#call me icepick joe

[a-high-femme]

I need a fucking lobotomy

[lolobizarreadventuresshatpost]

What if the food names in Vento Aureo are actually aliases?

Some arbitrary picked mafia nickname meant to help keeping anonymity?

-Boss, how're we gonna call the new recruit?" -Hmmm... you know, I had me some terrific suckling lamb for dinner last night...." -Say no more, boss!"

(in the meantime Abbacchio hoping he's gonna get The Icepick or something. Bad news buddy it was either baby lamb meat, or "Lobster Joe". Giuseppe Aragosta)

[super-ion]

In honor of the 1 50 year anniversary of Goncharov, I wanted to write just a little thing about my favorite underappreciated side character. Mariella deserves so much better than what she got.

-----

Mariella gasped awake, clutching at her midsection.

Katya shot her.

Mariella, drenched in Sofia's blood had grabbed her lover’s gun. Before she could even attempt to aim, the second shot rang out. A lance of pain streaked through her as the clocktower began to chime. She sank to her knees on the wet flagstones on the bridge and felt the life pouring from her. The last thing she saw was Sofia's glazed eyes. The last word on her lips was Sofia's name.

The clocktower, now distant, rang. She stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, tears prickling in the corners of her eyes.

It was Monday again. The clock was chiming with the sunrise.

Mariella pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. How many times had she woken up in this bed, on this day? How many times had she been around this loop?

She had lost count a long time ago.

Each time was different, as if she were trapped in a story with a thousand authors who couldn't agree on the details.

She wasn't even the main character of whatever this story was. She couldn't explain it if she wanted to, but over the grind of endless living the same week over and over, it had become clear that she was just a minor side character. Someone who existed in the background, along for the ride in someone else's narrative.

She rolled out of bed and stared into the distance.

“What do you want from me?” she asked the universe for perhaps the millionth time.

She didn't think about trying to end it. She had tried. She had tried and tried and tried. But invariably, death simply delivered her back to this moment.

Perhaps she had been dead this whole time. Perhaps this was hell.

She was doomed to relive the same five days, doomed to fall in love with a woman with impossibly twisted loyalties, a woman who herself fell in love with a monster, a monster by choice rather than necessity, but a monster nonetheless.

Even after this eternity, Mariella could remember being a schoolgirl on holiday in the countryside. She could remember meeting Katya, she could remember falling in love.

She could remember their reunion, years later. She could remember the unease, the vague wariness of meeting the woman that girl had become.

The door to her flat opened. Joe was here, bearing eggs and bread and sweet apples from the market.

Might as well start again, she murmured to herself and drifted like a wraith to the kitchen.

Joe was at the stove, his back to her as it always was.

“Hello, sister dearest. Do you want breakfast?”

The boss wants you to work late tonight, Mariella recited silently.

“Boss wants me to work late tonight,” Joe said, without turning from the stove. “Might be a busy week.”

He did turn them, a crooked grin on his face. He stilled at the sight of her. Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. Something she never noticed or questioned before the day after tomorrow.

Why do they call you Icepick Joe?

The question had been innocent enough at the beginning, but she had seen too much, lived through this week too many times.

He studied her a moment.

“There someone I need to pay a visit?”

The woman I love is going to kill you in four days.

Or he was going to kill her.

Both of them would be dead by Friday in either case.

Sofia would kill Joe. Katya would kill Sofia. Or Goncharov would kill Sofia. Or Andrey.

It was always the same. Every. Single. Time.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to fall to her knees and howl until her throat was raw.

Every single person Mariella ever loved would-

The phone rang.

Mariella flinched.

The phone never rang. Not in all the times she had lived through this morning.

It rang again.

She stared at it.

“You going to get that?” Joe called over his shoulder.

With trembling hands, she picked up the receiver and raised it to her her.

“Mari?”

Her breath caught in her throat and she nearly staggered.

That voice haunted her dreams, it haunted every waking thought.

She wasn't supposed to hear that voice for the first time until that evening.

She cast a glance at Joe, who was no doubt listening very intently.

“It's… it's me,” she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. “I'm here.”

“Mariella, what the fuck is going on?”

[zumwhy]

TikTok is pulling a goncharov folks this is not a drill

An 80s horror movie called Zepotha. Wish I could participate. Unfortunately, I am a Wimp who Does Not Like Horror- and even some of Joe (of the icepick variety) ‘s scenes were too gory for me

[do-you-have-a-flag]

So I was digging through letterboxd lists and i found this weird tv movie sequel to Goncharov from 1993!

it was a completely unrelated production and the only person they got back from the original was John Cazale as Ice Pick Joe, i guess they promised him a bigger role judging by the title Goncharov 2: the hour of icepick joe..... but he only showed up in the 20 mins of the film.

