someday i will make a straight character maybe // Beau 30 he/him/his // i follow from my main @headless-horsepossum // PM ME TO BE ADDED TO A STORY'S TAGLIST!
A kingdom is captured by a wicked magician, and its former Princes taken as hostages.
Story masterpost here. // Main tag: winter king’s ward // Extras tag: wkw extras
A few hundred years before the events of WKW, a young man is kidnapped and sold as a slave to a gladiatorial arena, where he meets a good-hearted Monster.
Story masterpost here. // Main tag: beast and blue eyes // Extras tag: b&be extras
Three idiots try to survive the zombie apocalypse, and fall in love instead.
Story masterpost // Main tag: the cafe at the end of the world // Extras tag: cafe extras
Box Boy Universe. A store clerk hides an escaped pet from the police, and gets more than he bargained for.
Story masterpost // Main tag: lost dog no reward // Extras tag: ldnr extras
A wandering magician finds a boy wandering alone in the wilderness. The boy has a terrible secret, and a monster in his pocket.
Story masterpost // Main tag: all those that dance // Extras tag: attd extras
A vampire meets a suicidal human and agrees to give him a wonderful last night on earth. Then the vampire gets cold feet.
Story masterpost // Main tag: and then you kill me // Extras tag: atykm extras
FBI AU, aka ATYKM if vampires weren't real: Masterpost // Main tag: fbi au // Extras tag: fbi extras
"Whumper dressing up Whumpee" "Caretaker helping Whumpee dress" all very good and that I like, but have we considered Whumpee helping Whumper dress.
They methodically work through buttons, trying not to think about how close they are to their tormentor, how they can feel Whumper's breath on the nape of their neck. They have to stare at Whumper's self satisfied smirk as they shave them.
Or perhaps Whumper hates dressing up. LOATHES it. Maybe they are a Whumpee to a bigger, stronger Whumper themselves. So they fuss, and they complain, and Whumpee is about to cry because they *need* to do their job and Whumper is making it real damn hard.
ok so fun thing about repetitive injuries/lacerations/whatever is that once they're healed, you can get a kind of itching sensation or just general hyper-awareness of where the wounds should be. even if there's no scar, even if you were never hurt in that specific location, even if the wound was never that painful to begin with.
it's like your body is just expecting damage and isn't sure what to do now that there isn't any, so it just sends Feeling there. it's not painful and it's not quite itchy, more warm and fuzzy but not in a good way. distracting. and after a long time of it not going away: distressing.
give this feeling to your whumpee. after years of pain and cuts and bruises, being without pain is going to feel weird. what do they do to deal with it?
the worst form of self-inflicted curse is coming up with Two Good Chapter Titles. like One good chapter title you can just enjoy cause it was like a fluke but TWO good chapter titles is like. so you Can Do This. So you Have an "A Single Bed, A Door With No Lock" and a "Stained Glass, Candles, Empty Stone" In There Somewhere but just. not today, huh? sad
hiiiiii everybody, can i interest you in a wkw update, lets all pretend the last one wasn't literally a full calendar year ago 😅
@annablogsposts @whump-cravings @whumpitywhumpwhump @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @favwhumpstuff @the-monarch-whumperfly @iboopsstuff @hellodecisionparalysis and as always, if you want to be added to (or removed from) the taglist, it's easier for me to keep track of messages than asks (and if I missed anybody I'll try and add y'all in a reblog)
TW for: underage whump; captivity/isolation; implied/referenced grooming, manipulation, gaslighting (not sexual just evil) (Morden is offscreen but his creepy vibes are still very much in evidence); broken bones; implied/referenced past child abuse; guilt and self-hatred; Badly Controlled/Unproductively Expressed Anger; skin picking/chewing (pretty mild i think but ymmv).
This is probably roughly simultaneous with the previous chapter.
----
Something is wrong.
There is no clock in Asher’s bedroom. But there are also not many regular events in his schedule. So the one thing Asher is sure of—or—anyway thing he is most almost-sure of is that the Wolf brings Andry to Asher’s little bedroom every seventh day, sometime when the sun through the high narrow window hits the floor between the armchair and the door.
Except now the sun is slanted low enough to splatter on the pocked and dented panel wall beside the door. And Andry isn’t here.
