Loved the whump community enough to finally make a side blog dedicated to it. I swear it’s not just an arcane blog but I can’t prove that…. Safe space for all queer people transinclusive
Whumptober Day 11 Prompt: Hidden Injury/Laceration
Angstober Day 5 Prompt: "Wait..."
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: COD MW (Reboot)
Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 2000
Triggers: Blood/Injury, Whump, Medical Procedures, PTSD
The barracks hallway feels too long, every step echoing. He stops outside the familiar door, knuckles hovering. Hinging, yet again, because as much as things have changed between him and Ghost, there are still barriers up. For a second, he almost walks away.
Then he knocks. Once. Twice.
Silence.
He leans in, breath tight. Then the voice comes, low and muffled through wood.
“Not now, Soap.”
Soap blinks. Frowns. “Are ye alright, Ghost?”
“Solid.”
“Then why won’t ye come to the door?”
Silence, long and damning.
-or- Ghost hides an injury to avoid medical, but Soap won't let him hide from him.
The cue cracks against the ball, and Soap watches it roll lazy across green felt before it drops in the corner pocket. He smirks, chalking the tip with a flourish.
“Ach, would ye look at that? Still the champion o’ the rec hall.”
Gaz groans, dragging his hand down his face. “That was pure luck, Soap.”
“Luck?” Soap laughs, leaning his hip against the table. “That’s skill, mate. Physics, really. Geometry in motion.”
“Geometry. Right.” Gaz shakes his head, lining up his own shot.
Soap lets out a scandalized noise, loud enough that a couple lads at the darts board turn. “I ken more than jus’ blowin’ stuff up.”
“All right, John Nash. Calm down.” Gaz smirks without looking up. “Though I find it hard to picture someone who just set the officer’s mess on fire one for cracking open the books.”
“That was an experiment,” Soap shoots back, voice dripping with mock offense. “And besides, it was jus’ a little fire.
Gaz chuckles. “Thought Price was going to throttle you.”
“It would’ve worked if Ghost hadn’t stopped me.”
Their laughter rings through the rec hall, warm and easy. But even as Soap grins, his eyes flick to the wall clock. The minute hand ticks past another mark. His smirk falters just a touch.
Ghost and Price should’ve been back from their mission by now.
He forces his attention back to the table, spinning the cue in his hands like a baton. Gaz is still talking, but Soap’s only half there. His gaze keeps dragging to the doorway, ears straining for heavy boots, that gravel-rough voice.
And then—movement. A shadow across the hall.
Price.
The captain strides past the open doorway, broad shoulders squared, face unreadable. Soap’s head jerks up, the question already clawing at his throat. Where’s Ghost? But Price doesn’t look in, doesn’t pause. Just keeps walking, jaw set.
Soap swallows hard. His chest feels tight. He grips the cue too hard when he lines up another shot.
Gaz frowns when he misses. “Not even close. Don’t tell me you’re finally losing your touch.”
Soap forces a grin, brittle around the edges. “Aye, maybe I’m just tired.” He sets the cue down, claps Gaz on the shoulder. “I’m turnin’ in.”
Gaz looks up, eyebrows raised. “This early? You? What’s crawled up your—” He stops short, reading something in Soap’s expression. Looks towards the doorway, then back. “Right. Get some rest, mate.”
Soap hums, already heading for the door. He doesn’t look back.
The barracks hallway feels too long, every step echoing. He stops outside the familiar door, knuckles hovering. Hinging, yet again, because as much as things have changed between him and Ghost, there are still barriers up. For a second, he almost walks away.
Then he knocks. Once. Twice.
Silence.
He leans in, breath tight. Then the voice comes, low and muffled through wood.
“Not now, Soap.”
Soap blinks. Frowns. “Are ye alright, Ghost?”
“Solid.”
“Then why won’t ye come to the door?”
Silence, long and damning.
“Ghost?” When the silence stretches, Soap starts restlessly bouncing his leg. “Ghost, just let me in.”
“Go away.”
Soap rears back. Scowls. “That an order, LT?”
“Yes. Piss off, Sergeant.”
The words stop him cold, like someone yanked the floor out from under him. What could be seen as cruelty for no reason nothing but a glaring red flag to Soap.
“Fuck that shite,” Soap mutters under his breath and pulls out a lockpick.
Soap hesitates only a second before sliding his pick into the lock. The faint click of the tumblers giving way sounds deafening in the quiet corridor. He’s crossing a line now, but the gut he’s trusted to get him this far won’t let him walk away.
The room is dim, curtains drawn, Ghost’s gear scattered across the floor in a haphazard, uncharacteristic mess. From the bathroom comes the hiss of running water—and over it, the sharp intake of breath.
Soap’s pulse spikes. He strides to the door and raps hard with his knuckles. “Ghost? Open up.”
“Goddamnit.” The muffled reply is hoarse with pain. “Insubordinate little shite.”
Soap’s jaw tightens. He hammers again. “C’mon. Open up, or I’ll break it down.”
When nothing answers him but the sound of running water, Soap presses his forehead briefly to the wood, fighting for patience. He draws in a breath, voice low but steady. “Ghost…I can smell the blood. Please let me in.”
