Welcome to the blog. she/her, adult. This is a whump sideblog, and the geology aesthetic is largely for show, though I do like geology. I’ll be in your notifications as @winterpinetrees. I’m here to have fun and show off my ocs like a kid bringing the same rock to show-and-tell multiple times.
Heed all content warnings. My ocs all come from the same interconnected story, so bear with me if someone has three names or I explain a bit of lore. I am always happy to talk about them.
Topics you are likely to find here: Superpowers and magic, lab whump, living weapons, the evil organizations responsible for the above, and complicated recoveries.
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Writings
Buried Depths [completed]
Zach’s magic is turning him into something inhuman. He isn’t the only dangerous superhuman to be imprisoned underground and trained as a weapon, but he might be the most afraid to resist.
The Horizon Guard
The scattered recovery period after Buried Depths. Containing superhero training, grappling with a screwed up system, and (eventually) a found family.
One For Sorrow
A proud young living weapon is rescued by his sworn enemy. The encounter goes so much worse than either of them imagined.
Whumptober 2025
assorted writings from the same world as Buried Depths, but at different times. Largely non-canon.
You know, little me was really onto something for loving Star Wars: The Clone Wars for its living weapon clone whump.
You are a soldier. You have never had any option but to be a soldier. This is the one thing you were made for. Every other person in your life is the exact same as you. You are a number. (You know this is fundamentally true, just as you know you are all different.)
You are raised in individual teams from a young age. You have been training with, eating with, sleeping beside these same people since you were children.
You are siblings. You are soldiers. You are going to watch your siblings die.
I am working on de-marveling these guys so they exist in their own universe now. Thats why the designs look a little funny. There is a certain change I made to the lore present here- Izzy is a trans guy. I’m particularly fond of this choice as it gives Gray more reason to view Izzy as his “second chance to save Holly”— and makes it all the worse when the two are ripped apart.
Also, Eloise (gray and iris’s daughter) does happen to resemble Izzy when she’s little. That is probably wonderful for Gray’s mental state :)
Izzy is the most doomed-by-association guy I have ever seen in my life. He deserves more fireflies and to never have to deal with the Legrands again unless he wants to. 10/10 character my heart hurts for him. (though I do kind of miss when he was “blond” lol)
After the events of Buried Depths, six young superhumans are freed from government imprisonment. Their only hope to stay free is to be more useful as a superhero team than they would be as living weapons.
It was always going to be a long road to recovery, but the mandatory combat training is making things harder. At least they aren’t alone anymore.
=== Characters ===
Zachary “Jasper” Sparston (he/him)
Sara “Sol” Torres (she/her)
Noah Griffon (she/her)
Cyrene (she/her)
Daniel Asato (he/him)
Vicky Palmer (she/he)
Guest starring their primary handler/legal guardian, Cointoss (actual name, Garett)
And Elster, a 500 year old fae thing and former(?) supervillain who just won’t leave Zach alone.
=== The Writings ===
not necessarily posted in chronological order. under no obligation to reach an ending. accepting asks.
Supervillain forcing Henchman work for them using blackmail/threats
Henchman feeling like they can't reach out for help, as they are a criminal and so not worthy of saving.
Henchman suffering Supervillain’s wrath after accidentally defeating Hero in a fight and taking the fame and glory.
Supervillain always leaving Henchman behind to deal with the heroes.
Henchman having a sickness/curse and only Supervillain has the only cure but it’s temporary. So Henchman has to stay close to Supervillain, or suffer.
Supervillain is Henchman’s parent who will make their kid a criminal AT ALL COST.
Henchman used to be Hero, and is now being paraded around as Supervillain’s little helper.
Monster Supervillain who used Henchman as a stress-ball/chew-toy when angry.
Other goons putting the blame on Henchman for Hero getting away, just to escape Supervillain’s punishment. Then even after the truth comes out Henchman is offered no help or sympathy.
Henchman being brainwashed to work for Supervillain.
Supervillain’s being Henchman’s possessive lover. (The danger! The power imbalance! THE DRAMA! Gimme! And then have Henchman dump them, before going on a date with Hero! 😈)
Henchman being forbidden from leaving the lair as they know to much.
No one listens to Henchman trying to warn them, and then everyone blames Henchman for not warning them.
Hero keeps flirting with Henchman, Supervillain is not happy. And Henchman knows they are playing with fire.
