee’s collar so they don’t act like a pet is negative punishment. If you rephrase it to say the collar is taken so the whumpee acts more like a person, that is now negative reinforcement. The action of removing the whumpee’s collar is both negative punishment and negative reinforcement, it just depends on how you look at it.

Conditioning isn’t inherently bad. Everything in existence has the potential to be good and the potential to be evil, it just depends on how we use it. Conditioning can be very good, very bad, or not affect anything. It all depends on how it is being used. There is healthy conditioning that is very good. Through too much or too little operant conditioning, you can have serious psychological problems. For any of you guys that have kids you take care of in your life, a good mix of these four is healthy when done right! Generally you should do more reinforcement than punishment when possible because it helps with motivation (which is a long rabbit hole we won’t go down today), but punishment isn’t necessarily bad. I’ve given both good and bad examples of all four types of operant conditioning. Whether it’s good or bad depends on the person.

I can go into greater detail on all four for both the whumper and the caretaker, but I think most of it you’ll have down now. I’ll delve into positive punishment by the caretaker to demonstrate this specific problem the caretaker might run into. While this does include the whumper’s beatings and torture, positive punishment isn’t necessarily physical. With children, typically adding chores or lecturing is good. Not necessarily with a whumpee if you want the whumpee to recover (though, I suppose you could make the caretaker terrible at their job and accidently punish the whumpee in unhealthy ways for more whump). If a whumpee was a slave and forced to clean, the caretaker shouldn’t make cleaning a punishment. It will positively reinforce the behaviors the whumper wanted, which is not good. If the whumpee was “lectured” to (way more maliciously than a typical parent would), lecturing would be a terrible idea because it also would reinforce the whumper’s desired behaviors from the whumpee. The caretaker has to be extremely careful with all four methods. They have to be careful to not reinforce the whumper’s desired behaviors and punish the undesired ones. Which can be really hard if the whumpee hasn’t told the caretaker what happened (HINT HINT this could be some good whump HINT HINT). The caretaker can also do mini physical positive punishments, like in @deluxewhump ‘s Max and Pet series when Max hits Carlo with a rubber band. ONLY IF THE WHUMPEE FEELS THEY NEED SOME SORT OF PHYSICAL POSITIVE PUNISHMENT. If the whumpee doesn’t want anything to do with being hurt, do not do this, this is what the whumper would do. This only really works with small things like rubber bands or else it is too painful and that is especially problematic for all involved. Physical positive punishment done by the caretaker is not ideal, but can be helpful in the early stages of recovery with some whumpees.

As for deconditioning, studies have shown that if after every time a person does the behavior, they get the consequence, they decondition faster than if it’s every few times. Which might be good for the whumpee! Most whumpers I’ve seen are pretty consistent about always punishing or reinforcing the whumpee! Though, if you get a psychologist whumper...that can suck for the whumpee. I can go into more detail later on this since this kind of gets tricky. Look up operant conditioning schedules if you don’t want to ask.

Social Conditioning

I’m not going into a lot of detail because if I do I’m going to go into social psychology and that’s its own field and we don’t have time for that. 

Basically, we act like people around us. This dives into conformity and roles and whatnot. We’re all socially conditioned. This especially effects kids. They watch adults do things and imitate the adults. That’s why kids know you are supposed to hold your phone up to your ears and talk. This is why people don’t want kids watching rated R movies because studies have shown that when kids watch violence they are more likely to be violent, especially the younger they are, and no one wants a ridiculously violent five year old. I can name a famous experiment for this, Bandura’s bobo doll experiment, where kids watched adults beat up a bobo doll and then proceeded to do the same. 

This can be used in whump for whumpees raised in slavery because they’re socially conditioned to act like a slave. And it would be so hard to break that conditioning. If you have ever moved to a country with a vastly different culture you’d know how hard it is to break social conditioning.

Now That You Have That…

Go and write conditioning correctly. Seriously. Psych nerds hate hearing the “negative reinforcement is punishment” thing. Seriously, please don’t. And please reblog so people will see this so that more people in the whump community will learn this.

