#I really like doing whump advice it’s fun

[sola-whumping]

I have a question regarding breaking pets in. I've just got two new pets, completely untrained and fresh from their previous lives, a couple. I was wondering where I should start? Should I go straight into breaking them? Should I try to explain what they are there for first? Curious to see what you have to say on the matter, thank you for your time and consideration.

I would always say to set clear rules and expectations from the start. You want to reward cooperation and punish unwanted behavior. That of course starts with them knowing what unwanted behavior is. You want your new pets to be able to trust you. When you make a promise you must keep it, if you threaten them you have to go through with it, if you say you’ll hurt them they should trust that you will. If you promise food that should also be reliable. You are your pets whole world now, and it’s a lot easier to follow someone who keeps their promises.

To start off I always like to get my whumpees into a more.. Vulnerable, mindset. Withholding information is a big part of this, and along with that comes manipulation. Making your whumpee think it’s been a lot longer or shorter then it has been can be a wonderful tool, especially if they are expecting rescue. Feeding them false information on people they knew in their past life or just cutting them off from all information on the outside world is just lovely, and if they ever do escape, that misinformation will impact their old relationships and who they think they can trust.

If they care for each other a lot I recommend punishing the other with a method that will leave a physical mark that will fade. Bruises work well for this and are very intimidating if your new pet isn’t a doctor or nurse. Electricity is also scary for first time pets, not many pets like seeing someone jerk or scream from a jolt. If you’re okay with marked up pets don’t be afraid to leave scaring, it will make them think twice before disobeying and earning a permanent mark.

You want there to be a visual to what will happen if they misbehave along with a pain stimulus. A good way to do this is to wire them both to electric collars so it will shock them both if one of them do something or to use a whip or knife. Make sure they know it’s their fault and if they just cooperated none of this would have to happen.

The most important point I have for you is to be reasonable. Your new whumpees might not know how to be good immediately and training a whumpee doesn’t always mean breaking them. You have to teach them to be good just as much as you punish them for being defiant. Start slow with your pets and don’t be afraid to meet them at their level. They’re more likely to obey if they know you’re a reliable handler with easy to predict punishments.

#nightshade talks #whump #whump advice #pet whump #somthing gabrial would say #I’m baaack #I really like doing whump advice it’s fun #this ask is from ages ago #long post #I missed writing

[goodluckclove]

I've been meaning to say something. (100 follower hot take)

Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you've had a nice day. Why don't you rest with me for a while? I made some chocolate chip cookies - with shortening instead of butter, so they're very soft and very chocolatey. I made way too many and they aren't my wife's favorite, so I could use some help in eating them.

You're probably a writer, right? Or maybe you think about how you could be. Browse the tags here, or on other social media platforms. Maybe you used to write stories as a kid. I bet those were fun. Teachers might've thought they were impressive, or they dissected them line by line until the words didn't make sense in your head anymore. Either way, if you're here you're probably here for a reason.

(rant alert)

I dipped a toe in online writing communities on and off. My last attempt was forty-five minutes scrolling through the writing hashtag on Youtube Shorts (so TikTok, I guess? I don't know). I didn't like it. I really didn't. The thing that sticks out the strongest in my mind is one particular video where a woman claims that every story needs a second act plot twist.

Huh? Every story? All of them? Why? Since when? Who are you? What qualifications do you have to make a statement like that?

That's the common thread that makes a lot of writing spaces very uncomfortable for me. Successful writers are really only successful in their genre and for the given moment, so they don't have that much objective authority in the craft. And yet I see a lot of people deciding the things that you can't do in writing. Or the things you have to do, and how you have to do them. It was so much of Writeblr at first glance that I almost dipped out once again. I didn't, though, and I'm glad I didn't because now I get to watch some of the next great storytellers from across the world grow and examine and forge their way forward.

No one can teach you how to write. No, that's not true. Teachers teach literacy. Handwriting. Typing maybe - do schools still teach typing? Let me try saying it in a different way - no one, not one single person on this goddamned planet, has the right to tell you how to make a story.

I was supposed to get my MFA in creative writing before my first breakdown. My uncle stayed in the program I was meant to be in, and a few years after I dropped out he graduated. Recently I had the thought to look up his thesis novella, and as I searched I found myself regretting my decision to leave school. If I stayed and got to develop my writing in an actual class, with other writers and a knowledgeable professor, how much further along would I be than where I am right now?

It was bad. His novella was terrible. It was so bad I had a small existential crisis for, like, three days. He spent so much money on years and years of professional education and came out with a truly soulless story that read as if you prompted an AI to write the next Great American Novel. So if you think you need a writing degree to be a legitimate author, it could help connections-wise, but it ultimately won't be the thing that does the work for you.

Not all advice I see online on writing is bad. I find the people who are able to capture the "I" statements of therapy and phrase advice as things that have worked for them, or things that they personally enjoy, to be fine. Some writing advice can spark inspiration.

But if someone is the type of person to boil every story down to troupes and cliches, and then immediately say that every story that uses the trait they don't like is automatically bad for everyone? I'm dropping the kindness for a second - that's trash. That's a trash take and I see far too many writers use it as a reason to stop before they begin.

I don't like whump. I say my reasons in previous posts if you go back through my blog. But you will never hear me say that any story with whump in it is bad, because I don't know that. You might prove me wrong. I am an adult human being and I have the humility to admit that I can like something I didn't expect to. I genuinely enjoy the direction of The Human Centipede (only the first one) and if you cringed just now that probably means you haven't seen it.

There are so many types of books and movies and plays and comics out there. To enjoy a specific genre is fine, to ignore the existence of everything else is a really, really, really odd thing to do. Maybe someone will hate your story because they think everything should be Neil Gaiman, and therefore have no way to understand your epistolary high-Western. You are not the wrong end of that situation just for existing.

And at there is a definite threshold on how many writing tips you can gather before they stop being useful. If you find them interesting, that's one thing. That's fine. But if the culture of creativity online has made you feel like you need to educate yourself on every possible angle before you can write a story, you are actively harming yourself.

Imagine taking the level of structure you put on yourself in that way and putting it on children playing pretend in the backyard. Oh, Susie, don't you know that it's overdone for your Kitsune have dead parents? Xyler, shouldn't you ask someone else before you decide how Spiderman would react to this? It would make no sense and they do not need it. Kids will make a whole world out of nothing and it's the most fucked thing in my heart that at some point they get access to Reddit and dipshits start insisting that's wrong.

They aren't wrong and you aren't either. Your favorite creative influencer can't tell you your story, strangers on the internet can't tell you your story, your teachers and loved ones can't tell you your story. They can influence it, but they can't write it honestly the way you can.

You do that. That's the thing you do.

Man that makes me upset. I can't tell you how to make a story, either. If anyone sends me asks for writing advice the most I'll do is say what I've done before hopping into your DMs and starting a direct conversation. it's so personal to each individual artist, and I'd like to think that the people selling these classes and software and promoting these platforms haven't thought about that before. Otherwise it does feel manipulative. If you have a willingness to practice and imagine and really experiment with the possibilities, you are ready to write your story.

