#tw for mention of medical abuse (specifically lobotomies) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anonymouspuzzler · 1 year

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(PSYCHONAUTS 2 SPOILERS IN FIRST IMAGE TEXT ESPECIALLY!!)

oh boy we've hit the point in my Psychonauts art backlog where we get into my OVERLY ELABORATE AUs!! This first one is what I call the "Cally O'Pia AU", which is basically "everything is the same except Cassie stole rescued one very specific weird little boy from a psychic lobotomy, and he grew up raised by her instead. There's a lot more content for this that I'd still like to finish someday, so I'll leave it there for now! There's another AU I've worked on more that you'll be seeing a LOT more of soon, though...

(Alt text/image IDs under the cut!)

[Image 1 ID (PSYCHONAUTS 2 SPOILERS IN DESCRIPTION): A sketchy, colored design for "(Caligosto) Cally O'Pia", an alternate version of Loboto who was raised by Cassie. He is posing with one hand on his hip and the other gesturing outwards; he has both original arms rather than a prosthetic. He has a full head of hair in a sloppy bob with long bangs and a yellow flower tucked behind his ear, wears glasses with green and red lenses instead of the inlaid lenses, and wears several multicolored bracelets and necklaces resembling Cassie's. He is wearing a janitorial staff Psychonauts uniform with the sleeves rolled up, half dark teal-green like an agent uniform and half-lilac purple. Over the uniform, he wears a long handmade-looking light-yellow skirt with pink tassels along the bottom edge, patched with several long patterned scraps of fabric as well as several smaller square patches. He is also wearing blue ribbed socks with light-brown sandals, and two fanny packs on his waist, one purple, one dark blue. There are bullet points about his personality and backstory next to the design, reading: - Picked up by Cassie during a Psychic 7 run on hospitals performing lobotomies (she got a little overzealous seeing a kid on deck and just. took him and ran) - Never met Lucrecia; she'd already left for Grulovia by the time he was adopted - Kept training with the Psychonauts, but became increasingly disillusioned seeing the Psychic 6 fall apart (especially when Cassie retreated to the Gulch) - Extremely powerful psychic, but blows off responsibility to the point he's all but useless as an agent; mostly tends to the aquarium and acts as a handyman - De facto custodian of the Gulch, since he's the only agent who can reliably make it in and out (he's going to check up on his mom) - Openly bisexual; in an on again-off again relationship with Oleander (both would rather it stay on but neither are emotionally mature enough to admit it) - Suspicious about the circumstances behind Maligula's defeat & the "official" Psychonauts founding; took on the moonlighting half from disillusionment, half to secretly investigate without influence (Oleander knew & would occasionally help) - Took the Deluginary job to get info on Maligula, didn't know about the plan with Truman until too late (no hard feelings against the guy himself, y'know?); realized he was in over his head, leaked coordinates to Raz & co. but got threatened into finishing the job regardless - Considered leaving the Psychonauts to be a dentist or marine biologist when he was younger; couldn't bear to abandon Cassie - One of the only agents to still regularly visit Compton in Psychoisolation - Picked up some writing skills from Cassie (he likes freeform poetry) - The socks with sandals are absolutely, specifically to piss off Hollis. Come at him.]

[Image 2 ID: A younger Cally O'Pia. He has messy hair, glasses, a big smile, and is eating a chunk of honeycomb. He is wearing a long tank top resembling Cassie's dress, over pleated pants that reach mid-shin, and sandals.]

[Image 3 ID: Traditional pen sketches of Cally O'Pia. In the left, he is standing with a neutral expression, one hand on his hip and the other holding up a dripping mop; in the other, he is sitting, grinning and using his psychic powers. In the second image he has removed his wrap-skirt to wear it as a shawl around his shoulders instead, revealing the Psychonauts uniform jumpsuit reaches about mid-shin on him.]

[Image 4 ID: A sketchy three-panel comic of Cally and Oleander. In the first, Oleander, wearing boxers and an unbuttoned shirt over a tank top, walks down a hall shouting "Cal??" Cally, standing around the corner wearing sweatpants and a baggy shirt, using telekinesis to bring plates over to him to dry, replies, "Kitchen". Oleander continues, "I can't find my All Paul shirt". The second panel shows Cally shifting his weight onto one leg as he dries the plate with a rag, nonchalantly saying, "Mm. Haven't seen it." Oleander, now looking directly at Cally around the corner, says, "Cal". "Yeah", Cally replies. "You are wearing the shirt", says Oleander. The final panel shows Cally, grinning knowingly and continuing to dry the dish, replying sing-song, "Dunno what you're taaalking abooouuuttt". Oleander, bracing his feet against Cally's lower back and tugging at the hem of the shirt with both hands, screams, "CAL SO HELP ME". Cally simply responds, "I look good though right".]

#anonymous puzzler art #psychonauts 2 #caligosto loboto #psychonauts 2 spoilers #rhombus of ruin spoilers #morceau oleander #cassie o'pia #tw for mention of medical abuse (specifically lobotomies)#one fun bit of trivia that I wrote after that little character bio that i *will* share #I decided Cally also does a ton of writing for true psychic tales under a pseudonym #he mostly sees it as propaganda-y schlock but he's *very* charmed that Raz is such a big fan

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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Space based story with prison camps: problematic parallels?

