Welcome to my little cozy corner of the internet! All individual chapters have content warnings, and if there is something you need me to tag please let me know. If you enjoy vampire or fantasy whump, pull up a chair and make yourself at home!
Ask box is always open, so come say hi, I promise I don't bite :)
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Of Vampires and Men
Masterlist
Set in a brutal world where vampires are the dominant species, we follow both vampires and humans as they struggle to survive.
General content warnings for this series: Vampires, slavery, blood, torture, trauma
Bloodbag, Of Vampires of Men book 0.5, is out now! You can get a copy here or you can order a signed paperback from my ko-fi.
Cry of Fangs, Of Vampires and Men book 1, is out now! Grab a copy here or on ko-fi.
The Dhampir Files
Masterlist
An OVAM spin-off featuring two dhampir brothers who are turned into lab rats.
General content warnings for this series: Abusive parents (Renn and Cal are both adults, but their parents are the whumpers), lab whump, carewhumpers, multiple whumpers, multiple whumpees
Blood of Magic
Masterlist
Magic is powerful, and those who can control it are kept on a tight leash. Thus begins the story of Theo, a Mage who is not having a fun time.
General content warnings for this series: Slavery, blood magic, noncon drug use, creepy whumper, forced to whump
Pennae Volatus
Masterlist
Zem has lived their entire life as a peaceful shepherd on the moon Zo'helt. But everything changes when they are captured and sold into slavery.
General content warnings for this series: kidnapping, slavery, gaslighting, colonialism, dehumanization, winged whumpee, nonbinary whumpee, sci fi setting
Join the Duck Prints Press Summer Reading Challenge!
a guest post by CarCrash.
Each year, as the weather starts warming up, I get hit with nostalgia for childhood summers and those long, hot, lazy days spent doing almost nothing besides reading as much as I wanted. Some of the books I read were for school assignments or chosen randomly from the bookcase at home, but most were picked up at my local library, which was close enough to walk to if I had nothing else to do (which I usually didn’t).
The library ran a summer challenge every year for any kid whowanted to participate: for each book read, you got another stamp on your game card, collecting small prizes along the way and a larger one at the end. It was fun and motivating and it was a nice way to keep track of what I was reading.
A lot of libraries still offer summer reading challenges, for kids and adults, and I thought it would be fun to make one of our own in the form of a bingo card! The squares are meant to be as accommodating as possible of different reading preferences while still encouraging you to get out of your comfort zone and read something new.
Have fun and happy reading!
you can also join this bingo as a challenge on Storygraph!
Cosmic Consequences, our space-whump themed anthology, is live until June 30 on BackerKit! If you like whump, sci-fi, and/or anthologies, you'll want to check this one out. We've reached our initial funding target and we just need $172 more dollars to reach our first stretch goal.
We're ecstatic to reveal the cover of Rattler's Moon: A Starslinger Tale by Kras Nebula (@scrawlingmouse)! Cover art by the lovely @thewisestdino
Alida Perez had been living on her own for so long she was convinced that nothing could shake her anymore. She’d spent the last few decades building her farm out of the dead of the Wastes, and she’d seen it all: bandits, dust storms, rich folks from the next town over trying to buy out her farm to gain access to the mysterious flowers growing there. It’s a hard battle to fight, though, when gumption goes up against a monstrous snake appearing out of nowhere, size fit to eat the moon. Alida, her farmhands, and the mysterious gunslinger who fell into her raptor pen have a long and winding fight on their hands— will they hold out? Or will this finally be the thing to drive Alida from her land?
This book is part of the Starslinger Tales series of standalone novellas, all of which are set in a post-apocalyptic weird west world and follow a wandering, immortal, nonbinary gunslinger named Xal.
Rattler's Moon will be released on July 21, 2026. We are running a preorder promotion over on our ko-fi! All paperback preorders will come with an exclusive map postcard of the Wastes, featuring original art by Nicole Alessi. We're also offering a bundle, where you can get both Rattler's Moon and Deepest Canyon in ebook or paperback. Preorder here!
P.S. If you've already preordered a paperback of Rattler's Moon over on BackerKit, never fear! Your book will come with the postcard.