If you ever have questions concerning psychology, send me an ask, I’ll be more than glad to help! I love psychology! This can go for disorders, therapy, social psych, learning/conditioning, memory, motivation, health, development, etc. If I don’t know the answer, I can look it up, or give you good sources to look into.

For anyone interested, I recommend taking psychology classes. If you’re in high school I recommend AP Psychology, and I don’t know anything about college psych classes, but I’m sure there are good ones. It will help you in your day to day life and help you write whump. Plus it’s fascinating. 

[waywardwhump]

I love your Fantasy stuff! Would you ever consider writing SciFi Whump?

Thank you so much friend~

I very much enjoy SciFi whump, and would absolutely be interested in writing it in the future. I don’t have any OCs for the genre at the moment, but maybe after I finish my rounds with my current ‘verses, I’ll consider working toward SciFi.

In the meantime, I present to you my two favorite SciFi whump tropes to consider.

1: Science has screwed up royally, and now either the scientist, or someone close to the scientist, is doomed to suffer a slow transformation into a monster. 

If you’ve ever seen the 1985 remake of The Fly, it’s very much similar to that.

Consider a whumpee who’s own scientific adventures has turned them into a beast, and while they’re well aware of who they are and where they are, none of their loved ones recognize them. They’re faced with fear and terror wherever they go. Their attempts to fix the problem get them dragged into their co-worker’s lab where they’re experimented on, treated as inhuman by friends of theirs who have no idea what it is they’re doing. Even if the scientists are as humane as possible, it still hurts.

And what if they aren’t as humane as possible? What if they don’t care about saving their subject suffering and pain? What if their need for knowledge drives them to torture this poor creature, all the while oblivious that this is their friend?

Consider the transformation itself, slow and gradual and agonizing as the body shifts from one form to the other. Imagine growing pains but 100x worse, because this is the body trying to react to a new set of DNA. 

Consider a whumpee who’s friends with the scientist, who gets caught up in the experiment by accident. The scientist, now caretaker, realizes what’s happening far too late to stop it, and is frantically trying to help the whumpee as they slowly turn into something clawed and fanged and unrecognizable. Imagine the scientist caretaker forced to watch as the new DNA asserts a fresh set of instincts upon the whumpee, and though the person they once knew is still in there, it’s buried by territorial aggression of whatever it was that got mixed in.

The scientist having to call in other scientists to try and help the whumpee. The wumpee’s frustration and anger at being unable to talk or communicate and now they’re surrounded by strangers that are caught between horrified sympathy and scientific interest.

Imagine someone breaking in and trying to hurt the scientist caretaker. Imagine the whumpee lashing out in defense of the scientist, only to be captured by the authorities when their efforts to protect draw them out into the open. 

The whumpee caged, dragged about by a leash, kept under close watch and tied down half the time because the humans don’t know how to handle an animal that’s never before existed.

The whumpee themself questioning their own humanity. They were human, once. What are they now? They stare up at the helpless caretaker and plead with their eyes for help.

The caretaker can only offer a hug and a promise that they’ll do better. They’ll keep trying. They’ll get them out of there. There has to be a way, there has to.

2: My other favorite SciFi trope, something that is NOT the person you love taking their appearance and pretending to be them.

If you’ve ever seen The Thing, or maybe The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, you get the jest of what I’m talking about here. 

A whumpee with a loyal caretaker, someone the whumpee trusts above all others. Something comes along and replaces the caretaker.

This person that the whumpee cares about so much is just...slightly off now. There’s just something that’s vaguely not right. 

But the caretaker smiles, and hugs them close, and reassures. The thing that’s taken over the caretaker uses the whumpee’s trust to manipulate them, and despite their misgivings, the whumpee does as the caretaker asks.

Alternatively, consider a whumpee whose caretaker turns whumper. The thing that’s now the caretaker needs them to do something that they wouldn’t ordinarily do, and when asking doesn’t work, the caretaker tortures them instead.

It’s not the first time the whumpee’s been hurt, but the fact that it’s the caretaker doing it makes it all the worse.

