Grab Them By The Hair

grab them by the hair

grabbing a fistful of their hair to hold them in place for the next punch or slap

grabbing their hair to force them to look at you

grabbing their hair to make them bow

grabbing their hair to slam their head back into the wall

grabbing their hair to smash their face on the floor

grabbing their hair to make them bare their throat to you

grabbing their hair to stop them moving away from the blade or syringe at their neck

grabbing their hair to dunk their head under water

grabbing their hair to rub their face in a mess

grabbing their hair to pull them across the room before throwing them down where they belong

grabbing their hair to hold them up when they’re about to slump over

grabbing their hair to drag them up to their knees from where they lay on the floor

placing your hand in their hair when they’re already kneeling just to remind them what you could do with it

stroking their hair as a half-hearted apology after pulling a little too much

comment more please :)

Smells are WAY Underused in Whump

The scent associated with an experience, good or bad, is a POWERFUL thing for humans, and a great tool for whump.

Smells making kidnapped (and already malnourished) character nauseous

(Remember, blood and badly burnt skin have distinct smells to them, it can really add to the impact if they’re mentioned)

A positive smell being somehow tied to the ordeal, and almost being ruined for Whumpee.

Victims of medical whump being sent into a panic at the smell of latex or strong cleaning supplies

Victims of mechanical whump (car related, saw traps, what have you) despising the smell of gasoline.

On the lighter side, Whumpee using the smell of Caretaker’s cologne/perfume to remind themselves they’re safe.

Please add if you want, because this is an untapped wealth.

Effects of Solitary Confinement/Captivity

For all of you writers out there, it’s important to fully understand the tropes/ideas that you’re writing about. Specifically, solitary confinement is a commonly used whump trope that has many more psychological effects than we expect. Not all of these effects apply to prolonged captivity, but many of them do.

Beyond 15 days, solitary confinement usually causes severe psychological harm.

These effects are more powerful among adolescents because the brain is still developing.

Anxiety/Obsessions

Because of the limited activities prisoners are allowed (being inside room, going to the bathroom, showering, sleeping), they often develop intense obsessions for specific things. Some obsess over cleanliness, hygiene, exercise, self-care, while others obsess over self-mutilation, hallucinations, or a particular object. Anxiety can also develop concerning social interactions, hallucinations, psychosis, and soon victims lose the ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Decreased Life Expectancy

Due to lack of exercise and high stress, there is a higher risk of hypertension, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes in victims of prolonged captivity.

Depression

Emotional blunting (lack of emotion) due to loss of social contact and activities often leads to depression. Forced loss of initiation of activities/ideas/interactions combined with a sense of hopelessness about their situation leads to this state, too.

Difficulty Thinking/Memory/Concentration

Victims of solitary confinement or prolonged captivity don’t have to think. They don’t have the luxury of practicing and improving upon their mental abilities. Without mental stimulation, the brain deteriorates, leading to significant drops in thinking, memory, and concentration capabilities.

Disorientation in Time and Space

After extensive periods of time without a clock or without a variety of activities to divide time into manageable segments, victims often are unable to tell how much time has passed. They also can hallucinate distortions of space, or walls closing in on them.

Hallucinations of All Senses

Without the ability to see in far distances, vision fades. Also, when the victim’s surroundings don’t change (especially when captivity is in grey/black/white areas), our eyes can lose some ability to see color. Once outside of captivity, colorful surroundings can fade to grey. Also, victims often have intense hallucinations of sounds/smells/sights/feelings because they are perpetually feeling nothing, so their brain makes up anything it can.

Higher Rates of Harm (Self and Others)

Due to the violent ideation, suicidal ideation, and an inability to experience external stimuli, self-harm and violent actions are common amongst victims, specifically when in captivity. Inabililty to feel (due to emotional blunting) leads to a persistent, ever-growing desire to feel something, and many find that ability to feel through committing violent acts.

Hypersensitivity to External Stimuli

Victims often have a complete lack of external stimuli, other than that created by the prison staff, which is rare. Especially when external stimuli is commonly associated with pain (harm by prison guards, captors), hypersensitivity to external stimuli is common among victims. Long periods of time without any stimuli leads to overinflated terror of stimuli in general, as well as increased sensitivity to it.

Inability to Organize Daily Lives

Because victims’ lives are completely controlled by outside forces (prison guards, captors), their brain begins to rely on those forces to organize their lives. Once pushed out of this systematic organization, they often lose the ability to do it themselves and develop chronic lethargy or apathy in which they spend extensive periods of time without doing anything. Sometimes, they stop behaving altogether.

Insomnia

Insomnia is often caused by the lack of external change of the victim’s environment. Because victims cannot often tell day from night or one hour from another, they are in a constant state of time-related confusion, leading to an inability to sleep for a normal period of time. As sleeping is one of the things they can control while in captivity, it can become a sort of coping mechanism to rely on to escape from their outside world, but they often struggle to sleep for long periods of time due to this inability to discern time periods.

Loss of Social Initiation

When confronted with social situations, victims generally avoid initiating any social contact, whether it be physical, verbal, or nonverbal. This is partially due to a lack of previous social contact (other than prison guards), which leads to a sense of anxiety around all social interaction because they have so little of it. Also, the loss of ability to organize their own lives can contribute to this.

Overt Paranoia

Extreme paranoia is common amongst victims of prolonged captivity, especially when the victim experiences repetitive, severe harm. Combined with an inability to know what time it is, the victim is on constant high alert for any source of possible harm, meaning paranoia can develop with anything they associate with harm, whether it be noises, objects, or sights.