Supervillain controls everything about Henchman even off work so that Henchman "doesn't destroy Supervillain band”
PLOT TWIST! Is actually Supervillain who is the Whumpee, as Henchman is the one pulling all the strings! :O
A wound which, when revealed, reveals also a character's identity- or rather, a secret identity or that the character is one and the same as the previously anonymous or disguised one who has done some deed that resulted in injury- a telling, distinctive injury that now identifies this character.
Accidental trauma reveal my love. When friends or enemies unintentionally discover Whumpee’s tragic background. For instance
The classic nightmare scene. Whumpee has never slept with people close by for this very reason. Unfortunately, they don’t have a choice this time, and they do, in fact, scream (or cry) in their sleep, in front of someone/everyone.
The person behind the trauma suddenly reappearing in Whumpee’s life. Whumpee losing it—running away, hiding, refusing to engage with anyone. Or even better, trying so hard to pretend they’re okay until they just. Shatter.
Truth serums, spells, and items. Flippantly asking Villain, “Why do you keep doing this?” only to get a gut-wrenching answer in return.
The mind probe. Whumpee is sick/unconscious, and someone does the magical mind probe (I swear this comes up so much in media) to figure out what’s wrong and stumbles on Whumpee’s tragic past.
Teammates unknowingly triggering Whumpee for a while until Whumpee finally just screams it out. The looks of horror.
Also shout out to intentional trauma reveals. For trusting the found family enough to tell them the things that hurt the most.
Any other tropey goodness that results in Whumpee finally getting the comfort they deserve.
remember kids, this pride month, and all the others: pride is still a riot, and always will be until every human can live, love, and simply exist without having to fight for it or hide themselves to stay safe.
Just a Whumpee who has been trapped in a cold dark cell for who knows how long and then wakes up one day in a soft bed, next to an open window. The feeling of sun and wind on their face as the birds sing.
I need more fics exploring the trauma and body horror of what was done to Absolute Batman when he was experimented on and tortured in Ark M for 3 months. He was stripped of human dignity and physically altered. He finally escapes only to be in a coma for 20 days and when he wakes up all his friends have been harmed beyond recognition- OMG
Like there’s SO MUCH potential there. I have some ideas I’m toying with but Idk we’ll see if it goes anywhere.
Whump that is intertwined with broader systems. Whump where the recovery arc is filled with with research and witness testimonies and trying to make sure it stops happening to others. Whumpees who become caretakers because they understand what was done the way no one else can. The story is bigger than the few main characters.
Being a Sword does have some overlap with being a Guard Dog but there's some important differences. A Guard Dog can go off leash. A Guard Dog needs to be trained, and rewarded, and serves out of love or duty or force or something. A Guard Dog is fundamentally a living animal that acts in a specific way due to its instincts or its desires or its sense of love and loyalty. A Sword might have all of those things. A Sword might feel love, a Sword might hate, a Sword might want affection. The fundamental difference is that it doesn't matter what a Sword feels or thinks. It's a Sword. It doesn't matter if it hates you. It doesn't matter if you love it. It cuts just the same.
Contains: past imprisonment, torture, and living weapon training. Everyone is traumatized, (caretaker included) but presently they are sitting in a room, awkwardly.
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These kids don’t stand a chance, thinks the darker part of him, the part that wishes he’d died back in March. He runs a coin between his fingers and steps to face the team. His team, for as long as he’s allowed to try and help them.
The six teenagers on the couches ahead of him were only set free on the condition that they'd still be useful. If they aren’t a combat-ready team by the new year, then his enemies will take that as proof that torture is more efficient than basic human decency, and never let anyone go ever again.
As a superhero, he faced much longer odds. There's no time to waste.
These kids were in an evil laboratory a week ago. Most of them had so-called handlers, men and women like him, who only existed to break them down. He’s halfway surprised that they’re even talking, but they are. Some of them are even confident enough enough to be rude!
“So are you going to tell me what he’s doing here, or am I supposed to just forget that we all know each other?”
Sara Torres, callsign: Solar, is the speaker. She’s sitting in a tank top with her arms over the back of the couch as if that confident body language could make everyone forget what she’s seen. She accuses Zachary “Jasper” Sparston, a fantasy-genre looking boy who sits six feet away, and was forced to beat her bloody while they were both imprisoned. He clenches his jaw. This group is almost as messy as the original Horizon Guard.
Six kids in the room. Ages 15 to 19. The squad spans hometowns in five states, several ethnicities, and just about the entire span of wealth and class. They have more reasons to hate each other than he has kills to his name. Six pairs of eyes fix on his. He doesn’t sit- he's done the redemption thing before, and it helps to seem like an authority -but he does rest his hands on the back of a chair.
