#sci fi ask

I can think of several ways it would be possible. My instinct was that it would have a high mortality rate but then I realised that I actually have no way of knowing because this is pretty far from modern torture.

 I can see the appeal in this sort of fictional idea. However that comes with the proviso that torture is generally very very low tech. We live in a world where you can literally 3D print an oesophagus and the most common form of torture globally is hitting people.

 There is a really strong tendency in fiction to show these incredibly complicated, high tech torture devices: often implying that torture is complicated, ‘skilled’ and can be ‘improved’ with technology. None of these things are true.

 Personally I feel like these tropes feed in to torture apologia. They’re not the worst form of it out there, but they’re false and they function in a way that supports what torturers say over what survivors say.

 I think that you can probably write this kind of remote control press-button-for-pain scenario without tripping in to that. But only if you’re aware it’s a possible problem in the first place.

 As for how it could work- My first thought as a chemist was ‘by releasing something into the blood’ but I don’t think that would work as you’ve described. I think it would require a much larger implant then you’re implying in order to release a sufficient quantity of anything.

 Which is possible, arm implants along these lines exist. They’re bulky enough to feel through the skin and they need to be replaced periodically to keep functioning. I’ve never had one and I’m not a medic so I don’t know any more then that.

 If you’re willing to research medical implants and adjust the idea a little… Well we often use capsaicin as a way to test an animal still has the capacity to feel pain*.

 The LD50 in mice (lethal dose for 50% of the tested population) is 47.2mg/kg. It is possible to be poisoned by capsaicin although I do not have much information on what that looks like in humans. There’d be risk of poisoning from repeated abuse by the guards in this story. There’d also be a risk of poisoning if the device itself malfunctioned or was damaged and say… burst.

 Something smaller (I think the word ‘chip’ implies something quite small) would work differently because it wouldn’t have the space to hold a significant amount of any chemical.

 I think that electric shocks are probably the most likely method with a smaller device. Which also comes with a significant risk of killing someone.

 I’ll be honest I have no idea what kind of difference it would make if the electricity was applied underneath someone’s skin. It isn’t something I’ve seen before. I suspect the heat generation might cause problems. It could damage tissues and cause blood clots which would increase the chance of lethal heart attacks or strokes.

 If the heat killed a lot of tissue around the device I think that could lead to… serious problems, possibly death. Having a lot of dead, rotting tissue in the body is pretty dangerous.

 Generally repeated electric shocks kill, sometimes from heart failure, sometimes from things like falling injuries.

 It’s also (unsurprisingly) incredibly painful. Alleg has a pretty good description of his experience of electrical torture in The Question. You can also find descriptions online as the use of Tasers and stun guns has become more common globally.

 I’m finding it difficult to judge this one because my instinct is that delivering an electric shock internally would cause additional damage. But I’m not sure what that would look like.

 Again I think this sort of device could easily malfunction and kill someone. Or malfunction and just stop ‘working’.

 There’s also a chance of the immune system attacking the implant. Which- I don’t know a lot about because I’m not a medic. I think it could be an important factor though.

 With both of these ideas it’s worth questioning whether this would be worth the effort. I’ve found a lot of authors don’t quite think this through so let me try and break it down.

 This is what has to happen before it can be used:

it needs to be designed

a prototype needs to be created

it needs to be tested

several iterations of redesign and new prototypes

parts need to be sourced

the whole thing needs to be assembled on a larger scale

it all needs to be paid for

the people who are supposed to be using it need to find it easy to use

 Tasers very nearly didn’t make it off the ground. It took decades of concerted work and funding from their manufactures to make them a ‘success’. Rejali does a pretty interesting run down of the way it happened if you want more information.

 The question you need to ask yourself is: would all of this have any advantage for the abusers compared to using pepper spray, Tasers or a stick?

 Because unless you’re really sure the answer is ‘yes’ then I think this sort of thing is really really unlikely. And when it comes to writing torture simpler is usually better.

 Like I said I can see how the base of this idea could add to your story. So I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand. But the existence of a device like this says a lot about the society you’re writing. Do the implications fit with the world you’re building?

 Torturers are… generally incredibly lazy and pretty dumb. Which makes the use of high tech devices less likely. Because the competition is a slap. For something to take off it needs to be as easy, quick and reliable as that. And probably also robust enough to be stamped on, vomited over etc.

 So: is there enough drive in this world to add torture to the functionality of this device? Is there the money to fund it? Is there the time to design and create it? And is it going to be reliable and tough enough to actually be used?

 If there was a rush to make something that blocked super powers adding more things (that might interfere with that main function) to the device probably wouldn’t have been a priority.

 Basically if you want this kind of device make it fit with the world you’ve built and think about whether it’s actually adding anything that a more typical torture wouldn’t.

