About Amnesia-fic

[bobthemole]

I tend to dislike amnesia-fic, especially if they are about reuniting a memory-less person with the other member of their OTP.

Characters are the products of their histories and if you take away the memories of those histories, how are they the same people? Unless the fic is an exploration of how much personality remains intact if you take away memory, but fics (outside the Dollhouse-verse) seldom explore that.

There's also the dynamic when one person in a pairing is an amnesiac and the other knows everything about them. If they two are teaming up to reconstruct the amnesiac's life, I think that's an interesting story because the memory loss is the primary "antagonist" and everyone's agreed on that.

But what I don't get is stories where A thinks B is dead and months later discovers a memory-less (and newly human) B working in a bar somewhere. The story then becomes about A convincing B that they belong together, although B would rather keep hir current simple bartending life and not be pursued by this creepy stranger, thank you. Inevitably, A devolves into a stalker who can't stay away from this stranger who bears a resemblance to hir lost (unrequited) love. And B is unusually content with hir memory-less life and has no curiosity about hir past. A eventually wears down B and they establish a new relationship. Sometimes B regains hir memories, precipitating another crisis, but conflicts are resolved and they embark on a happy paired life of whatever shenanigans (vampire slaying? demon hunting?) they were up to before they were separated.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on at a meta level, but it seems that the reestablishment of the pairing is prioritized over the will and happiness of the individual characters. And it's like amnesia is a shortcut for getting characters together without dealing with their mutual baggage - which I think is completely pointless and undermines everything that makes the pair interesting in the first place. What surprises me is the popularity of this trope - I'm sure I've read half a dozen spuffy fics with this plot, and now I'm finding them in Supernatural too.

There's probably a good reason Amnesia fic is so popular, and if I knew what it was I'd be able to appreciate it better. Does anyone have thoughts? Have you written or do you love reading this genre? What am I missing in my analysis?

Comments

[rebcake]

I've read quite a bit of amnesia fic, but I don't think any of it has met the criteria you mention of A stalking an unreceptive B who is happy with hir life. Okay, maybe one.

My fic reading is pretty much Buffyverse-centric, so I don't know about other fandoms, but in Spikeworld (and he does seem to get it the most), it generally runs from the hilarious (S6 Spike gets amnesia and thinks he's secretly dating Xander instead of Buffy! Randy & Joan have adventures!) to the sublime (shanshued!Spike doesn't remember his vampire days, but he's still very Spike which means he's very into Buffy! shanshued!Spike doesn't remember ANYTHING and tries to piece it together, with and without help from the people that he meets!) I'm not sure I like the shanshued!Spike turns back into William trope, though. Too much power imbalance.

Sometimes it's happy/romantic, sometimes it's darkest dark. I think these are a bit like another big fic trope — traveling back in time to "fix" things. Sometimes it works better than others, depending on who's doing the telling. It's a reset for one side, a chance for a do-over, to try again without making the same mistakes. Personally, I'm sort of a fan of the variation on this where things go wrong anyway, though I've had some fun with them going right, as well.

In the real world though (and I've actually had a brief amnesia experience myself) it seems unlikely that an amnesia victim would not be curious about their past. For the most part, I'd think they'd be willing to explore that with people who claim some prior knowledge.

I haven't written any amnesia fic, but I might feel a Randy & Joan one coming on...

[bobthemole]

Hey, thanks for friending and commenting!

I was mainly drawing on my Spike-verse experience. I do LOVE the idea of exploring how much our memories make up who we are. I loved Dollhouse for exactly that reason, as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (although Memento is too bleak for me to rewatch). But I prefer it when the story is about the memory loss rather than using it as a vehicle for romance. The latter, for me, detracts from the really interesting questions I want to explore.

Retrograde amnesia in fiction tends to make me antsy, because NO ONE tends to ask the questions I want to ask the victim. They haven't lost all their memories - they're speaking a language in a particular accent, they have a vocabulary which is probably more extensive in their area of expertise, they have muscle memory. I want them to sift through these clues and figure things out about themselves that they can't consciously remember.

I think this is a long-winded way of me saying that no one has written the amnesia fic I want to read :D


P.S. Has this post been linked somewhere? I'm getting an unprecedented spike in my DW traffic. My party is usually over on LJ.

[rebcake]

Yep, Slaymesoftly mentioned your post, which is how I came to realize that you weren't on my reading list by some oversight.