“Zachary is here because Department of Supernatural Resources - the DSR - demanded that you six join forces into a combat squad. It’s the best compromise we could reach to get you out of hell. Think of it like a very important trial run, to prove that kids like you don't deserve to be buried underground".
Sara’s face twists into a smile. There are glances all around. He images they’re thinking Kids? You’re kidding. Like hell we are. “Test run? We’re the best you’ve got?”
He raises his hands. “You’re the best the DSR let us save. You six have powers that work well together".
And everything else that clashes like oil and water.
"You're also clever enough to understand that you're being set up, to blow up. That's what the director of all this wants. Enslaved weapons are cheaper and simpler than healthy heroes. If you fail, you prove that everybody with powers who does wrong needs to be destroyed. But you're smart. Maybe even smarter than her. We can prove her wrong".
A burst of hysterical laughter from Vicky, who never even saw the inside of a prison. She’s the youngest. Daniel mutters “Fuck Director Gardenne,” the woman responsible for all of this torture, and Sara repeats it louder.
“Exactly! I hope the six of you can get along. God knows I couldn’t stand some of my allies when my team was founded. But if you’re never friends, then we’re doing this out of spite. You’re all going to coexist and look good on camera out of sheer superheroic spite. Ok?”
Now the six of them are looking at each other. A supernatural feeling races along his nerves, but his powers won’t help here, right? There are too many variables for him to force a success.
He clasps his scarred hands together. “We are going to reintroduce ourselves. I imagine you all have some misconceptions about each other from when you were prisoners”.
The way they look at each other is like kids, not tortured prisoners. Someone needs to go first, and it seems like embarrassment is driving them, not fear of a beating. Giving them a few days to acclimate was absolutely necessary.
Sara speaks again. “Is this, what, a name, pronouns, how long we spent in the Coal Mine, thing?”
Vicky affirms pronouns. Daniel, usually sullen, suggests sharing where they’re from. Zachary’s eyes lose focus at that. Time to step in.
“Name, pronouns, and power set. How long you were imprisoned doesn’t tell you how bad it was. You all know it’s more complicated than that. I’ll go first”.
Cyrene narrows her ice-pale eyes. He’s a famous superhero. They all know him, but they need an example.
“My name is Garett. You know me as Cointoss, a founding member of the Horizon Guard. I use he/him/his pronouns. My powers are complicated, but I'm not all that creative with them. Let's just say I don’t miss and I'm hard to pin down. Sara, how about you go next?”
Her powers have left her with no physical signs of her four-month imprisonment. No permanent injuries, loss of muscle mass, or even pallor from lack of sunlight. But no one, no matter how principled, can escape four months of torture without mental scars.
“I’m Sara Torres. They called me Solar, down there, but I prefer Sol. She/her. My powers? Super-strength, flight-“ she lifts a hand and golden light pours from her palm. “And that”.
“Is it actually, like, sunlight? Scientifically?” Vicky chimes in from her perch on the back of a couch.
“It burns like it”.
He looks to the next person. He’s well aware that this group composition is terrible, but they at least fought for each person to have a partner. Sara had been expected to stick with Noah, due to similarities in age and race. Unfortunately, Noah thinks Sara has a death wish, and Sara thinks Noah is a collaborator.
“My name is Noah Griffon. I use she and her pronouns,” she says, pointedly, likely because she wears a sweater vest and has hair cut close to her scalp. “I can control the weather, but not the way you’re thinking. I need to have open access to the air, and it has to be cold. I’m not a threat in August”.
“None of you are threats to each other. You all need to learn to stop thinking of yourselves as powder kegs,” Cointoss clarifies. Next.
Next is Daniel, former supervillain’s minion. Makeshift piercings dot his ears and eyebrows, and he keeps his limbs covered even in the heat due to a combination of phobias and habits the files can't pin down. He was orphaned in the battle that made Cointoss a superhero. Guilt is not a useful emotion.
“Daniel Asato,” he says, then hesitates with a sideways glance toward Cyrene. “He/him. I can bend metal. And I don’t want anyone to touch me”.
Zachary’s elf ears literally perk up at the use of the word bend. Cointoss gets that reference too. Avatar! His file said Zach loved cartoons. Loved. The boy is broken enough that the file used a cautious past tense. He’s breathing hard. You’d never be able to tell he’s six inches taller than anyone else in the room.
“My - uh - my name is Zachary. You can call me Zach, or Jasper. He/him pronouns, please. I’m a guy. I don’t know how to describe what I can do. There’s magic, in me. I call it the Darkness. It’s a parasite. It will do basically anything to keep me alive”.