And if it doesn't work? Try again. That's what you do.

Stephen King has written roughly a thousand books and maybe five of them have decent endings. He is unimaginably successful.

I'm rambling now. I think I got that out of my system. I was really worried to say this out of fear of being too weird or somehow reverse-gatekeeping so hard that it circles back into also being a bad thing. I've just spoken to a lot of people who I still think of throughout my day, and I truly ache for them to get past the fear of creation. Because it's worth it. It's worth it and it's fun, even when it's messy and you're tired.

Let it Be just came on. Beatles. I haven't listened to The Beatles in a long time. Feels a little apropos.

I love you, reader. Reader, Writer, Colleague. Take care of yourself. Especially the little you, still sitting there in the backyard of your soul, bathing in the sun with their bare feet in the damp earth.

Consider joining them, maybe.

#writeblr #writing community #writers on tumblr #queer writers #authors of tumblr #on writing #writing #actually writing #writing resources #writing tips #writing help #writing advice #how to write #writing tips and tricks #writers supporting writers

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

Whump fics have an audience, obviously, because all of us are here writing and reading it, but it's still a more limited appeal. Any advice for how to deal with discouragement when whump stories you're passionate about don't get any interaction?

I humbly think we’ll have to ask ourselves what the goal we hope will achieve is; do we write for notes and kudos, or do we write because it’s something we’re passionate about and so the act of writing alone brings us joy? this is a genuine question and either of these answers are valid.

I know a lot of us create for both the joy of doing what we love, and also for the validation of getting likes/reblogs/kudos and comments. and as someone who also writes, I understand how much seeing our works get the appreciation they deserve means.

but the thing is, it can also get discouraging when the work we put so much time and dedication into didn’t get as much love as it deserved. I know this is all so very cliche and is easier said than done, but if we really want to have fun in doing what we love, my advice would be that you do it for yourself, not for your followers. and the sooner we can truly accept this concept, the happier we’ll be.

do you get what I’m trying to say here? (because I’m not sure if it makes sense tbh), but long story short, don’t write for kudos or reblogs, write because this is something that you love. being able to do what you love is actually super cool.

sure, kudos and reblogs are amazing, but the sooner we can fully look at them as a bonus, not the main reason we create, the happier and more at peace we will be.

so it’s okay if our works get no interaction, because at the end of the day, we got to write them for ourselves.

repeat after me: I got to do what I love, which is enough. I’ll keep doing what I love because they’re a form of self care and I’m doing what I’m doing for me.

please don’t let the lack of interaction from the audience pull you away from the joy of creating the stories that you love. YOU should be the priority of your works. always.

#admin answers #whump #writing positivity #writing #writer #whumpblr #writers on tumblr #writers on ao3 #writing challenge #writing inspo #writing inspiration #writing advice #writing advices #writing tip #writing tips #ao3 #archive of our own #writing community #whump community #angst #whump blog #writers

[painsandconfusion]

Hi! If this counts as writing advice, I was wondering, how do you avoid romanticizing violence and abuse in writing? Like, at its core, what’s even the difference between “enjoying whump” and “romanticizing abuse”, and how do you make that distinction clear within a story? I hope this doesn’t come off as accusatory, I just don’t want to accidentally create something harmful ;-; Thank you!

I’m gonna answer this as a normal ask instead of a full writing advice thing cuz the answer is simple

Write form your characters pov. You can enjoy the content all you like without romanticizing it, but neither should directly come across in your writing if you write from a characters perspective.

If you’re writing from whumpers pov, you can romanticize it all you want and it’s all the more twisted and horrific that way. If whumper is talking about ‘coaxing out exquisite screams and delicious agonies’, that just makes them sound obsessy and fucked in a way that your reader can enjoy as whump. But. No one’s gonna blame you for condoning what your character does. At least they shouldn’t. That’s just good writing.

But. If you’re writing from whumpee’s pov, ‘exquisite screams and delicious agonies’ just doesn’t really fit, y’know? They’d say something more like ‘an unearthly screech clawed it’s way up their throat, snapping in half on its way out’. Making it visceral and wrong and bad helps solidify whumpees pov.

If you write from an ambivalent, omniscient perspective over the entire scene (or switch between the two ocs without warning or break), you’re going to run into the romanticization issue a *lot* more. Because at that point it’s speaking objectively about the characters. Then you’re going to have to apply any positive and negative adjectives directly to the characters thought process to separate them out. ‘Whumper loved listening to the pretty little sounds Whumpee made. Whumpee, however, couldn’t hear them - they were too focused on the darkness creeping into the edges of their crackling vision’. See how each adjectives connotations are directly applied to the character? It makes that separation easier.

Personal opinion that using anything besides the most basic descriptions during a scene -where no OC is taking over the perspective fully- is going to fun into the romanticization issue. Adjectives hav connotations. Connotations read as opinions. SO. If those adjectives/connotations/opinions aren't anchored to a character, they'll be attributed to the writer instead.

It's also my opinion that the content will be less engaging for the reader if you write from an ambivalent, omniscient perspective. It’s harder for the reader to step into the characters shoes and fully get fit punched by those whumperflies if they can’t see through the characters eyes and feel what they’re feeling.

tl;dr Romanticizing whump is an issue of the authors speech, not the characters. So he sure to write from the characters pov and you’re good to go.

Hope that helps!!

#sand asks #writing advice #whump community #writing tips

[a-reader-and-a-writer-for-all]

What is your favorite piece you've written?

Gasp! 😱 Anon! That's like asking me to pick my favorite child (not that I have kids... but still)!

I kid but I'm actually really horrible at picking favorites of anything. So here are three of my favorite pieces I have written:

I'm So Sorry (Jason Todd x Reader):

I wrote this during my first whumptober. It was the first mini-series I had ever written and it just came together so perfectly! It hit all the physical and emotional whump that I love to write, plus I was really happy with how I was able to make the ending tie into not just this story but to the Batman canon in order to make a final impact. Plus, it was the one and only time someone has ade me original art based on one of my fics and that still remains as one of the highlights of my writing on here.

The Colonel and the Sergeant (Rick Flag x Reader, Past Bucky Barnes x Reader):

This is such a special series to me. Not only am I SUPER proud of it but it also contains my favorite scene I've ever written (the flatline scene in Part 2 if you've read it) as well as two of my favorite characters to write for. I was also writing this series when I started talking more to one of my mutuals and reaching out for advice. Since then, they have become one of my closest friends and because of that, this fic will always remain one of my favorite things I've ever done.

