Brimming with possibilities.

Arcus / 25 (They/Them) A Whump/OC blog. I ramble alot if prompted.

[peachbrine]

mentor characters realizing that their mentee is traumatized too. the first time they make an offhanded remark about drinking too much after work, the first time they run into each other making coffee at 5 am because they know they won't be able to get back to sleep after a nightmare. the guilt of not being able to protect their kid from the same things they've seen. knowing they're wearing the trauma like a badge of honour. knowing it's nothing to be proud of, but having nothing to say to discourage them, because they made the same choices too, right?

[hcnnibal]

Hello hello I just wanted to say how much I enjoy and appreciate Look Homeward and the Angels. I've been following you since before the first Angels posts and watching their story evolve has been such a joy. You're a big inspiration for me and a big source of my confidence in making my own creative projects darker and hornier and more detail-obsessed. Thank you for torturing those blondes so wonderfully 🫡

its been really cool sharing this with you guys! thank you for going on this journey w me

cant believe that chapter 1 of look homeward was supposed to just be a one-shot but it just spiraled into a full blown comic with side comics and everything 😭

[pain-in-the-everywhere]

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.

[straight-to-the-pain]

Shoutout to hands tied behind the back, gotta be one of my favourite positions

[painwithoutplot]

picks up your ill and injured whumpee who has been left to sleep on the ground, regardless of how they ache to their bones and struggle to draw breath, and tucks them into a clean soft bed supported by plenty of pillows. btw

[benson-bradley]

Half Man x The Passenger 2023 | tiktok

[willgrahamscock]

some of you need to realize that your faves would be having unsafe bdsm sex because they don’t actually know what bdsm sex is, they just want to fuck and also kill each other. you must understand this.

[willgrahamscock]

you don’t have to write safe practices and contract agreements. your audience knows not to apply any of this in their real lives, sasuke doesn’t know what a safe word is im begging you please write the toxic yaoi

[whump-tr0pes]

YURI TOO!!!

[radioactive-earthshine]

Not sure why it's a new trend among fic readers to assume if the fic has not been posted within the week it's inappropriate to comment on it, like the fic has to be hot out of the oven to give feedback for.

I got a comment on a fic that is less than a year old and it was mostly an apology for being a comment on an "old fic" and how late they were in commenting.

Just comment on the fic. Doesn't matter how old it is.

[mysteryteacup]

Fandom is not social media.

Fandom is not trends.

Fandom is a cross between a library and having a slumber party with your friends.

"Old" means nothing to fic.

[whump-tr0pes]

Someone singlehandedly resurrected a fic of mine I hadn't updated in almost 3 years, just by commenting. I finished that fic and went on to write 2 more arcs with that character, completing that entire story.

Comment on the fic

[stigmata-oblongata]

[annabelle--cane]

really nice gift for Specifically Me when the character has an immediate and violent panic response to being held down / physically restrained. especially if their affect is usually cheerful or relaxed or reserved and this is their one "sicko mode (wildly uncharacteristic)" button.

[carrierlady]

i like when a whumpee has gone through something and only upon their return, do they realize how bad it was. everyone is happy they’re back and don’t realize the extent of what happened. whumpee slowly spiraling, trying to act normal, not wanting to drop these bombs on their friends but now that they’re safe, they’re finally processing everything.

[fineiguessimintowhump]

"Whumpee woke up, nuzzling into a soft blanket. They were laying on a soft mattress, and something was very, very wrong."

a classic for a reason. they could never make me hate you. perfect. no comment.

[bubble-up]

Love all the things that can cause somebody to shake. Like, almost anything can. Dehydration, overexertion, stress, fear, sleep deprivation, nausea, medication, pain, etc. etc. etc… “the human body just produces mucus for anything,” sure, but the human body also seems to love shaking like a leaf for anything. Sometimes for literally nothing. And unlike mucus it can’t even pretend to be helpful LOL

[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

[defire]

Ideas for editing your story--to make it MORE INTENSE

(giving myself away here)

Give your characters dialects--it's ok to copy real-world speech patterns

Have your characters interact with the scene props (like kicking back their chair as they stand up from the table)

Check the pacing. How do you like your chapters laid out? (Ex. I always do three scenes: establishing the problem, whumpity whump, and processing + cliffhanger.)

Use visceral wording by describing how someone did something and suggesting the effect of their actions. Ex. "She sat down" -> "she thumped into the creaking chair with a scowl." (This way it advances the emotional plot!!)

Tell the story in the way your POV character would word it.

Emotional plot > physical plot! Stories are about feelings! (Yes, your protagonist got beaten up and escaped but. They got beaten up to protect their sister and they escaped by betraying her! More angst👍)

Turn words into pictures. "He felt sad" -> "he buried his face in his hands. He'd lost before he even started."

[whump-me]

The strongest prisoner is giving the job of burying the dead. Every day, he sees which of his friends have died, and the marks on their bodies that show what their captors did to them beforehand. Every day, he digs their graves, and hopes his own grave will be next.

[diablo-sera-tops]

hey don't cry. blorbo coughing up blood