oh, they’re all c!primeboys coded bc I made this list after getting frustrated that all the whumpy/angsty prompt lists were too /r coded and i wasn’t able to use any for c!prime. also the wittebanes.
(if u want some more super c!prime coded ones check out dialogue 1, 2, 9, 20, and 25, and other 5, 12, 14, 19, and 20)
Anyway… been thinking bout seer au a lot so here it is.
TW: Abuse, dehumanisation, kidnapping, isolation, blinding, mutilation, what's essentially glorified slavery in a fantasy context (mages are forced to work for the king in this case), possessive behaviour, manipulation, severe codependency, referenced torture, referenced restraints, gaslighting, and forced medication/drugging. Yeah, the Seer AU is a doozy.
——
There were ways of telling people apart without sight- or Sight, for that matter- and ever since he'd been blinded, Tommy had gotten very good at them.
For example, Dream's strides were long and loud, and he tended to stay as close to Tommy as possible. It’s not like anyone else would be allowed to enter his chambers, of course. That'd have been a risk to the Kings property, after all. That’s all mages were, according to law, according to traditions. According to stupid bullshit, more like. But it was something Tommy could do to keep his mind sharp.
“Fuck off.” Tommy groaned, burying his face in the soft pillows.
“C'mon, Tommy, that’s no way to speak to your king.” Dream's voice was light, like this was still some kind of silly, joking situation. Like nothing was wrong.
“I'm not kidding around, prick. Leave me alone. Haven’t you already done enough?”
Dream sighed. “Tommy, are you having one of your moods again? I'm just here to bring you some food. Would you rather starve to death while you're healing?”
“Healing from you gouging my fucking eyes out.”
Dream paused. “I mean, yeah? I was helping you with your Sight. You didn’t want to wear the blindfold, so I thought that'd be more comfortable. Really, you should be thanking me.”
“You're unbelievable, man. Just, you’re so fucking… I don’t know.” It was how Dream always got- crueller than ever whenever he tried, ineptly, to be better, and then expecting some sort of reward for fucking Tommy's life up. It was as infuriating as it was painful.
It had happened after the enforcers dragged him away from his home on the street, with Tubbo, and Dream expected him to be all grateful for providing him with food and shelter even though he was a glorified- slave, really, no matter how much Dream pretended to be civilised. It had happened after he'd given Tommy a cane so he could walk when he fucked up his legs bad enough as a sick punishment for an escape attempt he couldn’t walk without one. It had happened a million more times than Tommy could name, and now it was happening after he took his fucking eyesight for his own selfish gain.
Tommy didn’t even fucking want his Sight. He never wanted to be a mage- the stories he heard, even dripped in propaganda, sickened him. Life in a gilded cage as the King's attack dog, never allowed to make a decision of their own and treated more like some sort of mythical animal than a person, sounded like a worse hell than the one he'd run from in the first place. At least Father never pretended to be anything but a cruel, drunken bastard mad that his favourite punching bag had died and taking it out on the child with her golden hair.
No, he was born with a gift that was more like a curse. The Sight hurt his head, dizzied his senses, and being forced into using it again and again by Dream until he passed out wasn’t exactly Tommy's idea of a good time. Neither was being dressed in fancy robes, having his hair scrubbed throughly with soaps that stung at his eyes and tied up painfully tight to be, essentially, shown off as a pretty tool in court, people oohing and aweing at his every movement while he was forced to do petty predictions for the entertainment of the rich fuckers who'd have kicked him while he was sleeping in alleyways, and now looked at him like some sort of show dog, pulling and prodding when they thought Dream wasn’t looking.
It was Tommy's own personal Hell.
The sound of Dream punching the wall in frustration didn’t even make Tommy flinch anymore. “It’s- I don’t fucking understand, Tommy! I give you a home, shelter, luxuries second only to myself. I give you the freedom to roam the grounds as you wish, and I spend hours each day talking to you, bearing my deepest secrets. I love you as if you were a brother of my own, not merely a servant useful to me, yet this is how you treat me?.”