Silence. His stomach clenches in the pause that stretches long enough to make him fear Ghost will dig his heels in, the scent of Ghost’s blood making him sick. But then—metal clicks. The lock slides back.
The door creaks open.
Soap sucks in a breath.
Ghost is shirtless, balaclava still in place, tac pants slung low on his hips. For a beat, Soap is taken aback by the sheer expanse of muscle, raw power carved beneath skin, a thin layer of belly fat that is startlingly human. The tight shirts Ghost wears beneath his tac vest have given Soap enough of a hint to guess, but the sheer beauty of Ghost’s body takes his breath away. Pale skin smeared with drying blood, and the scars—Christ, the scars. Layered, ragged, a brutal history carved in flesh. For one dizzying moment Soap just stares, caught between awe and heartbreak, before his gaze locks on the fresh wound: an ugly eight-inch slice running across his side and ribs, still weeping blood.
“Jesus, Ghost…” The words rasp out before he can catch them. “You need to go to medical. Now.”
Ghost’s body language slams shut, rigid as armor plating. “No medics.”
“Like hell. You’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig!”
“I said no.” The mask makes the words flat, unyielding, but Soap hears the edge underneath—fear, tight and sharp.
It’s then that he realizes the only time he’s ever seen Ghost in the infirmary was when he was either unconscious or too incapacitated to protest. Certainly never willingly.
Soap exhales hard, scrubbing a hand down his face. “What, you planning on stitchin’ yourself?”
“That’s what the med kit’s for, innit?”
“You’re a right handful, you know that?” Soap mutters, already moving. He snatches the kit from the counter, dumps it open. “Sit yer arse down before you keel over.”
To his faint surprise, Ghost obeys, lowering himself onto the closed lid of the toilet with slow, stiff movements. His size makes the space feel smaller, intimate. Soap kneels in front of him and reaches forward without thinking.
“Wait…”
Soap freezes, his hand midair. “It’s just me, Ghost. I’m not gonnae hurt ye.”
Ghost squeezes his eyes shut. Opens them. Nods.
Gauze in hand, Soap presses firm over the wound. Warmth seeps through instantly, tacky and hot. He has to change out the pad several times before the bleeding slows enough for him to work with.
“Gonnae stitch it up, now.”
Ghost braces himself like he’s about to take a bullet. “Get on with it, then.”
Soap has seen Ghost take a lot of hits. Bear a lot of pain—the scars are a testament to that. Simon Riley is the toughest bastard Soap has ever known, and if the prospect of going to medical brings about this kind of response in him…
Christ, Ghost. What happened in Mexico? What did they do to you?
As gently as he can, Soap sponges away the blood, but Ghost still flinches under his touch, shoulders twitching. Soap keeps his tone easy. “Simmer down, big man. Just me here. Just you an’ me.”
The silence is heavy, broken only by Ghost’s controlled breathing. Soap picks up the curved needle with steady hands, and Ghost’s eyes flick towards it, then away. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Soap snorts. “Aye, course I do. Got plenty of practice as a lad. Reckless wee bastard, always crackin’ my head open or slicing my arms on fences. Couldn’t afford a doctor, so I learned how to patch myself up. My mam—Christ, she’d have boxed my ears if she’d known. Always told her it was ‘just a scratch.’”
As he talks, his free hand moves on instinct, brushing lightly along Ghost’s flank like steadying a spooked horse. The tension in the bigger man’s frame is palpable, every muscle coiled, but Soap feels the tiniest shift with each pass, his shoulders loosening by degrees, breathing evening out.
He sets the needle, voice steady, ramble still spilling to fill the space. “Fair warnin’, I’m not the best seamstress, but we’ll get the job done. Hold still for me now…”
Ghost doesn’t reply. But he doesn’t move away either. His fists are braced tight on his thighs, knuckles white, until Soap dares to cover one briefly with his own. The twitch that runs through Ghost’s frame nearly undoes him, but then the hand stays. Clenched, yes, but grounded under Soap’s touch.
Soap falls into a rhythm, his voice carrying them both through. He doesn’t point out the flinch each time the needle bites. Doesn’t name the quake in Ghost’s chest. He just keeps going, quiet and relentless.
By the time the wound is closed and dressed, Soap’s throat feels raw. He ties off the last knot, presses the bandage snug, and sits back on his heels, breath shaky. “There. Good as new. Well…good enough.”
Ghost still hasn’t looked him in the eye, but his shoulders are lower now, the set of his body less like a fortress. Soap stands to wash the blood from his hands in the sink, forcing a grin he doesn’t feel. “See? Told you I knew what I was doin’.”
There’s no answer, but when Soap glances over at him, Ghost is rolling the tension out of his shoulders and inspecting Soap’s work. And that, Soap thinks, is worth more than words.
Soap mops the last of the blood from his hands and watches the crimson circle the drain. Ghost sits hunched forward on the toilet, forearms braced to his thighs, head bowed.
Shirtless, scarred and bloody, he looks less like a wraith and more like a man wrung out.
Soap swallows hard, throat dry. He wants to joke, to break the tension, but the words stick. Instead, he hears himself blurting out something he’s not even sure he means to say.
