Oh, irony, irony! We got each others' requests and did the same cliche, for the same character! Which just goes to show (a) great minds think alike (b) everyone has a different take.
Heh! Yes, I figured that was probably what had happened. I am vastly amused, as well as fascinated by the similar-yet-different perspectives we brought to the exact same concept. I'm really glad you ended up going with the 9th Doctor for this one, too. 4th-Doc amnesia would have been fun, but it'd lack the poignancy you get with #9.
Anyway, definitely enjoyed it. Good dialog, a very Who-ish feeling story, and I loved the songs.
The irony of it all is that astrogirl2 and got each others' requests, picked the same cliche to do, and did it for the same character! Which just goes to show (a) great minds think alike (b) everyone has a different take.
And I beta-read both of them!
I might as well say it again here: brilliant plot, a wonderful OC in Elly
(I can very much see why the Doctor would invite her to go with him), and
I loved the None dialect--lovely bit of world-building.
I think it affirms my belief that it's a pointless waste of time to
worry about whether someone else has done a story based on the same idea,
because everyone is going bring their own special perspective and style
to it.
Absolutely. I tend not to worry much about that sort of thing, myself. :)
Yeah, well, it was irresistable -- as you know.
I do, indeed. Ah, the 9th Doctor gives such lovely angst. :)
I didn't know whether anything had come up in later episodes to
contradict that, so I made it vague.
You're pretty much safe on that front, really, but, yes, I think you did
a fine job using what info you've already got from canon to give it
enough specificity to have the right emotional feel to it, while leaving
it open enough that it won't be contradicted.
I'm really glad you ended up going with the 9th Doctor for this one. I have trouble, actually, imagining this story with the 4th Doctor. I think you could have a lot of fun giving the 4th Doctor amnesia, but, yeah, it's difficult to imagine him learning from it in any significant way.
Of course AstroGirl's version of this, she used regeneration amnesia, which actually did make sense, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to do that.
Whereas it seemed to obvious to me it almost felt like cheating! :) It is interesting to compare the two, because they're such very different stories, but there's a certain character concept at the heart of them both that's very similar. I think that's really cool.
He unconsciously knows that he's an outsider even now. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
That's certainly what I got out of it, and I thought it was an absolutely perfect touch, something totally, subtly Doctorish. I'm actually remembering now, reading through the commentary, how many beautiful little moments like that there are. Like the blank psychic paper. Actually, mostly I'm remembering mainly how much I like this story, in general. :)
Because it's true, as one of my beta-readers pointed out, that there's no real reason why Klane would give the Doctor the information -- but he had to have the information for the plot. So I had to solve this somehow.
The Doctor's always had the ability of using the force of his personality to get plot points out of people who have no reason to give them to him. :)
I'm actually amazed that you considered any other doctor than 9 - he seems so natural for it, though 7 could have been very very interesting. Four would have produced a very different story, I think, though probably just as good.
Indeed, so perfect an idea did it prove, that AstroGirl, who, by some strange mystical coincidence known as The Organiser, had been given my requests, also decided to do the 9th Doctor with Amnesia. Which just goes to show that "there's no such thing as an original idea, only an original treatment."
And those two stories ARE so very different, yet so very perfectly Ninth, as Astro's said.
This was meant to be a subtle hint of amnesia, that he couldn't remember the name of "molasses" -- besides, I like the non-cliche-ness of that sentence.
You, know, it never twigged to me that that's what he forgot? I just loved as you say "the non-cliche-ness" of the phrasing.
Gotta thank Jonathan for the "I'm supposed to know?" line; he'd suggested the line "You mean, people know who they are? Fascinating." I didn't end up using the line, but I'm grateful for the idea, because it turns the usual "oh no, I can't remember who I am" thing on its head.
I remeber laughing out loud at that, and at the sheer brilliance and DOCTOR-ness of it - Jonathon's version, BTW, strikes me as far more 4 than 9, but for a 4 line it's marvellous.
Yeah, it did bother me a little that she didn't just steal everything of his, because that would seem more pragmatic, especially since she'd gone to all the effort of stripping his stuff. Maybe she thought better of it when he woke up coherent
Yeah but, forgive me, my first reaction when you say that is "but Elly wouldn't!" which I can't fathom for the life of me, but I honestly CAN'T see her, as you're created her, stealing from a victim of this "ghost". I think she'd let them keep the only kind of memories they have, the tangible ones.
And as to the litany of stuff he pulled out of his pokets, I didn't even notice that they'd all shown up somewhere in canon. They were just such Doctorish objects I didn't question.
I wanted the Menace to be Sinister and Creepy. So why not have people think it was a ghost? They didn't have to be correct.
I've only managed recently to make peace with lying to the readers thorugh the assumptions of the charcaters in a mystery. My fiance pointed out that the WORST offenders in history of doing this where Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, and after thinking long and hard I found I didn't mind being in such company.
So here we have Joon instead of "June". Though now that I think about it, wasn't there a movie with a character called "Joon"? Oh well.
