About

Wince is an online magazine/archive that explores and celebrates hurt/comfort and whump. While this site is our internet home, we also interact on Tumblr at wincemag.tumblr.com.

Wince is edited by a lifelong whumper and writer. She uses she/they pronouns and goes by “Ari” around these parts of the internet. Since Fall of 2020, Ari’s been joined by assistant editor Claire.

Wince is open to a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, art, and multimedia. If it explores and celebrates whumpy subjects, it’s probably welcome here. Please see our submissions page for more.

What’s hurt/comfort? What’s whump?

Hurt/comfort and whump are fan terms for a constellation of tropes focused on pain, vulnerability, and care in fiction. Hurt/comfort most frequently features a character getting hurt and other characters caring for them. Stories can be romantic but often they’re “gen” — without a romantic focus.

Fanlore describes hurt/comfort as “a fanfiction genre that involves the physical pain or emotional distress of one character, who is cared for by another character. The injury, sickness or other kind of hurt allows an exploration of the characters and their relationship.”

Whump often focuses on the “hurt”, minimizing or even leaving out the “comfort” part. The term “whump” is often applied to TV/books/media, whereas hurt/comfort is most often used for fanfiction.

While whump and h/c are primarily discussed in fan circles, these tropes are hugely popular. One only needs to look to the popularity of shows like ER and Chicago Fire, romance tropes like “nursed back to health”, or how networks release teaser photos of characters in peril to see how commonplace this interest really is.

Like many fanfiction tropes, whump was born in Star Trek fanzines. The term “whump” was first used in the SG-1 fandom. Other fandoms with strong whump and h/c followings include The X-Files and Starsky and Hutch.

Whump saw a boom on Tumblr around 2016. The community blossomed, as did resources and celebrations of favorite tropes. (Whumpapedia has collected many of these.) While original character fics, podcasts, podfics, writing challenges, prompt lists, medical explainers and so much more flourished, there was no centralized, curated collection of great writing. Wince seeks to fill that gap.

While Wince is a private project, it was formed with the support of the whump community and welcomes discourse and feedback.