Laughter bubbled in Tommy's chest and spilled out without meaning, harsh and bitter without any humour. “You love me? You love possessing me, you mean. You love having someone you can force to serve as your own personal spy. You love having someone to beat and torture on some made up punishment bullshit whenever you please. You love having something to show off to boost your own oversized ego. You love having someone you can make serve as your confidant, your own personal fucking therapist, because they have no way to tell anyone all your fucked up secrets. But me?”
Tommy raised his arms in the air, in a way that probably looked incredibly awkward considering he was sitting propped up awkwardly in a bed too big for him, but he didn’t fucking care anymore. “You don’t care about me, do you? If you did, you’d let me go, let me see my friends, you wouldn’t literally lock me in chains and tear out my eyes, would you? No, what you care about is Tommy the seer, Tommy the punching bag, Tommy the emotional support prisoner. Not Tommy the person.” His voice had turned scratchy, like he was crying, but no tears came out. “But you’re right, I guess. You don’t treat me like a servant. You treat me like a slave. A pet. Anything but a human fucking being.”
An awkward silence descended on the room, and Tommy just felt too angry to even flinch away from the hit that was almost certainly coming, if not being dragged into one of the interrogation chambers again for more serious punishment. Instead, he felt annoyed, impatient, at Dream dragging out the certain punishment to come. Instead, though, Dream pulled him into a warm hug, and Tommy couldn’t help but lean into its comfort. It reminded him of Mama, in the scant few years he had with her, and fuck, at this point he'd take that no matter how much it hurt.
“Oh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy…” Dream's voice was infuriatingly calm. “You poor thing, so confused and angry. It’s my fault, really. I didn’t consider how it must seem to you, alone all your life and used to being used. No one ever cared about you until I did, right?”
“Shut up,” Tommy half-sobbed. “Shut up. You'll never be Mama, or Tubbo. You're like Father. I hate you. I fucking hate you.”
“No you don’t, do you? You’re just scared, and you must be in pain. I must have not given you enough medicine this morning.” Dream absently ruffled a hand through his hair, and Tommy bit his tongue and pretended it was Mama. “You'll feel better soon, and it’ll all go back to normal, I promise.”
“I don’t want it to.” Tommy's voice was barely even audible at that point, so rough and tired. He didn’t want to continue to exist in this tailor-made torment, and he didn’t want to keep playing happy families with the man who ruined his life, and he especially didn’t want to take any more of the sickeningly sweet medicine Dream made him take, even though it made the burning in his eyes die down. It made his head so fuzzy and wrong, like his thoughts were all flooded by swamp water and he couldn’t understand anything and he hated it. “I'd rather die.”
“Oh,” Dream's voice had slipped into that inappropriately playful tone that sent shivers up Tommy's spine again, “You're far too valuable alive to me to have that choice.”
Hello! I'm not sure if this qualifies as torture, but I was wondering what the effects of having one's eyes pierced with a sewing needle would be—would this result in permanent blindness, or is it possible that the victim would still be able to retain some eyesight? Thank you! (Sorry if this is a weird question)
Huh. Well I know that in historical India something similar to this was used to blind people. However a heated needle was used and I don’t know how much the resulting blindness was due to the needle itself and how much it was due to the heat.
Heat would cause more damage to the surrounding tissue, basically cooking most of the area around it. It would also sterilise the needle and make infection a little less likely.
But straight up puncturing the eyeball is… OK so I am going to guess that most of my audience has not dissected an eyeball or seen one eaten. (Yes people eat sheep’s eyes in Saudi, you can get them in cans. No I have not actually eaten them myself, they’re a delicacy.)
When you cut a raw eye (depending on how you do it, and if you get behind the lens which is doable) it deflates. The fluid that keeps the structure of the eye flows out, the whole thing collapses. This would not just lead to blindness but problems with the eye socket itself collapsing over time (this is why inserted glass eyes were a thing.) There’s also significant infection risk because you basically have dead tissue stuck inside the eye socket.
