A place to hoard all my favorite angst, whump, and hurt/comfort stuff.
Because sometimes, in order to see what a fictional character is made of,
you need to see them broken.
Hello everyone! Call me Crystal (she/her or they/them, no huge preferences here). I've been a Whump and Hurt/Comfort enjoyer forever, but only recently discovered the whump community. Finally decided to throw my hat in the ring!
Made this little blog as a treasure trove to hoard all my favorite whump, angst, and hurt/comfort posts and art like a dragon. I plan to put my own whump thoughts/concepts up here as well (and maybe I'll be tempted into original writing if I see a really good prompt or something 🥰) because I love seeing my characters beat up until they crack open like geodes.
I am An Adult (TM) so there might be a couple NSFW things up here, but they will all be tagged appropriately.
Apologies in advance to all the whump blogs I'm about to spam reblog from lol
Likes/squicks under the cut, as well as the start of a masterlist!
Likes
Unbroken Vigil (my favorite trope ever)
Magic Whump
Sooo many other things related to Magic Whump
Nonhuman whumpee (merfolk, winged beings, any of the fun nonhuman beings you can play as in DnD...)
Bound and gagged
Kidnap and Rescue
Used as Bait (and Forced to Watch)
Caretaker x Whumpee (because I am a hopeless romantic)
Recovery Whump
Heroic Last Stand
Dislikes
Major Character Death (I need my happy endings)
Severe body modification (anything huge and unrecoverable)
Noncon
Masterlist!
Darius and Mianu stories
Used as Bait Part 1
Used as Bait Part 2
"Don't touch him" (ask response)
Control (song lyric prompt)
The Weight of the Crown (a response to a whump prompt)
Magic With a Price (for Magic Whump Week)
Cursed (for Magic Whump Week)
Collapse (for Magic Whump Week)
"Collapse" but from Darius' POV (ask response)
Random Darius and Mianu info stuff
Torture Ask Game response
Oc Ask Game 1
"Bold What Applies" tag game
Gail Carson Levine's Character Profile (tag game response)
"Find the Word" tag game
"Random Headcanon Generator" tag game
Darius and Mianu Picrew
Mianu Picrew
Two OC's in 15 (fun dialogue tag game, both bois)
OC Ask Game 2 (tag game, just Mianu this time)
Mianu's Scars (tag game response)
Characters and their room (tag game response)
Ask Game "for the cute boys"
More of that same ask game
And another one from that same ask game (you're all so nice!)
Stoic whumpee who never thinks about themselves to the point that when they regain consciousness after being wounded and see caretaker next to them the first thing they say is “Why are you still here?” / “It’s too dangerous” / “You shouldn’t be here”. The only thing that they’re afraid of is caretaker being under threat.
Especially good when whumpee and caretaker are lovers. And when whumpee is wounded so badly that even the thought of parting with them now is ridiculous to caretaker, no matter how dangerous it is for them to stay.
It's been [insert preferred timeline] since Whumpee disappeared when Caretaker gets a call from Whumper. No beating around the bush, no taunting. Whumper says exactly where Whumpee is and that they should hurry if they want to find them alive.
"Whining?" *speaks in a high pitched voice* " This is whining! Oh the ropes are too tight! You've hurt me too much! I'm so hungry! You want whining, I can give that!"
this is my oc Eden (left, they/them) and @mars-ax's oc Vulnerability (right, he/they) (and technically @parkernopeter's oc Passion is also present just offscreen <3)
You're not creating real people, you're creating the illusion of real people. You don't have to mention their favorite food if it doesn't come up, you don't even have to know it, though if they were actual people they'd have one. You can throw plot events at your characters to force them to take certain actions, or you could just rewrite the characters to be the kind of characters who would take those actions anyway. Your characters have a life of their own in their own little world, but don't be afraid to play god to get what you want out of them.
In the vast majority of cases, a character's strengths and flaws should be the same thing. There are exceptions (you can have a character be clumsy for the lols without needing to find some way that it's an advantage), but for most character traits, the difference between a flaw and a strength is the situation at hand and learning when to indulge it.
desire is the source of action, so your characters should WANT things. all of them should have something they want that's good for them, something they want that's bad for them, and something that's just a little silly, for spice.
Treat your secondary characters like they are the main characters of another story. I don't mean you have to know everything about them, but if their role in the story could be replaced by a cardboard cutout, then the story will feel flat where it encounters them. Give them their own motivation/wants/desires, and it will help you immensely in writing their interactions with the main character, and make the world seem bigger/more real to the reader.
Unlike real life, if you want anything out of your characters, you need to put them through meaningful hardship. Angst for the sake of angst is fun to toy with, but at the end of the day, there needs to be a reason for it or it's just not going to be interesting. Make sure that it's something that will get you more character out of your character.
People like "vibrant" characters. All that means, really, is dialing up their traits a LITTLE louder than they would be in real life. The reader is only ever going to receive at most 80% of what you mean (and often much lower), and 80% or less of a character is pretty boring. But if you overshoot in a carefully calculated way -- say, catapulting 120% of a character in the reader's direction -- then what the reader receives is 100%, and then they are happy and entertained. So go just a little harder than you think you need to.
Also, nobody actually likes a bleeding-heart perfectly moral Pollyanna-ish simpering protagonist. You gotta scuff 'em up a little bit. Get 'em grungy. If they really are a kind and good person, spend some time thinking about how HARD it is to be kind and good, how it is an intentional choice. How there might be a total bitch inside them who has been repressed and is screaming to get out. That's called TENSION, and it is TENSION which makes a story or a character interesting and compelling. More tension, more good.
