Through the Wringer

Staring at the ceiling, unable to move, unable to think, unable to do anything.

Crying and screaming, not being able to deal with it anymore, but also not being able to get away from it.

Breathing through it and feeling some relief. Okay. I can do this. I'm still in control. I can still handle this. Just breathe. Just focus on your breathing.

Breathing through it and feeling no relief at all. Slowly losing your grip on your coping mechanisms. Decending into panic and desperation. Hyperventilating.

Doing okay with the pain until one small extra thing suddenly completely sends you over the edge.

Rocking back and forth. Trying to sooth yourself and distract yourself. Fidgeting. Biting your lip. Bitting your nails.

Pulling on your hair to create new pain to distract you from the existing one.

Getting dizzy and nauseous just from the pain.

Drifting in and out of consciousness. Welcoming the softening edges of the pain as you're slowly drifting off.

Constant chronic pain that might not be that severe but becomes completely overwhelming to your mind simply because its always there.

Sharp unexpected blunt pain that suprises you and makes you yell out, all of your brain consumed by the sudden wave of agony as adrenaline rushes through your system and you're awareness completely shrinks to the sensation or the injury.

I myself have a fear of needles & such, and carry around the constant anxiety of being hospitalized. Surprisingly reading hospital themed whump isn't a squick for me. Opposite almost.

Instead that adrenaline feuled fear only kicks in after me, the doctor, and the IV enter the same space. Stupid brain.

Here's other ways your hospital phobic Whumpee may react when trapped in the situation, that I don't see pointed out too much.

Remaining calm until the equipment or big doctor arrive

Thrashing, screaming, and refusing to listen

Having to be strapped to a table (lemme tell ya, it's a crazy experience)

Several doctors (& caretaker) having to hold whumpee down just to continue the process or apply the straps. Some against their arms, some against their legs.

Whumpee blacking out, unable to recall what happened

Ripping the IV our of their arm upon waking

Sobbing hysterically when they realize where they are

Pleading and protesting every tube, needle, or medication

The escape artist (it's all apart of fight or flight)

Complicating or botching their own procedure, furthering their panic and now the panic of those around them

The betrayed cries as sedatives kick in

But also, yes! I love that prompt.

With the monster being actually awful. Hunter knows that their failure will result in many more deaths, the monster now angry and will go for revenge.

Hunter also knows exactly what Monster will do. They studied them, they've seen their victims. This knowledge would help in defeating them, but non of that matters anymore. This is going to be awful, and there is nothing they can do about it.

When the Monster has powers that will control Hunter. Sending them back to take out their own Team.

If it's a monster that kills slowly.

Monster leaving Hunter's body out as bait, marking of territory, or a warning. Team finding it.

Monster who is smart, and leaves Hunter as bait, still alive. The Team comes to recue them, of course. It's a trap.

With the Monster not being awful.

Trying to reason with Hunter who is just terrified or angry. No matter how much Monster tries to show they're not evil, Hunter keeps trying to kill them.

Monster who isn't evil generally, but now that Hunter is here, will do exactly what Hunter planned to do to them. After all, they were fine with it being done to Monster, right?

Monster actually being scared to death because they know more will come now.

Monster was also injured and now needs to find a way to patch themselves up.

Hunter getting sympathy for Monster?

But Team comes in a kills Monster anyway?

Two weeks ago I fell off a horse (or rather, fot thrown off with force) and slammed into the arena wall with my back and right shoulder. What looked very dramatic at first and had me struggling to breathe for a hot minute including a ride in the ambulance to the ER ended up "only" being bad bruising. No broken bones, no internal bleeding. Just a bruised shoulder, ribs, and back.

I was released home the same day after my x-rays came back clear with pain meds.

And let me tell you, I was almost incapacitated by "just" bruises. I barely managed to get around by myself at home. Could barely stand for more than a few minutes bc my back hurt so much. Had to force myself to breathe properly. Had shit lying around on the ground for days bc I couldn't bend down to pick it up.

Getting out of bed in the morning still hurts. Imagine sitting on the toilet and thinking "fuck how am I gonna clean myself up".