No Words (Extended Edition) (Hangman x Reader Soulmate AU):

What I really love about this one is how I was able to take a familiar trope and put a bit of a twist on it. I am usually not a huge fan of soulmate AUs because they can be a bit repetitive so I wanted to do something different and I felt like I was able to accomplish that. Plus, I had a few followers get really interactive after the fact and we soft of crafted scenarios of what would happen next after the fic and it was so fun and amazing that others loved my fic enough to want to join in the discussion about it. Plus, I just love writing soft!Hangman 😂

Thank you so incredibly much, Anon, for the ask! And I would love to hear what other people's favorite pieces I've written are! 🥰

#thanks! #anon ask #so kind #my favorite pieces #jason todd #jason todd x reader #rick flag #rick flag x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #hangman #jake hangman seresin #hangman x reader

[whumpsday]

22, 24, and 25 for the ask game <33

Do you have any particular songs or playlists that help you get in the mood to write whump?

nope! i write in silence usually, or occasionally i'll play a specific song in repeat that matches the themes of a specific chapter.

i do have official playlists for the Kane & Jim main cast, though!

Do you have any whump pet peeves? Meaning things that just bug you when you see them in a fanfic.

not really? the only thing i can think of is a general writing thing, which is people not using paragraph breaks between different characters' dialogue. like having two different characters talk in the same paragraph. it makes it near impossible for me to read.

What advice or wisdom would you like to share with other whump writers?

remember: the most important thing is to have fun!

#ask

[zeroducks-2]

{Commission Closed}

Blog Navigation: My Art - My Fanfictions (includes things I don't post on AO3). You can find my other socials here.

I post/reblog NSFW, and my blog tries to be as raunchy as possible within the limits of this puritan ass website, which shadowbanned me twice already ♥

Been hyperfixating on DC stuff for a while. More than anything else you'll find Bats and Birds (mostly Sladick), and cute little speedsters (mostly Eobarry). The Eobarry pit is at this point deep enough I don't see the sun nor I can feel its warmth on my skin anymore. Also, I love being gross to Dick especially but no one is safe from me.

Evil characters and grey characters are my special little meow meows. I support their (gay) rights and wrongs. No, I don't think they should be held accountable for their actions, they're not real.

I mostly write smut, whump and/or shippy content. I really like dark stuff & I'm a kinky bastard. Writing gen fics and pure fluff isn't my thing.

I am comfortable with any type of ask. Go ahead and send me that WIP you're writing for some advice or just to share, or prompt me because you want to see your blorbo being tossed around in that specific way. I also have an ongoing Dark Prompts Ask Game right here. You can also send me hate if that's your thing, I won't kinkshame you I promise.

If I unfollowed you it's 99.9% because you posted WFA or Harry Potter content untagged. Nothing personal, I just really don't want to see those things. Also, sometimes tumblr unfollows people without telling me, and in the same fashion, doesn't notify me of reblogs, comments or what have you. If you want me to see something but I seem unresponsive, feel free to send an Ask or a DM.

I don't have DNIs, I curate my own online experience. However, please note that this won't ever be a safe space for exclusionists of any kind. And if you can't grasp the simple fact that fiction ≠ reality, that no one is getting hurt & we're just having fun, be nice to yourself and to me and do not follow.

Anyone else is more than welcome ♥ Remember to stay very handsome!

#new year new pinned post #zeroducks

[greatandquestionablecontent]

WIP: in the mirror I saw who you could have been

Do you like fantasy stories with disaster bisexuals and psychic pain magic?? Do you like relationship shenanigans and identity crises interspersed with horrific necromancy??

✨ Revamped, reanimated, now with even MORE undeath! ✨

Summary

With the rare ability to suck the life energy from mortals, Delta has healed from death countless times. Except just once, a crucial part of them didn’t grow back.

Missing almost all memories, Delta has a new mission this time around: to wear the guise of their former self and help take down the last of their fellow energy vampires.

Jade, their past self's lover, once knew them better than anyone, and her perspectives from their tumultuous relationship are the best reference Delta has. And then there's Gavin, a soul Delta recognizes from another plane, now a determined rebel leader with his own ideas about how Delta's powers should be used.

Tangled in a web of past relationships and previous promises, Delta must decide where to go from here, and how much they really owe to a self who is never coming back.

Start from the Beginning 

1 -- Delta wakes up on a battlefield (edited from original posting) 2 --  Delta struggles to heal (edited from original posting) 3 -- Delta’s starting get a hang of this whole pain vampire thing 4 -- Delta’s body remembers Jade/ they meet her for the first time (again)

Character studies and backstory snippets (Can be read at any point)

Andromeda -- A flashback, Delta meeting Andromeda and learning about themself.

If Home Is Where The Heart Is Then We’re All Just Fucked -- A flashback. Set shortly before 1 -- when Delta comes back different. Jade has a bonding moment with Maren, learns Maren’s backstory, and gets some unwanted advice about her own life.

Maren: Clarity -- Problematic knife lesbian has a rare moment of self reflection

an undead person thinks about their favorite ghost -- what it says on the tin. Delta looking back on how they got to know Ilya

This Happens Later: Mountain Time, in chronological order

Note: Those marked with an * were written before I decided to change Trystan’s name to Delta in this series. There are hints at a previous draft with more of an Alternate Universe plot and a lot less Reincarnation and Resurrection plot, so some details are inaccurate, although similar things will still happen at some point in the new version. I’ll rewrite them at some point!

*Warmth (No longer fully accurate, but will still happen)-- Trystan, Jade, and Ari are venturing up a treacherous mountain after everything’s gone to hell. HUDDLE FOR WARMTH

*More mountain time (No longer fully accurate, but will still happen) -- what it says on the tin. Trystan, Jade, and Ari are still in the mountains. Ari's still pregnant and Trystan still has to torture people!

*Stop (No longer fully accurate, but will still happen) -- Trystan, Jade and Ari are still in the mountains and it SUCKS. Major environmental whump and creepy undead pain-vampire shit.

*An Occupied Body (No longer fully accurate, but will still happen) -- Direct sequel to Stop. Ari struggles with her emotions as she and Jade figure out how to deal with undead Trystan.

“I’ll take one final step, all you have to do is make me” (Whumptober Day 19, 2023) -- Delta (formerly Trystan in prev drafts) has gone to get help, leaving Jade and Ari alone in a cave to wait. Jade decides she’s done waiting, and guided by a mysterious voice, brings Ari along with her to an unknown fate.

Just Sweet Enough -- Sickening Jade/Ari fluff after they finally get rescued and make it out of their traumatic mountain ordeal.

These aren’t canon anymore but they have Fun Vibes. They’re all from the draft where it was about Alternate Universes.

old prologue (portal girl!) -- a young teen comes down from the mountains, claiming to have stumbled through an impossible portal. Ari backstory which is no longer accurate.

“I like to think there’s a world where you never gave up on me.” Ari and Denna talk about feelings, and how Denna never came looking for Ari.

