Not A Good Day

Hi, I’m Dren! If you’re wondering why a whump blog followed you, it’s probably for one of my sideblogs (aesthetic, writing, Tumblr favorites, etc).  On my main here, you’ll find whumpy fics, ficlets, prompts, and reblogs. Me: she/her, ancient by Tumblr standards, INTJ.

[adrenaline-whump]

Masterpost

Hi and welcome to my whump blog!  If you’re not sure what “whump” is, you can think of it as the hurt/comfort story genre with more emphasis on the hurt. Other definitions can be found here.

My whump preference is lighter than some; my characters get roughed up and beaten down, but generally not tortured. Lists of tropes and stories below....

Fave whump tropes (will show up frequently in my writing and reblogs)

Kidnapping

Hostage situations

Restraints

Gunpoint/knifepoint

Manhandling

Strong and/or defiant whumpees

Situationally, yeah (will show up, but less often)

Angst

Hospitals

Illness

Environmental whump

PTSD

Comfort/fluff

Ladywhump

Nah (nothing intrinsically wrong with these, just not my jam)

Gore/body horror

Extreme torture

Non-human whump

BBU/dehumanization/pet whump

Intimate whumper

Here’s how that gets distilled into fiction.  All of this is OC, as realistic as I can get it for the core storylines, plus a couple of looser AUs.

Longer Works

In the Wind is a 12,000-word story that wouldn’t let me go until I wrote it down. Caden Hale is a Memphis bounty hunter who runs into a skip when he’s not expecting to. He has a rotten night.

If that works for you, you can keep going with Wind Shear, which is how Cade deals with the aftermath of In the Wind.  (Spoiler: badly.)

Undertow should be read after Wind Shear, since it’s Donnie’s POV of the same time period. Recently finished...I think. It ends in a good place, but there might be an epilogue later.

Flash Point is in the Head Wind AU. It’s the only Cade story not written from his POV. It’s about 10K words that starts with rescue, continues with a bit of a siege, and ends with a hostage situation. I rather like it.

False Horizon is a standalone story, not part of the Cadeverse. A bodyguard and his young charge are kidnapped. After the ransom is paid and the two are released, Mark learns that he’s suspected of being the “inside man” who enabled the whole thing...which may have been the kidnappers’ plan from the start. 

Whumplets

Longer than drabbles, these whumpy ficlets were inspired by prompts. Some of them can be grouped together, and some are standalone. I’ve organized them into their own little masterposts:

Cadeverse Whumplets – short scenes from Cade’s world

Head Wind Whumplets – Cadeverse AU with an espionage vibe

Other Whump

Selection Process – Nicholas is a doctor whose professional services are firmly requisitioned by a mysterious stranger.

And finally, I have a few standalone whumplets tagged with prompt whumplet or TAT whumplet (inspired by Trope Appreciation Tuesdays).

[galexibrain]

PSA for my writer friends and fellow medical whumpers and sickfic enjoyers: you don't have to injure your character badly to fuck them up.

Two weeks ago I fell off a horse (or rather, fot thrown off with force) and slammed into the arena wall with my back and right shoulder. What looked very dramatic at first and had me struggling to breathe for a hot minute including a ride in the ambulance to the ER ended up "only" being bad bruising. No broken bones, no internal bleeding. Just a bruised shoulder, ribs, and back.

I was released home the same day after my x-rays came back clear with pain meds.

And let me tell you, I was almost incapacitated by "just" bruises. I barely managed to get around by myself at home. Could barely stand for more than a few minutes bc my back hurt so much. Had to force myself to breathe properly. Had shit lying around on the ground for days bc I couldn't bend down to pick it up.

Getting out of bed in the morning still hurts. Imagine sitting on the toilet and thinking "fuck how am I gonna clean myself up".

It's been two weeks and I'm now finally starting to feel somewhat normal again. I expect to feel some pain for at least two more weeks.

So, uh, if your character gets knocked down good, like, in a fight, they can be totally helpless even without any serious injuries.

Tested for y'all, can't recommend.

[thatsgonnaleaveamark]

@whumperless-whump-event - day 1 ↳ near drowning / "i thought i was going to die"

Waiting for dawn's early light / Stranded, petrified / Waiting for the end / Down by the beach side / Where death greets you / Like a long lost friend / There is no help left to send / And if I go, does the world keeps spinning without me? / If it does, then I don't want to know / And as time slows, just give me to the ocean / Still my heart says so / Here comes the tide / Wait for a lifeline / Again / The Bay - Stereo Honey

(all photos from unsplash)

[mid-knife-crisis]

You have to shove your whumpees to the ground on their stomach and yank their arms behind their back to tie their wrists before pulling them back to their knees with a harsh yank on their hair otherwise they're not getting proper enrichment

[adrenaline-whump]

*raises hand* Is it OK if we shove them into a wall or slam them into a filing cabinet if they've had a lot of floor time recently?

