#with a caretaker who knows the way whumpee is treated is wrong but is helpless (or too much of a coward) to change it

[tender-traps]

GOD i am such a sucker for cinderella whump

all the possibilities for an awful home life. forced to work, vilified, beaten, starved, locked in isolation, you name it. and of course being denied a blanket and having to huddle close to the fire in winter.

then they're free for just one night, or maybe three. just a short little step into a world where all of it goes away.

and then there’s the stranger. god this perfect stranger, beautiful and kind, who sees something worthwhile in whumpee. when they catch whumpee looking sad, they actually care.

and then they go back. and that taste of freedom makes it all the more painful. and when they think of the rest of their miserable life their spirit starts to break.

but the stranger!!!!! dropping everything, maybe making a personal sacrifice of their own, just to find their missing friend, because they CARE. someone finally cares enough to make it stop. and they do.

and that's where the story ends a lot of the time but we don't do that here. the aftermath. the scars, all of the toxic shit whumpee believes about themself, the feeling of being indebted to their savior. i'll take all of it thank you <3

[whumpshaped]

Chapter 2: Sil

Silence Masterlist

tw institutionalised/normalised pet whump, it/its used as a default for pets, past trauma, morally dubious caretaker, defiant/feral whumpee

Rayan sat on the ground a few feet away from the stray as it ate. He was lost in thought, quietly observing the visible injuries and weird bumps under its skin. Bones healed wrong, maybe.

The more he thought about this entire situation, the more he found himself absolutely furious with the pet’s previous owner. He had wanted a pet his entire life. He had grown up wanting one, seeing how happy and lively and perfect they were, knowing that if he was just a little more fortunate, worked just a little harder, get out of his one-bedroom dwelling and move into something a tiny bit more spacious, maybe the Pet Protection Agency would consider him as a potential adopter. He had always been so passionate about wanting to give poor, helpless things a better life, that was precisely why he was so obsessed with helping the stray cats and dogs around the area. His ultimate goal was to get one of the pets out of a shelter and give it a loving home, the best home he possibly could. 

And then there were people like this guy’s owner. He couldn’t fathom having the wealth and opportunity to adopt a pet and then treating it like utter garbage. He couldn’t fathom how the PPA could’ve given someone like that a licence in the first place. Wasn’t there an interview? Weren’t they supposed to check up on pets regularly? How did they miss this? 

His new acquaintance put down the cup gently, almost like it was handling expensive glass or something. Quite out of character for someone moving around so jerkily, and who had pretended not to care much for the soup in the first place.

"My name's Rayan. May I ask what your name is?" He kept his voice quiet, both so he could avoid startling it, and so others on the street wouldn't hear.

"Wouldn't we both like to know?" It choked out a dry laugh, devoid of any joy or amusement. "Owner called me mutt, or that thing. It. I'm not sure I ever had a name, Rayan." His name felt like an insult coming from the pet, as if he was in the wrong for simply having one when it didn't.

Rayan frowned. "Well, do you wanna have one? You could give me anything. Make something up. Go back and change it later if you come up with something better... surely, you don't want me to call you those things?"

"Why do you need to call me anything?" it snapped suddenly. "You're making it sound like you'll just stick around and humour me forever! Why don't you go on your way already?" 

"I- well..." Rayan rubbed the back of his neck anxiously, awkwardly, looking for words that wouldn't upset the other. He wasn't sure words like that existed. "I was hoping I'd find you here tomorrow, like... like always. Well, for the past week. And that I'd have a name to call you by when I came back."

The stray's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but it didn't lash out again. In fact, it didn't react at all, which was already better than the outburst a moment ago. Rayan counted it as a win.

"Think about it, okay?" he said with what he hoped was a friendly and pleasant smile. "I'll take this stuff back now. I'll bring you more tomorrow, if... you know, if you're still here. If I didn't annoy you into leaving and finding another place."

He slowly inched closer and grabbed the bowls and the plate with the cup on it, still without getting a single word in response. It was only when he turned to leave that he heard a quiet voice from behind him, so unlike the harsh tone he had just gotten used to.

"I've been calling myself Sil. In my head. I was always told to be silent, so I guess I just took it and ran with it."

Rayan stopped and glanced back at the stray, Sil, nodding his understanding without giving any indication that he noticed the faint blush on its face. "Sil it is, then."

"Will you really come back tomorrow?" it asked, prompting him to fully turn back around. "Am I really worth it, compared to a dog?"

"Hey." Rayan crouched down to be at eye-level with it. "I'll be back, as long as you want me to. You could even come home with me." Sil visibly recoiled at the idea, and he quickly added, "It's just an option. Just letting you know. All I'm saying is, I'll be back tomorrow. For sure."

"Okay," it said quietly, watching Rayan stand up again with those sharp eyes that seemed to catch even the smallest of movements. The eyes of someone that had been hurt by those movements.

"See you tomorrow, Sil."

~

taglist: @whumpsday @whump-queen @whump-blog @alexkolax @ha-ha-one @hidden-dreamland @looptheloup @batfacedliar-yetagain @oddsconvert

[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.