Consider the moment when the whumpee has to accept that the caretaker is dead.

Consider the caretaker going from threatening to soft edges and smiles and assurances. They promise the whumpee that things can just go back to the way they were. Doesn’t the whumpee want that? Doesn’t the whumpee want to be held and told everything was going to be alright? It’s okay, whumpee, it’s me, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, just trust me. 

And it’s easy, so easy to let themself be fooled by the thing that is now the caretaker, easier to be lied to than it is to accept that the caretaker is dead, and so, so much easier than the alternative, easier to fall into the old habit of comfort than it is to kill this thing that murdered their friend.

Consider a whumpee who’s surrounded by things that look and act and feel like their friends. A whumpee who knows that they’re mere prey surrounded by apex predators. A whumpee now caught between the comfort of pretending nothing is wrong, and the absolute terror that if they show any defiance at all they’re likely to be eaten too.

Imagine the caretaker begging for help, and the whumpee being forced to run away. If they helped, they’d have died, and maybe the caretaker was dead all along, but that doesn’t change the fact that those screams are still ringing in their ears and they feel like they just killed their best friend in the world.

Imagine a human caretaker, now, having to deal with a thing that has become the whumpee. Every heartache listed above, but now with the added guilt of the caretaker’s responsibility added in. They were supposed to care for the whumpee, and now the whumpee is dead. Now they have to defend themself from someone who looks like the whumpee. 

Now they have to stop themself when every nerve in their body screams for them to come to the whumpee’s aid. And what if they fail? What if they do go back to help the whumpee?

Imagine the thing hurting the caretaker in the whumpee’s guise. Imagine the whumpee bringing up each and every time the caretaker failed to help them. Imagine them describing how painful it was to be replaced.

And finally, imagine a whumper being replaced. A thing has replaced the whumper, and now, suddenly, the whumper is so much more powerful, and so much worse. They’re smarter, more resilient, they’ve lost what mercy the whumper might have had. Or, worse, they’ve gained a bit of gentleness about them to use against the whumpee.

A whumper who was once without an ounce of kindness suddenly being gentle with the whumpee, using their need for touch and contact against them in a way that the real whumper never would have thought of. A thing whumper that’s more manipulative, who knows how to get under the whumpee’s skin, how to get them where it hurts and how to use mercy as a weapon. 

The whumper didn’t know how to make friends. The thing that replaced the whumper, though? It knows exactly how to make friends, it knows how to draw people in, and the people it can’t draw in will just be replaced soon enough. There is no escape from this whumper. Eventually, they’ll be everywhere.

[caddy-whump-us]

For the up close and personal ask game 💖 💗 💞 💕 💝 ( and the black heart emoji included cause I can't find the emoji) please?

💖 Have any of your WIPs helped you through a difficult time in your life?

I don’t think any of my current WIPs have helped me through a difficult time, but I do know that certain OCs have. Julian, for instance, has been with me since at least college (for the record, I graduated some time ago; I am not a minor at all). And he and his variations have been something I can turn to when the real world is tough or boring or stressful. He’s kind of my ideal self–no, not “kind of,” he is my ideal self. So when I get to feeling overwhelmingly tall, gangly, unfeminine, broad-shouldered, glasses-wearing, bad-teeth, bad-skin ugly, I can slide into my ideal self in my head and it gets me along (somehow). It’s like a vacation from a reality I’m not very happy with.

💗 Share a single sentence from each of your WIPs that you think best describes the relationships you most cherish in real life.

I actually can’t do this. The relationships I most cherish in real life are not ones I like to include in the things I write. The most important relationships for me are with my parents and my brother, but I write whump. So the odds are that these relationships will be broken or blocked in the course of the story–as in, kidnapped character with worried parents. And the idea of worried parents isn’t enjoyable for me because it makes me think of my own parents and, yeah, it’s just not the kind of wickedly gleeful fun that I like in whump. 

It does come up! But when it has come up, I find myself trying to mitigate it somehow. The whumper won’t plant evidence that whumpee was killed, only that he was abducted, so they can hold out hope… Or I’ll kind of gloss over it entirely. I’m working on how to make this happen for Gravesby/Riddle when he winds up at Box Dreams. I mean, he’s got parents! And a sister! What then???