 Aaaand I’m going to leave it there cos I think I’m talking in circles. I hope that helps :)

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Honestly I think the best answer to this one is: how many survivor characters do you have in the story?

 Purely from a writing perspective I think that you need multiple survivors in any story focused on genocide. Because if you only have one survivor then you’ll struggle to really communicate the scale of what happened.

 I had an ask a while back about competing communities (I can’t seem to find it-) where I talked at length about how torture and genocide imply communities of abusers and communities of survivors. Because we’re talking about a scale of tens or hundreds of thousands of victims.

 So if the genocide is a big part of the background to this story then it should effect more then two characters. Because we’re not just talking about a single ‘abuser’ and a single victim here.

 Think about where you can have other effected characters and how those characters were effected.

 Are there people who got away just in time, missing the worst of it? Do they have survivors guilt? How many members of their extended families did they lose?

 Are there people with tales similar to this antagonist? How did they survive? Did they do things they regret? Conversely do they feel justified in doing what they had to in order to survive? Perhaps they don’t feel like they took any active role in their own survival. Did their families make it? Their friends? How big are the gaps in their lives?

 Were there ex-patriot or diaspora communities away from the areas the genocide took place? How has the genocide effected their politics? How many friends and relatives did they lose? Has it made their community feel stronger, more involved in each other’s growth and safety? Has it led them to open their doors to refugees and survivors of their own species? Has it led them to do the same for other vulnerable groups?

 I was reading the work of a Holocaust survivor a few weeks ago and I was struck by her observation that for survivors this was not something that ended. Yes she was freed from the death camps, yes she lived and yes she emigrated to the USA. But the experience moved with her and (from what I can remember of her words) ‘continued on the streets of Boston.’

 She spoke about how she was the last person left in her father’s line. That entire side of the family had been murdered.

 And that, that is what genocide is for survivors: the holes in their lives where other people used to be. People they loved and cherished. People they passed on the street. Strangers that they connected to however briefly.

 Holes.

 You communicate that to your readers by showing the people who are left and having them show what they lost in simple every day terms.

 When I was a child there was a section of the souk which was full of jewellers. Most of them were Yemeni. And I liked shiny things as much as the next mammal but I never paid the Yemenis much mind. They tended to sell a lot of big, gold pieces, well out of a child’s price range and I didn’t find the style particularly pretty.

 So I’d say my salaams and walk on past to the stalls that sold antiques or Afghani pieces to look at semi-precious stones I could afford.

 They were young men, the Yemenis. They were probably only a decade older then me, if that. They were probably married. They may have had young children. A lot of immigrants in Saudi come over when young and have families (whether those families are with them or ‘back home’), this holds true of my family as well.

 One day the government decided it didn’t want them any more, they changed the visa laws. It did not quite happen overnight but the Yemenis left.

 There’s been a famine in Yemen since 2016. And I wonder how many of those men who smiled and said salaam as I passed are still alive. I wonder how many of them got typhoid when the infrastructure collapsed completely. I wonder how many of their children died and how many of them will be crippled for the rest of their lived because of hunger.

 I could tell you about their neat clothes and carefully slicked back hair. I could tell you how much effort they put into their winning smiles and how they’d try to persuade my mother to stop and look even though she wore horribly unfashionable abayas. (The rich white women all wore terrible abayas as far as I can remember.)

 And that’s genocide. Seen from a remove.

 Survivors are not saints. The urge to put survivors of global atrocities up on a pedestal as if everything they do and say contains exceptional moral insight is… flawed. Surviving something awful doesn’t make people morally worse and it also doesn’t make people morally better. Acting ethically is something everyone chooses to do or not.

 I don’t think there’s anything necessarily ‘wrong’ with having a survivor be one of the bad guys in your story. They’re people and they can make bad decisions like anyone else. As long as they’re not the only survivor in the story. Because you only get that implication when you’ve got one point of representation.

 So include the community. Think about where you can work in other survivors. Think about the diversity of experience there. Think about how to communicate the scale you need to justify the term ‘genocide’.

 There are a lot of books and survivor accounts of the genocides that have occurred since the 1900s. They’re difficult reading but I think picking up a few could really help you understand the kind of scale and diversity of experience you’re aiming for.

 Mao’s Great Famine is a good one for scale but it doesn’t really focus on survivor accounts. I found that made it slightly easier reading. I still haven’t read all of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families but it does contain interviews with people who were directly effected and people in the diaspora community. That may be helpful.

 I think Amnesty International would also be a good source here. There are currently ongoing genocides in China and Burma which you should be able to find a decent amount of information on. The effected groups are the Uighurs and the Rohingya. There are diaspora communities for both groups and interviews with multiple survivors available online.

 There are other genocides happening at the moment, but I think you’ll find the most free, English information and interviews looking at these two.

 Overall, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this scenario so long as you take steps to make sure this villain isn’t the only survivor we see. The message that abused people go on to abuse others only comes across if you have a single survivor. And I really think that your story will be deeper and richer in a lot of ways by including others.

