Does anyone else wonder about an alternate universe where Eli and Serena run into Victor brining back his carry out and Serena takes it upon herself to make these two finally admit that the reason they are obsessed with killing one another is because they really want to fuck one another? No, just me? Okay…
'Revenge is bad' to YOU. i love when a character destroys everyone who wronged them. i love when they get to bite and maim and tear and rip and scratch and kill. Sorry ur catholic about it but i'm different
Because I’ve given up on fighting my fixation of the Villains series, I want to note that I actually really love the way evervale is implied in the books—As mutual obsession.
It fits both of them so perfectly, because they are both such terrible people.
I absolutely ship it, they are genuinely awful enough to deserve each other and the whole seeing each other/understanding each other in ways that no one else ever has, the whole angsty pining thing, the being jealous of god despite being an atheist (Victor), hallucinating the other (Eli when locked up at EON) and breaking out of prison to kill each other is so incredibly poetic it almost hurts.
I love their relationship, because they have literally no reason to like each other (both of them are assholes in ways that should probably repell one another). And still they’re obsessed with one another, because no one else has ever understood one like the other has.
They are the only people who ever genuinely understood each other. Until Victor came along (being angsty in his college dorm room) no one had ever seen through Eli’s facade, had taken him at face falue. Victor took one look at him and called bullshit on the persona he’d built over the course of years. And I think that’s beautiful.
I love how they drag out the worst in each other, how Eli stops pretending and trying to fit social norms around Victor, I love how Victor reacts to Eli ‘betraying him’ (calling the cops on him) with unrestrained intention to kill.
And I can’t even begin to put into words how beautiful their canon interactons are in the most tragically poetic and haunting way. Every scene where they interact is a delight to read, ranging from literal bloody murder to just their casual conversations in college (as if anything with these two could be casual, lol. I feel like everytime they talk there’s an intense philosophical debate going on, even when both of them are just talking shit.) It’s just all so intense.
Seperately they are angsty, somewhat tragic people. Together they are a fucking trainwreck you can’t look away from.
Like, I genuinely mean it when I say they are both awful enough to deserve each other.
(Also let’s appreciate Mitch for dealing with Victor’s bullshit for like ten years. And Sydney should choose a better role model, then again… the pool of available people is kind of limited, isn’t it?)
You knew Victor wasn't interested in sex, even before you began dating. But when he catches you in your shared bed with your hand between your legs, he insist you help him understand how to take care of you.
Warnings: fingering (non-penetrative), Victor Vale is a bit of a freak in a sociopathic kind of way, kind of one-sided sex, one instance of a petname (darling), Victor being slightly OOC but its okay i promise, fem!masturbation, reader is caught masturbating, mention of drugs (brief, unimportant), slight exhibitionism (mention of sharing walls), PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE!!!
Author's Note: Been thinking long and hard about that one quote from Vengeful; “He had craved a lot of things—power, revenge, control—but sex was never one of them. Even with Angie… he’d wanted her, of course, wanted her attention, her devotion, even her love. He’d cared about her, would have found ways to please her—and perhaps found his own pleasure in that—but for him, it had never been about sex” (Schwab 51). And now I’m thinking about Victor's need for control and willingness to pleasure his girl even if he gets nothing from it/has no interest in sex at all, and how that would translate into mid-Vengeful Victor. AKA; I got an arc of Victorious (I love being a bookseller) and am back in this fucking building AGAIN.
Victor Vale had never been interested in sex.
You knew that. Had learned that pretty quickly after you started living with him, Sydney, and Mitch. He was never interested in the happenings on-screen when you all watched movies—though, to be fair, he never seemed all that interested in the movies to begin with. But you noticed it especially whenever you had to venture into a club of whatever sort. It turns out the kind of errands the two of you often run together take place in the seedy underbellies of the cities you found yourself in, and you were often Victor’s first choice of companion when he had to make his way into a strip club or topless bar.