How to keep a happy human! [Part 1] - Your best guide ever!
Hello hello, welcome to my absolutely comprehensive guide to keeping your own human. Maybe you have one that you wanted to adopt for months, if not years. Maybe you just got gifted one, and don't know what to do. Maybe you are about to welcome a human in your house, and don't know how to prepare. In this guide, I'll introduce you to the basics, the necessities, and the arbitrary things.
So strap in, and let's get started.
Human needs.
As any living being, your human has needs. There are many basic needs, and many personal needs. This is why it's very important to talk to your new pet. As a responsible owner, you have to fulfil them all, at least to some extent. Negotiating is not an option when it comes to the basics.
Every human needs:
Basic needs. You need to take care of your human’s thirst, hunger, sleep needs, and much more. I'll go over those in a minute.
Self-actualisation. Everything your human wants to achieve, to be, to feel. In some of them, it's as small as hiking on a dream trail, and in others, it's as big as going to space. Make sure that the human you pick has a goal level that you can actually help them achieve. This point is also about them realising what they actually are. Their sense of self, if you will.
Community actualisation. Humans are social animals. If you cannot get at least a few humans that get along, make sure to either: a), schedule ‘playdates’ with other owners who have human pets, or b), let them interact with other humans in the wild.
Culture. This is a broader term. It might mean participating in religious holidays. It might mean letting them act a certain way. It might mean sharing with them and letting them share with you.
Personal needs.
This is everything your human wants that is specific to them. Maybe they prefer cold showers. Maybe they like their meals spicy. Maybe they have allergies. This is why it's very important to talk to your human. None of them are the same. Humans come in all shapes and forms. In all shades of brown. In all types of personality. If you're ‘hunting’ or catching a human from the wild, it's a good idea to pretend like you're also a human, and get to know them better. Or at least do a background check.
Every human has a different set of basic needs. It all depends on their physical and mental state. If you get a disabled human, you have to know that they might require more than an ablebodied one. They might need a wheelchair, a cane, maybe meds or full support all day at all times. If their mental state isn't the best, they might require patience and actual kindness and love, even when they act “weird” or “rude”.
Did you know that many human lash outs are caused by not meeting their basic needs?
If you're catching a human, you have to be ready for trauma. If you're getting a human with a mental disability, be it small or big, you also have to prepare yourself for a different experience than the perfect movie scenes. Every human, and I mean EVERY human, is a living, breathing being, and an individual. Do not treat them as stupid, as worse than your perfect dream, just because something goes differently.
Each of them is wonderful and should be treated as such, no matter their condition, looks, background or body. Your human might also have allergies. It is totally normal, and the reason why you get them checked by a doctor before doing anything with them. Adhere to directions or your doctor if that situation arises.
While we are on the topic of food, each human has a favourite dish. An easy way to get them to like you more, is to serve them that dish.
Things to look out for:
Processed food. It's a nice treat for them once in a while, but should not be a daily thing. If you cannot get them filling, natural meals with care put into them, you shouldn't get a human. End of the sentence.
Environment? You need a lot of land. And I mean a lot of land. Either access to a national park, or if you're rich, just get the biggest plot with as much of the natural environment as you can. Humans should spend a lot of time outside. At least a few hours if there's not a lot of UV, or too hot. Once in a while, if your human can do it safely, go camping. When it comes to their own personal room, let them decorate it, but make sure it is filled with positive things. Nothing that makes them overly sad.
Clothes. Everything in your human's wardrobe should be custom made for them, or a sentimental piece. This way, you can avoid materials which aren't natural fibers, and make your human extremely comfortable. Make sure it fits, make sure it's the cut your human likes. Don't be afraid to experiment with styles. Your human might like anything, and you should make it obvious that they are safe and should not feel ashamed about their personal style.
The human you get should feel safe and comfortable around you.
Do not threaten, use restraints only when extremely necessary (think to yourself: would a doctor use them right now? Or would they use another way?).
Do a bit of ice breaker on the first few days. Play a few games together, go for a walk if it's possible. If your human has any sort of trauma, it might be harder. Have a lot of patience.
Q&A time!