 Survivors are people. Most of the time I say that to encourage people to remember their positive capacities: their passions and relationships. But it goes both ways.

 Survivors are people; which means we shouldn’t paint them all as saints and we shouldn’t paint them all as devils.

 I hope that helps :)

Edit: Typos, whoops. Thank you for catching that.

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Constant restraint over a long period can result in sudden death, usually by strokes or heart attacks. However this doesn’t always happen and anecdotally death seems more likely with tighter restraints and when more of the body is restrained.

 It also depends how long they’re imprisoned for because the longer someone is kept in restraints the more likely they’ll have a stroke or a heart attack.

 Survivors of restraint torture in China recently have reported being kept in more extreme restraints then you’re describing for months at a time and in a few cases several years. I haven’t read any of those cases recently but from memory the longest period I can remember was two years.

 The restraints used in these cases were mostly a sort of combined hand and leg cuff. Essentially the hands are cuffed in front of the body and the legs are cuffed as well, the chain between the cuffs is long enough for the victim to be able to move, walk but not run etc but it keeps them in a hunched position constantly. Which over the time period these things are used becomes very painful.

 That’s the closest real example I can think of so it’s what I’m drawing from here. :)

 I think your character would also experience some pretty severe muscular pain, limited to their arms in this case. The weight of the cuffs would probably add to this.

 So from personal experience (I once wore a pair of old darbys for a day as a fashion accessory… it was Newcastle) the weight of the cuffs in and of itself can hurt. It can be awkward to stand because wherever you put your hands the weight sits uncomfortably. I found it especially hard on the thumbs because the weight was resting on the top joint where the thumb joins the wrist.

 This is a pain sort of like a bruise.

 Your character would also have muscular pain throughout the arms, due to restricted movement and the awkward way they’d have to move around the cuffs.

 Over months or years restraint use like this causes muscular wastage. I’m not a medic so I’m not sure exactly how or why this happens. But if someone can’t use their limbs normally the muscles tend to die off slowly, causing weakness and in extreme cases mobility problems.

 Most of the survivors of long term restraint torture in the Chinese cases reported mobility problems after release. I’m not sure how long term these problems are.

 I think that nerve damage would be possible with any long term restraint torture involving metal cuffs. Constant weight and pressure across a relatively small area of the wrist can cause that sort of damage. And that results in a permanent loss of mobility; usually a loss of fine motor control (ie struggling to do up buttons, write with a pen etc while still being able to move the arms and make weaker more clumsy movements with the hands).

 Muscular damage is at least theoretically fixable. Physiotherapy can do a lot to help people with these kinds of injuries recover strength and mobility.

 The weight of the cuffs and the way the character has their hands cuffed makes broken wrists more likely. If the character trips and sticks out their hands to catch themselves the cuffs and positioning of their hands- Well it makes breaks more likely.

 Restricting mobility shouldn’t hinder the character’s ability to take care of themselves too much in this case. So I don’t think that this would lead to them say, eating less or being unable to clean themselves.

 The pain would effect their sleep. Which can have long term effects on more or less every aspect of their health.

 Beyond that I think it’s just the usual long term psychological effects of torture. Anecdotally chronic pain seems to be a little bit more common in this kind of case.

 I think that’s it, I hope it helps. :)

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I’m going to start off with a possibly obvious point: kidnapping is traumatic. If the main thing you want from this sub-plot is to give a character PTSD you don’t need to go any further then that. Not everyone who is kidnapped will develop PTSD but it’s a realistic outcome.

 So…. Phycology is the study of algae, I’m assuming that’s not what’s meant here. But if it is then please correct me and I will happily spend some time reading up on algae to help you out. (That is not sarcasm, teach me about algae.) :)

 I am guessing that this is a misspelling of ‘psychologically’ and this is someone new to the blog who hasn’t heard The Talk about ‘psychological torture’ yet.

 So going forward: Anon it’s OK to make mistakes. I’m here because I understand how hard it is to find good quality information on torture. And because I understand how much misinformation is popularised in both fictional and allegedly-factual media.

 I strongly advise that you don’t use the phrase ‘psychological torture’ in your writing.

 Torture isn’t psychological. There’s nothing clever or psychological about hitting someone’s feet with a stick.

 And the phrase ‘psychological torture’ has been used for years by torture apologists. They use it as a way to dismiss survivors and belittle their experience. They do that by declaring that some types of torture are ‘just’ psychological; using this term to suggest particular tortures don’t cause physical harm and that survivors are faking their responses.

 This is bullshit. Don’t buy into it. Don’t support it.

 Torture is physical abuse and physical harm. The lasting psychological symptoms and effects are due to underlying changes in the structure of the brain which happen in response to extreme pain and stress.