I think (not a medic remember) that what the Indian method did was basically cook the cornea and this caused blindness.
A needle could be used to cause enough damage to the cornea to blind someone. Theoretically.
The brain is very good at filling in gaps when there’s small flaws in our vision. We see this with retinal damage and with several different eye diseases. With several different types of eye damage/disease there’s a period where the person won’t notice much change in their vision… and then it suddenly plummets.
That was actually my own experience, my vision seemed ‘normal’ to me for at least a couple of days after the damage was done. Then one day I couldn’t see the blackboard at school.
So where am I going with this? A single small puncture in the cornea specifically probably would not result in vision problems bad enough to be blind. Though they might still result in worse vision.
Multiple punctures on the other hand would probably blind someone.
Here’s the thing: blind usually doesn’t mean no vision. It rarely means complete blackness.
In most places blindness is defined at a specific level of poor eyesight that can not be corrected. My vision can be corrected with glasses, but without glasses my vision is bad enough to classify as blind. Without glasses I can focus to about 2-3 inches in front of my face. I see colour and light. But I can’t see detail. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t navigate by myself. I couldn’t recognise people I knew in the street. However I wouldn’t walk into walls.
The damage in you scenario would be permanent. You’re talking about, at worst, destroying the eyeball and, at best, scarring the cornea. But blindness isn’t an all or nothing thing. There’s a spectrum to it. Vision can be poor enough to be disabling without someone losing their vision entirely.
On a personal note while I’m glad my vision can be corrected (it makes life a lot easier) the world I see without my glasses is still beautiful. The play of light and shadow changes. Colour pops out in a way it doesn’t when I can focus. I can’t see the icelandic poppies in the garden as flowers, but I see these floating motes of vivid orange in a sea of green. I can’t see the rose bush against the wall, but I see these little balls of bright, bright green floating against the brick.
So I’d suggest thinking about what changes to vision will mean for the character and story. Think about the variety within blindness. And choose where to go from there.
Forewarning: this is dark but it ends well, I promise. Skip if you don't like minor whump or are uncomfortable with abusive parental situations. Again, if this has any potential of triggering you, please DO NOT read. Stay healthy instead and I'll see you in the next post. <3
Every time she thought she'd gotten closer to escaping them, they were back on her trail before she could get a decent reprieve in. The hunters of the Dales were ruthless and they were trying to wear her down.
It was working. Even now, as she hid in a village, melded with the townsfolk, she didn't feel anywhere near safe.
Blood red hair was covered by veils and humble trims of silver, a sheer blue scarf wrapped around her face to only allow ruby eyes to be seen. She looked nothing like the people here but she needed to, if she ever wanted to escape the prying eyes that would surely catch up with her here.
"M-Miss... Spare change?"
The woman nearly turned in a circle looking for the voice, before a gentle tug to her skirt brought her attention much lower. Her lips thinned in sorrow as she laid sight on a bruised, small little human. Blood radiated off of them from somewhere but she didn't see it past their clothing; it merely hit her senses when she gently crouched down.
"Why are you out here so late, little one?" She asked in a soft, warming voice as he shyly refused to look at her, now that she was so close.
"I-I can't tell you-" He replied, "But I-I could if you had some pitas.."
Her face fell but with how pale and purple his should-be-rosy cheeks were, she so desperately wanted to know his secret. She didn't have money, she didn't need food she couldn't catch herself so there was little use for it.
"Please Miss.." He begged, finally raising his scruffy head of hair to look at her and her eyes widened in horror when she saw one eye had been stitched shut and flattened. Clearly missing the insulation of an orb under the lid.
Forgive me, my love. The one thing left of you, I hope you'd do the same.
The woman reached for her veil and pulled it off of her head and face; letting blood-red curls spill out like a crimson fountain. She fussed, gathered it aside so she could reach for the single studded gemstone that had been wrapped in gold by hand. When he held out his hands, she gently dropped it into them and curled the tiny fingers closed.
"Will you tell me now?" She reminded gently as he stared over the item she'd given him with teary, shocked awe.