Q: What if my human has romantic feelings towards me?
A: Gently shut it down. I recommend getting them more situations to socialise in. As much as humans are individuals, we are much more intelligent.
You shouldn't treat a human as a complete equal, but also not as a dumb creature. Any more questions will soon be answered!
Part two of this post is coming soon!
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(on a side note, feel free to drop questions in the comments or tags. I'll add them to the Q&A section! Taglist open!)
Edit: I genuinely edited it wrong a bit, so I just fixed that, no other changes made.
Voting for the theme of our seventh anthology is now open! We received dozens of theme suggestions, and I have compiled them into one massive list. You can vote for your favorite ten themes here! Round 1 of voting will last until June 20, and then the top ten themes will move onto Round 2 from June 21 to 28.
This. Please. Whether I'm avoiding spoilers for a show or people promoting eating disorders, if I block a tag it means I don't want to see it. Spell your fucking tags properly.
Not only is this allowed but it's something i encourage all writers of any kind to play with! :D
The idea that all writers know what to say all the time and just splash fully-formed drafts out one word after the other is false. There are some who can do it, but i think most of us... can't. Which is why we need tricks like square bracket notes! They're not cheats or lazy writing or some other flavour of Not Allowed, but instead really really important tools that we should use as much as we need to.
Some of the most helpful tricks I've collected over the years are:
make some notes in square brackets – e.g., I had to write a scene on a sailboat, but I know nothing about sailing so i literally just had notes like [boat part] and [how to do X thing?]. If you use square brackets as punctuation anyway, use something else like [[double square brackets]] or a unique letter combination like XY at the start of the note; the point is to pick something you can search for easily later on.
(You can also style inline comments in a different font/colour. Scrivener has an inline annotation feature; if you use Word, you can make a specific Style to make notes stand out at a glance, etc.)
bullet-point your way through any tricky parts – this can be pure stream-of-consciousness vague ideas. it only needs to make sense to me later. much more helpful than just leaving big blank gaps that Future Me has to work out how to fill, but also better than dwelling on a piece of writing forever.
use comment tools – mostly do this if I have ideas for alternate events and/or phrasing, or if I want to check something for continuity purposes.
write out of order – Best advice i ever got for academic writing is to know or even write your conclusion first and your introduction last, which your main argument in between. Similar principles apply in fiction, or any kind of creative writing. If there's a part of the essay that I can visualise clearly or a part of the story that is particularly exciting or important, I might write that first, then figure out how it fits/how everything fits around it.
keep a loose scenes and/or "outtakes" folder – anything that i write out of order goes here, along with any notes for how I think I want to incorporate it into the full text. In the same vein, if I delete something but don't know for sure it will never be relevent ever again, it gets cut and pasted into an outtakes folder.
Basic rule though is that you do not have to get your writing perfect on the first try. This is where drafts come in. The way I see it is to treat each draft as a fresh start – I create/open a new document (well, new Scrivener file) and start over as if from scratch. Each draft gets a narrower focus than the last. This is my process, as an example:
first draft is the word vomit. You do whatever you need to do to get it onto the page, and it can be terrible. In fact, it probably should be terrible. You can fix everything later. it's fine.
The second draft is a half-hearted cleanup attempt. I'll re-type everything because everything is subject to change, from the characters' personalities to the pacing to the order of events. It's all primordial goop, basically. i'm just poking and prodding and making a few adjustments, but mostly trying to create a more stable version of the first draft. All shortcut tricks continue to be my best friend.
By draft three I'll let myself copy-paste between documents if I'm particularly happy with a passage, but try not to get hung up on anything specific. I'll still make liberal use of square brackets etc. as I need to, but try to address as many from the previous draft as I can. This is where I get more brutal with making decisions and trying to fix parts of the story in place.
Draft four is usually my final draft, but there's literally no rules about how many drafts you're allowed to write. It's at this point that I try to keep square brackets etc. to a minimum (unless i've diverged significantly from the plot of a previous draft and having to rewrite large chunks), and make sure to address all the notes and problems encountered in previous drafts.