 O’Mara, the neuroscientist who wrote about torture, likened it to brain damage. He also went so far as to argue that it’s deliberately inflicted organ failure. And you know what, I’m not a neuroscientist, so I’m not gonna argue with that assessment.

 I don’t know what you’re picturing when you say ‘psychological torture’. You haven’t given me a time frame for how long this character is held or information on the kind of culture this fictional world has. Which makes it hard for me to suggest specific things.

 What I can do is give you an idea of what torture looks like now and what sort of effects you’d expect in survivors. You can then consider whether torture is right for your story.

 Most torture nowadays is ‘clean’. Now different researchers use different terms for this (I use Rejali’s term) but what it essentially means is: a form of physical abuse that is extremely unlikely to leave obvious physical marks on the victim’s body.

 Lest you get the idea that is represents ‘advancement’ most of the clean torture techniques currently used are hundreds of years old. Some of them are thousands of years old.

 There’s been quite a bit of debate in the field about why clean torture is currently so common and why so many organisations have abandoned scarring torture. You can read more about that over here. Or if you feel you have a wealth of time on your hands you can try tackling all 800 pages of Rejali’s Torture and Democracy (highly recommended, also very large).

 The theory Rejali puts forward is that the shift is about evidence. Obvious physical injuries make it easier to build up cases against torturers.

 And a lack of obvious physical injuries can be used to discredit survivors.

 These are the sort of torture techniques that get labelled ‘psychological’ as a way to dismiss them: the ones that are being used around the world today.

 If you’re wondering what sort of thing I’m talking about things like sleep deprivation, beatings (yes this can be done without leaving obvious marks), near-drowning, forcing someone to exercise until they collapse, Tasers.

 I have a post here on typical torture practices in different countries in the modern era.

 While the physical effects of clean tortures are hard to definitively prove we’re still taking about incredibly dangerous things.

 Tasers, used according to the instructions, leave no mark on the skin. They can also cause heart attacks, seizures (in vulnerable individuals) and often cause death by falling injuries. Forced exercise, beatings and stress positions all cause kidney failure. In the case of stress positions that’s after the swelling in extremities that gets to the point of popping the skin open in massive ulcers.

 Sleep deprivation causes a whole slew of interestingly awful physical and psychological effects before (according to studies in mice) leading to death from multiple organ failure as the microbes in the gut take over the entire body.

 What I’m trying to say here is that if you’re looking for something dignified, without the vomit and pus and shit, then torture probably doesn’t fit the bill.

 And clean tortures can still cause physically disabling injuries.

 Drowning and choking tortures (such as water boarding) can cause brain damage. Incorrectly applied restraints can lead to a limb needing to be amputated.

 On top of all this are the long term psychological effects which I have a post on here. Memory problems are discussed in more detail here.

 PTSD is a possible symptom but it’s not guaranteed. The truth is that while we know the possible symptoms different individual survivors develop different symptoms and we don’t know why.

 If you’ve thought about it and you want to use PTSD because it adds something to your story then by all means do so. But don’t feel that it is your only option.

 Survivors do recover. They are not ‘broken’ and unable to live or enjoy life. They’re mentally ill and often disabled and recovery is a process of learning to live with their conditions.

 Wrapping this up: think about what you’re writing.

 I am not saying that you shouldn’t write torture. I am not saying that you should. I’m asking that you, and every other writer who comes here, consider what you’re committing to.

 If you don’t want a character to be dealing with multiple complex mental health problems for the rest of every story you use them in, it’s probably not a good fit.

 If you want something that doesn’t have even a chance of causing lasting physical damage, torture is probably not a good fit.

 Picture where the story is going. If you think the narrative could be the same without torture then you’re probably not capturing the scale of the impact torture has.

 I have a post on common inaccurate tropes here. I have a post on researching torture here. I have a list of sources over here. I also have a lot of asks tagged as sci fi.

 Consider why you want to write torture in this story. What is it adding to your narrative? What is it doing?

 If the main thing you want is this character to have PTSD afterwards that is possible with kidnapping alone. Physical attacks make PTSD more likely but they’re not necessary for its development.

 Kidnap and imprisonment is betrayal enough. It is reason enough for all the big, powerful emotions you want to put into this relationship. Ask yourself if torture really does add any more to that.

 I hope that helps. :)

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[knock-out part 2/3] you can't predict how long the character will be "out" for, and it's hard to judge the dose so you might kill them instead. I have three characters who are given the drug. I want to show that using drugs like this is a serious weapon rather than a “safe” way to neutralise a threat, but I can’t have any of these three characters die from the drug for plot reasons. Here’s what I have so far: one character gets a small dose and grows weak but doesn’t pass out, [knock-out part 3/3] then recovers quickly with no side-effects, the second is given repeated doses on top of other injuries and stays in a state of “haze” for a day (for plot reasons), with dissociative side-effects for the rest of their life, and the third gets one large dose, has a delayed reaction but does pass out, and recovers. Would it be realistic to give this third character short-term memory problems for life?