#in the mirror i saw who you could have been #my writing #wip intro #in the mirror

[aswallowimprisoned]

Restless far from a Wine Dark sea - Day 3 (rewind) hold my hand

Waking up in a PTSD attack is never fun, but Nurse Johns is here to hold his hand

Tw PTSD flashback attack, broken bones, captivity, medical whump, injury, Dead Dove Jewish vampiric whumpee, restraints

RestlessffaWDs' timeline is going off piste for @medwhumpmay

Within the first month of captivity, but not too soon.

masterlist

≪ °❈° ≫

Nurse Johns watched as the merman’s nose crinkled as he started to wake up, his tail fin spreading and stretching out to their full colossal size, and his hands relaxing their vice-like grip on the sheets.

Seeing a sea monster wake up was still a novelty, all the staff poised watching the creature wake.  

But rather than waking with a bleary blink, the seamonster flinched violently against his bonds, heart rate rocketing as he stared at the therapist sitting next to him with wide unseeing eyes of fear.

“Hey Fogel, it's me, Elias. You're waking up, ok?” 

The merman jerked against his restraints again, breath coming in short bursts as he let out an inhuman whine of fear.

“It looks like a PTSD flashback.” Logan, the other anthropologist, spoke through the comms.

“You're ok Fogal, shhhh, no one is hurting you right now, no one is going to hurt you, you are in a bed, covered with a blanket, can you feel the cotton? You're ok shh…” The therapist started crooning soft affirmations to try to bring him out of it. Nurse Johns had seen quite a lot of post-sedation flashbacks, especially being an army nurse. It was always difficult to bring them round. Poor guy.

“He's tearing at his tail wound again.” Johns spoke softly into his comms, not wanting to distract the attention of the scared sea monster.

“See if you can block access to the wounds, prevent damage,” came advice down the comms

Nurse Johns put his hand in the gap.

Fogal’s flailing hand stopped, and his fingers wrapped around the nurse's hand.

Hey, Johns was holding hands with a vampiric seamonster of lore.

Wow.

The grip shifted slightly, and tightened.

And tightened more.

Nurse Johns was abruptly reminded that the sea monster’s grip strength was incredible, and how he would blindly reach for and grab anything, even when asleep.

“He has grabbed my hand and is holding really hard…”

“I will get muscle relaxant…” Dr Orange was beside him and pulling out a tiny bottle.

“Fogel, I really need you to relax, I need you to calm down right now, and let go of what you are holding…” The therapist took on a much harsher tone than normal, trying to use an authoritarian tone to get the dissociated merman to obey.

“Hurry.” Johns gritted out. He could feel the bones in his hand start to strain and he gritted his teeth to keep from screaming, “Doc, hurry.”

The pain was intense.

“Here, here…” Dr Orange was only a moment from injecting the relaxant into the merman’s muscle when a bone in Johns’ hand broke with an audible pop.

He rode out the pain that rose in a wave and tried not to faint on the spot. The grip increased for a moment longer, til finally relaxing, allowing Dr Orange to gently unpeel the sea monster’s fingers from Nurse’s crushed hand.

“Someone help Johns while I sedate Fogal.” Orange commanded.

He managed to stumble into the atrium, before the adrenaline ran out and he fainted into the arms of the other Nurse.

a/n I had wanted to do this since I first saw the prompt, but wanted to establish the characters first.

Shout out to my mam, who waited a whole 30 seconds after breaking her ankle to faint

#I personally find this funny #its nearly midnight #tw ptsd #whump #medical whump #whump writing #restlessffawds #tw broken bone

[whump-me]

Whumptober Day 13: Infection

This is a standalone story in my original Mind Games universe, a modern-day sci-fi/fantasy thriller setting about ordinary humans with superhuman abilities and the people who want to use or destroy them. Full description in my Whumptober masterpost, which is linked in my pinned post.

This story contains: emotional whump, touch-starved protagonist, deadly disease, assassination

Words: 3900

---

Dahlia never would have chosen this restaurant if she had been the one picking up the tab. Her date thought she was the one paying her half of the bill, of course—he didn’t know about her job, or the expense account that came with it. So she’d had to make herself look like someone who frequented fancy-schmancy places like this on a regular basis.

And it had been fun. A chance to play with makeup, put on a dress. She had precious little opportunity for either, these days.

Of course, she could put on a dress any day she wanted. And to do her makeup to her heart’s content. Most of her assignments didn’t come with a dress code. But most days, what was the point? It no longer felt disrespectful to have fun when the people she used to love most were dead. She had grown too used to grief for that. Instead, it just felt… pointless.

Her handler thought she might be depressed. He kept dropping hints about it. Maybe she was, and if so, who could blame her? She didn’t see what good the information would do her, though. It wasn’t as if she could go to therapy, not unless she was going to lie about her entire life, which sounded pretty counterproductive.

Her handler had suggested picking this restaurant. She was glad she had taken his advice. It was nice to have a little fun once in a while.

Her date was surprisingly fun, too, at least so far. Maybe it was no surprise that the congresscritter across the table from her knew how to turn on the charm. The man had been practicing the art of charming reporters for decades. The same skills probably translated well to dates.

But when she had first sat down, he hadn’t given her the publicity-photo grin he sported on his website. He had given her a crooked smile that crinkled his eyes up at the corners. It had looked almost… genuine.

Of course it did. Every politician worth their salt knew how to fake genuine.

But then he had told her a story about his son’s baseball team and half a dozen puppies, and she had laughed out loud. Not the fake laugh she had perfected for this occasion. A real one. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed.

And when she had mangled the pronunciations of the fancy French words on the menu, he had made sure his own accent was worse than hers, even though she knew damn well the man had taken five years of French in school. It had been right there in the briefing materials she’d read.

If nothing else, he knew how to make a woman comfortable. That made this experience—the first date she’d had since the incident—marginally less excruciating than she had expected. She kept finding herself smiling without realizing she was doing it. The man was probably a slimeball, but at least he was an entertaining one.

He leaned across the table, so close to the candle in the center that she briefly thought the flame might singe off his eyelashes. “What are you thinking?”

She flashed him her best flirtatious smile. She couldn’t remember the last time she had flirted with anyone for real. She’d been married to Jack for ten years before… well, before. But she had practiced the smile in the mirror. She had gotten pretty good at it, if she did say so herself.

“I was thinking it’s been too long since I went out,” she said. “Really went out, I mean—the kind of thing you have to dress up for.” It had the benefit of not even being a lie.

He opened his mouth—maybe to ask her how long it had been, or some other personal question she didn’t want to answer. Before he could, she turned his question around on him. “And you? What are you thinking about? You looked like you were having pretty deep thoughts there.” He hadn’t, but she guessed that was the kind of thing important men liked to hear.

Besides, it was the perfect setup for a cheesy romantic line—something like, I was just thinking about how stunningly beautiful you look tonight. Cue the violins in the background. Then a shy touch of hands. Maybe a kiss—with both of them being careful not to melt their faces off in the candle flame, of course.

But he didn’t take the bait. “I was thinking about how refreshing it is that you haven’t asked me about my work.”

And here she had thought he was impatiently waiting for her to do just that. People with important jobs liked to talk about those important jobs, didn’t they? If she had been doing her own job properly, she would have been taking every opportunity to let him yak on about himself.