Barry Bostwick is certainly a choice to replace De Niro..... Loretta Swit was serving as Katya tho!!! I think director Shane 7. Chapman did some mission impossible episodes once? idk..... also a short lived 80s sitcom called 'are you still with me' so like, some experience i guess.

When asked about the film, Scorsese told Film Review in 1996, "No, I have not seen it. I do not plan on seeing it, and I do not plan on engaging with it."

It was a pretty forgettable low budget action film tbh, but the ice cream van chase sequence kinda slapped ngl

[cicadaemon]

everyone keeps going on about the characters and the script for Goncharov, but the fact that no one has mentioned what an absolute banger the soundtrack is an absolute sin. Icepick Joe's reoccurring motif literally killed me during Andrey's chaos scene. The entire piece that plays during the Boatscene with Katya? Goncharov's theme being called "running out of time"? We need to talk about this more!!!

[droppingartintotheinfinite]

Ok! So! Big Goncharov revival has happened on tumblr recently, and I’ve decided to take the opportunity when it’s handed to me to talk about one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Bear with me for a moment.

For those unfamiliar, Goncharov (1973) was a movie directed by Matteo JWHJ0715, a (then closeted) bisexual filmmaker from Italy. Martin Scorsese then lent his name to it to provide a popularity boost for the American release, which is where we get the common misconception that he directed it.

It stars a Russian mob boss named Goncharov (no first name given, for reasons I’ll discuss later) who’s brought a few key members of his gang to Naples, Italy in order to get revenge against Italian mob boss Mario Giglioli. (A good breakdown of the movie’s plot can be found in @mst3kproject’s review, which I would link here but tumblr is being weird)

Along the way, we’re introduced to his wife, Katya Goncharova, his right hand man, Andrey, Mario’s wife, Sofia Giglioli, and a few others.

Goncharov is an almost nauseatingly stereotypical man. What stereotype, you ask? Why, all of them! He’s a tall, heavily built man with a thick accent and a tendency to reference “Mother Russia” in tones of alternatively nearly reverential praise of Soviet era Russia and harsh condemnation of the Russia he leaves during the movie - the Russia directly after the Soviet Union’s fall. The way he does this is heavy handed and obviously written by a man who’s never visited Russia in his life in any era, to the point where my own lax education on the country doesn’t actually leave me unqualified to analyze the film, despite the majority of the main characters originating from it. (Though I’m sure there are great analyses to be made on the cultural inaccuracies within the film, especially given how many are entirely deliberate- but I’ll get to that later)

He’s also exhaustingly heterosexual, and very much being so with an eye towards to the beliefs of the time. There are many scenes in Goncharov that are hard to watch today, and many of the scenes between Goncharov and Katya are among them, especially the dinner scenes.

Here, you may be saying, “But Sol, didn’t you say the director was bi?” And hey, hold your horses, we’ll get to that.

Katya, Goncharov’s wife, is on the surface an ideal 70s housewife, if a bit more murderous than the average due to her mafia husband. She makes him dinner every night, defers to his whims without argument, and spends most of their shared scenes standing behind him, never beside.

She also violently murders him to avenge her lesbian lover, but as I’ve said, we’ll get to that.

Mario Giglioli, Goncharov’s rival, is just Goncharov with an Italian accent. I think if they could have cast Robert De Niro twice and had him play Mario as well as Goncharov, they would have. He has a german shepard and Goncharov makes one of his henchman steal it near the start of the film. I am unhinged about this man.

One of Goncharov’s few named henchmen is called Icepick Joe. He’s an ostensibly minor character who gets a bizarre amount of screentime covering his personal journey of *checks notes* petting Mario’s dog, stealing said dog, murdering his wife, stealing Mario’s dinner, and dying alone due to the poison in said dinner while the dog abandons him to run off into the woods.

He is quite possibly the most important character in the entire movie.

To explain why, I have to introduce two more characters, who fans of the film have no doubt been waiting for me to bring up since they started reading this post.

But first, let me talk about Goncharov’s marriage for a bit!

Goncharov and Katya are often said to have a loveless marriage, but the truth of the matter is a lot more complicated than that. There are moments throughout the film where it’s implied that they care about each other deeply, and that in any other circumstances they might have a perfectly healthy relationship, but they’re so mired in the idea of being the perfect mafia man and the perfect mafia man’s wife that everything they say or do is filtered though so many layers of performance that any actual affection they might hold for one another is suffocated under it.