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Thank you Anon :)

 Alright since this ask is going to heavily involve information from my day job testing medical drugs I’m going to start off by stating the sort of things I know. My training is as a synthetic organic chemist, which is a fancy way of saying I’m trained to make chemicals. I ended up doing a lot of work on pharmaceuticals/drugs. My post-grad degree was about drug-targetting (sending drugs to specific parts of the body) which is a branch of research aimed at reducing side effects. I’ve worked on drug formulations (all the other stuff that goes with the drug itself to make it easier to take ex turning it into a pill) and I currently test inhalers.

 I also take a fair few medications and I’m close to quite a few disabled people. Which has made me familiar with some of the weirder side effects out there.

 A lot of the time we don’t know why medications do these things or why these effects only seem to happen to some people and not others.

 Sometimes we know: chemotherapy agents have a tendency to make people nauseous and make their hair fall out because they attack dividing cells. And the cells of the gut lining and hair follicles naturally divide quickly. One of the medications I currently take can cause light headedness and fainting because it slows the heart rate.

 And then you get the odd ones. Right now I’m taking a medication which says inside the packet that I should ‘avoid exposure to sunlight’ (will I explode like a vampire?*). An old friend regularly took something which had a uh- slight tendency to make people’s skin die and fall off in huge chunks.

 These drugs were prescribed for dizziness caused by an ear infection and sleep disorders respectively.

 Chemicals can be weird like that. The pathways our bodies use to break them down aren’t always predictable and small genetic changes might mean different by-products in different people.

 Recently there’s been a lot more attention on how sexism and racism have effected science with people rightly calling out the fact that some drugs which are mostly given to women or non-white people seem to have more/worse side effects then expected. It’s a legitimate concern, especially when it comes to how much funding is put into researching particular conditions.

 The flip side is that it can take easily 15 years for a drug to be approved. Often side effects are something we have to accept until we have a better alternative.

 And there’s always an element of risk involved. A medicine being declared ‘safe’ rarely means ‘always 100% safe for everyone’ it’s more like ‘safe under these conditions’, ‘safe for the majority of people’ and ‘safer then the disease it treats’.

 All of which means that if you’re making up a drug you really are free to pick whatever side effects you feel fit the story. There are a lot of really weird ones out there, especially when you get into the rarer side effects.

 When it comes to knock out drugs in stories (or use of chemicals and drugs to cause pain) I try to communicate long term injuries and worst case scenarios because I get the impression a lot of authors either don’t understand them or don’t take them seriously. From the sounds of things you are taking this scenario very seriously and you’ve thought about the sorts of long term effects you want the characters to have.

 This combination of side effects isn’t something I’ve heard of in a single drug. But I don’t think that matters here.

 All of the side effects individually are possible with different drugs. The fact you’ve considered side effects and committed to showing them means you’re taking the issue seriously. And it’s a fictional drug. So I don’t think it matters much that you’ve chosen side effects to fit your story (I actually think that’s a much smarter writing choice then trying to pick a real drug).

 I think the only thing I’d really add is that memory problems of the kind you’re describing still aren’t that well understood. So most of the long term interventions in reality are just… life style changes. Reminders and alarms and helpers.

 The sort of general forgetfulness that I think you’re describing can have really terrible knock on effects on people’s lives. It makes it harder to hold down a job, keep medical appointments, maintain relationships and it’s really common in trauma survivors.

 I think trying to use that, portray it well, is a good thing. Because I have too many survivors tell me they didn’t realise what they were experiencing was a symptom.

 So realistic? Not exactly, but I think what you’re planning to do is a good idea regardless. Realism isn’t always the be all and end all of this stuff. It’s where and how we choose to break with reality that matters and whether that choice shores up apologist arguments or has unfortunate implications.

 Unfortunately most of the time when we, writers, break with reality around torture that’s what we end up doing: tacitly supporting apologist ideas. Usually not out of malice, but just because accurate information is hard to find. So I do stress what the reality is like a lot. I think it’s important to understand the reality before we decide where to depart from it.

 And I think where you’ve chosen to make that break works fine.

 I hope that helps. :)

*After running the experiment it turns out no! But it does make being outside in England feel like being out in midday in Al Khobar which is bizarre. 