It's been two weeks and I'm now finally starting to feel somewhat normal again. I expect to feel some pain for at least two more weeks.

So, uh, if your character gets knocked down good, like, in a fight, they can be totally helpless even without any serious injuries.

Shutting the door behind them and letting out the world’s most exhausted, shakiest breath. Sliding down the wall because they don’t think they can stand for a second longer.

Sprinting to an isolated bathroom to be sick in the second they duck out of sight. Sitting there on the floor heaving alone, unsure if they even have the strength to stand back up afterwards to just get themself water.

Be careful of a new scam going around on ao3!

Bloody teeth.

Yes, give them a rough punch to the face, watch their bottom lip split open, wait a few seconds for them to spit a bit of blood onto the floor, then wait for them to raise their head and smile at you.

Look at their teeth, stained with blood!

I love that in particular.

That is a very good question! I'm not sure, but for me personally, I've seen myself be the caretaker, but sometimes I can be the whumpee!

I'll gauge this with the whump community actually!

(in my experience, bc this was the first thing i wrote after waking up from surgery a couple hours ago)

since you can’t eat beforehand, I went in pretty grumpy-hungry but believe me, nervousness takes care of that QUICK and i completely forgot

if you have good staff, they notice when you‘re nervous & chat calmly without overwhelming you

anesthesiologists and other staff members repeatedly ask what surgery you are getting done to make sure you were properly informed and to avoid mixups; made me nervous (bc why did no one know what surgery they were doing with me??) until my anesthesiologist explained that they just have to hear me say the words

during prep, different people will be doing different things and giving instructions on what to do (make a fist, put your arm there, etc.), sometimes overlapping (adhd hell)

the face mask was placed over my mouth and nose with just normal breathing air for like 3 minutes while they were still prepping (i assume to get me used to the sensation?)

once the drugs started coming, my very very first instinct was „oh, i‘m gonna throw up“

i didn‘t throw up but then everything went hazy and blurred, kinda like being REALLY tired-drunk

one of the anesthesiologists was standing behind me and caressing my face while talking to me and promising to take care of me when she noticed i was getting freaked out; the other one was administering the drugs

being wheeled around in the bed is kinda surreal because you only see the ceiling (blurry too in my case since i wasn’t wearing my glasses) and hear everything around you. it is strangely protected but also vulnerable since in that moment you have no ability to decide what happens

before you go into the operating room you are first wheeled into a room where you transfer from bed to operating table, but the room is super creepy and looks straight out of a medical horror game, with the sterile cold metal table in the middle and all

when you are wheeled into the operating room it is super cold but they put a warm, fluffy blanket fresh out of a towel warmer or something all around you and it is heavenly warm

my surgeon came in and i didnt recognize him masked up and without my glasses, and he made a joke about how i might not recognize him after either (there was risk of blinding me, diabolical joke to make) so the anesthesiologists banished him from the room

the anesthesiologists will try to find a topic to chat to you about as a distraction while strapping you in and as someone who is socially awkward, it is much more stressful than the thought of surgery itself

I was trying to figure out if anyone’s studied why people like angsty stories and hurt/comfort type of fiction so much (it’s me, I’m people).

It seems to come down to

We feel the same intensity of sadness when talking about a tragic story from our own life as when watching a tragic piece of media, but we feel way more anxiety along with it when relating our own story. So it’s a way to feel sadness without as much anxiety. https://www.verywellmind.com/why-do-we-like-sad-stories-5224078

Catharsis (access, release, and process feelings with less personal risk/stress)

Endorphin release (pretty big endorphin release with sad/tragic media! Even increases pain tolerance afterwards. Maybe I am just self medicating my chronic pain) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/21/watching-a-sad-films-boosts-endorphin-levels-in-your-brain-psychologists-say

Identification with characters for identity exploration and building resilience (didnt quite say resilience but i think that’s what the trait identification study’s extrapolation comes down to as well) https://www.verywellmind.com/the-effect-of-stories-on-your-brain-5118221

Increased appreciation for one’s own life/relationships (less common)

And also, fandom is therapeutic and relational: https://www.vox.com/22297792/fandom-escape-grief-psychology-complicated-lynn-zubernis-interview

It also occurred to me that this hits a lot of Judith Herman’s stages in her trauma recovery model!