No one in the film ever refers to Goncharov by his first name. There are a few contenders for what it might be - he signs his name N. Goncharov, which some have hypothesized could stand for Nikolai, some of the early promotional material called him Ivan Goncharov… but there’s nothing sufficiently internally consistent for it to be stated as his first name with true confidence.

This is deliberate. In an interview, JWHJ0715 stated: “[Goncharov] is a man consumed by his work. He’s forgotten how to be anyone other than Goncharov, mob boss, and the lack of a first name is part of this. […] Goncharov is a man who’s lost his identity in favor of the image he projects”

Katya, conversely, is only ever referred to by her first name, even when speaking to characters who would be expected to use her last. It’s not quite as complete an erasure - there are a few moments where she’ll be introduced as Katya Goncharova instead of just Katya, but the vast majority of the time she’s referred to as either Katya or “Goncharov’s wife”.

This, too, is part of an erasure of identity, though in a different way. Katya has so thoroughly separated herself from the role she plays as Goncharov’s wife that in the few moments she is referred to by her full name, you can spot a split second of confusion, like she doesn’t know who’s being spoken about.

There’s a sense that Katya is unable to be herself with Goncharov, that she’s become so caught up in the person she thinks he wants that she can’t be the person she actually is, and it’s masterfully played as this slowly poisons her ability to care for him and eventually leads to her faking her death and later killing him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

(And, uh. Also ahead of my ability to write. This is getting long, so I’m going to break it here and post the rest later.)

[scariercnidaria]

WHY hasnt anyone made the connection yet between ice pick joe and leon trotsky. in the movie with the inexplicably russian names. like the movie is clearly a metacommentary on the USSR with goncharov becoming more and more of a stalin-figure (also the moustache?? the scarred hand??????????? hello????? why arent you all seeing this), irredeemably corrupted by his ambition for power literally culminating in him ordering the death of amarro. BY ICEPICK. in the goriest scene of the film (im not going to say most violent bc. the andrey scene was intense.and heartbreaking and oh my god the quietness of it made it so much harder to watch even though you dont actually see his hands around andreys neck its just goncharovs face as he carries it out and then its done im sorry its a tangent (its what everyone is here for dont lie) but the performances in this film were fucking electrifying).

Like He Is Sentenced To Death Via Icepick. bc goncharov doesnt want to expand his horizons. Its time to think about franchising but weve seen everything goncharov has gone through to get this far. naples is his home. hes already strangled ANDREY his best friend his rival his gay boyfriend gay sex lover homosexual boyfriend to get to where he is and he was promised naples one day and amarro just wants... to move on? he wants to franchise and give goncharov the franchise, so he can keep naples under his thumb and goncharov can have piss-all in comparison. Like amarro knows that its fucking the end like Winter Has Come To Naples that its best for goncharov to take the operation to a shiny new city but goncharov doesnt know that. like its winter. his boyfriend is dead and he killed him. goncharov is left in the snow.

also like. winter=nuclear winter. goncharov is the new shiny weapon hes the next evolution of warfare hes the up-and-comer the scrappy kid with nothing to lose He Is The Bomb he destroys himself and everything around him.

and like Another Side Note bc im writing this verrry disorganised sorry i keep thinking of things bc theres SO MUCH to think about w this movie im just trying to get it all down while its fresh in my mind. back to the USSR stuff while i take slight issue w this portrayal bc its clearly a very capitalist take (the ussr did not operate like a mafia... to say so is a shallow take grossly informed by propaganda starting and ending at 'muh mob hits are just like secret police'. Ignoring the fact that every country has police) (dont come at me about it here if youre just gonna call me a tankie this is a goncharovpost) it was written by an american in the 70s and the ghost of mccarthy haunted all production so Eh what can you do. i do think it was unexpectedly sympathetic to goncharov though? like maybe this is just me being internet blorbo poisoned to the extent that i see a fake dude with a moustache cause untold harm and go Gonna Put Him In The Jar "he just like me fr" (in a queered transgender irony kind of way. i prommy. none of you who are gayposting about gonchandrey are morally superior to me youre all doing it)

[prodigal-sunlight]

I FIGURED OUT WHY GONCHAROV SEEMED SO FAMILIAR! There was this anime I used to love as a kid called, Shisha no Tokei, which means like, Time of Dying or something?? Turns out it was a Goncharov adaptation lmao

I looked it up online and apparently it got cancelled with like, three episodes left to go, major cliffhanger. None of the english sources seem to agree if it was cancelled because of low ratings, or if there was some sort of copyright issues at the production company.