But she had avoided all the opportunities to ask those questions, because she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t care. Not unless he could make his work as entertaining as the puppy story, and maybe not even then.

To be honest, she wanted to know as little about the man across from her as possible.

“Is that unusual?” she asked.

He nodded. “It seems like half the people I meet are full of questions about what it’s like. The answer is, it’s a lot less interesting than they think. I can’t blame them for being curious, but it does get…” His voice trailed off. He furrowed his brow as he searched for the right word.

“Boring?” she suggested, because that was exactly how the thought of listening to those stories sounded to her.

“Exactly,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t want to say it. There’s no reason to insult the people asking the questions. But for me, it comes down to having the same conversation over and over.”

“And the other half of the people you meet?” she asked.

He rolled his eyes. “Those, I don’t mind insulting,” he said, with an easygoing grin that said he only half meant it. “They’re the ones who think I can do something for them.”

Then he looked down at his empty plate as his face turned pink. “When I say the people I meet, I don’t mean dates,” he said hurriedly. “I haven’t been on that many, I promise.”

She found his insecurity strangely charming. It was probably a put-on, of course. Could a person fake a blush? A politician probably could.

“It’s all right,” she said. She didn’t give him the practiced smile this time, but a softer one. One she had forgotten her face knew how to make. She didn’t have much opportunity for softness these days. “We’re both out of practice at this.”

He was recently divorced—a rarity among political couples, who tended to stay together for the photo ops. As far as he knew, she was divorced, too. She wasn’t. But she wasn’t married anymore, either.

“Thank you,” he said, still looking down at his plate. “It’s… a rough adjustment.”

“It gets easier,” she promised. And it did. Not dating—she had no clue about that part. But the pain of a lost relationship? The rupture like a wound that refused to heal, that made a person feel like their guts were going to spill out of their body every time they took a step? That part got better. Her hander had told her it would, and she had thought it was a lie. She had told herself she would never stop missing Jake. To stop missing him would be a betrayal.

But here she was, betraying him.

He cleared his throat, his cheeks pinking again. “Anyway,” he said hurriedly, “I’m glad you’re different, that’s all. I’m tired of talking about myself. I’d much rather hear about your work, anyway—you never did mention what it is you do.”

“Don’t run,” she warned. She almost laughed, because he would run if she actually told him the truth. She had no intention of doing that, of course.

“Let me guess,” he said, flashing her that crooked grin again. “You sell timeshares, and you’re about to whip out the slide projector.”

She laughed without meaning to as she shook her head. “I’m a journalist.”

His eyes went wide with exaggerated alarm—and, underneath, a little bit of real anxiety. “I see why you were afraid I might run,” he said, keeping his voice light. “You’re here to pry information from me, aren’t you?”

He hid his nerves well, but she could hear them, all the same. The life of a minor congressman was hardly front-page fodder, but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for someone to ply him with drinks and try to get him to say something he shouldn’t. It was why she had chosen this cover story. A hint of danger, easily waved away, could provide his mind with an explanation for any subconscious misgivings.

Not that he seemed to have any misgivings about her. For a politician, he was awfully naive.

“Sorry, but no,” she said. “I’m on the celebrity beat, and you don’t qualify.”

Now there was a joke. She couldn’t have named two current movie stars if someone had asked her. Even before the incident, she never kept up with the celebrity gossip. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask her for her bona fides.

He didn’t. And her strategy worked—she could see it working, could see the last bit of tension evaporating from his shoulders. “Now there’s a blow to the old ego,” he said.

“Hey, you said you were tired of being asked about your very important job,” she said with a laugh. “Can’t have it both ways.”

“So I did.” His gaze softened as he looked at her over the candle flame. It might have been a genuinely romantic moment, if she had still believed in romance.

She rested her hand casually on the tablecloth, calm up. It was the perfect time for a casual romantic touch from him—his fingers grazing hers, hesitantly holding hands like a pair of middle schoolers, testing the waters.

Guilt churned in her stomach, like it was still her first year as a PERI operative. She hadn’t expected guilt. Not about some slimeball politician. She wished she followed politics just so she could bring to mind some suitably asshole-ish thing he had done. But her blissful ignorance of all things current events worked against her. To her, he was just a man with a nice smile.

He looked at her hand. He was thinking about it, she could tell. Her hand quivered with the unexpected desire to ruin everything by lacing her fingers together in her lap, making her excuses, and leaving.

She left her hand where it was.

But of course the waiter chose that moment to come over with the check. As she explained they’d be splitting the bill, she hoped her relief didn’t show on her face.

She hoped he would be a jerk to the waiter, complaining about some petty thing, flaunting his power. When he didn’t, she covertly watched him, hoping to catch him leaving a small tip. She was glad he had made this experience less excruciating than she had expected, but now it was time for him to make things easy on her by being an asshole. Why couldn’t he just be an asshole?

His tip was better than twenty percent. She waited for him to brag about his generosity. She hoped his bragging was suitably obnoxious.

But he didn’t say a word. He hadn’t done it for her sake, then. Damn it.

He looked at her over the candle flame again, and of course her hand was still lying there, waiting for his. She could still pull it down to her lap. But she didn’t.

She saw his words on his face before he said them. Yet, here it came, the big romantic moment. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding cheesy and insincere,” he began.

Oh, just say it and get it over with. She hated that she didn’t want to just get it over with. She hated that she genuinely wanted to hear the words. Was she that hungry to be complimented on something besides her ability to get the job done?

Better that than the other possibility: that she had actually started to like him.

“I really like you,” he said. “I like that you didn’t ask me about my job. I like that you didn’t brag about yours. I like that you laughed at my corny stories—”

“They were funny,” she protested. “I wouldn’t have laughed otherwise.” Yes, she would have, but there was no reason to tell him that.

“If you say so,” he said, shaking his head. “But you know what? I honestly think you mean it. You have this air of sincerity about you. It’s not something I see very often in Washington. It’s refreshing.”

She managed not to burst out laughing at that. Sincerity? That was a better joke than any of the ones he had told her over dinner. She wasn’t sure if more than twenty words she had said tonight had been true.

“And… you’re beautiful,” he said, dropping his gaze shyly to the table. “I know you probably hear that all the time, but it’s the truth.”

No one had told her she was beautiful since Jake. She had never expected to hear those words again. After all, dating again was out of the question, considering her condition.

She hadn’t missed the compliments. Not the way she missed waking up next to Jake in the morning, or having someone to talk about her day with at night. She had stopped trying to be beautiful a long time ago. The face in the mirror was hers, nothing more and nothing less. When Jake had told her she was beautiful, it was another way of saying he loved her, and that was what she missed.

She hadn’t expected the words to thicken her throat with sudden threatened tears.

Especially not from this guy. She didn’t care what he thought. He was probably secretly a jerk underneath, anyway. All of this was just an act, meant to win her over.

She didn’t think she believed that anymore. She wished she could.

