themotherlobehq - Tumblr blog

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It's them! Family!!

I love your drawing style as well as how you've colored and shaded the characters. I keep looking at everything because it delights me.

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Neat art, and poor Hollis. Good that she's got a friend with her!

d - discomfort

In general, this is a WIP for a mini comic about Truman and Hollis. But I liked this work so lol first page

Bonus

and Truman is ready to protect his friends

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Painted more screenshots

Learned 'bout how hard it is to colour in lighter colours once the darker colour is down

Oh neon and mist I tried

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Hollis headcanons while I'm at it:

She's agnostic but raised christian and still finds comfort in faith which is why her quiet place is a church

also bc I think there was a church at her university she'd study at bc it was typically quiet and empty (source: my uni had a chapel/theater i could just sit in and study when there wasn't somethin goin on)

any friendships she made in medical school have since been strained or fully broken bc they either sided w/dr potts or took a neutral stance, the latter one somehow hurt more

dr potts is still a well respected doctor and ppl still mostly believe the method he stole from hollis is his, which is a wound in her history she'd rather just ignore

hollis did have a gambling problem long before any mental tampering happend, but that was years ago when she was just out of high school and thought she could take on the world just bc she had rich parent money and psychic cheats backing her up. she cleaned up and got help for it when she was getting her first degree

hollis' favorite passtimes include painting, bird watching, and swimming, the latter she plans to do ofc while on her very much earned vacation.

bisexual

she never wants to raise children but cares a lot about the interns

that's all i got off the top of my head

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fork

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Hollis being the heart of the Psychonauts. In this essay I will-

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I've been thinking that the shift could show that Hollis' sanctuary / an important of her metaphorical heart isn't safe from her fears anymore. Nor is it from her bad coping mechanisms even though Razputin's meddling led to that.

The hearts in the stained glass window repeat the motif of hearts through out Hollis' Hot Streak. She's kneeling in front of and on a table under the window but the table looks like a casket. And her original Mental Connection linked Death and Risks. The hearts are a stand-in for Hollis and her feelings in the other sections of the level.

The heart racer Raz helps in the racing game, linking Winning and Help and helping him. The heart he can only reach when he unrigs the Pillinko machine by linking Feelings and Share.

Returning to the chapel. It could be read that Hollis knows deep down still that she's risking her heart / her feelings / what she actually cares about but the bad ideas have overtaken everything. They've forcefully shifted her perspective, running on existing fears of hers.

Also, this interpretation ties well into the hub being a six-sided DIE in a MORGUE.

Even more. Lady Luctopus has a green heart Raz needs to whittle down to defeat her, and a pink heart functions as a trampoline to reach the green one.

I am always thinking so hard about the choice for church imagery in Hollis' mind and what it means for her character. I would say for sure that her inner-sanctum when trying to solve a crisis being a church would suggest that she is religious or had a religious upbringing.

The pews are full of figments of hospital patients. They are nondescript figures but their presence paired with her area to process is by the pulpit suggests that she sees herself as a sort of guide to others in this time, especially helping the helpless find a sense of salvation.

At the very front of this church rest the main dilemma Hollis faces, and based on her train of thought and general dialogue, it is easy to assume that this is a mental connection that she comes back to often. Risk with Death. The stained glass window behind this tableau depicts a shining sun, beneath which lies a cloud, beneath which lies a fade from blue to pink, not unlike a sunset. It could just be pretty decoration or could be indicative of the idea that just beyond any clouded idea or concept (taking a risk) there lies the possbility of an end (death).

I feel it could be argued either way that she has a positive or negative relationship with religion based on the imagery alone, but I feel it is safest and likely more accurate to simply say that it is a complicated one. We don't know anything about religion in the Psychonauts universe, which is why this choice of imagery was so fascinating to me. We have no clue what the major religions are like, or how psychic abilities would possibly play into religious affiliation or scrutiny. Not making any assumptions on that front, the symbolism of this being Hollis' safe space in her mind says that she, at the very least, sees a church building as a safe location, likely due to events in her past. She would want to come here to be alone with her thoughts, sort of like processing thoughts and seeking help for herself or others through prayer or self-reflection.

But this idea of Risk = Death being at the very center of the church could also imply a type of religious trauma that caused her to experience a form of death anxiety, barring her from knowing what risks are appropriate and therefore taking none to protect herself and others.

Despite all of this, there is another route that could be taken to interpret this symbolism that could go hand-in-hand with religious affiliation or could go unconnected. For many of those who are not religious, a church is still an important space which often reflects two major changes in a person's life: funerals or weddings.

After the hot streak section of the level, we see that the church windows now have hearts on the windows. Hollis is kneeling on the ground, something that would typically be associated with prayer, but she is gambling on the table....the table which could arguably be like a casket at the front of the church.

Another way to look at the stained glass motifs could indicate the first one being like her focusing on the idea of death as an impending inevitability to be avoided at all costs. The church being covered in hearts later on has a notably different vibe. I am reeeaching here but the first one could be more like a funeral and the later one could be more like a wedding, a time in a church that has a notably more carefree vibe than a lot of church services (although this does vary from church to church and denominationally) and Hollis does mention having a husband in one piece of dialogue relating to the socks and sandals....

Who knows! I am doing some stretching and just bringing up some symbolism. Please feel free to bring up more symbolism that you might find or other interpretations!

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Hollis learned while growing up to keep quiet about when she was stressed. She shouldered a lot of responsibility because her parents held huge expectations on her for grades, behavior (how she dressed, etc.), and the like. They only praised when she was 'perfect'.