Seemed like a good idea to watch the original movie to compare, and tbh the anime is kindaaaa trash. Like, maybe its just a really bad sub? But its the only one I could find. But its good trash! They added way more explosions and mafia bullshit, and the homoeroticism is a lot less subtle. I think they might have been going for a fanservice yuri angle for Katya and Sofiya? But the Gonchrey stuff is pretty faithful to the source material. Anyway its super cheesy and the symbolism is a lot more hamfisted than the original live-action Goncharov, but its a lot of fun! Also for some reason in the anime Katya had a twin sister, and Icepick Joe used a chainsaw?? It didn’t seem to go anywhere, and he still used the normal switchblades in the scene with the eyestabbing, idk why they added those bits

Anyway if you’re big on Gonchrey or whatever the ship name is checkout the ep “Farewell My Andrey” you’ll thank me later

[capnsoapy]

AN: grazie speciale (get it, coz Im italian) 2 my bf (ew not in that way) martin, spicymeatball666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling. U rok! Gene ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2! SKIANTOS ROK!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hi my name is Joe "Icepick" Rizzuto and I have a long steel ice pick (that’s how I got my name) and greasy brown hair with a receeding hairline and deep brown eyes like meatballs and a lot of people tell me I look like John Cazale (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Al Pacino but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a murderer but my hands are clean of blood. I have tanned white skin. I’m also a mafioso, and I'm part of an organised crime family called the Mafia in Italy where I work for my boss Mario (I’m a hitman). I’m a smart dresser (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black tie. I love Giorgio Armani and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black suit with matching tie under it and a white undershirt, pinstriped trousers and black combat boots. I was walking outside the clock tower. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. Goncharov stared at me. I put up my middle finger at him.

[canary-prince]

Jay tell me more about Julian the Priest

Okay, so--

Like I said, Julian the Priest is one of like...SIX characters that are allegedly trapped in the 9 hour director's cut. In the late 2000s my dad found a YouTube channel that had a bunch of these characters' scenes illegally uploaded. The ones I've seen since the channel got banned (my dad ripped some of them onto DvDs cuz he figured that might happen) are the ones pertaining to Father Julian Rose, Mr. Clark, and Lily Black. (Not ALL their scenes, obviously, but, you know, some important ones).

As you can guess from the names, these character mostly deal with the COMPLETELY DELETED "New York" facet of the story, where one of the mob's American branches is facing hardship due to the chaos in Moscow. Julian is the only non-Moscow character that Katya interacts with AT ALL. They share several long distance phone calls in which he takes her confessions. He's an incredibly angry and hollowed out man, but he exhibits a lot of patience with her (there's some hints that he's her bastard brother; if true, this confirms that her father did cheat on her mother). Edit: this shit never made sense to me but like, in the final cut, the shit with her dad barely matters we literally only really know it was supposed to a big deal is cuz of the unearthed early scripts. So idk why I'm even bringing it up, Julian exists even less than this subplot lol.

He takes a lot of mobster confessions; it appears to be the bulk of his scenes, and forms the heart of his "Faith is a poison" speech. It goes on for over 8 minutes, but essentially boils down to this: Christian faith rots away at human morality by convincing them of two lies. One, that they are special and unique and therefore beloved by the Almighty God and Two, that to apologize and repent is to erase the harm you caused. (Yes this character got an 8 minute speech. It's certainly something.)

Multiple times he urges Katya to leave Goncharov and to "chase true happiness" (yes, this could contribute to the lesbian subtext, because Katya is looking at the bracelet she stole from Sofia as he says it) but never gets angry at her for failing to do so, which I cannot STRESS how odd that is for the character??? He yells at people a lot, even when hearing their confessions, he's a terrible priest.

His other main connection to the "Moscow" plot is via Icepick Joe: yeah, plot twist, Julian ratted on Joe's brother, and most likely did it on the Don's direct orders (the extent to which Julian works for these people is not spelled out super clearly but he obviously DOES). Icepick Joe does speak to Julian over the phone exactly once, and Julian rather harshly taunts him about his numerous failures. He again invokes God, calling Joe a "forsaken and broken thing".

His actor was Richard Talmei, and at the time of filming, he was 55 years old and had been acting for 36 years. Commercials, local live theater, radio dramas, and a few failed TV pilots. Goncharov was his first (and ultimately, only) film. He'd lived a REALLY hard life. A meth addiction, a childhood spent homeless in a dangerous part of Chicago, a serious eating disorder: if that sounds vaguely familiar, it might because you read his post-humously released memoir Dirty Mask, which directly inspired David Sedaris.