All of Asher’s nails are worn and bitten too low to chew on, and the skin of his thumb is starting to suffer for it. Asher was still small when his mother left, and he doesn’t remember her much. Sometimes when Andry tells him to straighten his shoulders and keep his chin up and get his fingers out of his mouth Asher wonders if their mother stayed long enough to say all that to Andry. He wonders if she said it as gently as Andry does.
The door opens suddenly. Asher drops his bitten hands into his lap and sits up very straight, since the thought of being seen slouching with his thumb in his mouth by either Andry or Crane turns his stomach, though presumably for different reasons.
It isn’t either Andry or Crane standing in the doorway, though.
The way Asher feels about about Crane’s semi-frequent visits is—well. He heard about the White Crane and his Falconers for almost a year before seeing any of them. Now he sees Crane as often as three times a week, sometimes, though other times more than a week passes without a sign of him. Crane brought Asher a fresh set of clothes the day after his first visit, and last week he brought a small stack of books, with illuminated margins and even a few printed woodcut illustrations. In both cases Asher wanted to refuse, but Crane left them behind so casually that Asher could not find the right moment to do so; and Asher had been shivering in his threadbare shift, and—there is little enough to do in this one small room he is mostly not allowed to leave—so—
Anyway. His feelings about the Winter King’s Wolf are a great deal simpler: Asher hates him.
Asher heard stories about the Wolf before he saw him, too, and was almost scareder of them than of the Falconers. Even the strongest soldiers and cleverest assassins could hardly get a glimpse of the Winter King, they said, because of the fearsome Wolf that guarded him; with gleaming silver hair and yellow eyes like no man ought to have, and with all the slavering jaws and blind, bloody loyalty of his namesake.
None of that is true at all, though. The Wolf does have some Faery blood in him, probably; he certainly has silver hair and yellow eyes, and Asher’s first sight of the Wolf’s teeth did make him shiver. But the Wolf is only a boy, really; he doesn’t look any older than Andry, and acts even younger than that. The Wolf seems to have modeled his smile and the proud toss of his head after Crane, but really he has more in common with a too-handsome Courtier’s son than he does with the Winter King. He supervises all of Andry’s visits to Asher’s room, usually perched in the arm chair, occasionally rolling his eyes at them.
And—Asher tries not to think of this too often, because it makes him feel dizzy and shaky and sick with hatred—the Wolf is casual with Andry, laughs like they’re laughing together, bumps his shoulder into Andry’s, leads him with a hand on Andry’s elbow like his other hand isn’t on Andry’s—
Asher can’t think leash without tasting vomit in the back of his throat. Thorne might be Winter’s Wolf, but Andry isn’t a dog.
Anyway. Asher hadn’t thought about it before, but—he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the Wolf look anxious before.
The Wolf throws the door open so hard that it slams into the wall—adding more pock marks for the sun to pool in, later—but then just stands there, in the doorway, panting slightly, like he’s run to get there. His silver hair is standing at odd angles, half out of its usual neat horsetail, and his shirt looks like it might be on back-to-front.
Asher’s heart has leapt into his throat. He swallows it.
“Where is my brother?” he says. He tries to sound angry, instead of frightened.
“Y...yes,” the Wolf says. He’s staring at Asher, like—like—like Asher doesn’t know what. He is still frozen in the doorway, the hand he used to shove the door open hovering lamely in mid-air. Asher can see the two guards posted outside his room exchanging confused glances. The Wolf, as though suddenly feeling their eyes on his back, steps stiffly into the room and closes the door, overcorrecting and using two hands to guide it quietly shut, except that he has clearly damaged it by slamming it too hard into the wall, and now it takes three increasingly noisy tries to get it shut. It would be funny, probably, if Asher wasn’t so afraid.
(Thorne realizes once he is standing in the young Prince’s bedroom that he has had the presence of mind to change out of his blood-stained clothes, but not enough to think about what on earth to say.)
(Thorne takes a brief pause, mercifully facing the halfway-broken door and not the Prince, to wish that he had never been born.)
“The Prince—” the Wolf begins, and then he turns back enough to meet Asher’s eyes again and stops again. He looks, if anything, even younger than usual. “Andry,” the Wolf tries instead, and Asher is suddenly very aware that he has never heard Winter’s Wolf use his brother’s name. His hands tighten into fists in his lap. He feels—as though he has been desperate to hear Andry’s name, to hear someone say it, and also like he wants to snatch it out of the Wolf’s dirty fanged mouth.