She knows this can and will backfire on her again. But working under Dr. Potts and not being able to speak up of his intellectual theft ingrained those patterns even deeper into her mind. The message she she received was: "It's no use speaking up about my problems."

She hasn't found the time yet how to heal from this wound. (And she's been avoiding it, as well, because it hurts a lot.)

Her parents used in-vitro fertilisation for her conception, believing they could create the perfect child.

do any of u have any hollis family headcanons? i dont ever see much abt her out there in terms of headcanons but there has to be at least one hollis superfan out there right. speak to me.

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The Maternity Ward being a roulette game ties well into that headcanon that Hollis' parents projected her ambitions onto her.

Like with roulette, they bet on getting 'the perfect child' but that is. Impossible to predict and the concept fallible in itself. Children aren't numbers; they're people who have their own characters separate from their parents. It falls further apart once you consider factors beyond the control of the parents and people they'd emply / influence to mold Hollis as they wanted to.

do any of u have any hollis family headcanons? i dont ever see much abt her out there in terms of headcanons but there has to be at least one hollis superfan out there right. speak to me.

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milla vodello jumpscare, im trying some different rendering style stuff 🩵

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You know, I wouldn't be surprised if all of the experimentation that the Psychic Seven did prior to officially becoming the Psychonauts was part of the reason why the Psychonauts afterwards treated a lot of the things they did as bad and illegal.

The Psychonauts likely recognized that as valuable as those early experiments were for data and deep diving into aspects of the human psyche, they were also clearly dangerous and arguably made things get as bad as they did for the Psychic Seven. Thus the Psychic Seven retroactively put in rules to regulate certain things to ensure that those kinds of boundaries would never be crossed again. Kinda like how after accidents, disasters and malpractice, regulatory groups put in stricter rules to ensure that they can't happen again.

I'd like to think it'd have been a halfway decision between Truman and the remaining Psychic Six, something they all agreed upon simply because they recognized that the damage caused by Cruller (whatever it was he did from their perspectives) and Lucrecia was something that could have been avoided.

Oh definitely the Psychic 7 & Truman's experiences with just Maligula alone probably brought a lot to the table when it comes to what kind of practices the Psychonauts, government organization, has to disavow or regulate tightly.

one thing I usually think about when it comes to this stuff is Heptadome Harry/Helmut's brain being just found in the Heptadome is that like.

like it or not Otto's blaise response to seeing a brain in that dome implies that the gang was not unused to seeing maybe one or two other dead brains being used for psychic research.

Which brings up soooooo many questions like where did that come from?

Why a disembodied brain??

did you. get it. legally??? (i doubt they've ever done anything quite as illegal as grave robbing but like maybe they got in contact with facilities that deal with bodies donated to science)

my personal headcanon for Otto never checked that brain and learned he had his friend in his brain bank is bc

1) well its dead obvs he wouldnt think otherwise

2) him checking that shit could be down right prohibited by that point without the right checks in place.

Which dovetails into Helmut being one of the undocumented brains that Otto can wink and live with being borrowed (if you decide to ask him permission first!), bc it's wrapped up in a bunch of legal paperwork and red tape he just hasn't had the interest or time to get clearedup yet.

raz just gets away with breaking all the red tape bc hes a child and isn't dealing with paperwork. he doesn't care he's on a mission to save his mentor. the moral here is break laws kids /j

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The recent trend in fanworks making the Aquato parents into (unintentionally) abusive people to their children makes me uncomfortable.

They‘re the most obvious family around, with the most presence, of course. They’re are obviously imperfect and have dysfunctions in their relationships. Some of them really need to face how they’re treating each other and specifically Razputin. (See Donatella.) And projecting onto fictional characters is a thing.

I don’t think people mean anything malicious about. But singling out the Aquato parents to interpret them as outright abusive and even going so far as to claim that Razputin - sometimes all of their children - would be better off with the Psychonauts / Milla / Sasha is a choice they need to think about.

(Among those three, I only see Milla as a good choice for parenting material, which isn’t the point of this post.)

Especially because we have a pair of prominent, canonly abusive parents with Loboto’s progenitors who don’t face that amount of scrutiny in fanworks.

The Aquato are poor. They are immigrants. And with the hints remaining from Psychonauts 1 (however badly it was portrayed) and Psychonauts 2, they are also Romani. Each of these three are marginalized identities. They face oppression, violence, and often have little resources to protect themselves. Additionally, they all intersect, which creates another marginalization.

(I might go deeper into this topic in another, longer post.)

The main setting of Psychonauts is based on the USA, whose goverment - among other horrible things - has forcefully taken non-white children from their families and put them into white orphanages or white families to erase their identities, both in the past and still in the present, and force their own culture onto them to destroy these people. The USA aren’t unique in that - many European countries have committed and are committing these crimes. But again, the context of the Psychonauts games is in the USA.

So. To me it feels like that maybe some of the creators buy into the propaganda. Believe that Razputin, a second-generation immigrant, a child of first-generation immigrants, who knows his identity as Grulovian well like the rest of his family, who is poor, who is likely Romani so people likely chased off his family or refused to give them a permanent home in the USA before so they had to keep moving,

would be better off with an USA government organization with people who have no understanding of his identity and culture.

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Despite the Psychonautism being at relatively normal levels I still have things to say

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Local sweetheart accidentally turns Whispering Rock’s orphanage into a crisp || A Psychonauts animatic / AMV 🧠

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Hi I'm Alice I draw stuff!! I'm really into psychonauts right now aaannnddddddd you need to know that Cassie O'Pia is the best woman e v e r