Trigger warnings:

Holocaust

Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post and resources)

ivypool2005 asked:

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on Mars in the 25th century. There are two countries on Mars: Country A, a hereditary dictatorship, and Country B, a democracy occupied by Country A after losing a war. Country A's government is secretly being puppeted by a company that is illegally testing experimental technology on children. On orders from the company, Country A is putting civilian children from Country B in prison camps, where the company can fake their deaths and experiment on them. (1/2)

My novel takes place in one of the prison camps. I am aware that this setting carries associations with various concentration camps in history. Specifically, I'm worried about the experimentation aspect, as I know traumatic medical experimentation occurred during the Holocaust. Is there anything I should avoid? How can I acknowledge the history while still keeping some fantasy/sci-fi distance from real experiences -- or is it a bad idea to try to straddle that fence at all? Thank you! (2/2)

We are far from being the only people to have suffered traumatic medical experiments..

--Shira

TW: Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post, and all of the links)

Medical experimentation in history

Perhaps without intending to, you have posed an enormous question.

I will start by saying that we, the Jewish people, are not the only group to have unethical, immoral, vicious experiments performed on our bodies. Horrific experimentation has been conducted on Black people, on Indigenous people, on disabled people, on poor people of various backgrounds, on women, on queer people... the legacy of human cruelty is long. Here are some very surface-level sources for you, and anyone else interested to go through. Many, many more can be found.

General Wiki Article on Unethical Human Experimentation

US Specific Article on Unethical Human Experimentation

The early history of modern American Gynecology is largely comprised of absolutely inhumane experimentation, mostly on enslaved women (with some notable exceptions among Irish immigrant women)

An Article on Gynecological Experimentation on Enslaved Women

I also recommend reading Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens

The Tuskegee Experiment

First Nations Children Denied Nutrition

Guatemala Syphilis Experiment

Unit 731

AZT Testing on Zimbabwean Women

Project MKUltra

Conversion Therapy

Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates

Medical Interventions on Intersex Infants and Children

Again, these are only a few, of a tragic multitude of examples.

While I don't feel comfortable saying, as a blanket statement, that stories like this should never be fictionalized, it feels important to emphasize the historicity of medical experimentation, and indeed, medical horrors. These things happened, in the real world, throughout history, and across the globe.

The story of this kind of human experimentation is one of immense cruelty, and the complete denial of the humanity of others. Experimentation was done on unwilling subjects, with no real regard for their wellbeing, their physical pain, the trauma they would incur, the effect it would have on families, or on communities. These are stories, not of random, mythical "subjects," but of human beings. These were Black women, already suffering enslavement, who were medically tortured. These were Indigenous children, who were utterly powerless, denied nutrition, just to see what would happen. These were Black men, lied to about their own health, and sent home to infect their spouses, and denied treatment once it was available. These were Aboriginal Australians, forced to have unnecessary medical procedures, children given brutal gynecological exams, and medications that were untested.. These were inmates in US prisons, under the complete control of the state. These were prisoners of war. These were pregnant people, desperate to save their fetuses, lied to by doctors. These were also Jewish people, imprisoned, and brutalized as part of a systematic attempt to destroy us.

The story of medical torture, of experimentation without any meaningful consent, of the removal of human dignity, and human rights, is so vast, and so long, there is no way to do it justice. It is a story about human beings, without agency, without rights, it's the story of doctors, scientists, and the inquisitive, looking right through a person, and seeing nothing but parts. This is not some vague plot point, or a curiosity to note in passing, it is a real, terrible thing that happened, and is still happening to actual human beings. I understand the draw, to want to write about the Worst of the Worst, the things that happen when people set aside kindness, and pick up cruelty, but this is not simply a device. This kind of torture cannot be used as authorial shorthand, to show who the real bad guys are.

On writing this subject - research

If you want to write a fictional story that includes this kind of deep, abiding horror, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to read about it, not only in secondhand accounts, and not only from people stating facts dispassionately. You need to seek out firsthand accounts, read whatever you can find, watch whatever videos you can find. You need to find works recounting these atrocities by the descendants, and community members of people who suffered.

Then, when you have done that, you need to spend time reflecting, and actively working to recognize the humanity of the people this happened to, and continues to happen to.

You have to recognize that getting a stamp of approval from three Jewish people on a single website would never be enough, and seek out multiple sensitivity readers who have personal, familial, or cultural experience with forced experimentation.

If that seems like a lot of work, or overkill, I beg you not to write this story. It's simply too important.

-- Dierdra

If you study public health and sociology, it is often a given that the intersection of institutional power and marginalized populations produces extreme human rights abuses. This is not to say that such abuse should be treated as an inevitability, but rather to help us understand, as Dierdra says, how often we need to be aware of the risk of treating our fellow humans poorly. Much of modern medical history is the story of the unwilling sacrifices made by people unable to defend themselves from the powers that be. Whether we are talking about the poor residents of public hospitals in France during the 18th century whose bodies were used to advance anatomy and pathology, to vaccine testing in the 19th century, to mental asylum patients in the 20th century who endured isolation, lobotomies, colectomies and thorazine, one can easily see this pattern beyond the Holocaust.

Even when we shift our focus away from abuse justified by “experimentation”, we have many such incidents of institutionalized state collusion in abuse that have made the news within the last 20 years with depressing regularity. Beyond the examples mentioned above, I offer border migrant detention centers and black sites for America, Xinjiang re-education sites and prisoner organ donation in China, Soviet gulags still in use in Russia, and North Korean forced labor camps (FLCs) for political prisoners as more current examples. I agree with Dierdra that these themes affect many people still alive today who have endured such abuses, and are enduring such abuses.