And then it came. His hand creeping hesitantly across the table toward hers, awkward as a teenager. Well, it made sense. He was out of practice with dating. Almost as out of practice as she was.

Although she doubted he was as out of practice at touch as her.

Last chance to pull away. She looked into those shy, anxious eyes, and had to fight to keep her hands where it was.

And then it was too late. His warm skin brushed against hers. The weight of his hand settled into her palm.

The touch of his skin was soft as silk, but it hit her like an electric jolt. She had to stop herself from going rigid all over. She stared at their joined hands, and only realized she was staring after a few seconds had gone by. She pulled her gaze away.

She tried to keep her expression neutral, but something must have come through in her eyes, because he hastily hold back. That soft, warm weight disappeared, leaving her unanchored and alone.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shook her head. “You misunderstood. It’s fine. Really.”

“You looked…” His voice trailed off. And no wonder. He probably didn’t know how to explain her expression.

He had probably never seen anything like it before.

It was the look of someone being touched with affection for the first time in almost five years.

He settled his hand on his lap. She wanted to beg him to put it back. But it was too late. The moment was gone.

That was all right. She had gotten what she needed.

When was the last time she had touched someone, or been touched? The little touches that normally went with her missions didn’t count. Bumping into someone in the airport, reaching for an item on the shelf at the same time as someone else.

The last time she had really touched and been touched had been the last time she had kissed her husband and children goodnight. The day her Enhanced gene had activated.

No one knew why the gene activated in some carriers but not in others, and why it activated early in life for some but late in others. PERI had drugs that could activate it, but for most people, it happened without anyone’s help. The theory was that it was something in the air, or in the water. Some unintended side effect of rampant pollution. That, the theory went, was why psychic abilities had been vanishingly rare for most of human history before exploding in prevalence in the 1970s. Not that most people knew about that explosion, because both the Enhanced and the people who found their abilities useful had reasons for keeping their existence secret.

Dahlia didn’t know if the theory was true, and she didn’t particularly care. All she knew was that she kissed Jack and the kids goodnight, and the next morning they had fevers and were throwing up blood. The hospital had run every test they could think of, and hadn’t come up with an answer. They had put Jack and the kids in an isolation wing, afraid they were contagious. It wasn’t until after they died, without her getting to hold their hands or kiss them one more time, that the doctors discovered the mystery illness wasn’t contagious whatsoever. A mystery on top of a mystery.

She hadn’t cared about the mysteries. She had cared that her family was dead.

But other people didn’t care about the mysteries. They kept on investigating, long after the flowers on the graves had dried up. A few months later, a pair of men in dark suits had knocked on her door and told her about the Enhanced, and about the secretive government program had been studying them for decades. They told her she had a gift. They told her she could do a lot of good with it.

They told her what she had done.

She already knew by then, of course. Not the scientific details, which they attempted to explain to her with dense printouts complete with graphs full of too many numbers. She didn’t need the numbers to tell her she couldn’t touch anyone anymore.

Her family hadn’t been the only ones who had died of the mystery illness. They had just been the first.

No one had ever figured out the common ground between the patients who had shown up at the local hospital. No one had figured out where they might have contracted the new disease that seemed to vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

No one but her… and the people who had tracked her down so she could work for them.

When she hadn’t been interested in their speeches about serving her country, they had offered her something she actually cared about. They had told her they could try to cure her. They made no promises, except that they would try. But they had facilities all over the country dedicated to studying Enhanced abilities. They had shown her pictures, labs full of shiny high-tech equipment.

They had offered her the possibility of a cure—in exchange for ten years working for them. They and their clients had a long list of people whose deaths they would find convenient.

She didn’t know whether they would follow through. For all she knew, they hadn’t done a single day’s worth of work on it since she had signed her name to the paperwork. There was no way for her to know—she hadn’t understood the science of her ability when they had tried to explain it, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have understood the science of the cure. But it was the only chance she had. Ten years—five years, now—and then maybe she would get to kiss someone goodnight again. And if not, well, at least she would have gotten ten years of hope.

And in the meantime, she could touch people again.

Incidental touches. A brief brush of fingertips; a collision followed by an apology. A day or two later, there would be another story in the newspaper—one more person dead of the mystery disease no scientist could figure out. It would be a brief curiosity, and then, when no more cases materialized, the story would fade away. Until she got the chance to touch someone again.

Even those tiny moments of physical contact were better than nothing.

No wonder her date had pulled away. What must he have seen on her face? How hungry must she have looked?

Now would be the time when he would make his excuses and leave.

He opened his mouth. She braced herself. Why did she care about being rejected by him? He was an asshole underneath. He had to be.

She didn’t want to like him.

“I apologize if this is too forward of me,” he began.

She frowned. That wasn’t what someone said when he was trying to find a reason to walk away quickly.

“But…” He hesitated. “Would you like to come back to my apartment? Maybe share a couple more drinks?”

His cheeks had gone pink again.

She wished she hadn’t noticed him blushing.

She wished he hadn’t been so hesitant about it.

Why couldn’t he have made it awful somehow—leered at her, leaned across the table for a slobbery case? If he had, she could have walked away secure in the knowledge that she would never see him again, and good riddance.

Either that, or she could have accepted his offer, guilt-free.

Not that she was that desperate.

She wasn’t.

She didn’t have to go with him. That one touch across the table had been enough. Even the date itself hadn’t been necessary. She could have touched him casually in passing on the subway, because he actually took the subway—another rarity among his kind.

Her handler had been the one to suggest making it a date. He had said she needed a little fun in her life. Now she wondered if he had known how badly she needed that one moment of physical affection, a hand brushing hers across the table.

It occurred to her that maybe her handler felt sorry for her.

She didn’t know how to feel about that.

All she knew was that her hand was still tingling with the memory of her date’s touch. She was hungry, despite her fancy meal. She was so, so hungry.

Guilt boiled in her guts. But she had already passed the point of no return. Whatever she did now, he was dead anyway.

And who knew when she would get another chance to touch someone more than in passing?

Someone she liked. Because she did like him. There was no point in trying to lie to herself about it anymore. He wasn’t a secret asshole, or if he was, he was hiding it well. She liked him, and she had killed him.

“I’d like that,” she said. Three more words of truth in an evening full of lies.

Maybe she would get the chance to kiss him goodnight.

---

Tagged: @cakeinthevoid @gala1981

Ask to be added or removed from my Whumptober 2023 taglist.

#whumptober2023 #no.13 #infection #oc #fic #assassination #touch starved #emotional whump #my writing #my writing: whumptober 2023 #my writing: Mind Games

[yet-another-heathen]

4. Is there a kind of whump you wish you could write better?

12. What is one of the strangest things you have had to research for your whumpy writing?

25. What advice or wisdom would you like to share with other whump writers?

4. Is there a kind of whump you wish you could write better?

As I recently discovered with @redwingedwhump, the hardest thing for me to write is actually recovery arcs. Stories that have slow, emotional pacing and tend to be more driven by internal conflict than by external forces. I'm thinking specifically recoveries where the character(s) are already somewhere stable and safe, and are having to come to terms with things that already happened to them (instead of facing ongoing re-traumatization at the hands of the Plot).