Poor Impulse/Emotion Control

Specifically fear and rage, victims often suffer from an inability to control their emotions and the behavior caused by any emotions they experience. Because they have so little social contact, any social experience they do have is often fueled by hours and hours of pent-up rage, fear, or anxiety. These suppressed feelings explode during social interactions, leading to acts of violence or panic attacks during these experiences.

Psychosis

The symptom of psychosis is often related to the hallucinations that victims experience when in solitary confinement. Due to a constant state of being alone, they tend to hallucinate social interactions with other people, voices, and feelings, leading to a state of disconnect from reality.

Suicidal Ideation

As well as violent ideation (towards others, especially captors/guards), suicidal ideation is relatively common amongst victims because they are isolated in their minds, forced to fantasize about ways to escape their captivity. These fantasies often involve killing the guards or killing themselves. These fantasies often have more violent tendencies due to the withheld rage/fear they experience.

If you’d like any other research-based explanations of any other whump tropes or writing tropes, just ask!

Sources:

What Does Solitary Confinement Do To Your Mind?

Solitary Confinement: Torture in US Prisons

Solitary FAQs

Why Solitary Confinement Is The Worst Kind of Psychological Torture

Solitary Confinement FAQs

I’m Still In That Box: 23 Years In Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement Facts

Here's some uhhh "fun?" info about how deeper wounds work (unfortunately based on experience bc I am so clumsy lol) for your whump writing knowledge.

TW: mention of wounds, stitches, somewhat detailed description of stitching procedure, scars

So when you get a deep cut that goes past the surface of the skin (ie. needing stitches) there are a few things that need to happen to help it heal correctly and without infection. Depending on what caused the laceration, you may need a tetanus shot if it was some sort of metal (even if it wasn't rusty metal, this is usually done to play it safe). Then, they'll have to numb the area, and let me tell you -NOT FUN. Remember that open wound? Yeah, they inject the local anesthetic directly into the wound. IN to it- not near it. So that's really not fun, and it's even worse if you're able to watch it happen because the area swells up from the medication. So very unpleasant. From there, honestly the worst part is usually over. The stitching itself is scary to watch (caretaker said not to look for a reason!), but the most that's usually felt is some pressure from the needle- IF it is numbed completely.

What's worse though- is if you DON'T get stitches when you need them. So after a deep laceration, there is generally a 24 hour window (maximum) to get it stitched. Usually it's ideal to be done within 4-6 hours of the injury. If this doesn't happen, the wound cannot be stitched because the body has already started healing the wound as it currently is, and won't be able to heal back together and close. So this means: much longer healing process (sometimes can be a month or more depending on the laceration), the wound should stay covered with gauze for most of the beginning of healing to prevent infection which is a bigger risk with an open wound. This will additionally create a different looking scar than a wound that was stitched. They can look similar, but are obviously wider and flatter than a stitched wound which can heal with a raised and much thinner scar. Sometimes you can also see scarring from where the stitches were too! I think that's kind of cool, though.

This is just what I remember from the situation and doctors, I am not a professional.

Have fun patching up your whumpees! Or ya know.. Not

words to use in whump scenes (other than agony)

Blunt force

Ache

Throb

Dull

Pulse

Clench

Gasp

Crack

Beat

Slam

Crunch

Numb

Stabbing

Slice

Burn

Fire

Tear

Twist

Pry

Rip

Recoil

Cradle

Ooze

Pour

Gush

Shudder

Shaky

Gunshot

Crack

Pulse

Burrow

Blinding

Dull

Throb

Stretch

Spread

Cramp

Coil

Numb

Ache

Whipping

Slice

Crack

Tear

Rip

White-hot

Numb

Shock

Burn

Tazing

Shock

Burn

Fire

Jolt

Cramp

Paralyze

Tremble

Gasp

Douse

Stutter

Blinding

Broken/dislocated bones

Crunch

Crack

Slide

Tense

Freeze

Numb

Shock

Pull/push

Throb

Pulse

Spike

How would someone take care of an injured person without going to a hospital and any over all tips for writing characters with medical knowledge.

This is a massive question, but lucky for you I have today off and formally teach lower-resource medicine, so sit back and enjoy:

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to first assume that 1) there are no legal or insurance barriers (or a disregard for the existing legal or insurance barriers) to a medical professional practicing outside a licensed facility and 2) they don’t have access to any special equipment or medicines that would require a prescription.

We should probably start with why hospitals are important for medical care:

Hospitals have equipment that is otherwise inaccessible to the average person (imaging machines, monitors, ventilators, etc…)

Hospitals have specialized environments (such as operating rooms, negative pressure rooms, oxygen sockets, etc…)

Hospitals have round-the-clock nursing care available (the saying being that you don’t admit someone to the hospital for medical care, you admit for nursing care)

Hospitals have specialized knowledge available quickly across many disciplines

Hospitals have (or can relatively quickly acquire) most drugs that would be needed to care for any of their patients

Assuming you have the people and knowledge, some of these things can be improvised.

For example: Got a nurse? You have nursing care at least some of the day. Got a doc? You have medical care at least some of the day. Doc was trained in decent physical diagnosis (basically, was trained either before the 90s or after like 2015)? You can at least get most of the information you need to treat this person, even if it’s not as precise as an ultrasound, CT, or MRI). Got a window and a box fan? Boom you can make a negative pressure room. Read this post and have a surgeon? You can probably assemble what you need to do basic surgery. Got antiseptic, something sharp and sterile, and some really hot water and two wash cloths? Can treat most skin infections.

Assuming access to a standard pharmacy/medical supply store in the US (but without access to anything requiring a prescription) and unlimited money, you have the following equipment:

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