“Ghost… if you’re hurt again, don’t—don’t keep it from me. Aye?”
Ghost’s head lifts a fraction, almost meeting his eyes but not quite. Soap pushes on before he loses his nerve.
“I’m not sayin’ go runnin’ to medical. Christ, I ken you’ll never do that unless you’re half-dead. But don’t hide it. Not from me.” His voice roughens, almost pleading. “I can’t get on, thinkin’ you’re carryin’ it all yourself. I won’t tell Price, and I won’t force you to go. I’ll just… take care of it. Like this. All right?”
His hands spread helplessly, palms up in supplication. “Promise me that much. Please.”
The silence that follows is brutal. Soap’s heart stutters in the quiet, each second stretching longer. Then Ghost leans back, a slow shift of massive shoulders, and studies him.
Finally, his voice comes low, rasping, quiet enough to almost miss.
“…You’d keep that promise? Not Price. Not medics. Just you?”
Soap nods, fierce. “Just me. You’ve got my word.”
Ghost’s gaze lingers a moment longer, unreadable. Then, with a faint exhale, he dips his head once.
“Alright.”
Two words, flat as stone, but the way they land knocks the breath from Soap’s chest. He busies himself with the kit, gathering bloody gauze into a pile, and wiping down the sink area because he knows how much Ghost likes things clean.
When a warm weight presses against Soap’s back, he goes still. Ghost is curved against him, close enough to feel the brush of breath against his neck.
“Johnny?”
He has to swallow past the sudden pressure in his throat. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Soap doesn’t trust himself to meet Ghost’s eyes in the mirror. He does, however, allow himself to lean back into Ghost’s sturdy bulk. “I’ve got you, Ghost. Always.”
as much as I love badass characters pushing through pain to fight, I also love when they hit a point where they just can't. something structural is wrong or broken, so they can't stand. their muscles are simply too weak and overworked to hold them up. their bloody hands slip off the handles of their weapons, they can't aim through their vertigo or tunneling vision, they shake from blood loss or exhaustion even if not from fear. they've just reached their limit, and no amount of willpower will change that!
Every time someone comments on my old fic, i feel like I'm an old actor getting paid residuals. Appreciate you, old-fic-commenters. Key source of emotional income, tbh.
🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces
(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)
So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented:
→ Three types of ceremonial jewelry
→ A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed
→ A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn
Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.
And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.
Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.
─────── ✦ ───────
🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style
Ask yourself:
→ Who’s in charge, and why?
→ Who has land? Who doesn’t?
→ What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?
Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.
Start there. Not at the embroidery.
─────── ✦ ───────
2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict
Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?
→ What was destroyed and mythologized?
→ What do the survivors still whisper about?
→ What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?
No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.
─────── ✦ ───────
3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists
Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about:
→ Death?
→ Love?
→ Time?
→ The natural world?
→ Justice?
Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.
You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.
─────── ✦ ───────
4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)
Culture shows up in:
→ What people apologize for
→ What insults cut deepest
→ What people are embarrassed about
→ What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately
For instance:
→ A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?”
→ A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.
This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.
─────── ✦ ───────
5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals
Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about:
→ Breakfast routines?
→ How people greet each other on the street?
→ Who cooks, and who eats first?
→ What’s considered “clean” or “proper”?
→ How is parenting handled? Divorce?
Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.
─────── ✦ ───────
6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture
A culture isn’t a monolith.
Even in deeply traditional societies, people:
→ Rebel
→ Question
→ Break rules
→ Misinterpret laws
→ Mock sacred things
→ Act hypocritically
→ Weaponize or resist what’s expected
Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.
─────── ✦ ───────
7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap
Worldbuilding gets boring fast when:
→ The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure
→ The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric”
→ Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like
You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy.
→ Let ugly things be beloved.
→ Let beautiful things be corrupt.
→ Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.
─────── ✦ ───────
📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy):
→ Culture is not food and jewelry.
→ Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction.
→ Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter.
→ Let your world feel lived in, not curated.
The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list.
It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.
Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)
—rin t.
// writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range
// thewriteadviceforwriters
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just. please know. that giffing scenes like that is a fucking nightmare labor of love.
to wit:
bottom's the raw capture, middle's just flat curve correction to make the footage visible, top is the final coloring with /counts seven adjustment layers to add back in Literally Anything But Yellow
every giffer i know does it out of love for the game, but for the record it's not... easy. it's not just slapping the footage in a cap grabber and posting whatever it spits out. "professional" lighting and color grading has only gotten waaay murkier and flatter in the fifteen years i've been giffing on here, so uh. don't repost gifs, please!
I thought the bottom was a black bar. I didn't even realize that was footage.
Everyone say thank you to your neighbourhood GIF maker! Giffers are so important to the fannish ecosystem, but to so many people the amount of work involved invisible.
Woww!!! Last year, I was called in to be a pinch hitter for the @oureternity-zine, which meant I had to come up/board/create a 4-pg comic start to finish in like a month, which was incredibly fun! I went for Jayce's angsty time at the bottom of the canyon and made myself (and the mods, and perhaps you) sad lol