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2/? (She isn't loyal, but she'd be killed otherwise.) The character is then sent to grow up on a different planet, with his mother who figureheads a resistance against the people who took the characters sister and killed his brother. That's basic backstory continuing the character eventually gets captured again, and it taken to a prison. The character is tortured in the prison bc he killed several very important people and cut off the hands of another. 3/? Its seen (by the torturers i suppose, or at least the woman ordering them to do so) as rightful punishment. I havnt quite hashed out exactly what the torture is other than he definitely by the end has rather severe nerve damage in his hands from the shackles and chronic pain/weakness in one of his legs from something or another. Anyway the characters sister was put in charge of this prison, 4/5 and has no choice but to stand by and watch as the character is tortured. She does her best to make sure he isn't killed and the character knows she has no choice but to let them hurt her bc she is just as much of a prisoner as him, albeit in an entirely seperate way. She could stop the torture, and she could get him out, but she would be killed for it and he knows it. Im just wondering if he would blame her, 5/5 because she is in charge and could stop it. But she would be killed and it would likely end with them both dead. She cares for him when she can which isn't often bc she isn't exactly allowed too. Would he blame her I suppose? She has never hurt him, but lets it happen.

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Alright I understand what you’re going for here.

 It’s not the kind of situation that’s common enough for there to be systematic studies. Most of the time torturers and their victims don’t have a close relationship. It’s much more common to find cases where they were strangers or acquaintances prior to torture then close family or friends.

 This doesn’t make this a bad idea. It just means that there aren’t definitive answers. I’m working from a handful of anecdotes and extrapolating from other things.

 Even if this was a more common situation I don’t think you’d find many definite answers because individual variation would probably play a huge role.

 Torture changes things for survivors in a lot of unpredictable ways. While we know the possible symptoms what any individual ends up experiencing is unpredictable. And how well people cope with mental health problems, and how that in turn impacts their relationships is dependant on the person. Someone’s personal experience, friends, support network, work, general knowledge and a host of other things can effect these sorts of outcomes.

 Having that person also be tangentially involved in the survivor’s torture complicates things even further.

 What I’m trying to say is that there are a lot of plausible outcomes here and I think that makes this a writing question rather then a realism question. So the real focus is: what works best with the character?

 Blame is definitely possible in the scenario you’ve created but it doesn’t have to be straight-forward or simple.

 For instance the character might blame her while knowing logically that there’s nothing else she could do without putting both of them in more danger. And that could make him feel conflicted about blaming her, possibly feeding into self-blame as well. He could openly blame her, or he could hide his feelings for a variety of reasons.

 He might feel angry, that she’s ‘safer’ or that she can’t protect him. Or just because she ‘stands by’ and watches him at his worst. He might even come to hate her.

 But it’s also possible that he wouldn’t associate her with the torturers or guards and would view her more as a fellow (though perhaps favoured) prisoner. He might pity her. He might feel sympathetic towards her plight.

 He could plausibly have no strong feelings towards her at all.

 Whatever emotional response you think is best it’s important to tie it to what’s come before in the story.

 However you look at things he’s been away from his sister for a long time. It’s not clear to me how much time they spent together growing up (they could have been apart since he was 10 from the sounds of things).

 If they spent a lot of their childhood apart they may not have a close relationship to begin with. I don’t think that would make a particular response more likely but it could mean he has a less intense response to her presence generally. If they weren’t close before then he might not feel her presence is particular significant.

 If they were close then I think it’s a good idea to look back over the story. Read their interactions again and try to get a clear picture in your mind of what their relationship was before.

 Whatever happens you’re writing the process of how that relationship changes. And it’s really helpful to have a clear idea of where you’re starting from first. I personally find it helpful to have a clear idea of where I want to end up as well but some people prefer a more exploratory style where they find out where the characters end up as they write.

 It doesn’t matter which approach works better for you, what matters is that the intervening steps, the process of the relationship changing, are clear and understandable to your readers. And preferably pack a heavy emotional punch as well.

 So if blame is the result you want (if it isn’t use this as an example and apply the same process to the emotional response you want) think about what aspects of their relationship could feed into that.

 If they had a competitive or slightly antagonistic relationship then it might feel natural for him to place some blame on her. After all it’s probably an established pattern from their relationship. If he saw her as a protector and relied on her to keep him safe then this might feel like a huge betrayal.

 If they had a really loving, tender relationship then you might want to lean in to the illogical nature of the response. It might even be a good idea to have the character acknowledge (internally or verbally) that this isn’t a sensible response. And yet this does not make the feeling go away.

 With a more distant relationship did he feel like she betrayed her people or her family by ‘giving up’, regardless of how desperate the situation was? Or did he (as a kid raised in the rebellion) mostly view her as a prisoner?

 If he saw her as a prisoner and felt pity for her would that vanish as she stands by while he suffers? Or would it seem to confirm what he already thought; that she’s helpless, powerless.

 Find some part of their previous relationship that you can tie to this new set of feelings. Or acknowledge that it’s not a sensible response and have the character deal with more complex feelings as a result.

 Mostly try to resist the idea that there’s a ‘right’ response for your character to have.

 Try not to suggest in the story that there is one ‘proper’ response for a survivor to have. Because they are a varied bunch. People can live through more or less the same thing and come out with very different attitudes or perspectives as well as symptoms.

