I have a very specific whump idea for y’all but to get to it you will have to listen to my historical ramblings. But I promise there is a whump prompt at the end.
So, Revolution-era France, when everybody was chopping everybody else’s heads off with the guillotine, ended after Robespierre, the man behind the whole thing, was himself beheaded. The nobility, who had been the main targets of the guillotine, reacted to the Revolution ending in a…rather macabre way.
They started dressing differently. The men often wore very bright colors and outrageously elaborate suits of clothes, as a symbol of the return to the noble days.
Women went a different direction- they started dressing like the guillotine victims.
Before a prisoner was beheaded, their hair would be cut short, so that nothing would interfere with the guillotine blade. Women after the Revolution mimicked this, cutting their hair short and baring their necks in one of the first acceptable short hair trends for women (known as coiffure a la victime.) They would wear thin, gauzy white dresses to copy the way prisoners often were only allowed to wear their undergarments when they were in prison before their execution. Since prisoners went to the guillotine barefoot, women started to go barefoot to match. Red shawls were also popular- the assassin Charlotte Corday wore a red shawl to her execution, so women copied her look. Red chokers, ribbons, or necklaces around the neck, where the guillotine would have cut, became fashionable across the board. Women would have “prison portraits” painted of themselves in these outfits as if they were languishing in a cold, dark prison cell, pretending to be victims of the guillotine.
Basically, the national trauma of the Revolution became a fashion trend. It was likely a way to heal from the experience and feel closer to those that had been lost to the guillotine, and also poking fun at the failed Revolution by dressing like its victims.
But they took it to really absurd levels. There’s one part of this in particular that I’m fascinated by, even though the actual historicity of it is debatable.
Bals de la victimes- victim’s balls.
These were (supposedly) grand balls held by the recovering nobility. Sometimes, the guest list was restricted to people who had lost relatives to the guillotine or narrowly escaped it themselves- one ball was allegedly held specifically for the now-adult children of guillotined nobles.
Everything about these balls was meant to evoke this trend. You would come wearing either black mourning clothes or one of those prisoner-esque outfits, and you would wear one of the red strings or ribbons around your neck. Instead of gracefully bowing to your dancing partner, you would nod your head sharply downward to mimic the moment of decapitation. Often, people who had been in prison during the Revolution were the guests of honor.
So, what does all this have to do with whump?
I’ve been thinking about this idea for a bit now, of taking something traumatic and turning it into an elaborate parody for the sake of fashion. And I’m thinking…what if whumpers did that?
I imagine a whole room full of whumpers, dressed in fine fabrics tastefully ripped and torn and stained to evoke the imagery of the people they’re holding captive back home. Silk “bandages” wrapped over nonexistent wounds. Jewelry carefully designed to look like shackles and collars. Hair styled just messy enough to look as if it hasn’t been cared for. Makeup done to resemble hollow-cheeked, bruised faces. Maybe even fake scars and injuries painted on, bloodstains that are meant to be beautiful.
Perhaps the food served at this party is designed to resemble the kind of simple fare a whumpee usually gets- gruel or table scraps or what-have-you, though of course it’s all the best ingredients and only made to look that way. Maybe the room is decorated to look like a prison cell, or a bare cellar or attic, or a laboratory. Maybe there’s weapons or torture devices hung up on the walls, although they’re not real, just pretty fakes. Maybe someone brings their actual whumpee to attend as the “guest of honor”, and the guests bombard them all night, demanding to know what being a whumpee is really like, wanting every last detail so that they can make the next ball even more realistic.
Just- that whole concept of taking something so intensely traumatic and turning it into nothing more than a party theme. It’s fascinating to me and if I have the time, I’m going to try and write something with it. At the moment, though, it’s going to live here as a whump prompt.
(I told you there’d be whump at the end.)