comfort my beloved

Until finally they return to the group and say, wearily, “I…don’t feel well.” Most of the group is like, “Yeah, we know” in a casual, lightly teasing way.

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:

- obsessively making their bed over and over

- getting up at the same time of day even though they don't know what time it is, because their body does somehow

- similarly, obsessing over the time and date

- attempting to keep with the same routine they had when free, even if doing most of it is impossible (they might just pretend to in order to make themselves feel better)

- memorizing guard/captor routines, faces, names, schedules, building layouts in order to have a chance of getting revenge once out

- eating the food they’re given in a specific order, in a specific way

- collecting and hiding random objects (nails, paperclips, pebbles, sticks, etc) “just in case”

- if they’re let outside, doing the same “circuit” around the area every time, like they’re doing a patrol

- getting distressed when things were promised but don’t happen when/how they were supposed to (meals, lights turning off/on, scheduled interviews interrogations, shower, etc)

- going over training exercises and routines to keep themselves occupied, even if only in their head so as not to waste strength

- obsessing over everything that led up to their capture, imagining all the ways they could (or couldn’t) have prevented it

The caretaker finding the whumpee asleep in an odd place (hunched over a table next to their food, or perched on a stool leaning against a wall etc).

Bonus points if that's just a front. It's not that they don't care about their team. Hell, their team is the closest thing to family they have. It's just that panicking or breaking down isn't going to save the life of the person who's bleeding out in front of them. Especially if they're the only one with the knowledge to do so.

Bonus bonus points if the team knows this. Maybe once they are off duty they turn into a completely different person than when they are in the field. The team doesn't mind that they act that way. After all, that cold indifference is what has saved their lives countless times.