LUNGGGGGSSSS. They are seriously some of my favourite whump related injuries to write!
I started researching lung injuries as a teen (before I ever knew I was into whump), and I have so much useless information relating to the subject. So here is whatever I remember. Because more Whumpees deserve lung damage.
They're a class of injury that is not just hell to endure, but also to watch someone else go through. So Caretaker can also suffer in proxy.
A Whumpee might have to gurgle their words past the blood that’s coming up from their lungs, desperately pull air into a lung that won’t inflate because it has collapsed, or start losing coherence and coordination due to oxygen deprivation.
Other lung injury details:
Cyanosis (lips, tongue and fingertips turning blue)
Pale skin that is cool and clammy to the touch
Air hunger (a special kind of living hell)
Coughing, choking, rattling breath
Fragmented speech, or even the inability to speak entirely because they can’t afford the air. Not being able to project their voice, having to speak in a wheeze
Blood or bloody froth appearing at the mouth and nose, especially when Whumpee is trying to breathe through blood
Confusion, fatigue, irritability, compromised mental function
Lack of coordination, fumbling fingers, tripping over things, bumping into furniture
Oxygen deprivation can cause seizures, unconsciousness, brain damage, coma, and death of course
AND if you want, Whumpee can also go out quietly, without anyone knowing. Passing out or dying from oxygen deprivation can be silent and unexpected (See "old man's best friend" >> pneumonia providing a gentle end to old or very sick individuals without visible pain or struggle)
Some dramatic lung injury interventions:
For hemothorax (blood in the lungs): having to drain the blood collected in the lung so the person can breathe
For pneumothorax (air in the chest cavity, compressing the lung): releasing the air so it stops squashing the lung
Drowning: also see secondary drowning, where it happens outside of water
This is not exhaustive! Also, I am not in the medical industry, so take everything with a grain of salt and do your own research!
I was inspired to share this because I just wrote a fic where not one, but TWO Whumpees got lung injuries! TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
I finally got to use all my lung trivia! 🫁
omg I LOOOVE living weapon whumpees who won't do as they're told.
Who, despite undergoing intense reprogramming, aren't quite the blank slate the facility was aiming for. Not out of spite or defiance, but simply because human beings aren't machines and there's always going to be an element of non-compliance.
Balking at certain commands even though they've obeyed other more extreme orders. Like, they'll kill someone on command, but they refuse to crawl into a low tunnel
Memory wipes that WON'T TAKE (I am about to post a ficlet on thissssss UGH)
Developing intense likes or dislikes for certain people that nobody can explain
Refusing to keep certain gear on. Like maybe they keep taking off a particular protective cowl or vest, and even after being punished, they still keep stripping it off. And then they realises he won't wear anything that touches a particular area on his neck, the part where there is a scar
ooh talking about scars, a habitual rubbing of a particular scar. Or even an unmarked area, like the inside of their elbow, the back of a knuckle
checking out completely when they see someone in a very specific position. Like walking into a fire fight and then freezing in the middle of it because they caught sight of someone crouched, their back pressed against the corner of the room
intense fear responses to seemingly harmless things. Like horizontal metal surfaces, or surgical gloves.
And some of these can even happen after they're no longer forced to operate as a living weapon.
But yeah, people are not THINGS, and when bad actors try to treat someone like they are, things are going to end up erupting at some point or leak out sideways. Yay for messy living weapon whumpees!
I wrote a fic about a living weapon whose memory wipe won’t take.
I have seen so much about the Stoic Whumpee, and the Defiant Whumpee. They are fantastic archetypes, I love them so much.
But there’s so little on what it would take to break them.
Introducing the Procedural Whumper. The Whumper who gets called in when the Domination Whumper, Obsessed Whumper or Sadistic Whumper are proven ineffective.
The Procedural Whumper’s fight intro music is classical. And not even the epic kind. Something with the word “Spring” in it.
This is the administrator of Whumpers. He looks like a accountant. He wears wire rimmed glasses and rolls up his sleeves precisely three folds at the start of every session.
Afterward, he goes home to his wife and kids. He doesn't care about Whumpee, nor the organisation / individual that is so obsessed with them.
He's really good at his job.
The Stoic/Defiant Whumpee would try everything that’s served them in the past. Try to trigger them: Failure. Try to appeal/bargain: Failure. Try to outlast them: Failure.
Because Procedural Whumper doesn’t get impatient or frustrated. He isn’t trying to get any sort of reaction.
He simply comes in, clocks his hours administering precise whump, recording Whumpee’s responses to it, and then goes home to catch up on The Pitt (on HBO) with his wife. Maybe help his kid with homework if kid needs some extra academic attention.