1a. Healing relationship: Visceral identification leads to a sense of relationship with characters and vicarious experience of their relationships.

1b. Safety and stabilization: The alibi of fiction creates some safety, as does a more controlled environment in which to expose yourself to the contents of fiction (content warnings and expectation management of tags etc helps with this too).

2. Remembrance and mourning: Stories with trauma/angst exploration, whether or not there’s comfort/recovery involved, can be an aspect of rememberance and mourning especially if they resonate / reflect one’s own traumas (which are often relational), allowing mourning-by-proxy which again creates some safe distance to make it more bearable/less intense, especially since it doesnt have the anxiety level of engaging directly with your own trauma story so it’s less likely to lead to dissociation (impossible to process while dissociated).

3a. Reconnection with community: Maybe the least applicable, though I’d argue that fandom holds some of this.

Malnutrition/starvation has a bunch of really fucky effects, and I see whump people use malnutrition/starvation from time to time, (i am utilizing it now, hence the post) but rarely do they depict the horrific suffering. I have actually starved before, so here's my medically accurate advice on what that looks like:

Among the most prominent of effects of lack of food/lack of nutritious food ironically not depicted, for it is the most common nutritional deficit on earth, is anemia - lack of iron means your body doesnt produce blood like it used to, which at a point makes you cold all the time! It also messes with your bodily sense of blood pressure, making you more likely to notice tiny changes, which in turn can trigger dizziness, severe anxiety, heart palpitations, fainting, and vascillations between cognitive clarity and a foggy feeling. Lack of iron causes lack of red blood cells, which means you can't distribute oxygen as efficiently. This causes fatigue, a general sense of unwellness, called "malaise", and causes you to breathe and your heart to beat faster than they normally should. This, in turn, can trigger more anxiety! Anemia is a very anxiety inducing deficiency on its own because your body knows it's in trouble and it definitely wants to tell you about it!

It only takes about 3-4 days without food to develop anemia to this degree, though it can take as little as 2 if you already have deficits. If you are eating food but it's lacking in iron this transition can take 2-3 weeks, as your body uses up its iron reserves located in your liver, spleen and bone marrow (where red blood cells are produced).

Malnutrition and especially starvation also screws with your electrolytes, making you prone to dizzy spells and vertigo, and can seriously affect the myelin sheathes around your nerves and the delicate proteins in your brain, which combined with electrolyte imbalance and probable anemia can cause anything from blurred vision, headaches, fatigue and cognitive impairment (pervasive brain fog), at best, all the way up to the moderate landing of muscle spasms and ataxia (loss of coordination) and functional loss of senses like sight and hearing, to the severe landing of seizures and total organ failure. Also, malnourished muscles hurt!!! They hurt to touch, they hurt to move, it hurts to exist!

I once went 8 full days with little to no food, so I know this stuff from experience. Let me tell you, hunger pains are God fucking awful and paradoxically make you feel very nauseous and can cause vomiting, (your body wants to get rid of the concentrated stomach acid) and are truly indescribable in their instinctual ability to instill desperation, depression and terror. You would eat a lot of things you never thought you would after just three days without food. At 8, I was very strongly considering eating my pet birds. I had already begun eating their seeds. The only thing that saved them was one measly bag of potato chips, the very last thing resembling human food in the pantry (the vending machine size chips) on day 6, which gave me just enough salt and fat to rethink that idea.

Anyway, muscles! Hurt!!! Especially if you don't eat a lot of protein to start out. Muscular degeneration or "digestion" (ketosis) can happen surprisingly fast if you arent eating anything at all. 5-7 days usually if you are healthy, though 3 is not unheard of, especially if you are expending a lot of calories and have very little fat. It's quirky hallmark? A strangely sweet and metallic taste in your mouth. Like a penny coated in sugar water. The ache is hard to describe, but it is constantly there, and honestly wore me down psychologically more than the hunger pains, which curiously went away after day 4, only coming back with a vengeance when I tried to eat anything. It hurt to move, it hurt to think about moving, and the constant low level pain was absolute torture. The fatigue didn't help. I normally slept about 6-9 hours. During that time after day 3 or so, I started sleeping 15 or more, in bursts, and had very little energy to do anything but rest. Every now and then I'd get a burst of restlessness, my body pushing me to find food or drink water. It was unpleasant. The headaches were pretty bad too, at first.