During the 1971 April reshoots, which were done to deal with the "missing footage" issue, he had a severe aneurysm on set and collapsed. He was dead before the ambulance arrived and I'm 99% sure that the reason his subplot was removed was because of how traumatic Richard's death was for the rest of the cast.

"Wait, are you saying the entire new York subplot was cut because a guy died during reshoots?" Um. Look. The new York shit was likely not going to make it to the final cut. But every character being completely removed, even the guy who has a direct tie to Katya? Uh yeah. That's not just me. That's Carla Samsota, the (until recently uncredited) script doctor for the rework involved on cutting out New York and the weird counterfeiting side story stated in a 2019 interview with some weird artsy paper that she was only ever given vague reasons as to why Julian had to go entirely and tried to keep Lily Black in too, and she said that "people" got agitated and defensive when she brought up Richard or his character.

So yeah the movie's run time got cut down by a whooping 3 hours because a very cool guy died mid production and everyone was so devastated they couldn't look at his recorded face anymore.

[msadequate]

Alright here's my hot Goncharov take: At a fundamental level it's *not* a Mafia movie. Hold on, hear me out! First we need to acknowledge the somewhat strange aspect of the setting, where the USSR has fallen (as it would OTL 20-odd years later). Why is this strange? Because at the time the movie was made the fall of the USSR was a hypothetical notion relegated almost entirely to science-fiction, or the occasional political fever dream that foresaw a post-Soviet, American-led capitalist world order. We'll dispense with the scifi because it was most typically used there to demonstrate "the world is Different now" and you could find things like a fallen USA just as readily; the political side of things more commonly used it as either a call to action - 'look what we, brave America, could achieve, if only we had the courage' - or to examine the conditions that might emerge in the event of Soviet collapse, and hopefully give some ideas for Western opportunities if that happens.

Why does this matter for analysis of Goncharov? Well, first of all because as I say it's a strange thing to use as the backdrop of your movie. There could be a hundred different reasons people could be unwelcome in the USSR, but this work says nobody can return to the USSR because *the USSR is gone*. That they're in Naples, that they're members of or involved with the dealings of the Mafia - I honestly think this is quite incidental to the overall points the movie is making. The movie was Italian funded and directed, so it was natural to set it in Italy, use Italian extras, etc., but a very, very similar tale could have been told in any location where people are on the margins of society and violence is endemic. You would have an aesthetically very different movie, and I'll grant you that that does matter to the way themes are presented, but Goncharov could have worked just as well set among South African mercenaries, gangsters in New York rather than Naples, or Belfast as the Troubles are beginning.

Now, yes, as I said the aesthetics would necessarily be very different in any of those cases, or others which might have been used. But what *beyond* the aesthetics requires either Italy, or the Mafia? The point of the movie is that violence can't roll the clock back, which requires only two things: Nostalgia for the lost USSR, and violence. I actually think the fact the characters are from the USSR is more important and less easy to change than the fact they are currently in Italy. Even though the few details we get on how the Soviet Union collapased point to a rather different series of events (And yet, eerily, a rather similar outcome to what really happened decades later) it is a place, and more importantly a time, that most characters long to return to; and their response is a dialog with a lot of what might be called Russian pessimism. And worst of all is Icepick Joe, because as an American... he barely even cares. The only time he mentions it is to deliberately needle someone else, not because he himself feels any victory in the Cold War or any particular connection to the West. Imagine, your homeland is humiliated, you can't go back, but even if you could it would be changed forever; and your enemies, who are stronger than ever, don't even have contempt for you. You don't register.

Of course there is a lingering desire for it to return. Rumors of a resurgent Soviet authority are mentioned several times, both as dialog and background details and there's the seemingly incidental exchange between Valery and Rybak just before the bathhouse scene, which reveals a sincere nostalgia for the old Union, even as they made life very difficult for men in their line of work.

By the same token, Andrei is probably the ex-Soviet character least wistful for the Union, and least unhappy with the new world. And why not? Depending on your reading of whether he's Jewish-coded he may have had to surrender that part of himself, but he bought a pretty decent set of circumstances for himself, and he has escaped poverty to a significantly greater degree than other Russian characters (Who are fairly well-to-do but mostly started out better off than Andrei, but he is now clearly the wealthiest of them). And yet as Goncharov says "You never had time, Andrei, you just had false hope." Andrei is as caught up with time, and controlling it, as Goncharov, and as anyone else, the difference is he's trying to maintain *now* rather than go *back*.