Yeah, I was totally in awe of the Dollhouse look at identity through a dozen facets. What am I today? Perfect date, mother, bride, daughter, student, ninja, Senator? All of those? None? In a way, it's what all creative people (actors and writers particularly) strive to be and understand. A truly integrated person is rare, I think, so what happens when part of your "self" goes away?

Anyway, I think you should write the amnesia fic you want to read. I'd want to read it too!

[moscow_watcher]

I might feel a Randy & Joan one coming on...

*licks lips* :)

[rahirah]

(Disclaimer: have written 1.5 amnesia stories, which amounts to less than 1% of my lifetime fictional output.)

Characters are the products of their histories and if you take away the memories of those histories, how are they the same people?

EXACTLY. How are they the same people? How are they not? What is innate in them, and what is a result of their experiences? What does it mean to be you - how much can be taken away before you're not you any longer - and if you're not you, who are you? Did 'you' ever exist in the first place? If you forget something, but everyone else remembers it, how does that affect their relationships with you? Do they even have a relationship with you? Does forgetting your past truly erase it?

Amnesia fics are, at bottom, about answering the question "Who am I?" And yes, sure, like any other plot device, it can be used in trite, cheesy ways by less than thoughtful writers. And maybe it doesn't ping for you even when used well. But judging a genre by the trite, cheesy examples (and Sturgeon's Law; ninety percent of ANY genre is going to be trite and cheesy) isn't very useful.

[bobthemole]

Hey, thanks for stopping by!

I feel like I may have offended you by sounding overly critical of Amnesia Romance fic. I'm sorry about that, since I wasn't singling out the genre for criticism.

I'm fascinated by the question of Nature vs. Nurture in creating identity and am generally all over the Memory-Loss genre like small larvae on grain-based food products. But for some odd reason I feel unsatisfied when the plot becomes about reuniting a couple despite the memory loss of one. It could be a twinge of power disparity when one person holds all their shared knowledge. It could just be that I don't believe in soulmates, and I'm starving for a story where the loss of shared memories tears people apart.

Actually, that might be it. I was a wee lass when I watched a documentary about married couples in which one member lost several years worth of memories, and most of those marriages ended in divorce. I think I internalized the idea that there are no happy endings in this scenario - not unless the member with memories is able to let go of their shared past and see it as a brand new relationship. I can't suspend my disbelief when things run relatively smoothly.

But have people fall through a time-rift and play Swiss Family Robinson in the Paleozoic? Totally believable!

[rahirah]

Not offended! If a particular trope doesn't resonate for you, it doesn't, and there's nothing wrong with that. Though if it doesn't, I'm doubtful that people explaining why they like it would make any difference in how you feel about it. People have explained Alien Sex Pollen to me a million times, and I'm still DO NOT WANT. *g*

I think the thing is, people who want to write a romance want to, well, write a romance. Which usually means that the couple will get a happily ever after, regardless of the plot device used to accomplish that. I'm not particularly interested in writing reunite-the-couple scenarios myself, mainly because I write in a single continuity, and the couple doesn't need reuniting. (Plus I can't really use any plot device more than once, or people will get bored.) For me, when I did use amnesia, it was primarily as a method of examining the extent to which certain character traits were innate in the affected character, and to what extent they were learned. How the memory loss affected the character's existing relationship with their significant other was definitely a subplot, but it wasn't the main point of the story.

(If you want a story about a couple being torn apart, though, I can highly recommend greenmaia's "The Glory And The Dream." It's not amnesia, but it's another common fannish trope handled with brutal, heartbreaking realism.)

[bobthemole]

I will check out "The Glory...". Thanks for the rec!

[rebcake]

Well, I really liked your matched set of amnesia fics, which only ended happily because the memory loss was temporary — at least in Buffy's case. Spike kind of figured out a generally acceptable approach to life even before he was restored, but he always claimed that he followed his blood rather than his brain, anyhow. ;-) Now I want to reread.

[rahirah]

He's still pissed off that he never got to eat those jaywalkers. *g*

[moscow_watcher]

Maybe I was lucky, but I read several very good amnesia fics that cleverly explored characters' identity. I even wrote one, Who Are You, Faith Lehane? and had a lot of fun with it.

May I rec you a couple of amnesia fics I thoroughly enjoyed?