Benny and Joon, though I've never seen it.
Misled and loony, of course. I wanted to have a dialect here that felt like the kind of dialect that an underclass would speak, but which couldn't be pinned down to any specific culture, so that it would sound non-20th-Century. So I tried pinching bits from US and British slang, and bending them a little.
And you did a FANTASTIC job, I utterly LOVE your dialect, it feels so coherent and consistant and REAL - profesional assesment, that. *linguist*
I'm posting my comments in two batches, because I have more to say tham LJ will let me...
And this is really the reason for the title of the story, too. The amnesia the Doctor had been given was anaesthesia; a numbness which side-tracked the pain, but didn't help him deal with it. Mind you, in this scenario, the anaesthesia was probably helpful, as a temporary measure to help him get his feet under him, (and prevent him from becoming a terminal patient) but anaesthesia is never a cure for anything.
And did you know that untill this made me double check I was convinced the title of this peice was "Amnaesthesia" a blend of the two words?
The description is rather vague, I know. It just felt as if it would be rather lame to describe it as a cross between a squirrel, a crab, and a bird...
I rather loved the description of the critter, and for some reason pictured it with long lop-rabbit ears, too...
I wrote the "remembrance" bits above before I wrote the scene they were part of. There was quite a bit of that in this story; writing things out of order. It seemed to work anyway.
I do this an aweful lot myself (the last place was the worst offender for it) and it's such a joy when they fall into place like jigsaw peices, seemlessly like this, isn't it?
Elly is one who Names. I'd toyed with the idea of making it so that the Nones were the only ones who actually had names, while the Regs just went by their job designation and ID, but that would probably have been belabouring the point, and Jonathan persuaded me not to.
I actually think that woulda been neet, but I like weird stuff like that.
Vilakins actually wondered if I'd named Vilka after Vila Restal, but if that was the case, it wasn't conscious.
And here I was convinced you'd named it after Vilakins of whom Elly reminds me strongly.
Reminds me of sort of sci-fi dystopia vision-of-the-future-of-humanity novels I used to read all the time. Haven't found anything new along those lines for a while...so THIS, I cannot resist! :)
Oh, irony, irony! We got each others' requests and did the same cliche, for the same character! Which just goes to show (a) great minds think alike (b) everyone has a different take.
Heh! Yes, I figured that was probably what had happened. I am vastly amused, as well as fascinated by the similar-yet-different perspectives we brought to the exact same concept. I'm really glad you ended up going with the 9th Doctor for this one, too. 4th-Doc amnesia would have been fun, but it'd lack the poignancy you get with #9.
Anyway, definitely enjoyed it. Good dialog, a very Who-ish feeling story, and I loved the songs.
The irony of it all is that astrogirl2 and got each others' requests, picked the same cliche to do, and did it for the same character! Which just goes to show (a) great minds think alike (b) everyone has a different take.
And I beta-read both of them!
I might as well say it again here: brilliant plot, a wonderful OC in Elly (I can very much see why the Doctor would invite her to go with him), and I loved the None dialect--lovely bit of world-building.
I think it affirms my belief that it's a pointless waste of time to worry about whether someone else has done a story based on the same idea, because everyone is going bring their own special perspective and style to it.
Absolutely. I tend not to worry much about that sort of thing, myself. :)
Yeah, well, it was irresistable -- as you know.
I do, indeed. Ah, the 9th Doctor gives such lovely angst. :)
I didn't know whether anything had come up in later episodes to contradict that, so I made it vague.
You're pretty much safe on that front, really, but, yes, I think you did a fine job using what info you've already got from canon to give it enough specificity to have the right emotional feel to it, while leaving it open enough that it won't be contradicted.
This is an utterly fantastic story... reads just lioke an episode! And I rather like your OC's, especially Ellie.
Heh, a missing episode!
A missing episode is just what we need, when we have so few of the Ninth! Thank you. I love Elly and Vilka.
He'd rather get his mind off... how much was off his mind.
This is a really fascinating world. Good work!
And I beta-read both of them!
I suppose that I could say that I gamma-read the story. :) It was a pleasure to read, and I especially liked the songs.
OK, commenting here. :)
I'm really glad you ended up going with the 9th Doctor for this one. I have trouble, actually, imagining this story with the 4th Doctor. I think you could have a lot of fun giving the 4th Doctor amnesia, but, yeah, it's difficult to imagine him learning from it in any significant way.
Of course AstroGirl's version of this, she used regeneration amnesia, which actually did make sense, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to do that.
Whereas it seemed to obvious to me it almost felt like cheating! :) It is interesting to compare the two, because they're such very different stories, but there's a certain character concept at the heart of them both that's very similar. I think that's really cool.
He unconsciously knows that he's an outsider even now. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
That's certainly what I got out of it, and I thought it was an absolutely perfect touch, something totally, subtly Doctorish. I'm actually remembering now, reading through the commentary, how many beautiful little moments like that there are. Like the blank psychic paper. Actually, mostly I'm remembering mainly how much I like this story, in general. :)
Because it's true, as one of my beta-readers pointed out, that there's no real reason why Klane would give the Doctor the information -- but he had to have the information for the plot. So I had to solve this somehow.