They move on quickly from the boy with bleaching hair and magic brand on his palm. Cointoss takes note that he has no preference for his name over the callsign that was beaten into him. And in only three months. Christ.
“My name is Cyrene. I use she/her pronouns. I am also a telepath, and I can’t 'turn it off'. Learn to be okay with both of those things".
He's most worried about Cyrene. Everyone else was stunned silent when they were freed. Cyrene thanked him, then calmly asked for a nail care kit and a legal name change. He complied.
Vicky stares, awestruck, then realizes she’s up next. That kid is the youngest of the group, but Cointoss still feels a twist in his gut when they’re in the same room. Vicky is only using her powers of mind control and illusions like another teen uses makeup, but it reminds him of worse. He keeps trying on instinct to find the seams. Her freckles change every time he looks away.
“Hi! I’m Vicky Palmer, sometimes Victor for a Frankenstein joke. I use she and he pronouns. Don't overthink it. Illusion powers are really convenient for that, actually”.
Not for the first time, Cointoss thinks about being in a room with six highly volatile superhuman teenagers. He’s a super too, but his powers are situational. They couldn’t save him. If something is going to go wrong, this is the time. They size each other up. They pick at the seams of their chairs.
Then Zach/Jasper speaks. He might be the most damaged of them all.
"Were you the kid in the woods? The one who saved me?"
A week ago, the Department of Supernatural Resources blew up a failsafe in Zach’s ribcage when he seemed about to surrender. It forced Zach into a rampage that would’ve taken real heroes to stop, until Vicky charmed him to sleep. He immediately fell into critical condition.
"I was,"
"Who were the others?" he asks, and Cointoss didn't want to get into that just yet, but the group is all abuzz.
"The other team of superhero trainees,” he explains to angry voices. “You were arrested because you seemed like you might become villains. They have been trained since June to become heroes. If the Director gets her way, you’ll spar this June for all the marbles. Winner becomes the new Horizon Guard".
Silence. The threat of going back to prison means nothing to Vicky, so she asks the question. "For all the marbles? Is this like, to the death?"
"Might as well be. We go back underground if we lose?" asks Daniel.
"None of this is legal, and we're working to tear this whole tournament apart and have both groups work together, but right now, yeah. If you lose, the Director scraps the team. She’s threatened to scrap the team early if you don’t show good enough progress by January”.
Vicky drops onto the couch with a thud that spooks her teammates. "But we have until January?"
"Barely. Your “midterm” is on January 2nd".
"When do we start?"
.......................................
I'm not tagging this as "child whump" or "minor whump" because these guys are mostly treated like adults. That being said, Vicky, Daniel, and Cyrene are under 18.
I am not necessarily going in chronological order either. There are, without a doubt, chapters that could take place before this. However, Buried Depths is over and I am free from the burdens of a linear narrative. Except for when I feel like it. I have so many ocs and I have gone mad with power. This is almost entirely for my own enjoyment but it is very cool that other people are around.
You know those stories where a lost king/queen needs to return to the throne, as they are the only ones who can fix the evil in the lands?
That, but from the pov of a rebel, or servant/warrior who was forced to work for the new rulers.
They don't get a heroic journey to their destiny. Or to support a hero along the way.
They just work the underground network to get people out. They take losses and dangers and pain, and keep up the hidddn fight day in and out, with no time for legends or tales about a lost ruler.
That won't help them here. They can't sit around and wait. People need help, so they help.
And when the king/queen returns and brings peace with them, the rebels don't get glory like them. No epic tales written about them.
something i never see explored with caretaker or friend characters is what it's like to grow up surrounded by traumatised people, but have no trauma of your own. it feels like you're on the outside of this club that you can only get into by going through something Really Bad, even though the people inside the club are happy to welcome you anyway, you know you'll never actually fit in.
and fucked up as it sounds, you want to fit in. you want the awful things to happen to you. you feel envious of what they have, even if that thing is memories of the most awful things known to man and consequences that run your daily functioning into the ground.
you're not sick enough to relate to the sick people, but you've seen ever so slightly too much to fit in with the "normal" people. your problems seem so minimal compared to these life-altering horrors that the whumpees have been through, yet you're not coping anyway. so either you admit that the problem is yourself, or you find a reason to react that way.
give me caretakers that sit through whumpee's stories and swallow back envy. who actively go looking for danger and dodgy people in the hopes that they'll go through something that can put them on whumpee's level. who plan out how to make things worse in precise, structured detail, then get angry with themself because what the fuck are they doing and it doesn't count if it's fucking orchestrated.
