A Healer's Hands
poll results came in: team whump, medic is broken down to be made an example of
cw: gore, medic whump, creepy whumper, team dynamics, captivity, torture
The Medic's crew stumbled through the cell door, one after the other.
Captain, with a black eye and a limp, lifted two fingers to their temple in a mock solute. Their clothes were torn and there was blood on their uniform's collar.
Youngest trembled as one of the henchmen shoved them inside the gated door. They looked around, eyes brighter than a deer's in headlights. "H-hey Medic." They wrapped their arms around themself.
"Hey," Medic swallowed down the twisting feeling that rose up. He forced his voice to soften, to not carry any of the sharp panic he felt. "Where are you hurt?"
"We're fine," Captain cut in, gesturing behind Medic's shoulder. "It's--"
Medic had already whirled around.
Lieutenant.
The Lieutenant held onto the cell wall with a shaking grip. Where he touched it, blood trickled down the stones in a steady faucet run.
Drip.
Drip.
"Lieutenant?"
He glanced up. His nose was gushing red. It stained his uniform, bright and electric in the dull light.
"Turns out those fuckers can throw a punch after all," said Lieutenant with a hoarse laugh. Still unceremoniously reckless.
But he let Medic hold a makeshift bandage--ripped from Medic's shirt-- to his nose.
As Lieutenant sat down, Medic crouched beside him, correcting how he was holding the bandage. "Don't tilt your head up."
Lieutenant winced when Medic readjusted the bandage.
Medic drew away and reevaluated the situation. "It's broken," he said.
"It’s just a new look I’m trying out – call it avant-garde." Lieutenant tried to laugh but ended up grimacing. He waved Medic away. "I'll survive."
Medic shook his head. "Wiseass." But he smiled. Then. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
Lieutenant tilted his head against the wall, pieces of choppy hair falling away to reveal a swollen eye and pulsing bruises. He closed his eyes. Through a clenched jaw, he managed, "I think they broke my ribs."
Medic swallowed down a wave of helplessness. "Just stay still."
Lieutenant kept his eyes closed, breathing shallowly. "My pleasure."
Medic turned to Captain and Youngest. "So, you and you, where are you injured?" He only asked to make conversation. He had already identified that Youngest's arm was dislocated, hanging loosely at their side. And on Captain's right thigh was a raw-edged wound, seeping and damaged.
Medic took off his jacket, ready to tear it into makeshift bandages and a sling.
But neither looked at him.
Youngest was staring at something over Medic's shoulder. They pressed back into the wall, shaking.
"No," they whispered. "No. Not again."
Captain put a comforting hand on their shoulder, mouth set in a thin line.
Electric fear whispered a spider-like path down Medic's spine. They turned just as the cell door opened.
Whumper entered with two henchmen strolling behind them. Whumper grinned, teeth canine-sharp. His blood-red hair was tied back, accentuating fox-like features. He didn't look quite human-- too tall, too much of a bounce in his walk.
And he wouldn't stop smiling.
He swung a crowbar.
Even Lieutenant flinched.
Oh.
Oh.
Whumper arched an eyebrow when Medic stood his ground. "You're Medic?"
Medic glanced at Lieutenant-- saw panic and web-woven fear-- then back at Whumper. "Yes."
Whumper flicked the crowbar side to side. He kept talking, a paper mache smile at the corner of his mouth. "I don't appreciate you wrecking what I'm trying to build here."
Medic failed to understand. "I'm a medic. I have to provide care," he said automatically.
His head buzzed. He couldn't-- couldn't think clearly.
Whumper appeared to consider this. He tilted his head to the side. "I see. Well, I have to do things too, I get it."
"Yeah. Wait. No, what?"
The henchmen grabbed Medic. One kicked him in the back of the knees, forcing him to kneel.
Medic struggled, lashing out like a trapped animal.
A henchman brought the edge of their gun over Medic's head and Medic slumped forward.
His vision suddenly doubled.
The short-wired tension burst into flame.
Captain lunged forward. "Leave him alone!"
It took two henchmen to restrain Captain, pinning their arms behind them, and another to kick Lieutenant in the ribs, so he doubled over coughing. Incapacitated.
Whumper leaned over Medic, tilting his chin up to look him in the eye. "You should have left well enough alone," he whispered.
Medic snarled something unintelligible. A curse. A plea. He didn't know.
Whumpr straightened. To the others, he said, "You all break as easily as his hands will. And if you don't believe me? Watch."
There was a sharp intake of breath. Realization hit with a dull, sick thud. "No!" Lieutenant cried out, "No! No-- don't!"
But the henchmen had dragged Medic's hand out and splayed it on the tiles, kicking him when he tried to pull it away.
Whumper lifted the crowbar.
Medic's eyes widened in horror.
"No-- no, nonono! Please--" His voice arched into a desperate cry, more animal than human.
Crack.
A splintering sound.
All Medic could see was white. Electric pain filled every nerve, spilled into every bone, coating his teeth and burning-- burning, burning, burning.