“Andry is,” the Wolf says, finally. “He’s—he’ll be alright.”
Asher empty fists tighten hard enough to hurt his hands.
“What do you mean,” Asher says. He doesn’t know what it sounds like, since he can hardly hear anything over the roaring in his ears.
“He’s—there’s—um.”
(There’s been an accident, Thorne wants to say, but that would be such a vacuous, bloated lie that he can’t seem to force it past his tongue.)
“I think he will live,” the Winter King’s Wolf says finally, and then sighs, as though relieved to have finished his job.
Far more than biting his fingernails, the thing for which Andry scolds Asher most often—the only thing, really, which Andry ever really snaps at him for—is acting before he thinks. Mostly he only spills or loses things, or speaks out of turn, and Andry only rolls his eyes; but occasionally, when Asher acts quickly in anger, there is a look on Andry’s face that Asher feels like lead in his belly, because it is too like the way Andry looks at their father.
Asher picks up the heavy oak night table—lifts it easily, somehow, even though usually he struggles even to drag it closer to the bed—and brings it down on the Winter King’s Wolf with every ounce of strength in his body.
(Thorne can move very fast, when the occasion calls for it; more than one arrow meant for his Master has been stopped by the quick blood Thorne inherited from his Faery mother. He has just enough time to see the blow coming and raise an arm to catch it.
Craetan woodwork is often blocky and severe, not to his Master’s taste at all, but even Morden would admit, Thorne thinks as the wood splinters over his wrist and elbow: Craetans can make a sturdy table.)
The heavy oak edge of the table cracks loudly over the Wolf's arm, raining splinters over his head. He stays on his feet, somehow, though he stumbles badly, flailing for the arm chair with his left arm to hold himself up. Most of the table hits the wood floor between Asher and the Wolf with an earthshaking thud, one splintered leg clattering down a half-second later, at about the same time as the sheer block-headed stupidity of what he’s done crashes over Asher like ice water.
The Wolf tries to flex the fingers of his right hand, and his immediate hiss of pain is mostly lost under the sound of the door flying open again—hanging from its hinges at an odd angle, now—and both guards burst into the room, speaking Leisevan in raised voices, with their hands on their swords.
“HOLD,” Winter’s Wolf snarls, and the audible teeth in his voice unhinge Asher’s knees so that he is suddenly sitting on the bed again, with both hands pressed over his mouth.
The guards freeze, looking almost as alarmed at the sudden ferocity of the Wolf’s voice as Asher is. The Wolf barks something Asher doesn’t understand
(“Outside, and don’t move until I tell you!”)
And maybe the guards don’t either, because they just stare at him; and they try to say something in response, speaking over each other, and then the Wolf bears his teeth and roars, more like a Lion than a Wolf. Asher hears the guards scramble back out into the hallway and slam the door as best they can, though his vision has gone white with terror.
The Wolf stands like that for a moment, left arm braced on the armchair and right arm tucked too-tightly against his side, fingers curled into a stiff claw. Asher doesn’t move, either. The Wolf is panting slightly; Asher might be holding his breath. When Asher gathers the courage to meet the Wolf’s eyes again, they aren’t flashing anymore.
“You idiot,” the Wolf says, still panting, but with no real rancor. “That would’ve just about killed somebody who wasn’t me.” The Wolf frowns down at his hand, tries to move the fingers, winces badly, sits down heavily in the armchair. “Fuck. Okay. Hold on.”
Then he reaches his unbroken left hand towards Asher. Asher feels the angriest and the sorriest and the scaredest he has ever felt. He's glad to already be sitting down, at least. He squeezes his eyes shut.
The Wolf’s hand lands on Asher’s shoulder. Asher jumps badly, expecting a blow, and feeling off-balance and frightened by the absence of one.
“Here, Prince,” the Wolf says. “Look at me.”
Asher, in an exercise of great bravery, does.
The Wolf still doesn’t look angry, only—serious, which looks even stranger on his pretty courtier's face. His eyes aren’t flashing anymore, but they do look a little brighter gold than usual.
“He’s going to be alright,” the Wolf says. “He was—hurt, badly, and he’s with the Healer now, and will be for a while. But he’s going to be all right. Okay?”
Asher wants—
Asher wants.