But none of this hinges on the Mafia, it all hinges on the fall of the Soviet Union and the complex relationships people have with their places of origin, their childhoods, and the tensions between current reality and rose-tinted nostalgia.

[kurjakani]

idk still anything abt goncharov however the name icepick joe calls to me. i wanna invest in him & draw him

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Sofia, Katya, Icepick Joe

And/Or

Coronabeth, Mercymorn, Dulcinea

Best friends with Icepick Joe, one-nighter with Katya, marry Sofia. Fairly easy since I'm (at least in practice) not into men and Sofia is probably a lot more similar to me culturally.

The TLT one is actually harder because they're all so great and yet so horrible. Is this the real Dulcie or the evil cougar? If it's the real Dulcie, marry her, one-nighter with Corona, best friends with Mercymorn. If it's Cytherea, reverse her and Corona and hope against hope that I can somehow keep the embarrassment of my wife cheating on me with her own sister to sub-Crimson Peak levels of mortifying.

instead of fuck marry kill, there should be an ask game that’s “husband, one night stand, best friend” because that’s the actual tough call

[taureau-soleil]

Tw: medical trauma? If you don’t like uncomfortable topics pertaining to barbaric and invasive surgeries then steer clear of this post pls

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Someone was telling me about a topic that Joe Rogan discussed on his podcast: lobotomies. It sparked discomfort in me

So naturally I went down a rabbit hole of the history of lobotomies and the usage of lobotomies in America.

Here’s the rundown: lobotomies we’re technically* invented by Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz in 1935. He was presented with a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine** in 1949 for his contributions to the medical community. He was inspired by research conducted on chimpanzees that was led by Yale neuroscientist John Fulton.

Moniz’s work inspired Walter Freeman, a neurology professor at George Washington University. Walter Freeman had no credentials that gave him the a-ok to perform surgeries (he was not a trained medical professional…)

Freeman believed that lobotomies performed by his equal, William Beecher Scoville from Yale, were too technical and messy. So after practicing on some ALREADY DEAD bodies, Freeman started to use his own technique on living folks. His technique?

Sticking fucking icepick-like tools up underneath peoples eyelids, breaking through bone, and then wiggling the icepick back and forth until the patient stopped struggling.

Freeman showboated*** his technique at meet-ups for the medical community. He performed several lobotomies for audiences of professionals, who didn’t seem to care that he had no qualifications for this type of work. All they cared about was the fact that his patients came out as zombies. Zombies who no longer had to inhabit the overcrowded asylums in America.

Surprisingly his technique wasn’t 100% doodoo, because some people were able to walk away and live out the rest of their lives as normal. But not everyone who went under the pick came out as the same person. A lot of people he performed lobotomies on had completely different personalities than before. Some lost the ability to speak (shoutout to Rosemary Kennedy). Some only lived a few more days until they violently convulsed and died. No matter, though. The medical community slapped a bandaid on the negativity of this. How?

Before and after pictures of the patients were circulated. The before pictures all being distasteful representations of the person they once were. The after pictures showed the public a dressed up, made up, glassy eyed version of these people. It worked for some, so how could it be something bad right???

More than 3500 lobotomies were performed by Freeman until 1967. This was when antidepressants made their way onto the playing field.

* Moniz’s name for his procedure was leukotomy. The term “lobotomy” was coined by the American medical community. Moniz was also not the first person to perform psychosurgeries. Just the first to perform a lobotomy.

** Despite many concerned families pressing for Moniz to have his Nobel Prize revoked, he’s still a holder because of his scientific contributions…

*** Freeman, at one point, performed two-handed lobotomies. An ice pick in each hand, an ice pick in each eye socket. His story ends with him losing his medical license after a patient of his died in the middle of him performing one of his famous transorbital lobotomies. After that, he hopped in his “lobotomobile” (yes he called it that) and went around the country to re-visit his old patients until he died of cancer in 1972.

Resources:

https://thejns.org/focus/view/journals/neurosurg-focus/43/3/article-pE4.xml

https://lithub.com/a-brief-and-awful-history-of-the-lobotomy/

https://thejns.org/focus/view/journals/neurosurg-focus/43/3/article-pE6.xml

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/lobotomys-back

https://www.npr.org/2005/11/16/5014080/my-lobotomy-howard-dullys-journey

https://lisawallerrogers.com/2009/01/16/266/amp/

[prehistoriics]

Legend’s Land.

words -; 1,868 characters -; my own sona, mentions of the hermits, apathetic xisuma (practically xisumavoidd’s character :]).