"P-Papa sent me out t-to get money-" He started, looking up at her now like she'd turned into a God, even as she'd crouched so low to meet him on the dusty ground. "me and papa don't have nothing to eat and Papa gets mean when he doesn't have his yucky juice.."
"...Did he do that to your eye?" She asked, careful to keep the venom out of her voice as she spoke to the already troubled youth.
"...H-He didn't have it for a long time last spring..." The boy mumbled in a foggy haze, not entirely understanding what he was admitting as he did. "But it's okay now... this will get us food and Papa can get all the juice he wants so he's happy again."
She couldn't say anything, in fear her throat might collapse with the heat that burnt into it. Fire met her cheeks, her nose, she was glad she'd put her scarves back on to hide it. Because she couldn't hide the anger that his words left in her heart. As she looked at the one thing her heart craved, wanted more than anything in the world.
And someone that had it, had already damaged it.
Somewhere her mind had been set to follow him, even as he'd thanked her and thanked her and ran off to show his goods. For once she was grateful for what she was, how stealthily she could move, and how the innocent being didn't notice her shifting through the shadows.
If anyone had seen her, they would have thought she wanted to eat him, with how closely she pursued and kept up with his pace. It was the opposite. Her undead heart skipped phantom beats when she thought of what the child could return to. If his monster of a parent had already taken one of his eyes as a tribute to their anger.
She was right to have followed him when she heard anger from the small shack he'd run into. Past a hanging cloth curtain, into the shanty that had become their home.
"Papa! Papa! Look what I got!"
"What's this?! Did you steal this?!"
"Papa no! A-A lady in the market gave it to me!"
"Lies! I didn't raise a thief! I told you to beg not to steal!"
Her whole body shook, seized up in tension when she heard a thump and then a soft cry. The sounds grew, she prayed it would have stopped at the first hit but soon, she heard the poor boy hacking and choking as the man laid strength into him.
"Stop!" She screamed, bursting into the home without warning and forcing the man to turn towards her with his son in his grip, waiting for another punch. "I gave it to him! I gave him the earring, just stop!"
The man gaped in anger, staring at the woman that had just entered his shack and started barking orders at him. "Who are you? You dare come here and interrupt my discipline?!"
"That's torture!" She exclaimed, "Blinding your son, is not discipline, it's torture."
He looked in anger at the boy, who flinched as soon as he turned. "So now you just go telling people about our family accidents?"
"I asked." She intruded again, "Because I'm not a fool who would think a child would somehow lose their own eye."
He'd started to pick the boy up, turned to throw him, and when he glanced back towards her; she was staring him nose to nose. Inhuman speed crossed the room silently and she looked at him with a sullen face of simmering rage.
"I don't care what you are, lady. I'm gonna teach this worthless boy a lesson." Even the kid in his hands cried as he landed another devastating blow to the side of his head. No sooner had the hit landed and left the child unconscious, did a flourishing pain erupt in his gut and he was left staring at the woman in front of him.
He stared and he stared, a small cough bringing up a large mouthful of blood. Finally, he glanced down after he'd dropped the child in his grip to the floor. Her arm was sticking out of his gut, clean to the other side and she was still looking at him with a cold, blank stare.
"You humans don't deserve offspring..." She muttered bitterly, grabbing the man by the face and leaning him closer to reach fangs to his artery.
At last, she drank as much as she could. Until the veins in his body collapsed on themselves and she was left with flesh hanging in her mouth. When she let his corpse fall, her worries and attention were drawn to another human. The stilled boy on the floor had just become an orphan thanks to her.
Well... He might have become a human orphan but she wasn't about to leave him to suffer from what she'd done in his name.
Even as she collected his battered form against her, wrapped him tight in her robes, he whimpered in pain and distress. Once perched on her hip, she hushed him, quietly opening her satchel and floating around the house for anything that she might find handy later. He'd already said there was no food so she didn't hope for much but a canteen was the next best find. They would need it if she was going to take him with her.
He cooed in greater distress and she pet the soft mess of ebony curls back, kissing his temple to soothe him. "Shh, I've got you, darling, I've got you."