Amnesia! Spike by Mahaliem

Tabula Rasa Ad Aeternum by Kallysten and Kantayra

Memories Without Words by Kantayra

[bobthemole]

Thank you! I will check these out :D

[rebcake]

Well, if people are giving out recs, I've got a few!

Shanshu!Amnesiac Spike:

No Mistakes by treacle_antlers — http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1412347/1/No_Mistakes
Forget and Smile by Miss Murchison — http://home.mchsi.com/~missmurchison/Forget_and_Smile_1.html (also its short prologue, Sweet Lethe, linked from the main story)
Fool's Paradise by kats_meow — http://kats-meow.livejournal.com/47960.html (darkish one-shot)

Barbverse Matched Set:

Deja Voodoo (Buffy's memory loss) — http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/347657.html
The Hero of the Piece (Spike's memory loss) — http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/377147.html

Most recent Randy & Joan:

Dear Randy by annapurna_2 — http://seasonal-spuffy.dreamwidth.org/330605.html
(I don't think that I've ever read a bad Randy & Joan, although the dual amnesia sort of precludes the sort of deep diving you're looking for.)

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I think the amnesia trope as you describe it (with one person convincing the other that they belong together) isn't too awesome (except, I vaguely recall liking one where Drusilla used some kind of demon worm to eat a lot of Spike's memories? So, he went back to being sort of evil? I can understand not leaving someone well enough alone if the memory loss makes them *evil*). But I think there is potential for interesting storytelling there.

Like, I think amnesia stories can go back to nature vs. nurture, how are we who we are, fate vs. identity, etc. Like, "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" deals with selective memory loss. Or in this season's Fringe, notaserialkiller!dude loses the memory that kept him from becoming a serial killer, but he didn't lose what the memory did to him. I think that stuff's really cool.

And I can see places where you could do cool things with amnesia in fic. For example, as a character regains or acquires new memories, you could explore how that shapes him or her. If characters with amnesia immediately make a connection, it can say a lot about that connection (in Tabula Rasa, some couples connect [Dawn and Buffy, Spike and Buffy, Tara and Willow] and Anya and Xander super don't; in It's a Terrible Life, Sam immediately gloms onto Dean). I think you could also do something interesting with one character mourning the person they used to know, and new!person trying to grasp what they used to have.

And I have an original!fic on the back burner that deals with nullifying memories in a certain way that I won't detail here, but I think it brings up interesting questions (though, duh, if I'm planning on writing it, I probably don't think it's dumb and boring).

So. Anyway. I think the idea of playing with memory loss (though, I have to say, I usually need it to be magic or "science"-y, not from a large whump to the head) opens up interesting avenues. But ffic's primary concern is often "how can I make these people have sex?" which tends to leave the fun, compelling stuff ignored. For me, it's like genderbending (though not quite as disappointing quite as often); I'll keep reading cuz I'm convinced that there's *got* to be some good ones that delve into the things I'd like to see explored. /long ramble is long

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right - amnesia in itself can lead to a lot of interesting questions about the nature of identity. That's what I love about Dollhouse, Eternal Sunshine, and a bunch of other stories that feature memory loss. (And now I'm curious about your original fic, NO PRESSURE.)

It's the "how can we make these characters have sex" aspect where I get confused. There are far FAR more convincing and less problematic ways to get characters in each others' underpants. So why use amnesia?

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

My original fic is a long way off! I just have it jotted down in the Big Book of Plot Bunnies In My Brain. It's a little bit science-y.

I think the "how can we make these characters have sex" aspect is often baffling, but something we just have to deal with in ffic. I mean, I came across a request looking for "one character is mentally disabled" fic the other day. Which, yeah, I read all the recs cuz what the hell, and that was hella dub-con. Which, out of all the ways to get two people together, "one has the mental capacity of a toddler" is not the way I would go about it, but "convincing" and "problematic" kinda mean nothing in fandom?

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

but "convincing" and "problematic" kinda mean nothing in fandom?

That certainly seems to be the case. *sigh*

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

Sigh is right.

There are the fics that are good.

There are the fics that have nuggets of awesome things, but fail to explore them cuz all the want is romancing.

And then there's the crazy.

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

I want to cross-stitch that on a wall hanging.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should say that the "mentally disabled" fics took great strides to make it okay (and I kinda read to see how they were gonna try and accomplish that). I would say that they mostly failed. And the others had it so, "But he gets better!" I might have actually been less disturbed if they weren't so darn fluffy.

