[shinji ikari voice] i'm so fr*cked up

Am I supposed to forget all the things they’ve done to me?

So there’s this thing in pigeon-keeping, called Tiger Swallow pigeons- it’s a cruel practice where their feathers are plucked from a young age, and after a few molts, they develop this pattern as the new ones grow in white.

actually, having your defiant whumpee break down when they can no longer take it does make your work a dozen times more angsty and realistic. because yeah, no matter how strong or invincible someone is, they can only take so much before it becomes too much.

idk if its understandable what i mean but i hope so 😅

- It’s been a while since I’ve read His Dark Materials, but - is forcing the human/daemon to hurt each other something that would physically work? Like, under threat of killing them? Oh my fucking god the betrayal of trust. The guilt.

- Daemons can, like, be permanently injured and killed, right? What if the whumpee’s daemon was injured so badly that they need medical treatment that couldn’t be administered by the whumpee or another person’s daemon so someone else had to touch them.

- Also, if the daemon’s form hasn’t settled yet, could they be forced into restraints that physically stopped them from changing form even under conditions where it was badly uncomfortable or painful to stay in the current one? (Yes I know this is inherently minor whump but I legitimately cannot imagine how anyone would be able to finish The Golden Compass if they weren’t okay with that).

- Speaking of canon, the mere threat of Intercision.

- Also, yay I remembered right, there’s actually a thing where people mutilate someone’s rib cage so that their lungs don’t work on their own and their poor daemon has to manually keep pumping their lungs like a bellows 24/7 to keep them alive. This is canon. Imagine an injury like that, not quite as severe so it’s repairable by modern medicine, but in the meantime it could be several days of horrific pain and utter exhaustion and lack of sleep until they get to safety.

Now that I think about it, HDM, and especially The Golden Compass, was such a huge influence on me holy shit. Yeah it was a cool world and adventure story and all that but 8-10yo me was reading that book over. and over. and over because of all the hurt/comfort scenes, esp. between Lyra and Pan, and lying awake at night imagining whumpy scenarios with OC human/daemon pairs! Oh my fucking GOD the imprisonment and the threat of having their bond severed and the escape from the prison with the kids sheltering their daemons from the cold under their clothing?

Aight, hear me out!

So, there are a lot of rules that come with daemons obviously - the being far away, the no touching, the injuries from the daemon appear on the human etc.

So imagine the possibilities!

Whumper locking Whumpee’s daemon in a separate room

Whumper stroking and petting Whumpee’s daemon until they almost (or do) throw up or pass out or both

Whumper with the scariest, most intimidating animal you can think of for a daemon

Or, alternatively, something not scary at all, like a chihuahua or something so nobody expects what they’re capable of

after Whumper has hurt Whumpee as much as they can, they then move on to the daemon.

YOU COULD MAKE WHUMPER ONE OF THE PEOPLE WORKING AT BALVANGAR!!!!!!

Bigger daemons supporting the Whumpee when they’re about to topple over

the caretaker having a really sweet, cuddly daemon who doesn’t mind being hugged by the Whumpee

or a scary one to get revenge

the caretaker’s daemon helping them with patching the Whumpee up

Daemons growling at a threat! (IDK why i love this one so much but it do)

Daemons battling it out

That little growl the human does to order their daemon to attack! (same as the daemons growling, i just love it)

The whumpee’s daemon puts themself in between the whumpee and the whumper when the whumpee is being beaten, physically blocking them from getting to them. Because the whumper’s daemon is too small to push them out of the way, and they think there’s no way even the whumper would stoop low enough to actually break the taboo. They’re wrong.

The whumpee’s daemon crawls inside their clothing for warm/comfort like they used to do as children, even though their settled form is really a bit too big for it.

The whumpee - not their daemon - is attacked and mauled by the whumper’s daemon. Which leaves them utterly horrified, because of how utterly insane that is. What kind of person can just reach out with their very soul and touch someone, and hurt someone, and seemingly not even feel the whumpee hitting and pulling fur and ears to try to force them off. What the fuck is wrong with this person? What the fuck is someone like that capable of?

On the other hand: the caretaker witnesses the whumpee’s daemon actually biting a human that’s threatening them, and is horrified because what the fuck has happened to them that they’re mentally capable of doing this? Have they been touched so much that they think it’s inevitable, or has something been done to them that’s so bad that their daemon being touched seems better?

Stoic whumpee is just barely holding it together, their daemon is… not.

The whumpee has to be talked through doing a painful medical procedure, like stitching a wound, on their own daemon because the alternative is somebody else touching them.

You know that moment - I think in the Golden Compass - where someone falls to their death and their bird daemon is trying desperately to stop their fall the entire time? That but they live.

The whumpee’s daemon almost always prefers to walk than be carried, but they’re shaking so badly and they’re so weak after the adrenaline wears off that they can’t even stand. And really the whumpee can’t either, but one of them has to.

The whumpee and their daemon are trapped under debris in a collapsed building. Rescuers find the whumpee and are able to free them, but can’t do anything but give them food and water and try to treat their injuries for days because their daemon is still trapped and they have to find a way to lift up the debris enough to free them.

The whumpee needs to jump from a moving vehicle for whatever reason, only either they or their daemon slip, or get caught on a railing, and in the second that their timing is thrown off they’re pulled an agonizing distance apart.

The whumpee is kidnapped and forced into a van. Because their daemon is uncooperative they’re thrown out of the van and the kidnappers shut the doors and just drive off - not going that fast but forcing the whumpee’s daemon to run after it until they collapse from exhaustion.

The caretaker’s daemon curling around the whumpee’s daemon and grooming them until they fall asleep.

The whumpee’s daemon has a form that’s meant to stay near water. They end up out in the desert and their daemon gets severely dehydrated.

daemons being caged, imprisoned, held for ransom until their human agrees to something

daemons being held captive long-term for prolonged “agreements”

daemons being imprisoned as a punishment for a crime: serve your sentence, and you get to see your daemon again (which also brings to mind: separate sections of a prison for humans and daemons. the daemons huddling together for comfort, the humans feeling lost and empty, both while they both experience chronic pain from the separation.)

particularly cruel masters locking up their servants’ daemons during work hours to ensure “good behavior”

a whumper who forces the whumpee and their daemon into separate rooms, just at the edge of their bond, and leaves them separated, the whumpee screaming and clawing at the walls to get back to their soul

when the whumpee tries to be defiant, the whumper grabs their daemon and the whumpee immediately collapsing in shock and horror with an utter feeling of violation and wrongwrongwrong

the whumper threatening severance after a particularly egregious act of rebellion, and the whumpee begging the whumper to torture them, do anything to them, just don’t hurt my soul don’t take my soul from me

the whumper’s own daemon trapping and torturing the whumpee’s daemon while the whumper tortures the whumpee

bonus points if the whumper has a daemon that is considered harmless or even cute

or even worse, the whumper’s daemon trying to offer comfort after a particularly brutal day, and the whumpee flinching away because that’s their torturer’s soul how can such a brutal person have a kind daemon?

I’ve gotten the question/request of how I draw wings lots and lots so I’ve decided to make a dedicated post!

Now…I’m no master, but I have found a way that I like to draw wings that’s efficient for me. There three main points: 

References

Simplification

Texture Management

First of all - References

My favorite wing reference of all time is this post by Jenn on Twitter. I have both the images saved but I use the Wing Shapes one, below, alllllll the time. Like for real all the time!

I also keep pretty extensive collections of wing photo reference. When I’m having trouble, I’ll trace a few or do studies to get back into the swing of things. Here are links to my Pinterest boards:

Broadwing Reference (passive soaring and high-speed)

Longwing Reference (active soaring)

Shortwing Reference (elliptical and hovering)

Secondly - Simplification

When I sketch wings, I simplify Jenn’s diagram even further -

For me, the key to drawing wings is simplifying the wing down - from the structure to the feathers - the goal for me is to be able to draw them quickly and have the proper information conveyed. It needs to look like a wing in the base sketch. If it doesn’t, no amount of rendering and extra feathers will help. I like to break the wing into the three main moving parts. The orange is one part, then the purple contains two main chunks feathers that you can group together and move as their own parts. 

On top of that, I like to think of wings like a sheet of paper. They can bend and fold in on themselves, with the orange meaty bits anchoring everything together. 

Lastly - Texture

I like to call wings “texture monsters”. Feathers are hard to manage and can easily make wings look over-busy and muddy. Just like before, I break the wing into chunks so I can spend less time drawing the wing and it’s feathers:

Then you can put it all together and push things further -

So yeah this is how I throw wings together! The wings I draw aren’t super technical or detailed, but I what matters for me is that they look and feel like believable wings at a glance -

~ Larn

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WING WHUMP WING WHUMP WING WHUMP

me and sage's og creator have been coming up with wing-specific whump for SO LONG that i could probably fill the library of records with ideas at this point. but that's too long to post, so take 8 for now:

broken blood feathers! this is when the shaft of a feather is broken due to some sort of force trauma, causing an overwhelming lot of bleeding. it doesn't look like a lot on a bird, but if your whumpee's feathers are to scale, this can be a LOT of blood very quickly. (i am not an expert! i recommend some research!)

some sort of binds that prevent wing movement for long periods of time. this can cut off circulation, exhaust muscles, hurt like an absolute bitch, etc etc. lots of potential

molting!! make your stressed whumpees molt!! leave bare patches in their wings!!

broken wing bones are very hard to set and heal, because literally every position is a bad one and you can't really put a cast on a wing, especially a human-sized one. snap their bones!

pin them down by their wings! dig a bony knee into the space between their muscles! it would really hurt!

have their feathers ripped out, for whatever reason!

in terms of caretaking, preening is super up there for me. with winged whumpee it's always so relieving to finally have comfortable and clean wings. with a winged caretaker whumpee can feel useful, like they're giving back to caretaker