The Doctor's always had the ability of using the force of his personality to get plot points out of people who have no reason to give them to him. :)
I'm actually amazed that you considered any other doctor than 9 - he seems so natural for it, though 7 could have been very very interesting. Four would have produced a very different story, I think, though probably just as good.
Indeed, so perfect an idea did it prove, that AstroGirl, who, by some strange mystical coincidence known as The Organiser, had been given my requests, also decided to do the 9th Doctor with Amnesia. Which just goes to show that "there's no such thing as an original idea, only an original treatment."
And those two stories ARE so very different, yet so very perfectly Ninth, as Astro's said.
This was meant to be a subtle hint of amnesia, that he couldn't remember the name of "molasses" -- besides, I like the non-cliche-ness of that sentence.
You, know, it never twigged to me that that's what he forgot? I just loved as you say "the non-cliche-ness" of the phrasing.
Gotta thank Jonathan for the "I'm supposed to know?" line; he'd suggested the line "You mean, people know who they are? Fascinating." I didn't end up using the line, but I'm grateful for the idea, because it turns the usual "oh no, I can't remember who I am" thing on its head.
I remeber laughing out loud at that, and at the sheer brilliance and DOCTOR-ness of it - Jonathon's version, BTW, strikes me as far more 4 than 9, but for a 4 line it's marvellous.
Yeah, it did bother me a little that she didn't just steal everything of his, because that would seem more pragmatic, especially since she'd gone to all the effort of stripping his stuff. Maybe she thought better of it when he woke up coherent
Yeah but, forgive me, my first reaction when you say that is "but Elly wouldn't!" which I can't fathom for the life of me, but I honestly CAN'T see her, as you're created her, stealing from a victim of this "ghost". I think she'd let them keep the only kind of memories they have, the tangible ones.
And as to the litany of stuff he pulled out of his pokets, I didn't even notice that they'd all shown up somewhere in canon. They were just such Doctorish objects I didn't question.
I wanted the Menace to be Sinister and Creepy. So why not have people think it was a ghost? They didn't have to be correct.
I've only managed recently to make peace with lying to the readers thorugh the assumptions of the charcaters in a mystery. My fiance pointed out that the WORST offenders in history of doing this where Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, and after thinking long and hard I found I didn't mind being in such company.
So here we have Joon instead of "June". Though now that I think about it, wasn't there a movie with a character called "Joon"? Oh well.
Benny and Joon, though I've never seen it.
Misled and loony, of course. I wanted to have a dialect here that felt like the kind of dialect that an underclass would speak, but which couldn't be pinned down to any specific culture, so that it would sound non-20th-Century. So I tried pinching bits from US and British slang, and bending them a little.
And you did a FANTASTIC job, I utterly LOVE your dialect, it feels so coherent and consistant and REAL - profesional assesment, that. *linguist*
I'm posting my comments in two batches, because I have more to say tham LJ will let me...
And this is really the reason for the title of the story, too. The amnesia the Doctor had been given was anaesthesia; a numbness which side-tracked the pain, but didn't help him deal with it. Mind you, in this scenario, the anaesthesia was probably helpful, as a temporary measure to help him get his feet under him, (and prevent him from becoming a terminal patient) but anaesthesia is never a cure for anything.
And did you know that untill this made me double check I was convinced the title of this peice was "Amnaesthesia" a blend of the two words?
The description is rather vague, I know. It just felt as if it would be rather lame to describe it as a cross between a squirrel, a crab, and a bird...
I rather loved the description of the critter, and for some reason pictured it with long lop-rabbit ears, too...
I wrote the "remembrance" bits above before I wrote the scene they were part of. There was quite a bit of that in this story; writing things out of order. It seemed to work anyway.
I do this an aweful lot myself (the last place was the worst offender for it) and it's such a joy when they fall into place like jigsaw peices, seemlessly like this, isn't it?
Elly is one who Names. I'd toyed with the idea of making it so that the Nones were the only ones who actually had names, while the Regs just went by their job designation and ID, but that would probably have been belabouring the point, and Jonathan persuaded me not to.
I actually think that woulda been neet, but I like weird stuff like that.
Vilakins actually wondered if I'd named Vilka after Vila Restal, but if that was the case, it wasn't conscious.
And here I was convinced you'd named it after Vilakins of whom Elly reminds me strongly.
I utterly love this story. Love it SO much.
I just finished reading "Anesthesia" and WOW!
I loved Elly and the moment when the creature gave the Doctor back his memories. Very powerful.
I like! Do continue! :)
Reminds me of sort of sci-fi dystopia vision-of-the-future-of-humanity novels I used to read all the time. Haven't found anything new along those lines for a while...so THIS, I cannot resist! :)
Pyro Psychotic has added Anaesthesia to their Favourites.
(from http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6146766/1/)