[thatsgonnaleaveamark]

Steal, 1x06 (1)

[adrenaline-whump]

Can I share something that’s made me happy ever since I noticed it? My brain did a thing with words, completely by accident. Spontaneous poetry. Fair warning: explaining it involves massive spoilers for False Horizon. But I think everyone who wants to read it already has, so...

In the climax at the farmhouse, Spencer reveals that he killed Scott with Mark’s stolen gun. “Three shots took him straight from passed out drunk to dead.”

They have a gunfight in the back yard, Mark hurts his hand, Spencer thinks he’s won…but Mark’s got Scott’s gun and shoots Spencer three times in the chest, killing him almost instantly.

So here’s how writerbrain described that moment:

“Dark stains spread from three neat holes.”

Say it out loud and consider the rhythm of the line.

Bang bang bang. Bang bang bang.

Two sets of three. It connects Spencer’s crime and Spencer’s consequence in the line where the consequence occurs.

I love that.

[adrenaline-whump]

Flash Point

New story posted on Ao3! Half new, anyway. This was formerly known as "the Chris and Emma story." It's about 10.6K words.

If it's been a while since you read the first installments, I recommend reading the whole thing. There are events in the later parts that are seeded/foreshadowed in the earlier ones.

If you're like "the what story?" here's the deal. Emma is driving to her brother's house for a nice weekend in the mountains, and she's almost there when she finds a stranger lying in the road. It's our friend AU Cade, who managed to get himself captured and interrogated, and who subsequently escaped. Escaped from where? Sure sounds like Chris's house. So what happened to Chris? And what can a mousy schoolteacher and an injured operative do about it?

[adrenaline-whump]

Morning reblog!

Also, I should clarify: the Ao3 story includes the whole thing, start to finish, so you don't have to track down the old posts! Chapters 1-5 are previously published, and 6-11 are new.

The earlier work is basically unchanged; I just corrected a couple of words when I dropped it in. There are a few things I'd do differently now, but I didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

[adrenaline-whump]

Flash Point

New story posted on Ao3! Half new, anyway. This was formerly known as "the Chris and Emma story." It's about 10.6K words.

If it's been a while since you read the first installments, I recommend reading the whole thing. There are events in the later parts that are seeded/foreshadowed in the earlier ones.

If you're like "the what story?" here's the deal. Emma is driving to her brother's house for a nice weekend in the mountains, and she's almost there when she finds a stranger lying in the road. It's our friend AU Cade, who managed to get himself captured and interrogated, and who subsequently escaped. Escaped from where? Sure sounds like Chris's house. So what happened to Chris? And what can a mousy schoolteacher and an injured operative do about it?

[adrenaline-whump]

I'm editing a sentence. I'm rearranging words, trying different phrasing, scowling at the screen, and generally fighting with what I want to say. Why? Because the darn sentence works perfectly with an em-dash. But I feel obligated to reword it anyway. Stupid AI....

[adrenaline-whump]

What am I doing, you ask? Editing a whump story. Why?

[mid-knife-crisis]

Does anyone else have whump phases like, in waves. Like for a while you'll be like "Oh yeah, some cool whump content, that's great," but you'll just keep doing your other daily life shit. But then out of nowhere for anywhere from days to weeks you'll get hit with the Super Whump Beam(tm) and literally all you can think about is fictional characters getting kidnapped and tortured. And then after a while of that it's back to business as usual until it all happens again

[mid-knife-crisis]

Any time I see in a show or movie or whatever someone's captured but their hands are just like boringly bound in front of them and there's no other restraints I'm like why did they even bother

[adrenaline-whump]

God yes. If your captive can pick up a nearby object and hit you with it, basically you haven't restrained them at all.

What almost annoys me more is when the captive is tied with their hands in front and also gagged. I have a hard time maintaining my suspension of disbelief when they just sit there ignoring the obvious move.

[adrenaline-whump]

Good news for my three loyal readers: I have a complete draft of Flash Point, aka the Chris & Emma story! Like most of my early drafts, there are parts that are not too bad, parts that make me cringe and flag them “FIX”, and parts that make me grin and look forward to posting them. I’m not going to retcon anything I’ve posted in the past, so that means I don’t actually have a ton to edit.

[groovysarity]

[apolladay]

Did your job exist one thousand years ago? Disregard changes in technology (i.e. doctors existed even if they didn't practice medicine the same way as today)

Yes

No, but there was a earlier/similar version of it

No, my job isn't analogous to anything that existed 1000 years ago

Unemployed

Voting ended onApr 1

[adrenaline-whump]

A few days ago, I realized that my approach to writing has been shaped by my experience in high school and college theater. I start with the story I want to tell, and then the character who tells it. That's why I gravitate toward either first person POV (Cade) or close third person. I'm in someone's head...and I want you to be there with me.

That's one of the main reasons why I haven't done any multiple POV stories so far. I think I've been subconsciously afraid that it would muddy the characters' voices, or that I'd get confused about who knows what.

But, I mean, heck...there are a number of plays where actors play multiple parts. It might be a little more work to nail down the persona of each one, but it's perfectly doable.

[sarcasmcloud]

"Where's River? Is he alright?" - Slow Horses s02e05