A terrible sound ripped itself out of his throat.
And then again--
Crack.
His left hand.
Medic screamed.
Maybe he had screamed before.
Had always screamed.
Maybe he would scream forever.
Darkness filled the corners of his vision, blurring the sharp flashes of red of white--
Electric, pulsing red.
Burning, vicious white.
Blood trickled down his arms, bright and throbbing with a cinching pain.
Whumper wiped the gory crowbar on Medic's shirt.
His henchmen let the unconscious medic slump to the floor, little more than a bundle of clothes. They released Captain, who sank to the cell floor, unable to look away from Medic.
Whumper bent down by Lieutenant, whose breaths were coming in sharp drags. He wiped a tear off of Liutenant's face. "Crying?"
"No." His voice shook.
Whumper smiled generously. "Oh, no." He stood. "Tomorrow, one of you will offer up the information on your base. I do not make idle threats."
The door locked on the blood-soaked cell.
Lieutenant muffled a sob.
"We...we can't," said Captain. Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry.
They didn't know if they were apologizing to the unconscious Medic or to what remained of his hands.
tagging the people who interacted with the poll: @acer-gaysimpstuff, @yet-another-heathen, @another-whump-sideblog
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on reflection, i think there's a symmetry to, say, doctors who are willing to refer patients to osteopaths or other ""holistic"" healthcare providers and the susceptibility of engineers to certain kinds of crankdom (of the "i-disproved-relativity-in-my-garage" type). both are forms of scientific training of a sort, but they're heavily outcome-focused and not theoretically focused. in large part, this is good! you do not as a doctor need to have a robust theoretical defense of every treatment you provide to patients, and it would be impossible to do so, because medicine is a huge and complicated subject. you do not, as an engineer, need to have a subtle grasp of theoretical physics to build a bridge; you just need to know what the latest developments in bridge-building are.
but it means in both cases you can have people who are skilled in their field, or who even excel, but who don't understand very well why certain techniques work. and in the case of alt medicine, where there has been considerable work to try to obfuscate or deceive people on how shaky the theoretical basis for their techniques are (stuff that literally if you remember your high-school physics and biology at all will make you go, "wait, there is no plausible mechanism for this, that's not how any of this works"), doctors who do not have time to read studies on RCT trials of every type of medicine they have ever heard of will blithely recommend stuff to patients that's actually complete horseshit, especially if the culture around them has been normalizing that woo as part of "holistic" therapy for the last hundred years, spurred on by alternative medicine practitioners and a public with a fear of needles and ~chemicals~ that medical practitioners have not done enough to allay.
it does not help that medicine only emerged very recently from being about 99% bullshit. like maybe at the end of the 19th century at best medicine was starting to be put on a broad-based empirical and theoretical footing--before that it's truly insane the stuff that wasn't just considered perfectly normal medical practice, but was considered serious Science. i mean, this is why we developed double-blind studies in the first place--because theoretical explanations of medical treatments are still necessarily often secondary to the process of finding ones that actually work, so we need really robust mechanisms to avoid confirmation bias or outright charlatanry. and while mainstream medicine is far from perfect in this respect, "alternative medicine" is all far, far worse.
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Simon's joke of "soup of theseus" is so damn good & way more layered than most people think.
Okay so first- what is the ship of Theseus?
So amongst his many misadventures and legends the ship of theseus was a ship the Athenians believed connected them to the divine living person that was Theseus. The thing is, he was maybe Poseidon's adopted kid/the King if Athen's son and probably not real (or at least if he did his misadventures were super exaggerated as royals = divity stories are) but the fate the Athenians had for him & Apollo (the 6 labors is a fun legend that explains their connection and what the original ship may have been) was so intense, they would constantly give maintence as a form of religious worship to said ship on the island of Delos (where Apollo's most sacred sancutary is) every year it would dock to pay respects.
Btw we don't need to know the specifics of Theseus but he did infamously slay a minotar and Finn did have a good exchange with the Mannish Man to get the enchiridion aka the book that sets Betty & Simon on the paths they are on now so that's neat af
So if you've ever heard about the ship of Theseus being paradox- it comes from the critique that's always existed about that ship's maintenance & religious practices tldr if you are constantly replacing each rotted and borken part of a ship, is it still the same ship?
The soup is a paradox like the ship
That paradox exists in many many scifi and adventure stories like the Nier series & Ghost in the Shell but in this instance we got to first look at the joke literally. Farm world's Finn's wife's soup is the same as the ship. The original soup farm world HW made no longer exists on a technicality, but the way Finn and his kids continue to add on and consume the soup is exactly like the Athenians. It's about the intent of carrying on the memory and keeping the soup around to honor the dead rather than the soup's original recipe {which also is incredibly sad & imples that farmworld Finn is both coping and never learned the original soup recipe}. It's a beautiful way to honor their dead mom/wife and it makes you wonder if that Finn did die if his kids will continue the practice.