That said, there are certain relationships that I put into things that I don’t have in real life–close IRL friendships and romantic relationships, to be specific. I am forever putting those into fictional situations because it lets me, the writer, experience something of those relationships (in an admittedly idealized way) when I can’t (and probably won’t) experience them in real life. Julian&Avery have been my surrogate for IRL romantic love for literally years, which sounds sad, sure, but I’m just not the kind of person anyone is likely to fall in love with, but at least I can imagine my ideal self and an ideal relationship.

Okay, that got a little to deep, but you get it? Maybe?💞 List 3 tropes that you feature in your WIPs and explain why they’re important to you as a person.

This is awkward because so many of my tropes are whump tropes and it’s a little weird to be like “Well, ‘tied up’ is important to me because…”

However! There are several recurring tropes that seem to indicate ongoing challenges for me. So that’s why they’re ���important” to me.

Characters caught in an anonymous and uncaring system that’s so much bigger than them and so much out of their control. That’s how I feel about…life, pretty much. It’s like nothing in my life is under my control. I’m at the mercy of systems far beyond my control or even my understanding.

Mute or silenced characters. I can speak and hear, but I often feel like I’m not heard or taken seriously.

Injuries are a pretty obvious symbolic representation of being hurt. I guess that goes without saying.

A bonus! I’ve been a fan of kidnapping stories since I was a kid. And I think, in a weird way, they’re like an “escape.” As in, a character is taken away from what they know but in that happening, they’re also escaping what they know. It’s like a dark adventure in the world of fiction. (I felt the same way about stories where characters run away from home and have adventures.)

🖤 Do you and your OCs have any backstory elements in common?

No, not really. Like I said above, my OCs are idealized versions of me or idealized people in my idealized life. So since my life is pretty fucking boring (no really, it is), their lives and backstories are all quite interesting and dramatic. They have danger! And adventure! And excitement! And love! 

I guess in their most tame version, the one where the ensemble cast are all students at the same university, there are probably a few more backstory parts in common. Maybe not that many, but since some of my OCs in that version grew up, you know, in a middle-class suburban house with two parents and maybe a sibling, we’d have that much in common. Otherwise, nah, they’re so much cooler than me.

💕 Have any of your WIPs (or the research you’ve done for them) changed the way you view the world around you?

I’m kind of going to go with “no” on this one. That said, I have learned a lot of interesting things in the course of researching things–everything from when certain tortures became common to what 19th century stables looked like to traditional vampire myths to foods and recipes on down to clothing and individual rooms. So that’s been interesting. I don’t think it’s changed the way I view the world around me? Mostly because, lol, I work in a library so research is what I do, but it has been interesting.

💝 Are any of your OCs based off of people in your own life?

I used to do this all. The. Time. But it was usually out of anger or spite. They were revenge stories and I’d make the person who had hurt me into a villain character. 

The problem was that that doesn’t make for a very interesting villain. There’s no motivation there. It’s just me being angry (so who’s really the villain?). 

I have tried to add some friends into stories before, but it didn’t really work out either. 

Admittedly, there might be some traits in common between characters and people I know? But that wasn’t a conscious decision.

How’s that do for you, Anon?

[spookyboywhump]

🍅🍇💧❤ from 'another ask game' for Wren, Zander, Cain and Vanessa! Don't have to answer each question for all character if it's too much ^^'

Thank you so much for these!!

 I tried to get through all of them but I blanked out completely on 🍅 and had to skip it, I am v sorry (I also realized I really need to flesh out Vanessa some more)

 This got kinda long so Below Cut!

🍇 Does your OC have any bad habits? Does your OC have any addictions like smoking or drinking? How did they fall into these habits and why? 

