#scratchedandscrawled

[gingerly-writing]

Have you heard of whump? Do you like it?

I have heard of whump and I do like (certain parts of) it! 

in the old days I knew it as hurt/comfort and that also appealed to me. I think it was less heavy on the outright/brutal torture than the whump community (with more of an equal balance between pain and comforting afterwards). I guess it’s a balance between h/c sometimes lacking enough pain and emotional payoff because of that, and some of the heavier whump violence squicking me out.

I mean, if you’ve read much of my blog you’ve probably realised I LOVE emotional anguish of all flavours. does he love me? why did she betray me? will they hurt me? ALL SO GOOD. so I guess upon breaking it down that the central appeal of both h/c and whump (for me) is the emotions and the relationships!

but yeah, kudos to the whump community for bouncing along doing their thing! I’m more than happy to hang out on the edges and fling an occasional prompt their way ;P

[scripttorture]

(Modern day) The main guy has been caught. You need information from him. How would you torture him?

You wouldn’t. Torture can not lead to accurate information: pain, memory and the human brain fundamentally do not work that way.

 You’re obviously new here and that’s OK. I’m here because a lot of people, like you, get taken in by torture apologia. It’s incredibly prevalent and it’s very difficult to find accurate information on torture.

 Believe me after researching this stuff in my own time for a couple of decades I understand.

 I’m going to link you to the masterposts which cover this particular set of misconceptions. Then I’m going to link you to some of my sources in case you want more information or just to know where I’m getting this from.

 First off the effect of torture on interrogation is discussed here.

 The effect torture has on investigations more generally (and the massive problems this causes, preventing any accurate information gathering) is discussed here.

 Here’s what an effective investigation looks like. There’s a further post here on leading questions.

 There’s a post on forced confessions over here, the average ‘success’ rate for forcing confessions under torture is about 10%. Which means that under torture 90% of people don’t comply long enough to sign their name.

 There’s a post on the common misconceptions and apologist tropes in fiction here.

 You can read about the common effects of torture here. And the detrimental effect on memory in particular here (yes torture actually destroys the evidence in an interrogation context by significantly increasing the chance that victims will forget the information or that their brain will edit it, producing a false memory.)

 If you’re interested in why torture actually happens when it can’t lead to accurate information, I’ve got an old post on that here.

 My main sources (which I need to update with some new ones) are all over here. For a beginner I recommend starting with O’Mara, he’s a neuroscientist and gives a very good, accessible grounding in the topic with a lot of citations. After that I’d suggest Monroe for an overview of just how varied survivors are and Alleg or Fanon for first hand accounts.

 You were wrong, it’s OK because the important thing is what you do now that you know.

 Read. Educate yourself. Get angry.

 And when you’ve done that if you have more writing questions I’m here.

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