And don't get me wrong, I still do enjoy writing slow, heavy scenes where not much physically happens! They're just as important to the story as a whole, and they can be a LOT of fun to read. But I can only write them in the context of shorter scenes within a larger story, where the emotions serve as a pause from the forward momentum of the plot. When those emotions are meant to provide the momentum on their own...that's when my skill set tends to feel stretched. (For the time being!)

12. What is one of the strangest things you have had to research for your whumpy writing?

Oh man... that's a hard one, because I don't really consider any of it strange. Niche, yes. Unusual, perhaps. But my deepest research dives have been into what it's like to live as an upper-limb amputee. Or into what medications are most useful for treating Long QT Syndrome, or what having an ICD go off feels like. Or alternatively, about foods and wildlife found in and around the ancient Syrian desert. Or about laqabs (that one was fun). None of it is actually strange, it's just about understanding the experiences of people whose stories we don't get to find unless we go digging.

25. What advice or wisdom would you like to share with other whump writers?

Take advantage of occasional unsanitary descriptions! Don't be afraid to make the things that happen to your characters be embarrassing and gross! I know we all love the pretty kinds of pain, but I feel like we shoot ourselves in the foot by leaving out the stuff that's gross or humiliating. If your whumpee is crying themselves sick, let them get snot on their face! If they just had a near-death experience, let them realize that they lost control of their bladder! If they're being kept like an animal in a cage, let them face ALL the consequences of ending up without a bathroom!

Those descriptions can each be incredibly brief, but just acknowledging that they're happening at all brings the whole story back to reality. If you go too long without them, your suspension of disbelief starts working against you. The whump your character is going through starts to seem oddly natural. Until suddenly there's something there that gives you just that tiiiiny jolt of "....oh. Oh god. It really is that bad, isn't it?" that truly renews the horror of what you're reading. There aren't many things that can have such a big impact on the overall reading experience of your story in so few words.

And besides, when you find various ways to take away the dignity of your characters (and I mean ALL of your characters, not just your whumpees), it's SO FREEING. You learn that you don't need your Aloof Dignified character to be aloof and dignified 100% of the time. And that in fact, when you find ways to take that defining trait away from them and they still come back to it after, that makes the character trait ten times stronger than it was before. Perfection kills personality. Humiliate everybody, and you'll see what they're actually made of.

#a pleasure as always Nemi #thank you <33 #ask Wick

[letstalkwhump]

Let's Talk Whump

Welcome to Let’s Talk Whump, a series of interviews that spotlight the amazing people in our whump community! I’m Malice and I’ll be your host today. 

Here today to talk all things whumpy is the brilliant @another-whump-sideblog!

We’re thrilled to have you here! Do you mind starting us off with an introduction?

You can call me Cam, my favorite color is green and I have a snowglobe collection!

Let’s get straight to the point! What does whump mean to you? 

To me, whump is any media that focuses on pain (of any kind) and how the characters cope (or don’t cope) with it.

And how did you find the whump community? What made you want to join? 

I first got super into whump during a depressive episode. I’m not sure exactly why, but it was comforting. I read pretty much all I could find in the fandoms I was in, and then I just started searching whump in general! I actually don’t remember the first whump fic I read, fanfic or OC, or else I’d shout it out. For quite a while I was reading a lot of whump without interacting at all, out of fear of people realising I was into whump, but eventually I got over that and even started sharing some of my own whump writing!

Do you think your view on whump has changed since you joined? 

I’ve gotten a lot more into OC whump and less into fandom whump as time goes on. I’ve also gotten less afraid of publically liking whump.

Everyone’s favourite question: Favourite whump tropes!

I like pet whump and torture whump a lot. I also like long recovery arcs with imperfect caretakers. And I’m always a big fan of unreliable narrators.

Do you have a favourite piece you've written?

I really like the first chapter of Jane’s Pets. The style is pretty fun and I think it’s a good introduction to the series.

I love the format and second person pov! It’s a really intriguing idea! What does your writing routine usually look like?

I tend to write at complete random, whenever I’ve got a free moment. I write in my phone’s notes app, which is a bad choice but it would take too much work to switch over to something else at this point.

Do you find that some things are easy for you to write? Is there something you struggle with writing? 

I’d like to think I’m pretty good at describing characters’ inner feelings, and I know I’m not great at setting a scene or describing how things look or feel or things like that. I love writing dream sequences because then things can not make sense physically and I can purely focus on the emotion. I also struggle with editing. I tend to edit only very rarely, and usually only after I’ve already posted something. I just known that if I say ‘I can’t post this until I’ve edited it’ I would post things very very rarely lol.

And is there anything you're working on at the moment? 

I’m working on the season finale of season two of Jane’s Pets right now! I’ve also been trying to work on describing the world outside of my characters’ heads and not starting every single scene in medias res.

Do you have a joke or pun you would like to share to spread some smiles today?

Did you hear about the performer who fell through the floor?

It was just a stage they were going through!

I haven’t heard that one before, it’s good! Is there any writing advice you’d like to share?

Just have fun! I guess I don’t really have advice for professional writers, but for those of us here just writing stuff and putting it on the internet for free, there’s no need to get bogged down in what you ‘should’ be doing in your writing. Just do what makes you happy! 

Shout out to your favourite writing/whump blogs, bffs or people who've inspired you.

The first friends I made in the whump community were @whumpyourdamnpears and @whump-in-the-closet! Both are great people who I’m glad I’ve gotten to know!

Finally, is there anything you'd like to add?

Thanks for interviewing me, this was fun!

Thank you so much for joining us , @another-whump-sideblog ! 

And to all you swell folks at home, have a whump-derful day!

[kcrabb88]

For the ask game: 2 and 28!

2. Anything that you’d like to write but feel like you’re unable to?

Funny and very relevant question, because I like, never write modern AUs in any fandom I'm in, either because I didn't feel compelled or because I didn't think I could, but that is about to change! Because! I am going to write a QuinObi (and Anakin and Padme and Qui-Gon and lots of the cast) 80s/90s AIDS Crisis AU. Not, you know, current modern day, but still qualifies. I'm actually really hype about it, so we'll see how I do.

Also kind of related, but I used to have quite a bit of trouble not pulling my punches when writing my more intense scenes (violence, sexual assault, torture, anything like that) which is funny for a person who writes a lot of whump, but I've worked really hard over the past few years to just GO for it, and I'm really proud of that!

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

My most boring but tried-and-true advice is that it's MUCH easier to fix a thing that exists than to stare at a blank page. You can edit as you go along, like that's no problem, but trying to make everything PERFECT as you go along will probably make writing a lot more painful. Writing is supposed to be fun! Another thing I do that goes along with this, is that I often will read over things I've written the night before the next day like over lunch or on the train or what not, like in a place where I can't edit it (such as on my phone on Dropbox) and it kind of gets my brain spinning for what I might do later. It's a neat little trick!