The boy curled deeper into her neck and she adjusted her grip on him, disappearing out of the house and further into the village without another sound. Like nothing had ever happened. It was going to be ten times harder to run now, to evade the hunters that pursued her, now that she'd tied herself down with a human child. She was being careless, reckless, in even bringing him with her.
But she wasn't about to leave him there to be blinded and beaten still. To be forced to beg, left on dangerous streets to be taken and thrown into slavery, or sold as a concubine. The horrors the man had left his child to face... seemed less threatening when she remembered what the man subjected his child to, willingly. Of his own hand.
Please don't hate me, for the life we'll live together, it won't be easy.
But I'll keep you safe and I'll love you more than you could ever imagine, my precious baby boy.
How would someone torture a vampire? Aren't they hard to kill?
Hard to kill... Yes. Hard to torture? Hardly. So long as it still feels pain, it can be tortured.
In my lore, vampires are immortal to the indefinite unless beheaded or burnt into ash and scattered. So with that being said, there's really no wrong way to torture them. Some of my favorites would be...
Gouging out the eyes, slashing them, dropping scalding wax on them. Chemicals directly to the eye, removing completely or sewing shut. Anything to get the vampire whumpee blind. Once they are, they can only manage to hear what could possibly be coming. Even at complete removal with the addition of fresh blood it would take around a days time for them to reform and become functional again. Without fresh blood, on a starving system this could turn into days if not weeks depending on how long the whumper prefers.
Deafening
Forcing them to wear extremely loud headphones for hours at a time, popping their ear drums manually or compacting their ears full of different substances. This can include but not be limited to actual dirt, wet sand, wax, clay, could even be their own blood but it would take more to congeal and settle. The timeframe for healing would be about the same as blinding. Compaction would end up needing removed, washed or dug out in order to regain hearing abilities.
Cutting out the tongue/voice box
The severing of the tongue strings would be enough to make vampire whumpee sloppy and unable to speak properly. It would also allow for screams and moans of pain and anguish still. As would cutting out the tongue completely. For those that enjoy mute whumpee's, they could merely cut or sever the voice box. Crush it, damage it in some way to render them unable to give even the tiniest of whimper and then demand it from them. "Why won't you answer me? Do you not want to be obedient?" With fresh blood; 48 hours for severed/crushed chords. Indefinite without. Tongue would take around the same time to grow back, restringing would be within a few minutes.
Removal of Teeth and Nails
Their fingernails grow back indefinitely and very quickly when it comes to a regularly fed system. A starving system might take a day or two to heal nails that had been yanked from the root. This goes for fingers and toes. Teeth; human teeth don't grow back but fangs are indefinite. They grow from root to full maturity in 7 - 14 days. Faster with a fully fed system, fresh blood equates to rapid healing/growth times. 3 days with regular fresh blood. But in the mean time, rip them all out and get creative! Sprinkle salt on skinned nail beds, touch them with rough objects, poke and prod to make the little vampire squirm. Smash them, file them off past the flesh. Take all their human teeth and leave them with nothing but fangs and then take those too. Make them peel their nails off themselves as a punishment.
Breaking bones
Broken bones are an amazing vice/trope when it comes to vampires because it renders things useless. It slows them down, slows down their healing and their abilities to fight back. One broken arm does a lot of damage if they can't heal it immediately. Break in some ribs and they'll have the pain but wont know what to do with it. It burns blood up in their bodies to repair them and it can cost them a lot of energy. Eventually their systems will give up and leave them broken to conserve themselves.
Burning them
Burning them is another delight as their skin is more resilient than human skin. It takes a longer hold to flame or kindling, ashes smudged on them doesn't do much damage at all. A brand is satisfying but not permanent unless branded in silver. Alternatively, they are able to withstand molten substance poured on them and suffer less penalty than a human. While it takes seconds to burn a human, it takes minutes to burn a vampire.
