The Whumpening

It's July! That means this years trope vote is now open for everyone to vote on their favourite tropes - including additions from your 2024 honourable mentions!

For the 2025 playlist, we are open to suggestions! So if you have a favourite whumpy song, feel free to let us know via the form.

The vote will be open until the 28th of July.

We aim to have the prompts list ready for the end of August.

If you want to chat about your favourite tropes, the [DISCORD SERVER] is always active for our wonderful community of whumpers.

Similarly, if you're looking for a comprehensive list of the tropes, then under the cut are links to the A-Z lists that Surro put together some time ago. We can't wait to get the WT ball rolling this year! -Mods Surro, Yenn, Vanne and Kitty <3

[Question Summary + Trope List Links under the cut]

there’s someone in the whump community who’s recently been gaining some traction. their posts haven’t really gotten super popular but they have circulated a bit and keep popping up on my page. youve probably seen them yourself if you’re a member of this community.

I never really interacted with their content just because realism in whump art isn’t my personal cup of tea (obviously if it’s yours, that’s fine and keep doing your thing, that’s not what this post is about), but a friend of mine decided to look a little bit further into things. it turns out this user has a history of using ai for writing, and seems to have a pro-generative ai stance.

they also use ai for all of their “art” (screenshots from a friend). even after being made aware of the harm that ai does, they have said that they will continue to use it.

this has been pointed out before by a few other people in the community, but I wanted to make a post for more reach since a lot of bigger names in the community who have denounced ai have been spreading around this content without knowing.

i know i’m kind of preaching to the choir but generative ai should not be tolerated in a space like this. the whump community was founded by fanfiction writers— the same fanfiction writers who are having their work scraped for generative ai without their permission or knowledge. generative ai has done so much harm to fandom spaces this year alone, and with the recent scrape of ao3, we should be fighting harder against it. allowing this to remain unchecked in this community is dangerous.

that, combined with the real harm generative ai does, makes this very kind of content go against the fundamental beliefs and morals of the whump community. i know i can’t speak for the community as a whole, but i have not found a single member here who would knowingly endorse generative ai. it just feels incredibly shitty for this person to not even mention that this work is ai (except for the one post included above). with how much effort and emotion people put into their stories and art, using ai to try and replicate that comes off as just incredibly distasteful.

the forbes article linked above to water consumption and ai isn’t even the only example i can think of when it comes to the harm ai’s done. if the whole “destroying the planet”, and “scraping work from artists, writers, and animators without consent” wasn’t enough for you, then i honest to god don’t know what will be. maybe the many, many accounts of ai being used to allow people to spread child pornography and irl gore videos of horrific events? it’s not harmless. it’s immoral on a fundamental level. in a world where ai is being shoved into people’s faces left and right with the integration of it into basically every corner of the internet, i think i can speak for us all when i say we want to keep this corner ai-free.

I don’t exactly know how to do this, but here goes.

You haven’t seen me around lately because I’ve been dealing with some pretty serious health issues. Turns out I’ve got this very rare genetic disorder that’s only going to get progressively worse from here on out. It’s called Spinocerebeller Ataxia, if you want to look it up. It attacks my cerebellum causing balance and coordination issues. And, as of right now, there is no cure and no treatment. It’s a terminal diagnosis.

I struggled for a long time trying to decide if I should tell you guys about this or not. Or if I should just slowly fade out of your collective recollections like a happy memory, but then I thought about how nobody in my real life really knows about this wonderful community, and how they wouldn’t know to tell you all once I was gone. And I couldn’t just drop off the face of the planet like that without some kind of explanation. And… well, I just really miss you guys, too

I have no idea how long I’m going to have. This disease is so rare and it affects everyone so differently, but I think doing some gifs and getting back into reblogging whump might help. So I’m going to try and finish up all the requests I have over at my gifs blog and get this blog active again.

I hope it was the right decision to tell you guys. In fact, I may share some of my journey on here if you’d rather unfollow me so you don’t have to read about it. This is heavy and I don’t expect anyone to stick around for it. But I also could have another 5-10 years, depending on how my disease progresses, and I’m going to make the most of it. It’s just going to be very hard fought. I’m disabled now and I need all the love and support I can get as I traverse this new normal. I can still work and I’m still mobile for now, but that’s changing fast. I start physical and speech therapy soon, and hopefully that will help with some of my symptoms.

I love you all so much and I’m happy to answer any of your questions over DM but, please forgive me if I don’t respond to many asks publicly.

Love you always,

Whumper having whumpee follow around behind them or sit on their shoulders— an extra set of hands

Whumper pulling out a feather whenever he needs to sign something ( make whumpee hold the ink pot)

Not allowing whumpee to stretch out there wings ( bonus : having them bound)

Whumpee scared to chirp even though their instincts scream at them

Whumpee staring at the birds outside the window wishing they could fly around like them

Whumpee stress picking at their feathers

Whumpee being shoved in a small dangling birdcage in whumpers room

Whumpee using their wings as a shield only to damage them further

Whumpee’s wings being clipped and put on display above whumpers bed

Being treated like an animal

Broken wings

Questionnaire - İntercultural and cross-linguistic perspectives on whump genre

As part of my research thesis for my Masters of Contemporary International Studies, I am conducting research on "Intercultural and cross-linguistic perspectives on whump genre."

This questionnaire is part of this research!

Survey period: Thursday 1st June 2023 (9pm, NZST) - Thursday 29th June 2023 (9pm, NZST)

For the purpose of this research, participants must:

be at least 18 years old

be interested in, or have an appreciation for, whump in fictional stories

Note: Participants are not required to consider themselves a part of the "whump community" in order to participate in this study.

This questionnaire will take approximately 10-15 minutes.

Additional information:

This research defines whump as, "Whump is a genre of fiction that places emphasis on a character's physical and emotional experience of pain, and often recovery, in a story."

this is an academic research project (Master's research thesis)

Your responses are completely anonymous.

You may edit your response up until the survey period closes.

You may withdraw any information you provide up until the time the survey period closes.

For detailed information, please see here: İnformation sheet - Questionnaire (this is also at the beginning of the Google Form)

This research also has an interview with limited spaces. İf you are interested, see this post here. İnterview participants must be bilingual, and meet the participant criteria mentioned above.

This study has been approved by the Research and Development Committee of IPU New Zealand Tertiary Institute. The approval was made on the 3rd of May, 2023.

Anyone is welcome to participate! The only requirements to participate are that you are over 18 years old, and that you have at least some general interest or appreciation for whump.

In a hospital they’d treat the person with IV fluids to correct dehydration and anti-nausea meds to stop the vomiting. The meds could be given IV or they could be given as a tablet that dissolves under the tongue.

If fluids and anti nausea meds didn’t work, they might do some imaging (probably a CT scan) to see if there was a blockage causing the vomiting and if so, put a tube from the nose to the stomach to drain the stomach. This would rest the digestive system until the blockage resolved or they resolved it surgically.

For how to prevent it from home before it gets to that point, check out this post I did recently :

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/macgyvermedical/708465299948814336