His job is not to achieve a result, it's to maintain a procedure. He is paid (a LOT) the same every month, so he has no felt need to rush the procedure, or hide success if he achieves it early. The facility has made sure that he is rewarded for his time, not his result.
And it’s time that wears down on our Stoic/Defiant Whumpee. Because they might have an unbendable spirit, but the body is finite. Injuries stack, lack of food and sleep compound. And time is a cruel mistress.
Whumpee tries to find a weakness, because of course they do, but they're hard-pressed to find it. When Whumpee chokes out something that sounds like it might land, Procedural Whumper simply says "hm" and logs it in their fucking sheet.
He doesn't care if you call him a sociopath or psychopath. He knows it. His wife knows it. Even his kid knows it. They have language around it. He cares about people. He just doesn't care about YOU.
I love LOVE LOOOVE Whumpees who are hyper competent. Who are constantly working out their own rescue. Trying to figure out the system; examining not just the room or the box they're in, but the dynamics of the people in the room, the psychology of the people who are holding them captive.
Can this one be pit against that one? Is that one the weakest link? Does this one want me to desire him, to like him, or understand him? Maybe he can be intimidated? Or maybe he can be convinced I can be dominated and afraid of him?
Competent Whumpees are so so SO good.
But you know what's better? A competent Whumper. NNGGHHHH.
There's something about tears showing up without emotion. Not because Whumpee is stoic or repressed, but because they're so badly injured (possibly from brain damage, shock, or suffocation) that their body can't regulate certain base functions and starts to leak tears involuntarily. (Yes, an actual medical thing.)
It's such a profound loss of control, especially if Whumpee has been one to grit through pain and damage and never offer a glimpse of weakness.
Imagine:
Whumpee who has been brutally beaten about the head, his face drenched completely red; skin only visible only where his tears have carved clean tracks through blood.
Or:
Caretaker trying to hold up Whumpee's sagging head, frantic hands slipping on the tears sliding down Whumpee's slack and empty face.
Or:
Whumpee woozy and incoherent, feeling the slide of moisture down the side of their face. Wiping and looking at their hand; trying to register that it's tears they're feeling, not blood.
They'd much rather it be blood.
Wrote my first whump fic featuring a team, and... it was so... FIST CLENCHINGLY FUN //unholy screeching
Things that are so much fun because a team is being featured:
Having the team members break down in completely different ways. The physically strong one goes into a trauma freeze, the smart leader spirals into self-flagellation, the cheerfully stupid one is just... out for the count because of his injuries.
I found myself in a flow-state of writing because when I got stuck with one character, I simply asked myself, what are the other two up to right now? And BOOM. Cut to team members freaking out, or figuring things out, or Having Opinions.
Personality differences create friction. Or alliances. And then they can shift all over the place as things change around them.
Team members can trigger each other in both good or bad ways. One can look at the other and go, ooh, reminds me of my best friend. Or at another and think, ugh, this one's just like my former boss.
Best if the character doesn't KNOW they have these biases. They trust or distrust team members with no proper basis simply because they're referencing past events in their lives.
Watching a team figure things out together in real time. Whether it's coming up with a solution to a problem under pressure, or gently comforting each other in the aftermath of an intense event... there's something quite wonderful about watching a team's moving parts produce a result. Like opening up a machine and watching the cogs and gears turn.
Adversely, an unhealthy team can be JUST AS FASCINATING to watch. UUGH I need to write this.
Team members can INTERRUPT each other. I cannot emphasise how useful this is!! They can interrupt not just speeches or monologues or dialogues, they can interrupt trauma spirals, and situations that are going out of control. A scene can be building to something, and someone can do something to de-escalate. OR ESCALATE.
INTERRUPTIONS ARE SO FUN. Done right they inject energy and dynamism to a scene.
And it's not just about what's happening in the moment of the Whump Event. People process intense situations in completely different timelines. So the person who holds it together during the event can fall apart weeks later.
Emotions can affect one another and ripple through the team. It could rip through a team, or heal and stabilise. SO MANY POSSIBILITIES HERE.
Having the team members find things out at the same time as the reader is so awesome. Like, seeing the seemingly dumb character surprise their team when they KNOW how to navigate a particularly complex social/political situation. Or the newbie displays some physical prowess that wows the entire team. It gives a sort of real-time disclosure that feels very immediate when the team is right there to react to it with the reader.
Gah, it seems I now have a blorbo team. I think I'm going to be writing more team whump. YASSSS.