Wren: Wren has a terrible habit of picking at the skin around his fingernails when he’s nervous or anxious, which is unfortunately often. It’s been a bad habit since he was a kid and despite his best efforts he’s never really been able to stop it. He’s not one to smoke or drink (which is probably for the best because it does not take a lot to get him Drunk)

Zander: Zander has several bad habits, mostly unhealthy coping mechanisms that only end up hurting himself more. While he doesn’t smoke or drink he does have an issue with strong painkillers, and would probably have an awful addiction to them if he had regular access. Since his current situation doesn’t really allow for a healthy handle on things mentally or physically, terrible solutions are about all he has. 

Cain: Cain’s whole life is probably bad habits lmao but he does have a bit of a drinking problem. Even though he’s really only a “social drinker” he doesn’t really know when to stop and he gets drunk easily (Zander actually prefers this because he’s much nicer drunk than he is sober)

Vanessa: While she’s not as bad as Cain she also has a bit of a drinking problem, and she does smoke from time to time. Most of Vanessa’s bad habits were born from her trying to see exactly how much she could get away with when she was younger (Spoiler alert: it was a lot)

💧 What is something from your OC’s past they’re the most ashamed of and why? What is something they’re really proud of? And lastly what is something in their past that could make them shake with dread?

Wren: I haven’t really talked much about Wren’s backstory (despite the fact I have it all worked out) so here’s a Piece Of That Mess. 

 The thing he’s most ashamed of is not only feeling relieved when his mother passed, but also not being with her when it happened. He could’ve been, he was told he should be ready for it to happen, but due to the state of their relationship he just couldn’t bring himself to be there, and at the time it felt like the only option, now however he feels as if he was unnecessarily cruel letting her pass away with no family around.

 As for the thing he’s most proud of, it would be landing the job he currently has. It’s probably one of the only things he’s proud of, knowing that all his hard work finally paid off and actually got him somewhere in life. 

 And as for dread

 At some point in his life he lost somebody very close to him, and there is nothing that can break him down more than the memory of when he found out that unfortunate news. 

Cain: There isn’t a lot that he’s particularly ashamed of, but that’s probably because the one thing he is, he’s so ashamed it passes straight into that dreaded past memory territory. I feel like even though he would say differently, there really isn’t a lot that Cain is proud of? He’s a complete shit person and even though it wouldn’t be something he says out loud, he doesn’t actually think highly of himself or anything he’s ever done. 

 Which brings us to the thing in his past that he dreads which *rubs hands together* fun stuff

 At one point, a few years after he got Zander, he killed someone. He didn’t mean to, it wasn’t supposed to happen, and while Cain is a lot of shitty things, he’s not exactly meant to be a killer. It’s one of the only things he feels genuinely guilty over, and something that even Zander wouldn’t dare to bring up to him. 

❤️ What inspired you to make this OC? How long have you had them? How have they changed in the time you’ve been developing them?

 I’ve had all these ocs for roughly a little over a month now, when I started coming up with this whole story!

Wren: When I was coming up with the idea of the story I wanted to have two whumpees, one experienced and one inexperienced. Though he kind of turned out to be a bit more Soft Baby than I intended the more I developed him.

Zander: Zander was actually created before Wren for this story (which might be why I keep getting more invested in him), and his original concept was both a guard dog and a fighting dog. I like the guard dog aesthetic of a tall, angry, scary man in a spiked collar, but when I actually started writing the thought completely slipped my mind because guess who said “I don’t need to write that down”. He was supposed to be just an overall angry and mean bastard of a whumpee but the more I worked out his backstory and all that the more he got kinda Soft (sometimes) 

(Also funnily enough, his name was originally Cain)

Cain: Tbh the inspiration for Cain was more like taking a step away from my preferred type of whumper, the creepy intimate kind, and just go for some feral bastard. When I originally made him I wanted him to be an older man but the more I wrote him the more he just seemed like a spoiled rich kid and I pictured him younger. 

(And related to Zander almost being named Cain, Cain was almost named Zander)

Vanessa: Ironically, Vanessa was originally created in order to help Wren. I had wanted there to be someone who was very involved with this whole situation but either didn’t want to be/had some reason to want to stop it and could help him in some way. However, I am admittedly weak for Evil Ladies and when I realized she could just make his life harder, she ended up being… this