    She’s heard talk about the ‘legends’, as they were called, who were in Icepick many years before the current group was. Many great builds were risen up from the ground on that island and its surrounding archipelago, it seemed, and after a long while they were left behind. Not very many have visited the island in the world, mainly because it was over a million miles away, but a select few had been brave enough to take on the trek.              But that number was about to go up by one.

The redhead had gathered up an overabundance of food, rockets, and everything in between. Before you ask; no, she wasn’t crazy. Hardly anybody in this universe was.. although, I could end up being ultimately wrong. Leaving absolutely no word of her leave at her base, her shops, or anywhere, she started heading off. 

Who knows how long it’s been, she stopped keeping track a few nights ago, so only a omnipresent entity knows. She’s seen hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of messages go by on her communicator, and she’s seen no concrete structures in the ocean ever since the Icepick shopping district. She was tired, and it showed - phantoms would soar behind her every night, but luckily, she would fly fast enough to not get her arse kicked. 

Letting out a yawn, she nearly fell out of the sky and out of the clouds, but that’s when she saw it; the tall, monument-like structure. Eyes widening, she softly coasted down onto the weathered ceiling of the top floor, kicking away some of the leaves and other debris on it. “H-Holy shit..” She muttered, glancing down into the structure, before jumping down onto the second floor, staring at the huge, faded machine before her. She slowly approached it, wiping cobwebs away.

She pressed the button, waiting for the small jingle to play it’s melodic, yet choppy tune, and it did! But.. it was also somewhat distorted. Still recognizable, but distorted. She backed up slightly, trying her best to ignore the crunching of cyan glass below her sneakers. Suddenly, the moon went back to hiding and the sun rose. Nobody was on right now, not on Icepick, but.. what about this part? Shaking her head, she dismissed the thought. “No, no, silly! They all left many many years ago! Xisuma, Grian, Joe- all of them! N-None of them can be here..” she told herself, furrowing her eyebrows afterwards. “..right?” She added quietly, before going down to the bottom floor. The base was less freaky in the sunlight, sure, but with it being abandoned? It was still freaky. 

Taking a deep breath, she started to head off toward the rest of the island. Wait, no, what about Mumbo's base, you may ask? We'll find that out next. She just forgot, that's all! Head turning to where Mumbo's base would and should've been, was nothing. A little bit down left of it, however, revealed where it was: partially sunk in the water. Eyebrows furrowing, she flew over to the architechs railway stop, immediately hoping off once it swayed, unstable. She towered herself up, just so she wouldn't fall into the ice cold water, which was bound to be littered with drowned. She perched on the cobblestone pillar, furrowed eyebrows scanning around at the massive circular base. She wouldn't dare to touch it, it could possibly ruin it! So, instead, she got finished looking and flew off. I'm not quite feeling up to describing the ruin of everyone's bases, so, let's just skip that, shall we?

Second to last, but certainly not least, she ended up next to the battlefield of the Civil War. It was raining by now, but yet the flames on the ground never seemed to extinguish. Coasting down to the ground, she stuck one of her hands out to the flame, and.. immediately brought it back, because holy shit, that was hot. Even with the pouring rain falling on her hand, it still felt like it was burning, hell, it looked like it was blistering. Ignoring the pain, she got ready to fly up to the G-Team base, but noticed it was about to collapse on itself. It probably wasn't a good idea to explore it. Turning her head to the team S.T.A.R. base. It was in way better shape than the opposing base, due to it being built out of stone bricks, but she still didn't trust it. 

Taking off to go look at Xisuma’s base, Em let out a hefty sigh. It was sad to see this world in ruin; no sign of life anywhere, except for the flora and fauna that had overrun the entire place. Every base was a death trap; she had almost died five times trying to tour Stress's base, but failed miserably and nearly died. 

Flying over the shopping district, something- someone near the stock exchange caught her eye. Curiosity getting the best of her, she flew down to the weathered ground and structure, cautiously approaching the figure. They appeared to be non-responsive at the moment, completely still, leaning against one of the pillars, but breathing yet. Thunder roared in the background. Taking her trident out of its holster just in case, she went on her tip-toes and tapped the man on the shoulder. 