 The response you write should be the one that works best with your characters and the story you want to tell. Don’t feel you must use blame. Instead think about whether it adds to your story: does it create interesting character moments, obstacles for the characters or feed into the plot?

 You’re the person who knows what’s best for the story and what will work best with the characters. Be open to multiple options. Take your time and think through what works best.

 For the character himself it’s possible (may be likely) that he’d already have some trauma symptoms before he’s captured.

 I get the impression you’ve probably already seen the Masterpost on common trauma symptoms, but here it is for the new readers. :)

 For the physical injury pattern you’ve got multiple options.

 I think that really severe nerve damage suggests something more then shackles. Unless something went wrong.

 The easiest way to get both injuries in your character would be a suspension torture that was more common historically. Victims had their hands tied together in front of them, were hoisted anywhere between a few feet and two meters in the air and then dropped.

 This causes nerve damage in both hands and could cause breaks or fractures in the legs. Either could lead to chronic pain.

 Suspension without the drop would still cause nerve damage in about 15-20 minutes.

 Nerve damage is less common with restraints but it is still possible. Ratcheting cuffs that can tighten are more likely to cause nerve damage, especially if they’re applied too tightly over a long period.

 Other dangerous things that can happen with those sorts of restraints being too tight- Broken wrists and reduced circulation leading to painful swelling in the hands (look up ‘finger milking’ in my tags for more information).

 Over longer periods (multiple hours with the cuffs tight enough to cause swelling in the hands) blood clots might form and that uh… really dangerous. Basically if large blood clots start forming in a limb due to reduced circulation then they either block the blood vessels (which kills the limb and leads to amputation) or the clot gets swept back into the body when the restraints are removed. The clot usually then lodges in the brain or the heart causing a stroke or a heart attack respectively.

 I’d say suspension probably works better for your purposes.

 Standing stress positions can lead to chronic pain in the legs. But it often also effects the back and usually effects both legs.

 Falaka might work. It’s beating the soles of the feet with an implement. Depending on the implement it can be clean, scarring or even lethal. With a harder implement like a wooden stick it can lead to fractured or broken bones in the feet.

 But even when falaka is performed in a ‘clean’ manner it can lead to chronic pain. It causes a thickening of the tendons in the soles and also causes tiny bone fragments to detach inside the feet. It’s unclear how long these bone fragments stick around but they’re detectable by MRI for a few months with the right method.

 You could also just go with the idea of the leg injury being the result of a specific attack or accident. A broken knee perhaps, after a beating or a fall. Not all injuries in torture scenarios are ‘deliberate’, in the sense that they weren’t necessarily intentional. Because torturers are not as in control of the situation as they’d like people to believe.

 I think I’ll leave it at that for now, but if you have any further questions don’t hesitate to come by when the askbox is open. :)

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I think that anything used exclusively to torture which is more complicated then a mop and a bucket of water is vanishingly unlikely.

 I also think that the idea of ‘psychological pain’ is edging pretty close to the way torture apologists tend to label clean tortures as ‘psychological’ rather then physical.

 This has been consistently used in the real world to downplay or dismiss the physical harm done to victims. It has been used to justify, legalise and condone certain tortures. It has been used to suggest clean tortures are ‘safe’ and are not ‘real torture’.

 It has also been used to systematically bar real survivors from receiving support and to protect real torturers from prosecution.

 In essence Anon I think that until we live in a world that takes torture seriously, supports survivors and treats torturers like the criminals they are: this fictional trope needs to end.

 If you want to write a story with torture that doesn’t leave permanent marks just use clean tortures.

 Seriously, there are a lot to choose from.

 Bending over backwards to make a high-tech extra-special-exception is only going to bring torture apologia into your narrative. It’s going to risk suggesting some survivors don’t count. That some people’s pain, injury or death wasn’t ‘enough’.

 That torture is less damaging then it is. That torturers can be controlled or know what they’re doing.

 Read through the common misconceptions about torture. Read through the effects it has on survivors. Read the masterpost on clean torture.

 If you want to invent a torture for your sci fi or fantasy world I’d strongly urge you make sure it meets the following criteria:

The tools are common enough that the torturer could find them at home or work

The idea is simple enough that a 4-6 year old child could have come up with it

It is simple enough to carry out that someone with no training who had never used the tools before could both understand how the tool works and use it.

 I’m not angry at you Anon. I understand why you’re asking these questions. They come out of the fact that it’s hard to find accurate information on torture and it’s easy to find misinformation.

 I’ve been there. I do get it. And I’m angry about the fact that you (and everyone else) has been put in this situation.

 Wrapping this up I’d advise you to think about what torture is adding to your story.

 Can you tell the same story without torture? Because if the answer is ‘yes’ then you’re probably underestimating the effect torture has on survivors, torturers, witnesses, organisations and communities.