Freezing (Alt)
For a final topic, don't be afraid to use cold in vampire whump as much as we do fire! Cold is even more painful to vampires than it is to humans. While regular, lively bodies will try to compensate for and regulate temperature, vampires can't do either. They run naturally low body temps and when freezing temperature hits, it's crippling. They become slow and sluggish in icy rooms, their blood can and will actually freeze inside them. If they freeze completely, they will be trapped in a state of mental alert but nothing else and this can drive a vampire mad. When they thaw out, returning back to moving and circulating is excruciating to every degree of the word.
With this said, being hard to kill in my opinion only opens the doors to being able to take more for longer. The idea for good torture isn't that you do it with the intent to kill but the intent to break, control and bring to such pain that both happen seamlessly. Even if the whumper intends to kill at the end, they don't have to rush to the point because that's when all the fun ends in my humble opinon. :)
Hi there! Not sure if this is exactly torture? If a child (about 8) were to try to gouge an eye, could they actually do it? Like is it hard to really damage an eye? (I hope the age aspect doesn't make you uncomfortable, please ignore it does) I wear glasses and I've never used contacts because the thought of touching my eyes makes me woozy. So I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating in writing what an eye injury might be like? Thanks :)
Apologies in advance if this discussion of eyeballs and damage to theeyes squicks you.
I managed to severely damage my own eyes when I was around six, though Iused a different method (don’t make my poor life choices). It’s not hard todamage an eye but some ways ofdamaging an eye are ‘harder’ than others.
Gouging is probably one of the harder ways to damage an eye. That’s notjust because of the structure of the eye but because it’s difficult to getclose enough to a struggling person to actually do it.
That second bit is the main factor I see here. An eight year old child isgenerally pretty small and not that physically strong. What you’re picturingrequires this child to overpower someone else and (probably) pin them for abrief period of time.
If this character is being attacked and is doing this in an attempt todefend themselves- well it’s a good idea in a fight but I don’t think they’dmanage to actually gouge an eye. I think in that kind of struggle, where they’remore or less outmatched by the person they’re fighting, they’d shock theattacker enough for the attacker to let go and they’d probably give them ablack eye.
But I don’t think they’d actually damage the eye ball itself because Ithink the attacker would probably let go and move away before it reached thatpoint.
The eye is protected by the eyelids, skull and the muscles around itthat hold it in place.
Have you ever dissected an eyeball? Or eaten one? (probably not if you’refrom the West-) The outer membrane that holds it together is actually prettytough. But once it’s broken the whole structure can collapse pretty easily.
If you’re picturing the eyeball ‘popping’ there’s quite a lot to getthrough before that can happen: the eyelids, the muscles around the eye and themembrane itself. That’s not to say that it’s impossible but I think other kindsof damage are more likely, especially during a struggle when both combatants aremoving around a lot.
Severe bruising around the eye is really likely and damage to the corneawhich could affect vision is also very possible.
But if you were picturing destruction of the eyeball or the eyeballcoming out of the socket I think that would only be possible if this childoverpowered the other character and made a very determined effort to target anddestroy the eye. I think it could take anywhere from half a minute to a coupleof minutes concerted effort, which is a long time in a fight when the otherperson is struggling to get away/stop you.
It’s not impossible. But whether or not it’s exaggerated depends on howyou’re picturing this fight going.
If the intended victim is bigger than the child, stronger than the childor just not pinned down very well then I think destruction of or removal of theeyeball is really unlikely. It could still happen if the characters are veryunlucky, but it’s unlikely.
You could have the victim’seyesight damaged temporarily via scratching to the cornea. I thought this was permanentbut a quick search has shown that actually cornea damage usually heals byitself in around a week. If you wanted permanent loss of vision in that character’seye a bad infection of scratches on the cornea could accomplish that.
I think this boils down to how you want to play it: how you’re picturingthe fight and what’s important for later on in the story. Unlikely injuries dostill happen from time to time and I think that if you feel it’s important tothe story later and has lasting effects then you should keep it in. But if theinjury itself doesn’t matter so much then it might be a good idea to tone itdown to something more common/likely.
