#superseded

This is a great question, and you (and everybody else, of course) can absolutely always ask me whatever you want to, because I love answering unique and interesting questions like this one!

There’s something we whumpers feel when we watch whump that we call “whumperflies”. It’s similar to when you feel butterflies in your stomach, but also a bit like when you’re on a rollercoaster and it dips down and you feel that ZING deep in your stomach. I find this absolutely fascinating about the whump experience, because it is a literal physical sensation that the majority of whumpers report feeling when the whump is just right.

But emotionally… it’s really a maelstrom of two conflicting emotions.

There is, for me, a sadistic sort of glee in it, and I think this is because of my sexual interest in whump. It’s basically the same sort of giddy “hubba hubba hubba” you feel whenever you see something that’s particularly sexy to you. Because seeing men in vulnerable positions IS sexy to me.

However, there’s also IMMENSE sympathy for the whumpee. There’s a reason why I have (and often find myself using) tags like “my poor pirate baby” and “this hurts me”, because along with the sexual zing of the moment, there’s this absolutely crushing need to save the poor bastard, to hold him to my bosom, take all of his pain away, keep him safe and destroy whoever broke him. And this is basically the epitome of something that “hurts so good” because HOT DAMN does it hurt, but in the best possible way.

That second part, the overwhelming sympathy, is also why the “comfort” of the hurt/comfort trope is so important to whumpers in general. When we get to see a character within the whumpee’s fictional world actually save them and ease their pain, giving them that comfort we feel driven to provide, ourselves… it’s like this giant RELEASE, like when you scratch a mosquito bite, like “Awww, yeah. AWWWW FUCKING YEAH.” And when shows/stories leave that part out, the build-up is still good and all, we still enjoy it… but it basically feels like foreplay without the main event.

The whump community likes to laugh about the fact that, for a bunch of people who love watching fictional characters get tortured, we’re also some of the kindest and gentlest folks IRL you could ever meet. And it’s true. I often wonder if it’s not that we feel sympathy and empathy more intensely than other people do - so intensely that it gives us the same sort of emotional “high” that thrill-seekers get when they chase down ever more dangerous risks.

That part and the part where he is talking about her leaving, where he says he is strong enough to protect her from them now. That’s the part that broke me. Just completely destroyed me. I can watch gore, I’ve watched people die, I’ve seen someone burn to death, and I can handle situations that make most people queasy. That statement of protection and the acting with it is so telling of abuse, just took me right back to my own personal hell. Well done, but so painful.

Yes. That scene was excellently acted, and the way he says “but I’m stronger now!” is so fucking heart-wrenching. And it just says so much about why he was the way he was and why he did the things he did - especially in regards to Anna. He simply doesn’t know any other way to BE, and I think he might even think that’s how sex is DONE, because that’s how it’s always been done to HIM since he was young, and... it just kills me. My poor precious psycho son T_T

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Sometimes I see a post… like the one I just...

“Today’s a tag and release folks! You know the drill. Lure them in under this intricately designed Mouse Trap with some specifically designed posts!” “Oh no…Killian-Whump is on to us!” “Oh shi–ABORT ABORT ABORT!”