Malnutrition, and specifically a lack of protein, also causes pervasive muscle aches and all the neurologic issues mentioned above.

My experience led me to the development of ataxia that has never completely gone away. I remember the panic of nearly blacking out while trying to stand too, and not being able to cognitively focus on anything, much less visually focus. (Started about day 5). Mind you, I was 15 years old and weighed only 89 lbs prior to this period, with a fast metabolism and very little fat. After it I weighed 81 lbs. 8lbs in 8 days is a lot of weight to lose, and boy did my body hate me for some time after that. But my insomnia was cured for a while!

Anyway, i hope this proves insightful for all your whumping and torturous needs. I didn't plan on making it so personal, but hey, I've lived through that, so it seemed relevant to add that here.

I recovered my mental faculties first. As soon as I had carbs in me I immediately felt better, and all I wanted to do was eat and eat and eat. I wasn't even "hungry" exactly, there was just this overwhelming urge to stuff my face.

But I knew that was a bad idea.

When you don't eat for a while, your digestion goes out of whack. You can't process food the same way, cause you've starved the bacteria that digests your food for you in your gut and stomach. Plus your stomach acid isn't being produced as much, and the smooth muscle loses its flexibility somewhat and "shrinks" (contracts). It means you feel full quickly, but are not satisfied at all by it. You just want to keep eating, and a kind of war begins between the impulse to keep eating and the feeling of a full belly. Many people vomit because they lose out to the impulse and their stomach, not having the enzymes or acid to digest much, and being cramped up so it can't move things, can't take it. That's why you start with starches. Carbs. They digest easiest, and restore your electrolyte imbalance.

After eating enough bread to just fill me up, I noticed almost immediately that I felt more alert and springy. But I still ached terribly. In fact it felt worse as the sugars entered my system 20 minutes later and my body shifted out of crisis conservation mode and into damage control mode, sending help to damaged muscles and nerves. Healing those creates inflammation, which increases the pain.

I kept on a diet of pretty much nothing but simple carbs like bread and potatoes, for three days, spending most the time sleeping off the fever that sprung from the inflammation. (101F). I then ate some turkey the landlord had brought us (more on that below the cut) in small bits. I was surprised to find it tasted disgusting, since I normally like turkey, and took that as a sign my body wasn't ready for that yet. It was probably a wise choice. I craved fat, and salt, so ate mashed potatoes like they were going out of style. My body sang and I felt so elated at even the smell of them that I literally ate nothing but that for another three days. I had more energy and the fever was receding, though I had headaches daily and BOY was my gut unhappy, but luckily I only had diarrhea. Long enough, (2 weeks or so) and you lose the ability to digest much at all, leaving you with a gut paralyzed by gas.

So I ate mashed potato until the turkey caught my nose. It smelled good, so taking my bodily cues, I ate some. Slowly. My headache almost immediately lessened, and i got a jolt of feel-good all over me, so I stated mixing it into the potatoes and transitioning slowly over 4 days onto eating the turkey on its own. I didn't want to shock my system in its fragile state, since there was no way to a hospital except by medi-evac by helicopter. (More context below the cut), assuming the weather allowed. If something went wrong I had no real help. People often died in this town due to medical emergencies.

And so it went with everything. I focused on carbs and protein, since that's what I craved, and just took it as slow as I could. It took a week of damn near eating half a turkey before my muscles improved, and the headaches went away entirely. Then we had beef in the form of hamburger, which I HATE, but never in my life had I loved it more. It was iron, fat, protein and salt. Combined with fried potatoes I was in bliss, and began to recover much more quickly. I was still weak and fatigued for another week or so, and still had bad dizzy spells, but those improved by weeks end.

All in all it took about a month to recover to where I had been before, body and mind, though I was functional after 2 weeks.

Context below the cut, for the curious: