Caretaker Finds Whumpee Bound And Gagged, Unable To Move And Whimpering For Their Attention. Caretaker

Caretaker finds whumpee bound and gagged, unable to move and whimpering for their attention. Caretaker skids to their knees and pulls whumpee into their arms.

Whumpee, with their arms behind their back, can only press their face hard into caretaker's shoulder.

I’ve been seeing this float around on Facebook lately and it’s bugging the crud out of me:

What is with everyone’s obsession with insisting it’s bad to need to be rescued? For as long as the human race has been on the planet, people have had problems that they needed other people’s help to resolve. Needing help is not a failing nor should it be the takeaway from these princesses’ stories as if it’s a bad thing that makes them weak. Yes, they do need help. Your point?

Snow White and Aurora were both under a curse that rendered each of them effectively dead. Were they supposed to magically wake themselves up? I’d want to be rescued if I were them. Plus, breaking it down to “she needed a prince” belittles the efforts of the Seven Dwarfs and the Three Good Fairies, who did most of the legwork in the resolution of their respective movie plots out of deep platonic love for the girls under their care. Then there’s Cinderella, who lived in an abusive household. It’s not a weakness that she wasn’t able to get out of that situation on her own, and once again, giving all the credit to the prince (and credit where credit is due, he did search far and wide for her and was able to take her away from that life in the end) detracts from the aid provided by the Fairy Godmother who enabled her to get out in the first place. All of these ladies had more helpers than just their princes, and it is because of the combined love and efforts of all of these people that our heroines were able to have their happy endings. There are plenty of great stories where the heroine is able to fight for herself, but these particular stories aren’t about that because these ladies are each in terrible circumstances where they simply don’t have the ability to do so. They do what they can, but in the end they can’t save themselves alone and there’s nothing wrong with that. These are beautiful stories about having people in your life that value you enough to fight for you when you can’t fight for yourself. Wouldn’t we all want someone to come to our rescue when there’s nothing we can do about our situation? Is it not a good and comforting moral to show that there are people in your corner who will show up for you no matter what the circumstances?

The other thing that’s bugging me about this:

Leia has to be rescued. By a man, and at that, one who could technically be seen as a prince. No one bats an eye at this, because it’s understood that she’s being held prisoner on the Death Star and couldn’t possibly be expected to get out of that on her own. It’s not seen as a weakness that someone had to come for her and take her away from there. Leia is awesome and is rightfully acknowledged as a great heroine, but she also needs help sometimes, because everybody does.

So WHY do people get so hung up on these princesses who also shouldn’t be expected to get out of their own prison cells of eternal sleep or abusive family by themselves? Why the strong negative reaction to girls needing outside help in such serious scenarios? For all that people say these stories teach girls to sit and wait for a man to save them, the stories themselves absolutely never try to say that, and frankly, with the opposite trend in recent years of fictional women who have to do everything on their own and can’t be shown to need help because they have to be the Strong Female Character, I’d be far more concerned about the impact that would have on girls. Far better to say you might need help at some point in your life than to instill the idea that you’re not a strong girl or not good enough if you can’t do everything by yourself.

Anyway. Justice for the classic Disney princesses.

What are some things you wish you saw more of in lady whump?

ooooh i love this question <3 mostly i would love to see more comfort by someone who isn't a male love interest!! so much lady whump is just hetero romance woman in peril which is great if that's what you like, nothing wrong with it, but i don't vibe. give me platonic lady&lady hurt/comfort!

other tropes i love that i don't see enough for ladies:

ladies who are unpleasant when they're injured/ill. crabby, mean women who are crabbier and meaner please

false recovery. things are starting to look better, then take a nose dive really quickly before anyone knows what's happening. i looooove that trope.

wound complications. infections, hard healing journeys, etc. a lot of time women's injuries are barely a blip on the radar. STRETCH EM OUT.

lady leaders/captains! collapsing from exhaustion! crumbling under pressure! we see effortless lady captains but rarely complicated ones. give me tired lady captains who are disillusioned and bored! lady captains who don't think they should be leading! women who don't WANT to be leading! women who found out this is harder than they thought and are pushing themselves really hard and suffering the consequences!

i made a whump wheel

want to beat up a character but don't know how you wanna do it? same here, friend. behold, the whump wheel! it currently has 60 different prompts/tropes on it and is ready for use! 🎉 i...love this thing. it is wonderful for writing exercises. (if you wanna know what's on it before using it, take a peak at the screenshot below)

baby marauders for the soul <3

a tale of three ducks. and a few more.

it was the best of ducks (huey), it was the worst of ducks (scrooge). it was the age of wisdom (donald), it was the age of foolishness (dewey). it was the epoch of belief (louie), it was the epoch of incredulity (goldie). it was the season of light (webby), it was the season of darkness (I've run out of characters)