Anyway! Back to amnesia! I think another way I've seen it that isn't *so* bad is where the characters didn't know each other before one got amnesia. And another would be in which the amnesiac character is in danger for some reason, so the other character has to step back into their life and be all, "BTW. Demons." *g*

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

Those amnesia variants sound interesting. If the characters didn't know each other pre-amnesia, that becomes an entirely different setup. I enjoyed the show John Doe because it was about the protagonist building a surrogate family while trying to reconstruct his past, and he had a LOT of agency in the process.

[mergle.livejournal.com]

Most fictional amnesia has a Dramatic Recovery where boom, all of the memories come back at once. I generally take that to mean that the memories are still there (and hence all of the neural patterns, connections, etc), it's just that their recall is impaired. That's why they still remember things like language, how to tie their shoes, and what physical sensations mean they need to seek a bathroom if they don't want to soil themselves. And so, I tend to take this to mean that the character's personality is largely intact (although possibly not completely) because their brains are pretty much the same except for the impaired recall. This is probably why TVTropes calls this laser-guided amnesia. =P

I liked amnesia tropes better when I was a kid, because then my heroes and heroines could Dramatically forget their past and then Dramatically remember it and reveal it to everyone. It had pretty much the same sort of appeal as Destined Heroes and Prophecies and so forth -- it made characters Special. Now, I generally consider myself to have grown out of that, and I find the trope tedious most of the time.


I've seen it used acceptably by some authors. Lois McMaster Bujold has a sci-fi 'verse where medical technology for bringing people back from the dead tends to involve varying amounts of memory loss, some temporary, some permanent, and it freaks the hell out of the one viewpoint character who we see go through the whole process.

It's part of the Rules of the Haibane Renmei world, that people who wake up in the walled town as Haibane have lost specific memory of their pasts, although some of them have vague memories of a type of event from their past (one character comes to realize that she pushed someone away who was trying to help her, and hurt them, in her past, but nothing more specific than that). They tend to lose their curiosity about their past quickly, but that could be put down to rules of the universe, same as what makes them sprout wings.

I think amnesia fic is a bit like Drunken Hookup Fic -- something many writers resort to because they can't see how else to get their OTPs to overcome their personal hurdles and start sleeping together, or simply because it's easier than trying to have them overcome their personal hurdles.

(That said, I think Drunken Hookup Fic is a much less grievous sin, because it _can_ be realistic and reasonable, depending on characters and canon setting.)

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

I looked thru Amnesia on TVtropes - there's a LOT of that stuff going around :)

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

*waves hand* I'm one of those who enjoys a good amnesia fic. Off the top of my head, I think it's almost always Spike who has no memories (which makes better sense, given the things that have or could have happened to him since Buffy last saw him).
And I've written several - most set in the future somewhere and with varying degrees of memory recovery.
Currently working on a Randy/Joan fic and having a hard time making it believable that they would not have figured out more about who they are by now. I remember reading one years ago where there's been an apocalypse of some sort and Buffy has remained "Joan" to avoid remembering all that's gone wrong and Spike takes care of her. (In fact, there may be two fics with similar themes, now that I think of it, and I may be combining them in my little pea brain.)
Anyway - reasons for liking? A chance to explore the basic personality without the baggage of memory? How much of this person is innate, and how much of it due to life experiences? An opportunity to see/show how deep the attraction between the two characters goes, or how inevitable it is. (Trying to avoid the whole "soulmates" thing, but you know...) In the case of Randy/Joan - how might the relationship have played out without the bad memories that made Buffy so determined not to fall for another vampire? Stuff like that. Have to go to work - if I think of other, more coherent, reasons, I'll add them later. :)

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

Yay awesome information!

Buffy has remained "Joan" to avoid remembering all that's gone wrong... the case of Randy/Joan - how might the relationship have played out without the bad memories that made Buffy so determined not to fall for another vampire?

Those that good reasons I hadn't thought about. I imagine the latter plot is tricky, because it's trying to show that a relationship is working in the absence of something that the protagonists don't know is missing.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

*nods* Randy/Joan is problematic if you try to extend it past a couple days. Unless you have an apocalypse or something that sends them running away.

I ended up making a while post about this a little while ago. And enigmaticblues had a good comment and summation of what can be appealing about the trope.