It wasn't that he didn’t look. He did; Victor was always looking. Watching. But he never cared.
It only became more obvious when you got together. You had mostly pieced it together at that point, so you never tried. You didn’t care—sure, it’d be nice to find mutual pleasure with your lover, but there were hundreds of other ways to love him, and for him to love you. You never tried, and he never asked, never offered, never implied. You simply took care of yourself when you were alone.
It was a night like that when it happened.
You were on your back, sheets pooled around your hips, hair splayed on the pillow. It smelled like him; that’s what had done it. He’d slipped out of bed at some point, leaving you to stir awake like you always did, sheets still warm from his body. The pillow smelled like him, and it’d been days since you’d last been on your own, and, really you didn't even think. Just slid a hand under your shorts, between your thighs, and started to relieve that building ache.
You thought he was out. Thought he was in a dark alley, or a dingy bar, or a drug dealer’s den, looking for a way to stop the buzzing in his bones. You did not think he had simply stepped out for a moment, his body too hot, his head too full. So when he slipped back into the room, expecting to find you still asleep—probably curled into his side of the bed, like you always were—he froze in the doorway.
He knew you did it, of course. Very little happened around him that he didn’t know about. He knew, but he’d never known. Never seen it, heard it. Never been in the room, because you were nothing if not a respectful lover.
He watched for a moment, wondering what it would be like if he felt that way. If he craved sex the way you so obviously did. But he didn’t feel that ache the same way you did.
He did, however, feel the immediate need to help. Not for his sake, really, but instead to fulfill his innate need to take care of the people he decided were his. It was the same as his need to teach Sydney to protect herself, the same as his need to make sure Mitch stayed alive and moderately content. Victor Vale took care of his people, and that included you.
“Jesus—” you pulled your hand away the second you noticed him. “What the fuck? Victor—shit—fuck, Vic, sorry—”
You rolled instinctively, thighs pressing together in a shameful attempt to hide what you’d been doing. As if he hadn’t been quietly watching for the past minute. You stared at him, heart pounding, face flushed, eyes wide. You had been close—Victor could tell. He wasn’t interested in sex, no, but he was interested in the human body. In the intricacies of how it worked.
He could tell, because your thighs kept shifting and your chest was heaving. But instead of asking, of pretending he didn’t know exactly what you'd been up to, he steps closer.
“How often?”
You blink once, twice, foggy head taking a moment to catch up. “What?” You tipped you chin up to look at him in the dark, those pale eyes just as sharp in the absence of light as they always were. His hand, always so gentle when it came to you, pushed the blanket aside as he sat on the edge of the bed next to you.
“How often do you touch yourself?” He asked again, voice so even you’d think he was asking about the weather.
Those sharp eyes of his watch your throat bob, your tongue darting out to wet your lips. “Victor—”
“Don’t lie to me,” and suddenly he seems angry. Frustrated, though with you or himself, it’s impossible to tell. “How often do you touch yourself?”
“I…” you swallow your sudden shame. “Every few days. Never—never while you're around.”
He hums, considering you. He’s calm again, reaching out to brush some of your hair off your face. “Teach me.”
“What?”
“Teach me how to pleasure you,” He rumbles, sliding into bed next to you. Your head spins as he tucks his body against yours, his warmth seeping into your skin. “You’re not meant to do it yourself. Let me take care of you.”
“Victor,” you huff back, rolling over to face him properly. He’s watching you, careful, calculating. “You’re not interested in that kind of thing. I know you aren’t. It’s okay.”
His head tilts a little, and it almost takes your breath away. He’s so gorgeous, always has been. It was one of the reasons you fell so hard. That soft blonde hair, each lithe line of his body, the way he always looked like he was scheming. Those sharp, pale eyes that always felt like they were boring into your very soul.
