#whump meta

[ziptiesnfries]

i feel like an often overlooked downside to 10-episode seasons and the death of the "monster of the week" format is that we get way less whump variety nowadays. used to be that there'd be dozens of opportunities for your fave to get punched or kidnapped or hypnotized or what have you. these days if it doesn't fit into the main plot, it just doesn't happen. this is a tragedy. we should be protesting.

[whumpdoyoumean]

"I want to punch them in the face" - This character is obnoxious and/or despicable and I hate them and every time they're onscreen I am filled with rage

"I want them to get punched in the face" - This is a beloved character who I love dearly (so much, in fact, that I need them to be bloodied and in pain)

[scumashling]

I'm late to the nsfwhump/noncon kink discussion but as someone who both enjoys Nsfwhump as a form of trauma processing and for Certifiable Sexy Reasons due to having a lot of wires crossed between the two, I feel very strongly if you are someone with a noncon kink and you engage with it through other people's fiction about sexual violence, you should be taking care to read the room/contextual cues before you start commenting overtly sexual things on their work, especially in the whump community. Speaking as a survivor with a hardcore nonconsent kink, it's really not that difficult imo to ascertain the difference between someone who's writing about sexual violence to be titillating vs trying to invoke horror even if you, the reader, technically find the depicted acts to be arousing. Exercising care around this is good practice, especially because for a lot of whump writers, depicting acts of sexual violence in an accurate way is an important practice of truth telling and trauma processing that often gets mistaken for porn/smut.

Personally my favorite brand of whump is the type that strikes a balance between "survivor fiction" nsfwhump and "smut" nsfwhump because my own sexual desires and trauma are very deeply intertwined and I don't necessarily perceive these two types of whump as being two seperate categories but that's just me

[painwithoutplot]

my pedantic side comes through a little when it comes to conditioning 😭 i like to reserve the term 'conditioning' for psychological conditioning (subconscious associations/triggered automatic behaviour). i think a lot of the conscious processes that get labelled as 'conditioning' can be more accurately described as indoctrination, or internalisation (usually of whumper's verbal/emotional abuse). that said, i do think 'conditioned whumpee' has come to describe a distinct trope/trope cluster including a mix of the two (which i really enjoy!). i still use it for tag navigation sometimes; i'm not sure yet how far i want to break with it (when it comes to conscious processes) for the sake of accuracy.

[paingoes]

you are allowed to use whatever words you want BUT ☝️if you feel like entitled to an artist or community’s work you should not be openly disrespectful or derisive or backhanded to them and you especially should not insist you know their internal experience better than they do. like i dont really care about semantics but it is shitty and creepy to insist that someone’s interest in something is inherently sexual. thats all. like is it too much to ask kink tumblr to respect people’s boundaries. oh i forgot im talking to the “youre a loser if youre a virgin” / “im a ketamine gay not a steven universe gay” / “i am massively over concerned with other peoples sex lives and with social hierarchy” side of tumblr. ok carry on.

[whump-in-the-closet]

I wish I could read more stories with neurodivergent whumpees like. their adhd is pre established. Their anxiety, depression, autism, etc I want it to effect how they react to the character fracturing conditions of whatever they’re put through

[whumpmancer]

Magical healing in whump, a re-balancing

I really enjoy whump in fantasy settings - but I know many folks feel like magical healing can get in the way of good whumping and meaningful caretaking (because of how easily it fixes things). Thus, I thought I'd share some ideas on re-balancing it for whump-centric writing and RP! ^^

(note that this is still in regard to a rather vanilla kind of healing, that's supposed to bring relief without any horrific, long-term consequences. There are some cool ideas out there for magical healing that can be downright dangerous or traumatizing, but this is something different!)

there is only as much magical healing the patient's body can take, because the magic works through forcing biological processes - but without providing much additional energy for them to occur. That way healing can be taxing on both healer and the patient, drawing on their body's resources - and thus has to be done in more than one phase if the injuries are serious. The amount of additional energy provided by the spells could vary depending on the healer's skill, but giving more than absolutely necessary would always be very inefficient

the longer the injury exists, the more difficult it is to heal with magic - which makes battle-healing somewhat viable, but leaves a lot of room for injuries to linger if that narrow window is missed.

the nervous system may fail to catch up with magical healing - and the patient may still feel pain despite the flesh no longer being damaged. Then, they may still need to give their body some quality time, so that the nerves and the brain "believe" that the healing was "real".

healing can feel different for the patient depending on the healer's skill and source of power. It can be jittery and uncomfortable if the healer lacks experience or they're under strain, or it can feel very soothing in opposite cases (enter the scenarios where the caretaker struggles to make things as comfortable as possible for the whumpee).

if curses or magical corruption are being cleansed, it could feel like a tug of war within the patient's tissues - either painful or just really freaky and uncomfortable, before it gets better

magical healing does nothing to clean wounds of debris or contamination. A mostly clean wound healed by magical means could possibly be safer from infection, but to a varying extent - so it's always better to manually clean it before mending.

healing potions are similar to spells in how they force the body to heal - thus chugging too much at once can cause someone to get real tired real fast, or even outright faint (adrenaline could probably keep that from happening, but not for long). Also, drinking too much in one go could prevent the potion from being absorbed effectively, thus leading to some of it being wasted - always better to go slow

with alchemical means, it might also be most efficient to have the patient drink some of the potion, and put some of it onto the wound as a compress, creating more opportunities for caretaker/whumpee interaction. Again, going slow, touching wounds grass... I hope some of you will find this useful! :D If you have thoughts or more ideas, please let me know in the comments! ^^

[defire]

I love/hate it when people reblog my whump posts with "this is just me irl"

I'm sorry that you can relate but high five same