(The team fic that inspired this yap post. I wrote it in a 7-hour sitting because INSPIRATION ✨)
I do so love a Whumpee whose attitude takes a turn:
Whumpee is on the ground, grimly taking a beating from several attackers. The sass has been kicked out of them already, so now they’re trying to outlast their attackers, putting up their arms over their head, tucking down their chin and drawing their knees up to their midsection. Just… enduring.
This can’t go on forever, right? The attackers have to tire out some time... Which should be soon.
Broken bones and bruises will heal, eventually. As long as they don’t cause too much internal bleeding or brain damage…
Then they hear the *snikt* of a knife being drawn.
All of a sudden Whumpee is scrambling back, the heels of their boots skidding on tile, saying “no no no, wait, no—“
++++++++++++
(Just lie down, kid. Things aren't going to get any better.)
Bleeding is one of ✨MY FAVOURITE✨ injury motifs to use. It's the OG signaller of whump, but it can honestly be pushed even further as a storytelling device.
First of all, blood is finite. There's a ticking clock built right into a injury that won't stop bleeding.
The way blood exits the body says a lot. It spurts under high pressure from an artery, pulsing in time with the injured party's heartbeat. From a major vein, it is heavy and continuous. It might be slower, but persistent and dangerous nonetheless.
And it looks different depending on what blood vessel was perforated. Blood from an artery (arterial blood contains a lot of oxygen) is bright red, venous blood is dark.
Depending on where someone is gashed, sliced or stabbed, they can bleed out in mere minutes, despite desperate hands pressed to the wound, or it can happen quietly over hours.
When the bleeding visible, it provides a ways to visibly increase the stakes. How people react to a visibly bleeding character says a lot about who they are, how they react in crisis, and even their relationship to the injured party.
In traige conditions, a medic or a caretaker can look at a Whumpee who is still alive, still struggling, and determine (in combination with other factors) from the colour and the force of the bleed whether they are salvageable or not. And the team MIGHT NOT AGREE.
Boom, drama right there.
Maybe Caretaker moves into comforting Whumpee, administering pain relief or sedatives, and team is like "WTF are you doing? SAVE THEM."
And bleeding might not always be visible. One might bleed into a chest or abdominal cavity, causing it's own set of problems.
Blood in the chest can start compressing the lung and compromise breathing. (Go read my OTHER whump obsession, about lungs hur hur hur)
The bleeding might be entirely invisible except for the systemic signs... pale, sweaty skin, confusion, rapid pulse, losing consciousness. A medic or caretaker can miss the signs if the situation is chaotic, and the Whumpee isn't signalling pain or discomfort.
Even the way that blood is spread over surfaces becomes a narrative point. Evidence of what happened.
A drag path where Whumper or Caretaker pulled Whumpee along the ground, or off surfaces where Whumpee tried to hold on.
It doesn’t even have to be someone else moving them. Gravity can do the job just fine. Walls where you see smears streaking down. Bloody fingerprints reducing in number as Whumpee lost their grip.
The blood around an unconscious body can tell the story of a desperate struggle, where the blood is smeared over a wide area, or it could tell of a body that went still, with an uninterrupted pool of blood spreading laterally. Maybe it’s because Whumpee lost consciousness, or maybe the remained awake but tried to stay still so as not to worsen the injury.
You can do the movie trope where they try to write the name of the person who caused them harm. Or you can see how they tried to help themself or others from the blood smears they leave behind on the body or triage supplies/gear.
Blood also changes as it clots. It becomes more viscous, thicker. Instead of running and dripping easily off an elbow, say, it may cling before dripping slowly. Instead of running or streaming down, it drags and breaks, and might even stop mid run.
And blood doesn’t clot evenly. It dries at the surface and at the edges. And if movement causes fresh bleeding, the fresh blood can run over the old.
Clotting and coagulation is a sign of time passing. The longer a person has been bleeding, the tackier and stickier the blood.
And blood tests can also provide certain information that could build a picture of abuse, neglect or torture.
Starvation or malnutrition doesn’t just show up as visible emaciation, but also in blood imbalances and anemia.
Repeated blood loss or injury can cause low iron / hemoglobin.
Drugs or poisons that have been ingested show up in toxicology scans.
They may not be conclusive on their own, but taken into consideration with other results, they can reveal an incriminating pattern of abuse and/or torture.
Imagine the moment Caretaker or medic pulls the lab results. Suddenly the reason for low energy or low affect has a completely different story.
Aaaaand, I think that’s it… I think I’ve finally yapped myself dry of blood-related trivia.
Please be reminded, I have no medical background AT ALL! All of this came from a brief period of hyperfixation. Assume everything I’ve said is a lie and do your own research! My intention is merely to inspire more stories where blood is used as a narrative device.
If you’re a nurse/doctor/emt who can correct anything I’ve written or add your own detail, please let me know.
