Assume queued until proven reblogged

amazed at leon kennedy’s ability to look like the brother of every white girl he stands next to

i love the idea of there being a running joke in the dso that leon is the brother of every blonde girl he meets. but in another universe he would’ve been a great brother🥹 too bad his entire family died when he was a kid lol

Yeah yeah "graphic design is my passion 🐸" I was trying to make a tool to explain how I have problem deciding where a fic should fall on this arbitrary "sense of danger scale" and I think I accidentally defined some words in a way that will be useful for me in the future.

So I think that a whumpy fic can be defined by its ratio of hurt to comfort, but that doesn't mean that a whump fic contains 0 comfort. If someone has been disemboweled in the mountains with no communication and no medical supplies, their friend can be rocking them and singing to them and wiping their damp forehead, but the ratio of hurt to comfort is still going to be greatly skewed because that's a mortal or near-mortal wound.

Likewise, a fic where a character gets a papercut can still enter into "whumpy/whump-lite territory" if it's really bothering them and no one cares, because the comfort level of 0 skews the ratio.

There's also a matter of delving. A high-ratio (which is to say, fluffy) fic can still be a satisfying sickfic if the author delves into the symptoms (which imho is usually what differentiates a satisfying vanilla fic from a disappointing one)

ANYWAY

What if we plot along two axes?

We can assign each scenario a “hurt” value and a “comfort” value on a scale of 1-5, plot it on the graph, and then categorize it into one of four quadrants:

Low Hurt/Low Comfort

Low Hurt/High Comfort

High Hurt/High Comfort

High Hurt/Low Comfort

This solves the ratio-skewing issue.

Example plots:

How does emotional vs. physical hurt and comfort factor into this? This chart's descriptions almost purely focus on the physical aspect of the whump, but there is also the emotional distress aspect and the emotional as well as the physical aspect of the caretaking.

I don't really consider pure emotional hurt to be "whump," but the emotional aspect of whump is such a huge part of it for me: how upset the character is by their injury, how much is the pain affecting them, if they are distressed by the caretaking/treatment, if they are scared, if they feel like they can show pain/fear or they have to hide it...yummy.

A scene where a character gets a relatively minor injury and has to have it patched up could be "high hurt" IMO if the character is extremely distressed by being touched and the caretaking is triggering to them.

You could have a fic that is almost ALL physical caretaking with minimal presence of the hurt, and have it still feel REALLY whumpy because of the absence of the emotional element: the caretaker is just coldly dealing with Character's physical injuries and not considering their feelings at all. The caretaker could even be dealing out emotional hurt: making fun of Character for showing pain, treating them like they're "making a big deal" out of such a minor injury, etc.

This could be independent of the comfort aspect: you could have a fic where the caretaking is extremely distressing and painful but the character is still comforted, so it could be high on all three. This assumes that the fic contains care, though; you could just leave this axis off for fics without caretaking, either by others or by Character themselves.

Cause for me personally, I write a lot of stuff where the caretaking part is where the Horrors really kick in.

I have travelled across time and space to bring you TOYS

All four stone in my Forest Floor series are done. Just thinking about mossy stones, dappled light on the forest floor, lichen, bark, leaves.

I had fun dressing up stones again.

THE CAGE, WITH HUMAN SOUL AND PARTS

THE GIRL, WITH HOPE CROSSED ON HER HEART