This is when I move on to revisions. Revisions are the "final do-overs", for me. I start them when I'm satisfied with all the large-scale aspects: plot and chronology; characters' personalities, motivations and arcs; large-scale pacing (so the over-arcing pace, rather than the pacing in individual scenes); backstories; and worldbuilding. I'll copy the last draft's document instead of starting with a blank one. First I run through those large scale things one more time and tweak until I'm happy, not just satisfied. Then I shrink my focus to in-scene pacing, dialogue, and the quality of the writing itself.
I'll also rewrite my plot outline between each draft, too. The act of actually re-writing stuff is very helpful for making your brain think about it.
Drafting like this isn't for everyone, but realising that you can just bullshit your way through chunks of text was a massive game-changer for me. Some people will do a draft, then work on something else, then come back and do another draft, work on something else, etc. Some people's drafting process will look more like what I consider to be revisions. Do whatever works for you. Just remember that from the moment you first decide you Want to Write a Thing to the moment you hit "post" or "publish" or give your manuscript over to a publisher, you can keep making as many changes as you like in any way you like. (And if you go the querying to traditional publishing route, you'll probably get suggestions for, and have space/time to make, changes to the manuscript quite far into the process).
I don't believe I've ever met two writers who have exactly the same process. Every writer I've spoken to about the craft of writing has their own process, usually developed over years and years of practice and trying things out.
For example, I don't rewrite at all, that sounds horrendous, I just save-as to create a new draft. I also get the big structure stuff done in outlining, but I'm a weirdo who writes 20k word outlines. As mentioned above, I am one of those people who needs space between drafts--or at least, between rough draft and first revision. And I do my first revision on paper, always. The human brain processes screens and hardcopy differently! I write all over my printed rough draft, and then go back to the doc and apply those edits and anything else that occurs to me at the time, so my draft 2 is more sort of draft 2.5??
There's a lot more, obviously, and it's different between novels and short stories (I don't print short stories unless I'm really struggling). But I'm always experimenting with different ways to write, and sometimes they work and sometimes I get stranded and have to go back to the drawing board. Some people have a lot more hand writing in the prep stages, in notebooks or on index cards--I visited someone once whose dining room walls were covered in butcher paper and index cards with pushpins!
So if you're a newbie writer, experiment! Read about a bunch of different ways to get those words down! Try new things! Put notes and placeholders and such in your drafts, write by the seat of your pants, try out the whole in-depth outline thing, revise every paragraph before moving on to the next one, whatever works!!
Also please feel free to come talk to me about it! I love hearing about how people write.
What if there was a whumpee who got sent to auction but nobody’s bidding on them and they even lower the price. Carewhumper gives an exasperated sigh before throwing out a pity bid.
#353
content: servant whumpee, humiliation, dehumanisation, human trafficking whump, past trauma, implied past torture, implied starvation, implied murder, carewhumper
Whumpee was standing on the stage, emaciated body full of cuts and bruises unable to be hidden behind the clothes their handler had hastily procured for them, and stared at the crowd with wide eyes. The starting price for them was already low, lower than for many of the other servants, and they knew full well why. They were not a good servant. They tried and tried and tried but their body simply couldn't keep up. When they fell behind, they got punished, and the punishment made it so that they were unable to do even the tasks they had previously been able to. Rinse and repeat.
"500," the auctioneer tried again, and Whumpee closed their teary eyes for just a moment. The lighting in the tavern was dim, and yet they felt like if they had to stare into the lamp for one more second they would throw up. The other servants went for 700, 800, even 1000. And there were bids for them. They were wanted.
Whumpee wasn't.
"500?" the auctioneer yelled, and Whumpee opened their eyes. Nobody in the crowd was really paying them any mind. They were the last servant of the evening to be sold, and most of the guests already had a servant by their side that they'd purchased. The ones who didn't — well, they weren't interested in Whumpee either. "450!"
Great, they were lowering the price even further. Whumpee's legs were shaking from having been up and working all day, only to then be led to the auction where they had to stand for as long as the others were sold. They longed for the uncomfortable wooden chairs of the tavern.
"450?"
Whumpee glanced at their handler, and they got a glare in response. They would get the biggest cut of the sale, and the further the price went down, the less they would get. Whumpee looked away as quickly as they'd glanced at them, down at the floor. Their bare feet were bony and deformed from having spent so much of their time walking back and forth.
"400!"
They knew what happened to servants that didn't get sold. They'd never personally seen it before, but they knew. They'd seen their handler come back with patches of blood on their shirt, they'd heard the rumours, they knew they never saw someone from previous auctions ever again.
"300," someone finally yelled from the crowd. Whumpee risked a glance up at them. They were middle-aged, with hair down to their shoulders, in clothing that was quite unassuming. They didn't look cruel. If anything, it looked like they were trying to save Whumpee from the fate of an unwanted servant.
But would the auctioneer accept such a low bid?
When Whumpee looked at them, they looked a little taken aback. The whole night, the prices had only gone up, not down. The auctioneer exchanged a glance with Whumpee's handler, and when their handler nodded, they turned back towards the crowd. "300! Once, twice…" Whumpee held their breath. "Sold!"
Whumpee was grabbed by their handler and dragged off the stage, and they followed clumsily. "Lucky, aren't you?" their handler sneered.
"I'm sorry," Whumpee said, as though they had any power over the bidding process. They felt like they'd robbed their handler by being such a bad, useless servant.
"300 is still money, I suppose. Do not embarrass me. Do everything the way your master wants, be quiet, be docile. You know the rules. If they bring you back and ask for their money back, I will personally wring your neck."
Whumpee had no doubt about that. "I will do my best," they said quietly.
They finally arrived at the table where Whumpee's new master sat. "Whumpee, was it?" their master asked.
"Yes," they said meekly.
"My name is Carewhumper, I—"
"Money first, introductions later," Whumpee's handler cut in rudely. Carewhumper sighed and reached into their pocket, pulling out a purse with more than enough money to pay for Whumpee. They took out some coins, counting them carefully, not wanting to pay more for a no-good servant than they absolutely had to. Once they handed over the money, Whumpee's handler was gone. Not even a goodbye.
"I'm sorry you had to pay for me," Whumpee said, eyes downcast. "I will do everything I can to make your purchase worth it."
"I'm sure you will," Carewhumper said, and Whumpee could hear the thinly veiled threat in their voice. "But not tonight. Tonight, just sit here with me. Enjoy a beer or two. Your job only starts tomorrow."
Reminder to self: A file folder of outlines and character notes and half-written scenes is the equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook and holds just as much value to the creative process.
If a framed canvas isn’t the only worthwhile expression of visual art, then a fully edited and polished piece of significant length is not the only worthwhile expression of writing.
Immortal whumpee who hasn't eaten in years, reintroducing food into their shriveled stomach.
#354
thank you for this prompt i'm actually really proud of how this turned out, i hope you guys enjoy as well :)
content: immortal whumpee, past trauma, aftermath of whump, captivity, starvation, emeto, rocky recovery, recovery fic, comfort, multiple whumpers (referenced, not in the story)
It had been years.
At first, the hunger pangs were bearable. Even when days passed, Whumpee could tell itself it would be over soon, their captors would return and feed it, and it wouldn't rot away in a cell forever. Days turned into weeks. Whumpee got hungrier. It started to punch the walls so that plaster would fall off, and it would eat that. It wasn't satisfying, but it was something in its stomach. Weeks turned into months. The plaster was gone from the wall in most places. Months turned into years. There was nothing but the dull constancy of hunger pangs coming and going like waves in the ocean.
When the door finally opened, Whumpee didn't even move. It stayed lying on the cement floor, staring up at the ceiling. It couldn't be bothered to move its emaciated body an inch.
"Um, I'm looking for, uh, Whumpee?" came a hesitant voice from the top of the stairs. Like the voice's owner was scared to venture down into the basement. "Is anyone there?"
It had been so long since it had used its voice, Whumpee wasn't sure it knew how to anymore. But this was its one chance at companionship. At food. At freedom — hah, what a distant fantasy. "I—" Their voice cracked, and it had been so long since it'd received water or anything to wet its lips and throat with. "I'm here."
"Whumpee? Oh, uh… Okay. I'm coming down."
Steps descending the stairs. When Whumpee attempted to push its body up to see who the new arrival was, it found it had lost the strength to. Its emaciated body had been stripped of all muscle, and it simply couldn't support its own weight.
"Oh," came a softer voice, from closer. Whumpee turned its head to look at them.
The stranger was at most 20, a laughable number compared to the centuries Whumpee had spent on this earth. They looked equal parts scared and intrigued. But Whumpee wasn't looking for emotions. It was looking for food. It found none on the stranger's person.
"You've been alone down here for quite some time, haven't you?"
"Water," it choked out.
"There's water upstairs. I'll open this door now, okay? And you can come out. Whenever you're ready."
Another laughable concept. Nobody ever waited for it to be ready. Nobody ever asked its consent. Nobody ever considered its feelings. And now that this stranger might do all of those things, it had lost the ability to cooperate. A cruel joke.
"I can't," Whumpee said, but the jingling of keys drowned out its weak voice.
"Hm?"
"I can't. Too weak."
"Oh." The stranger stepped into the cell and crouched down by its side. "I see. I should've expected this. Well, you look light enough to… to carry. If that's okay. Is that okay?"
"Can I really— Can I have water?"
"Yes. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
Whumpee nodded. The stranger picked it up in a bridal carry, and Whumpee could do little more than hang there limply as it was carried upstairs. Everything was bright up there. It closed its eyes and let the stranger carry it where they willed.
It was soon set down on something foreign, something so unlike the cold, cement floor. Something soft. Whumpee opened its eyes — it was on a sofa.
It soon heard the sound of a tap being turned on, then a glass being filled. If there was anything left in its body to produce liquid, its mouth would've probably watered at the mere prospect. The stranger came back and helped it sit up, then held the glass to its lips and helped it drink.
Oh.
Oh.
Whumpee closed its eyes. It gulped down the water all too quickly, and like the horrible little monster it was, it immediately asked for more. The stranger fetched it even more. This repeated at least five times by the time Whumpee was satisfied.
"Would you like something to eat as well?"
It was just common courtesy; the stranger must've seen the state it was in. Paper-thin skin sticking to bones that were jutting out, the result of several years of starvation. With fresh, cold water in its system, Whumpee felt a little more daring. A little more alive. "Yes, please."
"A sandwich?"
A sandwich. So casual. So mundane. Nothing sounded better than a sandwich. "Yes, please."
The stranger left to prepare it, after laying Whumpee back down on the sofa. Whumpee listened to the vague sounds of it being prepared, and it imagined the soft, fresh bread, the fillings — what fillings would the stranger use? Ham? Cheese? Tomato? Lettuce? Eggs? Would they use condiments? Mayo? Ketchup? The possibilities were endless — and the way the bites would slide down its throat one by one. And with how generous the stranger was with water, maybe it would be possible to ask for even more than just one sandwich. Whumpee, for the first time in years, felt giddy with excitement.
The stranger returned, once again helping Whumpee sit. "It's just a simple peanut butter and jelly, I hope that's okay."
Peanut butter. It remembered eating whole jars of it before it was captured and imprisoned. And jelly, sweet and sour, wonderful, grape jelly. It got so excited to be able to bite into it, it even forgot its manners, not thanking the stranger for the food before it dug in.
Oh, this was so much better than eating plaster off the wall. This had taste, actual, real, good taste. Whumpee bit and bit and bit and it definitely bit off more than it could chew but it didn't care, it was being fed, it was genuinely, actually being fed.
Then its stomach did a flip, and suddenly it was retching, onto the remainder of the sandwich and onto the stranger's kind hands. It was mortified. And most of all, it mourned the food.
"I still want to eat it," it said before anything else, staring intently at the vomit-covered sandwich. "Please? I'm sorry."
The stranger made a face. Even a kind stranger could only be kind for so long — Whumpee wondered what its punishment would be. A lashing? More years down in the basement? The thought, detached as it was from its emotional landscape, sent little more than a small shiver down its spine. What was a few more years of solitude and starvation?