But the paradox goes beyond the soup & into our reality
A lot of people have noticed that Fionna's last name is Campbell and Campbells is a real soup brand that would've been around before the great mushroom war. When Marceline gets sick as a kid, Simon goes great lenghts to get her chicken soup- that only worked out because the primordial version of the Mother Gum assisting {which is extreme Bubbeline foreshadowing}. And in that scene the can low key is a campbell design. But what if I told you there's more?
In Cheers, the tv show Simon is seen constantly watching and referencing throughout the original run of Adventure Time & in the recent Fionna and Cake had Carla Tortelli work at a Canpbell's Factory.
Neat references aside the soup ends the moment the main trio hit the remote button and I have a BA in psychology & interest in childrens media and entertainment that I want to milk for once. Metaphorical intention is beyond relevant episode specifics but actually the foundation of Fionna and Cake when it comes to the paradox.
Simon making the soup of Theseus joke is the main problem Fionna and Cake has to address
If Simon can summon his & Prismo's au from his head without proper MMS (Magic, Madness, and Sadness) where does Simon the human start and Ice King end?
As viewers who grew up alongside the series, the majority of 25+ watchers are finding Simon, older Finn, and Fionna painfully relatable because good fucking god we are all traumatized because of the ongoing pandemic.
If you want to focus on the main topic you can skip this part. But if you want to get very serious for a minute, please stay. The majority of people wont to accept what I just said about the pandemic being ongoing because global governments pretending the pandemic is over, the rise of depression and escapism in real time at a social level at a global level but especially in the US where the series is being made, and the daily interactions we have with most people refusing to mask up {with a violent reaction} when there still isn't a cure for COVID has created the perfect enviroment for most people to not accept change or crave extreme change. Fionna and Cake tackles these 2 very common forms of how depression tends to manifest when it's not fully manic to be displayed through Simon (self isolation from poor coping due to loss, detachment from society, dwelling on the past to the point it effects social interactions, extreme forms of religious practice, etc.) and Fionna/Finn (pretending everything is fine, avoidance, going through the bare minimum motions to survive, escapsim and dream of grandure, not caring about sel preservation, no/lack of self control with sweets/coffee, etc.). And I've noted there's a subset of AT viewers who don't relate or find the depections too real to the point they're upset the show's tone isn't as light hearted as AT. The thing is when a global disabling event happens, unless you were under 10 when it happened and even then it's a 50/50 because you probably did lose or know somebody who did die these last several years, you will have some kind of trauma response to it whether you like it or not. Hell, some of you unknowlingly have a gap in your memory about 2020 specifically due to inconsistent sleep schedules that have nothing to do with the shrinking of the brain mass COVID causes that we all call "brain fog" and now that I pointed it out you're probably going to go stare at a wall for 5 mins {sorry btw, doubly if you have long COVID and this is how you found out what brain fog partially is}. As someone who's been dealing with depression since I was a child, it's okay to be not okay given the last several years and doubly if you've been conscious long enough to see the US freefall into fascism too {which I hope encourages those who weren't aware that's been happening to go look into that because we can't get into it right now}. Because I unfortunately know what manic depression can look like - if you find yourself relating to Simon a little too much during ep 3, please talk to somebody who is licensed and trained to do so {not me, I haven't done suicide prevention work since 2017 and am not licensed- I genuienly won't be enough of a resource} okay? Don't throw away yourself nor change yourself for others only. You need to work to accept the past, move on to live in the present, and change yourself for yourself. It won't be easy and resources are out there to not do it alone, alright?
Becuase of how paradoxial and fluid mental health (espeically undiagnosed depression) can be and how AT has it's own version with MMS, could Simon have unconscious MMS still because of Betty's with without a battery but can't tap into it because of his mental state? And could Ice King as we once knew him even be considered a proper person Simon could return too?
The original wish of why Ice King's appearance & abilities is the way it is IS because of Evergreen's impression on Gunter {Evergreen was one of the ice elementals of the past btw- go watch the original Adventure Time for that context}. So Ice King isn't even an original character, just the crown building off the wishes and manifestations of each bearer by emulating a warped version of Evergreen. And that's the main reason why I speculate Ice Thing aka Gunter the Penguin is chill af to the point he got married and can exist with less gems. His wish didn't build off of power to protect Marceline (Simon) nor the power to copy Evergreen (Original Gunter).
As the main trio jump from connected universe to connected universe, more Simons and crowns will appear that are even more removed from our Ooo's crown and it's version of Ice King or Ice Prince or Winter King will only manifest because of the prior and current wishes made. So if Simon does get a crown that isn't the Ooo crown, will the Ice King that once existed even be THE Ice King he wants to be? And will Simon want to be Ice King or an Ice King when the trio do return to his Ooo?
The crown and it's many versions is a paradox that can only be resolved if Simon and Fionna can work together but also set aside their depression to address what they both really want and what that wish's intention will do to themselves and those around them. In short, shit's deep
I applaud the team for Fionna and Cake for tackling such a layered problem and I'm excited to see how Simon's soup of emotions, Fionna's growth, & magic crown of Theseus is addressed.
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