“No,” he concedes after a moment. “I’m not. But—” He cuts you off with a look, the same one he gives Sydney when she’s being particularly teenagery. “I am interested in you. In loving you, in pleasuring you. I will learn how to take care of you properly, even if I get nothing from it. That is my decision to make, darling.”
Damn him. Damn Victor Vale and his expert use of that stupid, stupid nickname. He knew it was the fastest way to make you cave, and he knew that it had worked this time when you let out a shaky breath and averted your eyes from his. You could practically taste his boyish grin when his mouth met yours.
“Teach me,” He insists again, and you let out a shaky breath. He lets you find his hand under the sheets, lets you gently guide him between your thighs. When his fingers meet the soft, wet skin of your cunt, his breath catches. For once in his life—or at the very least, since you’ve known him—Victor looks… lost. Nervous.
“Have you…” His eyes catch on yours, and you know the answer to your question before you even ask. No, he has never done this before. But he knew the body, knew how to work it like a machine, so it only took him a moment to find his way to that little bundle of nerves. He hesitates for a moment, brow furrowed, then rubs. Gently, but…
“Vic,” You mumble and shift, and he freezes, scanning your face. Reading you. “Like this.”
Your hand meets his again, and you start to guide his movements. After a moment, he takes over again, touching you the way you like, and you all but melt into him. This, at least, was familiar to Victor. His body welcomed yours, even as he kept his hand working steadily at your clit. He let you hide your face in his throat, let you curl into him like a cat in a sunny spot.
“More?” He rasped against your hairline, letting his fingers dip a little lower. He stopped when he felt you shake your head.
“S’enough,” You mumble against his throat. “I don’need anymore. S’okay, Vic.”
He seemed to relax a little at that. He’d been wanting to please, but any actual penetration was a bit much for him tonight.
He didn’t let his mind wander while he worked. He focused on keeping that steady pressure and rhythm you’d shown him, categorizing each little noise you made in his head. He only shifted when you bucked your hips a few times, whines pitching up. “Close?” He prompts softly.
“Cl…close,” you agree, biting your lower lip, conscious of Mitch sharing a wall with you both. You felt Victor’s wrist flex, giving him room to keep rubbing, even as you shifted. When your thigh brushed his crotch, you noticed something. Victor wasn’t… hard, per say. But he wasn’t unaffected, either. Even if his head hadn’t caught up to the situation, maybe never would, his body reacted naturally to yours.
It was that thought that pushed you over the edge. You came on Victor’s fingers, mewling softly, letting him keep going until it was too much and you had to tell him to stop. He retracted his hand, pulling it free of the sheets, staring at the slick on his fingers in the little light from the window. You pulled back to watch him, the way his eyes slid over the evidence of your arousal as if it were the result of a science experiment.
Maybe it was, for him.
“Do you want a tissue?” You murmur, unsure of what to do with him now that it’s over. You’d truly never expected to be in this situation with him. Victor hummed, icy blue eyes meeting yours. You reach over, pulling one from the bedside table, and reach to clean his hand for him. He lets you, the same way he lets your clean blood from his hand when he hurts himself. He watches you work, watches you crumple the tissue and toss it aside. He watches you settle again, body relaxed after the release you’d been needing.
“Thank you,” you hum after a moment. Victor hums back, sliding his arm around your waist. He wanted you close. Wanted to feel those relaxed muscles against his body. “You didn’t have to do that, Vic.”
He shakes his head, letting you shift so your back was to him. This was another one of those familiar positions, and he settled comfortably into it. His lashes fluttered, breath warm against your collarbone. “M’supposed to take care of you,” He rasps against your skin. “I take care of what’s mine. You just have to teach me how.”
You let his words sink in, let them settle in your chest. Victor had found a way to pleasure you, and would continue to find more, even if the sex itself did nothing for him. It wasn’t about sex for him.
We’re so excited to share our full Whumptober 2025 Playlist with you! We spent a long time collaborating on the list, and have included a variety of artists — including several from our trope vote suggestions!