The man seemed to jerk awake, sending a shocked Em back a few steps. Sipping the drink that was on one of the slightly raised up mounds of quartz, he groaned quietly, seemingly out of annoyance. “Alright,” He began, wiping his hand on his face. “Who's here, I know it isn't one of ya Hermits; Xisuma said y’ wouldn't be back for a.. long while. Until an anniversary stream,” he paused once more, taking another sip of the drink. Then, he glanced at Em. “Ah. Don't think I've seen one of you, before. What are you, a gremlin?” He asked, laughing after, as the redhead calmly wrapped her hands around her trident, eyes narrowing at the neutral colored man in front of her, electricity buzzing through the three points of the prismarine weapon. Ooh, this should be interesting; a clash of colors!

“I'm not a gremlin,” calmly stated Em, the other just laughing more in return. “..but if I'm a gremlin to you are you a giant to me?” She asked, raising a suspecting eyebrow. The taller one stopped laughing, eyes narrowing at the shorter one, grabbing his sword. She had only said practically same thing he had said to her; just in her eyes, yet he was resorting to violent retaliation. Tightly gripping the trident, she took a few steps back, ready for whatever would come next, sword in a comfortable position to come out at a moment's notice. 

Hand on the sword, and hands on the Trident, the two were ready for a battle. AX made the first move, which cut Em's sweater. Eyebrows furrowing, Em jabbed the trident at the other, one point jabbing him. She swiftly pulled out the weapon, put it back in its holster, switching to her sword rather quickly. Of course, she wouldn't attack two times in a row; that'd be rude. She's not rude. Swinging his sword at her, AX managed to swing it into her side, swiftly taking hit out. Wincing in pain, Em gritted her teeth, and swung her sword at him, which he parried with his own sword. Immediately after, he swung the diamond sword at Em again, putting a deep gash in her shoulder, making it apparent to her that he was not playing nice. Em made one more swipe at the other, which put a gash in his stomach, then she switched her sword for her trident and quickly scrambled up onto the hill behind the stock exchange, catching her breath afterward. Ignoring the excruciating pain per usual, she shakily aimed her trident at the other. Squinting her eyes to try to find him easier, which didn’t work out too well.

But somehow, with luck, the trident hit the other and so did a crack of lightning. Grinning ever so slightly, while also gritting her teeth, she grabbed her trident as it flew back to her. “What the hell?!” AX shouted, glaring up at the other on the hill. “That wasn't fair! You're not supposed to do two attacks in a row when th-” He started, but Em cut him off. “You do know that either side isn’t s'posed to cheat, right? You parried my attack and then swung at me. By simple and universal rules, I should do an unfair move in return.” She finished, grinning mockingly down at AX, who was furious. 

“Oh, you liittle shit..” He grumbled, climbing up the hill to the redhead. She stared him up, daring not to show her fear and her anxiety in her face. Muted blue eyes stared down into light green ones, both full of malice, even though this was the first time they had met.

With AX focused on her, Em brought her trident back a bit, slow enough that AX wouldn’t notice, as if to throw it slightly. On the other hand, with Em focused on AX, the rat man himself slowly brought out his sword. Taking a gentle step back, Em released the fully charged trident from her hand, letting it fly into the other’s side. In the blink of an eye, the other’s diamond sword was at her throat, but it hadn’t moved any further. 

Taking another step back, she remained cautious of the sharp edge, and walked around to the side of the man who was now on his knees, seemingly frozen. She quickly pulled the trident out of his side, eyebrows furrowing. She grinned even more, breath hitching. The sun started to rise, the rain letting up, allowing the thunder and lightning to subside. She wiped the trident off on the overgrown grass, putting it back in its holster. Taking off her sopping wet sweater, she grimaced at the large blood stains, but wrapped it around her waist nonetheless. 

Xisumaa was impaled by pastelcomputer.

“Maybe next time, you shouldn’t be such an asshole.” She spat out at the body, eyes narrowing. Hair extremely wet as well got pulled up into a messy bun, the multicolored roses in it only moving slightly. Taking a deep breath, she quickly ate a few golden carrots, which instantly made her feel better. She coasted down to the ground of the shopping district, and started rummaging through the various chests. 

A while later, her satchel was full of extra stuff, but mainly stuff she would need. Glancing around once more, she lifted off to visit Xisuma’s base. Nearing the base and almost going down, she noticed the state of it. Using rockets to easily keep herself up, she looked down. 

Inside the base, there was an overabundance of guardians, along with a baby Elder Guardian in the middle. Gritting her teeth, she decided to start heading back home. After a while, however, she realized something: she was out of rockets. She sighed, feeling herself fall already. She shut her eyes, bracing for impact. 

pastelcomputer fell from a high place.

Well. She was back at her base. Time to wrap up her wounds...