"No, I think…" They withdrew, letting Whumpee fall back onto the sofa. It didn't have the strength to push itself back up again. "I think… Huh, well. We need to clean this up, and then I'll make some soup instead. Maybe that'll stay in your stomach."
"I don't need cleaning, I need the sandwich," Whumpee said, like a petulant child. "Please," it added, hoping to soften the stranger's heart. That sandwich had been so good. The best thing it'd ever eaten. And now—
No. Don't be ungrateful. Soup was good. Soup was fine. It was still food, even if it wasn't… chewable.
"You definitely do need cleaning," the stranger said, and when Whumpee tried to lift its hand to lick off some of the vomit, they even smacked its hand away. Whumpee whimpered. "Don't do that. Look… Ugh, I can't believe my grandpa did all this."
Grandpa? Its captors were a group of middle-aged men. Just how many years have passed?
"I'll help wash you off. I'll clean the sofa as well. And in the meantime, I'll put some water on the stove with a soup cube. How's that sound?"
"I really want the rest of the sandwich," it said before it could've controlled its stupid, greedy mouth.
"Look, I know. You're starving. But you really shouldn't eat what you've puked up. Please. Just let me help."
And so Whumpee did, because what else was there for it to do? It couldn't have protested if it wanted to. And so the stranger helped it wash off years of accumulated grime, turning the water almost black as it washed down the drain. They helped it into new, soft clothes, then carried it back not to the living room, but to the kitchen. They set it down on a chair as the water in the pot boiled, giving off the scent of freshly seasoned chicken broth. Then, the stranger took a ladle and put two big ladlefuls into a bowl, setting it down before it on the table.
"We're gonna take it slower, okay?" they asked.
"I never asked your name," Whumpee said, though its eyes were fixed on the soup.
"Oh, right. I never introduced myself. My name is Caretaker. My grandpa… Look, I know this looks bad, that my grandpa did all this to you and now I'm here, and I'm— But I'm different, okay? I would like to set you free, but with how you are right now, I don't think that's feasible. So, uh… You're stuck with me for a little longer."
"Okay," it said easily. Caretaker had given it water, and was trying to feed it. It couldn't have asked for a better captor. "Can I eat?"
"Yes. Slowly. Spoon by spoon, okay?" Caretaker lifted a spoonful to Whumpee's mouth, and Whumpee tried to savour it, it really did, but it ended up gulping it down and opening its mouth for more. "Spoon by spoon. So it can stay in your stomach."
"Spoon by spoon," it repeated, though it wanted to scream give it all to me now, and give me that sandwich, and give me all the contents of your fridge, and give me more even still. "Thank you," it said, remembering its manners.
"Of course." Another spoonful. "We'll get through this, okay? You and I." Another spoonful. "You'll feel much better once this settles in your stomach."
"Okay," it said quietly. "Thank you."
Caretaker smiled. If it had any brain capacity to focus on anything but the soup, it might've noticed the eerie resemblance they had to their grandfather. But where his smile was always a sneer, a cruel twitch of his mouth, theirs was gentle and kind.
you’ve heard of living weapon whumpee, now get ready for:
living sacrifice whumpee!
whumpee raised for one specific purpose - not to kill, but to die, whether in body, or mind, or spirit, to make room for something greater in the world
whumpee with countless hours of pain and suffering carved into their skin and bones, all for the sake of seasoning their soul
whumpee who’s held on a pedestal as nobility, as godlike, but not because of who they are, but what they are
whumpee who has known reverence from everyone around them, but never kindness, never love
whumpee with the empty, placid demeanor of a lamb that knows exactly what its fate is
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
Please stop trigger tagging with #epilepsy tw/cw/warning/etc.
I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is
I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.
Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.
Here’s proof of what I mean:
THIS POST IS 100% OKAY TO REBLOG, I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE WITHOUT EPILEPSY TO ESPECIALLY DO SO!
3 Common Things That Make Readers Put Your Book Down:
1. Your protagonist is reactive instead of proactive for the first 8 chapters
2. The stakes are “I might be sad” instead of “I might lose everything.”
3. The middle sags because you’re scared to make things worse for your characters.
I see these in almost every other manuscript I read.
Which one are you guilty of right now? Be honest. 👀