We hope these songs align with the prompts with their overall themes/tone. Some of the lyrics have also been used as one of the four options for each days prompts.
We hope you have enjoyed the short run of song teasers as much as we have, it’s been so much fun seeing the excitement and ideas coming through our ask box/the post replies. With the full playlist here, we invite you all to talk about your theories in the replies/reblogs!
But for now, here is the official playlist and we shall hopefully see you back here tomorrow (August 25th), 6pm BST sharp! (Timezone Converter: Dateful)
WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation CHALLENGE (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are four prompts for each day of the month, giving 124 for you to play with! There is also a list of 18 alternative prompts that can be subbed in for any day to give participants as much creative freedom as possible.
All prompts are meant to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is “flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be a reference to an ‘old flame’ - an old relationship. It’s truly down to you!
You can produce work in any media you choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, photo/video/audio edits, paper crafts and elaborate recommendation lists (not just a list of links). You can participate as much or as little as you want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.
Please make sure to read the Event Info and FAQ carefully, as most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.
Information on how to TAG is here.
This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.
This year’s playlist can be found here.
The ‘Anatomy of a Whumptober Prompt’ post can be found here.
And our 'Resources for Writing Sensitive Topics’ post is here.
We’re very excited to see the community come together for yet another year of Whumptober! Go ham with the prompts, and support your fellow creators - we wish you all the best of luck, but most importantly: HAVE FUN!
Happy whumping,
Mods Vanne, Yenn, Kitty and Surro
Text versions of the prompts, including a google doc format, are posted below the cut!
A Google Doc of the prompts can be found here for easy copy-and-pasting!
Whumptober 2025 Prompt List
No. 1: “Please don’t cry”
Lamb to Slaughter | Ceremony | Beg for Forgiveness
No. 2: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.”
Prophecy | Sewer | Taking Accountability
No. 3: “I look in people’s windows, transfixed by rose golden glows.”
Isolation | Candlelight | Found Family
No. 4: “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.”
Non-Human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers
No. 5: “My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.”
Quivering | Dream Journal | Phobia
No. 6: “No grave can hold my body down.”
Caught in a Net | Medical Restraints | Pinned to the Wall
No. 7: “Tell me that you’re okay, and I’m fine.”
Trapped with the Enemy | Elevator | Pushed Beyond Breaking Point
No. 8: “Oh horror, oh horror, what did you see?”
Self-Inflicted Injury | Held at Gunpoint | Dissociation
No. 9: “We’ll make it alright to come undone.”
Touch | Flashbacks | Scalding
No. 10: “There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do.”
Without Consent | Secrets | Lips Sewn Shut
No. 11: “Can you get through all the pain inside you?”
Hidden Injury | Laceration | Forced Reveal
No. 12: “It’ll be for nothing.”
Cardiac Arrest | Sacred Place | Withholding Medical Treatment
No. 13: “How dull is it to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished.”
Never Enough | Insignia | Forced Retirement
No. 14: “In the end, it’s worthwhile.”
Ignoring an Illness | Body Bag | Wounded Caretaker
No. 15: “You can take a break, if you just tell me that it hurts.”
Failed Rescue Attempt | Body Part in the Mail | Live-Streamed Torture
No. 16: “I’ve had the rug pulled beneath my feet.”
Repressed Trauma | Permanent Marker | Disorientation
No. 17: “Tell me there’s a hope for me.”
Internal Bleeding | Coma | Redemption
No. 18: “As the world caves in.”
Dystopia | Ruins | Environmental Whump
No. 19: “You’re on your own, lost in the wild.”
Dehumanisation | Living Weapon | On Patrol
this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about
I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.
I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.
I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.
Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.
Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:
The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.
Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.
Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.
That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.
Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.
Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.
(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)
Thank you for your consideration.
If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.
In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.
Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.
Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.
Happy writing.
PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.
Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.
PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.
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