What Whump Readers Want

by Ennis Rook Bashe

Have you ever met a woman with some unusual interests? I’m not talking about taxidermy, or even pegging.

When you ask her what her favorite movie is for a relaxing night in, she says something like “Saw 3.” If you sit down to a Netflix marathon with her, she knows the exact timestamps of when Geralt gets stabbed in every Witcher episode. If she shows up to your LOTR marathon, she’s more excited about Frodo looking sick and weak and having his wounds bandaged than the snack platter.

And, yeah, she probably has an AO3 account.

Or maybe you’ve met a guy who daydreams about participating in trench warfare and being stabbed with a rusty bayonet. He knows everything about medieval torture equipment. He thinks superhero movies would be way better if the superheroes got beaten up more often, and his favorite Stephen King book is probably a Richard Bachmann.

These people aren’t serial killers. They’re just whump fans. 

What we call “whump” was invented by Star Trek fans in the late 1970s/early 1980s. They invented a genre of fic called “get ‘em,” which focused on hurting their favorite characters. The Stargate and X-Files fandoms then started using the term “whump” for these works. According to the Fanlore wiki, “The term whump (or whumping) generally refers to a form of Hurt/Comfort or Hurt no Comfort that is heavy on the hurt” and involves “placing [a character] in physically painful and/or psychologically-damaging scenarios.”[i]

So why do people enjoy reading about characters suffering?

In a 2021 article in Wince Magazine, author S.E. Klein theorized that “consuming tragic media can act as a method of emotional regulation” and that people can have a physical reaction to the emotional stories: “Compassion for the suffering of a fictional protagonist stimulates the vagus nerve and promotes a rewarding sense of calm and contentedness.”[ii]

People also enjoy whump because it can serve as an excuse for queer representation. In Elizabeth Woledge's model of intimatopic slash, she writes about how “[Hurt/comfort] provides a plausible way for any author to depict increasing closeness between two men, because when the hero is hurt, he is at his most vulnerable. The element of hurt permits him to share intimacies that would otherwise be kept private".[iii]

Similarly, in a 2025 survey of the whump community by Vanessa Roades, about 85% of people who responded identified as not straight.[iv]

Personally, as a rare disease patient and mental health professional, I’ve also noticed that a lot of disabled people and trauma survivors enjoy whump. Doctors often tell chronically ill people that they’re exaggerating pain or making it up. I once got told that I was just being dramatic, when actually I had appendicitis. As a result, I find it encouraging to read stories where characters in pain are validated and supported. One of my chronic pain friends in the community also says that what he likes about whump is the “intense and lovingly detailed narrative focus on the bodily suffering/disruption” and how being able to express that pain in writing gives him a sense of catharsis. 

From a publishing perspective, a story that appeals to whump fans revolves around the physical and psychological suffering of a sympathetic character, and how they deal with it. In whump, plot points like trauma and injuries are presented as major obstacles to the characters. Whump often portrays realistic healing times for injuries and focuses on how painful they are. Healing is often a major plot point as well.

Finally, traditional genre fiction usually focuses on a protagonist who’s an everyman (like a regular soldier) or someone the reader will want to be (like a Navy Seal). However, whump fiction often contains protagonists who are more vulnerable than the reader (for example, a soldier who’s spent the last five years in a POW camp.) By traditional writing standards, whump protagonists also often lack agency. They show their power not in how badass or decisive they are, but how they endure and survive.

 A story might have a character get hurt, like a horror novel where ghosts kill people, but that doesn’t mean it’s whump. To use an analogy, say you want to read something spicy. A writer says he has what you need. But instead of a novel about the protagonist taking a hot trip to Pound Town with some big back baddies, it’s an action thriller where the heroine only takes her top off once. Wouldn’t you feel cheated? Wouldn’t you want your time back?

Now imagine you’re a whump reader looking to read whump. “I have a story where a character gets shot,” a writer says. You pick it up eagerly. The action hero gets grazed by a bullet in the third chapter and never thinks about it again, because he’s too focused on saving the world. Just like someone who found out that the erotic story they downloaded was entirely SFW, a whump reader would be PISSED. 

Whump stories often contain genre elements, such as spy fiction, horror, or even romance. However, in order for a story to be right for WPP, its emotional throughline should focus on the whump.

Let’s say you’ve written a sci-fi thriller where the story is about the hero, a James Bond-like spy, taking down an evil scientist who experiments on humans. He’s from an upper-class family and has a debonair attitude that’s attractive to women. Though he doesn’t have much of a personal life outside work, his colleagues admire him. During the climax, the hero uses his spy training and breaks into a lab to steal a secret code.

Even if this was the most tightly plotted spy novel in the world, it wouldn’t be what our readers want. 

Now imagine another novel with the same basic plot: a spy stopping an evil scientist who experiments on humans. Except in this novel, the spy hero is a former lab experiment. The evil scientist tortured him, leaving painful scarring that makes every movement difficult. He struggles with PTSD that causes flashbacks. He’s worried that because of his secret dark past, he’ll never fit in with his new spy team. During the climax of the novel, the hero proves he’s stronger than his trauma, using his spy skills to break into the secret lab he once escaped from. Afterwards, he confesses his past to his teammates, who comfort him and promise to support him no matter what. 

Two stories with the same basic beats. But one of these is a spy novel with violence, and the other one is a whumpy novel about spies. We want our writers to be able to tell the difference, because our readers certainly can.

[i] Temming, Maria. 2023. The Pain Fandom. Fansplaining.com. https://fansplaining.com/the-pain-fandom/

[ii] Klein, S.E. 2021. Neurophysiology of Whump: A Research Proposal.  Neurophysiology of Whump: A Research Proposal – wince magazine

[iii] Woledge, Elizabeth. 2006. "Intimatopia: Genre Intersections between Slash and the Mainstream." In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 97–114. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Page 110.

[iv] Roades, Vanessa. 2025. An Overview of the Whump Community: The Data. https://vanessaroadesbooks.substack.com/p/an-overview-of-the-whump-community

About the Author

Ennis Rook Bashe (they/them) is an Elgin and Rhysling Award finalist, TAP New York Writers’ Institute Poetry Prize winner, HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship-winning poet/novelist/game designer, and orange cat owner. Their chapbook Beautiful Malady includes work nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find more writing and information at ennisrookbashe.com.