Also, if you're stuck, read aloud to yourself or even to someone else (or via a voice memo to someone far away). That has helped me a ton!

#Thank you for the ask! #These are fun questions #KCrabb does memes #Fic things

[alatariel-galadriel]

For the writing ask! :D

10, 17, 28, 36

10. Top three favourite fic tropes.

-whump. I’m tying hurt/comfort into this as well, because they tend to be tied pretty intrinsically. It’s my bread and butter—I want that character put through the WRINGER!! Jokes aside, I really love the character exploration it instigates. It’s great, 11/10, no notes.

- AUs. I’m real picky about them, but man, I’m a sucker for a well-done AU. I love exploring the ripple effect AU changes can have, and they can lead to so much fun world building and some really clever ideas.

-okay this isn't actually a trope, but I adore fics that take small world-building details and run with them. It’s about the IMPLICATIONS!!!

17. Past or present tense? Why?

I honestly don’t notice it very much when I’m reading. When I’m writing? Present tense, 1000%. I have no idea why I feel so strongly about it, but I really dislike writing in past tense.  

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

I read my stuff out loud when I’m stuck! I already gave that as an answer, though, so-- if a section's feeling mechanically monotonous or bland, I typically find it's rooted in a lack of sentence length variation. This is ~extra~ and also completely unnecessary, but I wrote some code into my bootlegged Word to make a feature that highlights sentences different colors based on length. I mostly wrote it for fun, but I'll turn it on so I can check that sort of thing at-a-glance.

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

Oh god, titles are my nemesis. I either know them straight off the bat, or I end up staring blankly at my screen for 12-18 hours throwing my hands up in frustration and slapping some words together. My favorite one, though, is “Of Sense and Sensibility”—the only reason I chose it was to make a joke about Tim having neither of those things, and I stand by that decision.

Thanks for the ask!! <3

#whispers from the ally #ask game

[the-bloody-sadist]

Hello, I hope you are well on this hellish afternoon! If I may ask a weirdly specific question, in your opinion, what do you think is an appropriate amount of time for a character to be locked in a torture lab in a novel (story length wise?) Because it's plot relevant and plot stuff happens, but also I don't want it to be too much? 🐳

Hi Lil Whale! I WAS WELL UNTIL YOU REMINDED ME IT WAS A HELLISH AFTERNOON 🤨. Lol JK I love the question, and there's a lot of factors that would contribute to the right choice for your story. First of all, it depends on where in the plot this event takes place. Is it a midpoint, where everything changes in the middle of the story? Or is it the Dark Moment area, where this is going to bring your character to their lowest (if it's the MC) so that they can either turn evil/give up if it's a tragedy or rise to triumph if it's a hero's journey type? The length depends mostly on the pacing of the story as a whole, as well.

If this is a midpoint occurrence, I'd say you can have them in there for quite a while, as long as you keep an undercurrent of conflict and scenes that always end with a change--or contribute to the build-up. This can be as minor as whoever is torturing them trying to get one answer out of them or trying to break them down one inch in one area, and that either succeeding or failing, etc. with the methods always ramping up somehow in the next scene to help the reader stay involved. If you're not constantly building up to something, that's when it can feel too long or too slow, especially when it comes to capture and torture. Don't fall into the belief that just because your audience might be into whump/torture that you don't have to do any work aside from showing the pain. That's not what makes these scenes in movies so good, and without movies giving you the extra goods like sound and visuals, your version is just writing, which forces you to make SURE you have the best version of pain you can offer, which means connecting the arc of change, the buildup, the emotional impact, and the struggle through conflict to reach a decision.

If this is a Dark Moment occurrence, I would advise it be shorter but stronger. You want to bring them to their absolute lowest emotionally and physically, but the dark moment is a bridge to the end, and readers will feel slogged if you drag that out too much. So hit hard and fast, basically, hit those plot points, and then either drag the character out or drive them to madness.

If it's not either of these, I think I would suggest a sort of midline between both. The Midpoint is where you could have the most fun (if you like the torture portions), and anywhere else in the story should be both short enough to act as a minor arc and long enough to fulfill that minor arc.

I REALLY HOPE THAT HELPS BUT FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANYTHING MORE IF YOU HAVE REMAINING QUESTIONS OR NEW ONES!! A lot about the story itself and what you plan to do with it has to be known before I could say anything more concrete. So feel free to give me that (or not) if this advice doesn't work for you!

I learned the most about how to write prolonged torture when I wrote Sinner, because almost the entire novel is spent in that sort of situation, and I was worried at first about it getting repetitive or boring. But there's a certain rhythm to it that makes it probably more fun and simple than anything else I've ever written, and I wish I could do a hundred just like it.

#sadist’s answered asks #Lil Whale Anon 🐳

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

the character everyone gets wrong

that one thing you see in fics all the time

there should be more of this type of fic/art

Thank you for the ask! From this ask game.

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Cedric, obviously. He is not nice. He does absolutely not care. He's unfriendly. He kills people, for fucks sake. Why the fuck is everyone swooning over him.

(If he knew, he'd be so confused, and possibly unsettled. That would be so fun.)

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

Not necessarily "fics", as I don't really start many stories where I suspect that's gonna be the case, but i see it in prompts all the time. There seems to be this unspoken agreement that "whump" defaults to evil and often intimate whumper kidnaps and keeps poor whumpee, in long term slavery/torture, wanting to break and/or train them.

It gets no tags, and even if it had one, blocking it would be pointless, because everyone and their cat uses them (just like I have to wade through ridiculous amounts of content tagged as "carewhumper" or "pet whump" that have nothing to do with it).

So I see a post that starts out fairly agreeable, "whumpee deserves a little break." Not too far off from writing advice: If there's always tension, that's bad pacing. So what is it? False hope? Changing circumstances? Someone new arriving?

Only to have a "so whumper invites whumpee to cuddle on the sofa and watch tv 🥰🥰🥰" slammed into my face next paragraph. It's tagged #comfort, nothing else.

Fuck my life.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

Everything straight from my list of favs, obviously /s

But also not /s, because this is kinda part of 25 which I shall complain about in another answer. Yes, I totally wish there were more stories that cater to my very specific, niche inside a niche, taste.

I have a few things I like most - as I can see when I look at my favs and my own writing - but just because a story contains one (or more) of those tropes/things, does not mean I will like it.

I like dungeon/prison setting, but not modern or military. I like fantasy and magic, but I do not overly enjoy some common things like vampires/demons. I do enjoy a good bit of gore, but I want happy ends and no MCD. I like ace characters, but I've grown tired of m/m pairings since before I joined here.

In the end, no single trope will be more important than my need to have a good story I enjoy.

#salad-ask #starlit-hopes-and-dreams #this ask is not oc related #The first one doesn't really feel fitting in original fiction #So have a silly