Recently I’ve been really into characters that request to be tied up, for whatever reason. Some ideas I’ve been rotating around in my mind:
Whumpee was horribly traumatized by being isolated for a long time, to the point that they started to scratch themselves bloody as a form of self harm, just to feel anything. When they are rescued, they are semi-delirious and Caretaker has to restrain them to get them to stop hurting themselves. They realize that as long as they’re tied up, they literally can’t be isolated again because eventually someone will have to come in and give them food or water to keep them alive. Meaning they start to associate being restrained with safety from isolation, so they panic if unrestrained.
Exact same as previous point but it’s actually Whumper who first saved them from the isolation (maybe they were the one who put Whumpee in it, maybe they weren’t) and is absolutely delighted to see that Whumpee panics when left unrestrained (I personally like to think that Whumper does pet whump with Whumpee now). Bonus points if later on Caretaker tries to rescue them from Whumper and they don’t want to leave because they know Caretaker wouldn’t let them be constantly restrained the way Whumper does.
Hero works at a super abusive hero agency that overworks all its heroes and doesn’t let them have friends/family/whatever outside of hero work due to it being a ‘security risk’. So Hero is super touch starved and Villain feels bad for them so they start bringing them back to their lair after particularly rough fights to patch them up, and give them some much needed positive human contact. But Hero tells them that the agency will kill them if they find out that they are ‘fraternizing with the enemy’ (even though Hero is often very injured/exhausted when this happens and likely could not put up much of a fight even if they wanted to) so Villain has to tie them up, do all that under the guise of ‘capturing and interrogating’ them. Because obviously the agency doesn’t give a shit if one of their employees is getting routinely captured and tortured, but if they’re getting medical aid from a Villain? They would definitely care about that.
Hero who knows that they can’t actually escape an evil villain who has captured them and turned them into their pet. But they don’t actually tie Hero up or lock the doors or anything. This could be for so many reasons. Maybe Villain is just so much stronger than Hero that they both know trying to run is pointless. Or maybe Hero is ‘willingly’ staying with Villain in return for the safety of their team or city. Or Villain lives somewhere super secluded, so yeah, Hero could get out of the house but they’d just starve to death in the woods. Or Villain has the entire city under their control and as soon as Hero gets out someone just spots them and returns them to Villain. Whatever reason, Hero is trapped but theoretically does possess the physical ability to try to escape. This is killing them inside, they can’t just not even try. So they keep trying to escape, even knowing it’s futile, likely getting themselves hurt and traumatized every single time they try (either that or they don’t try to escape and feel incredibly guilty about that). So eventually they just snap and beg Villain to just tie them up so they can actually rest without either being actively working on an escape plan or feeling incredibly guilty for having the ability to try to escape and not even trying. They can’t feel guilty for not trying to escape if they’re restrained and don’t posses the ability to even start an escape attempt.