Asher wants to say something steely and brave, or to be angry, or to hit the Wolf again; he wants to keep his lips pressed firmly together and not feel them tremble; wants his eyes to blaze like the Wolf’s do and not prickle and burn and fill up with tears. He wants never to have laid eyes on Morden Crane or the black-coated Leisevan guards or the Winter King’s Wolf. He wants Andry.
Asher’s reaches out and grabs a handful of the Wolf’s shirt. He isn’t sure if he means it as a threat or if he is using it to hold himself up. There are tears burning down his cheeks, so if it’s a threat it’s probably a weak one. He pulls on the Wolf’s shirt, once; the Wolf winces when it pulls where his arm is still tucked against his side.
“Don’t—hurt him,” Asher says, and it sounds the way he means it: half plea and half threat and half promise and half curse. The Wolf winces harder, like Asher’s tear-thick voice hurts him, so Asher says it again, and again after that: “Don’t hurt my brother, Wolf. Don’t hurt him.”
“I won’t,” Thorne says, because he can’t say anything else, even though he knows it’s a mean and stupid and selfish thing to promise, even though he means it to be true.
----
Thorne, knowing as usual very little of Morden’s plans, has several hours in the coming night to fret about how he will explain his broken arm to his Master. He has no desire to implicate the little Prince, and no way of knowing Morden wouldn’t punish Asher if he did. As it is, so much happens so quickly in the next few days that Morden does not learn that Asher is to blame for Thorne’s broken arm for another three weeks, at which point Thorne is much too busy and much too far away to see Morden’s reaction, which is probably for the best since Morden laughs until he cries.
i still plan to remain on tumblr until it is actually fully turned off, but on the off chance that that does actually happen in the near future:
are there any fiction sharing sites that like. don't require you to sign away your legal ownership of the stuff you share. i already post on ao3 but the appeal of tumblr is that i can BOTH post writing (i.e., no/very generous character limits) AND answer asks and post bullshit on the same platform so. are there any fiction sites that also have social platforms That People Use and that have soooome kind of tag filtering system. please
These are more focused on the background stuff rather than the usual "what would the character do in XY situation" kinds of asks. I've been looking for something like this for quite a while and in the end decided to make my own. Feel free to use, go wild, enjoy
What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?
How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)
What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?
And reverse, which one of the four things did you struggle with the most?
How did you choose their name and why? Was it simply based on vibes or is there any specific meaning behind the name? Are the reasons behind their name different in- and out of universe?
What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?
What is an aspect of their appearance that you like the most?
What is the origin of their personality? And let's be honest - how much of it is projecting?
How big is their role in the story? Do they make a frequent appearance or are they a character with little "screentime" but big influence? Or are they just a favourite background guy?
What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?
Is there any existing character from other media that your character resembles? Was the resemblance intentional or was it a coincidence?
Do you have a playlist for the character? What songs do you associate with them and why?
Do you have a voice claim for the character? What do you imagine the character sounds like?
Do you have any quotes tied to the character, either from the story itself or from another source that fit them?
Have you ever made a moodboard for them?
Is there any memes or running jokes associated with the character, both in- and out of universe?
Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?
Does the character have other characters connected to them? Do you have a family tree and "offscreen" connections made up for them or do they exist in a vacuum purely for the purpose of the story?
What is your general favourite thing about the character? What is your least favourite?
Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about
I changed around a few of the Falconers names and have been trying to come up with a way to introduce them by their new names and their specialties/combat roles/etc.
And one of the ways that occured to me that would be fun to do this is to. Make them, like, character sheets
.......which in turn got me thinking about running a d&d campaign that uses the wkw magic system and has Morden and the Falconers as the bad guys. I don't have anything even close to enough time to do that atm but. Man it could be fun
at least we will always have cutting open your hand and a vampire immediately latching onto it as some sort of twisted aftercare and foreplay simultaneously
me regaining my youth, my crops returning to life, the sun peering from behind the curtain of winter cold when my favourite whump blog thewhumperinwhite returns to grace me
HIIIIII THANKS I LOVE YOU!!
I was back at school this semester and I've been doing freelance editing work over break so my brain is fully liquid by like 3:30 pm most days lmao but!! I might(???) be able to take it a little in the next weeks so. We'll see!
Anyway. I'm still on Tumblr pretty much every day lol so. Can probably answer asks at the very least