 You don’t need to bring a psychological thesis to the story. But you do need to bring more then unrealistic apologist tropes.

 We owe that to survivors and we owe it to our readers.

 These sorts of dark, heavy, difficult topics deserve to be taken seriously. And if they’re not essential to the story, if they’re not adding to the characters and the plot then consider taking them out.

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I’m going to start this off by saying that I’m not here to tell people what they should or shouldn’t like. There is nothing wrong with liking or not liking a character, story arc, plot etc. A lot of the pieces I’ve given low scores in the Torture in Fiction series are things I like and several of the things I’ve given high scores are things I don’t like.

 What I’m trying to encourage is critical thinking and a greater level of understanding for the reality of torture.

 So whatever I say about River Song, or any other fictional character, is just an opinion. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying something that has flaws and the flaws in something do not mean it has no worth. Plenty of stories handle torture badly but handle other difficult topics excellently.

 The Torture in Fiction series is just about trying to get authors and audiences to think about how the media they love treats torture.

 Now I’ve said all that, it’s been a while since I watched all of River’s episodes. I’m going from memory here and those memories may be wrong.

 I don’t think we actually see enough of River’s childhood to say whether this is supposed to be the kind of brainwashing tropes I rail against or coercion.

 There are a lot of deliberate gaps in River’s story. I think that’s a good thing because it helps give a sense that this is a character who does a lot of things away from the other characters. She has her own adventures.

 But it also means that the writers are relying on the audience to fill things in.

 She’s taken from her parents as a baby and raised to kill the Doctor.

 Now that, in and of itself, does not necessarily suggest a brainwashing plot. Plenty of people in the real world are raised in isolated communities with the consistent message that they need to do or achieve something their parental figures decide for them.

 We see organised attempts on the Doctor’s life by River and the group who raised her. But I don’t remember seeing anything from River’s life with this group beyond the moment when she’s taken as a newborn.

 And that’s really the crux of the question: what were the details of her training and her childhood?

 I don’t think we can accuse writers of torture apologia on the basis of something they never actually wrote. I also don’t think it’s good practice to leave such a glaring gap in this particular case. There are narratives where leaving this kind of gap means you should expect that a portion of the audience will fill in the gap with torture apologia. Because those are the tropes they’re used to.

 From your perspective though, that gap means there isn’t necessarily much to ‘fix’. You can just decide to fill in the gap in with something that isn’t the standard ‘fanon’. Treating this as if River is raised by a cult (which arguably she is) and isn’t physically abused could work.

 An upbringing by manipulative individuals could explain what we see of River’s behaviour; her obsession with the Doctor and her attempts early in her life to kill him.

 There isn’t any guaranteed way to ‘make’ a person change their mind or think the way you want them too. But the key word there is ‘guaranteed’, manipulative and emotionally abusive tactics can effect someone’s beliefs, especially when the character in question is a child.

 The people who raise River keep her isolated from the rest of the world, they control the information she has access to early on and they have the ability to use emotional responses and repetition to hammer their message home.

 We know that from an early age River was taught an insane amount about the Doctor. He was made the focus of her upbringing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that she was praised and rewarded for remembering things about him, focusing on him or deducing/predicting his actions. In those circumstances her life long obsession doesn’t look that strange.

 When we’re taught that something is that important, that central, consistently from a young age- Then yes for a lot of people it does become a central part of their lives. It’s bizarre that the focus is a person but if the focus had been a religious group or a political organisation it probably wouldn’t look quite as weird.

 River’s also taught that the Doctor needs to die. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to imagine that she’s taught she’s special and loved because she can kill him.

 And I suppose we can argue that the people who take River and raise her are successful to some degree since River tries to kill him.

 That’s more likely if River herself cares for the people who raised her and sees them as good parents. Physical abuse gets in the way of that.

 And if I was writing River’s backstory that’s how I’d do it. I’d write her as isolated from the world outside the organisation and showered with love and praise because she’s going to kill the Doctor.

 I’d create an environment where this child is taught that her worth and whether others love her is dependant on her performing this task.

 Since River eventually leaves I’d probably also include punishments for questioning her teachers or going against what the organisation is trying to instil. These wouldn’t be physical punishments but things like trying to humiliate her, no play time or just having a trusted parental figure sit with her for hours going over how she’s wrong.

 That kind of upbringing is likely to result in a child that’s willing to do all kinds of awful things. Because they’ve been taught it’s right and because they believe it’s the only way to ensure they’re loved.

 It’s about trying to please the people they care about most in the world. And about those people callously using that love and affection to achieve their own aims.

 There’s an ask here that you might find helpful. Looking through the tags for ‘cults’, ‘leaving cults’ and ‘child soldier’s’ will probably also be useful. I know there’s an old ask on how to write the ‘children raised to be assassins’ premise but I can’t find it at the moment.

 I hope that helps. :)

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