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memory games
I'm rereading The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, which is still just as excellent the second time around. As an additional plus, I can't remember the solution to the central mystery, which means I'm weirdly unspoiled considering I've read this book before!
The first time I read this book, though, was before I watched Winter Soldier and subsequently spent most of a year in a fandom that's largely focused on a character who is defined by amnesia and identity issues. That's pretty much what The Rook is about too, and it's just really fascinating to read it now, because what it does is different from what nearly all Winter Soldier fic does. (At least, I should say -- the fic as it existed when I first got into the fandom, when I was reading just about everything. Now that I've drifted away from it, while I do still dip back into reading in the fandom occasionally, I burned out utterly on Bucky recovery fic, so I'm not sure what is out there now.)
Anyway, without getting into spoilers beyond what's in the first couple of pages, The Rook begins with the protagonist, Myfanwy, becoming aware of her surroundings in a park. She's surrounded by dead people, which circumstances suggest she killed, and has no memories before this moment. All she has is a letter in her pocket, written to her by her (or her past self, rather) before she lost her memories, telling her what her name is and giving her instructions for what to do next.
So what's interesting to me about reading this after being involved with Winter Soldier fandom is that present!Myfanwy is a very distinct and different person from past!Myfanwy. Both the narration and Myfanwy's internal voice are very clear on this. She has a separate sense of identity, never thinks of past!Myfanwy as anything other than a different person from herself, and also has a personality that's distinct enough from her past self that she has some trouble, at first, passing herself off as past!Myfanwy, since her mannerisms and modes of interaction are very different. (For plot reasons, she needs to conceal her memory loss from most of the people who used to know her.) She's also lost all sense of connection to the people she used to know, so has to rebuild those relationships again, differently this time.
One of the things that drew me to Winter Soldier in the first place, as well as to this book, is that this kind of identity conundrum is fascinating to me (it's something that is addressed in various points in Kismet, too, since they have memory-editing technology, though the most direct exploration of this sort of thing is something I haven't gotten around to in the comic yet). However, the very clear delineation between new!Myfanwy and old!Myfanwy -- not just in the way that she thinks about her own identity, but also being a very distinct person from her old self, bold where old!Myfanwy was timid and so forth -- is something I've rarely seen people do in Cap2 fic. Even in fics in which present!Bucky identifies as a different person from past!Bucky -- and those definitely do exist -- he's still written as fundamentally the same person: a variation on the theme of Bucky, still informed by his past self's personality and experiences, not an essentially newborn personality.
I suppose a lot of it is because in canon, his amnesia isn't as complete as Myfanwy's -- he still remembers some things, while she retains nothing at all. And also, writing him as a whole new person means losing the connection to past!Bucky, as well as Bucky's connection to Steve, which I think is what draws most people to write about them in the first place, so it's not surprising that most people don't want to jettison that. I certainly never have; all of the fic I've written is from the perspective that, while his experiences have changed him, he'll retain some connections, and emotional connections, to his past life.
Still, since I do find the book's exploration of identity very interesting (and plausible, at least in light of Myfanwy's experiences and the way she's processing them), this is now making me consider how this particular take on memory and identity would carry over to Cap2 fandom. I've kicked around the idea in the past of writing something where present!Bucky doesn't really emerge with past!Bucky's moral compass, whether it's a matter of being too damaged or simply that he just isn't that person anymore; he ends up as a mercenary, a killer-for-hire. I backed away from doing that because it was just too damned depressing for me at the time, but now that I've walked down from the intensity of my initial feelings for the character ... I dunno, it would be an interesting thing to write, at least.
ETA: While I was writing this, MY SORRY EXCUSE FOR A LOVING HUSBAND STOLE MY BOOK. This is what I get for telling him it was good and he should read it. I meant after I was done.
The first time I read this book, though, was before I watched Winter Soldier and subsequently spent most of a year in a fandom that's largely focused on a character who is defined by amnesia and identity issues. That's pretty much what The Rook is about too, and it's just really fascinating to read it now, because what it does is different from what nearly all Winter Soldier fic does. (At least, I should say -- the fic as it existed when I first got into the fandom, when I was reading just about everything. Now that I've drifted away from it, while I do still dip back into reading in the fandom occasionally, I burned out utterly on Bucky recovery fic, so I'm not sure what is out there now.)
Anyway, without getting into spoilers beyond what's in the first couple of pages, The Rook begins with the protagonist, Myfanwy, becoming aware of her surroundings in a park. She's surrounded by dead people, which circumstances suggest she killed, and has no memories before this moment. All she has is a letter in her pocket, written to her by her (or her past self, rather) before she lost her memories, telling her what her name is and giving her instructions for what to do next.
So what's interesting to me about reading this after being involved with Winter Soldier fandom is that present!Myfanwy is a very distinct and different person from past!Myfanwy. Both the narration and Myfanwy's internal voice are very clear on this. She has a separate sense of identity, never thinks of past!Myfanwy as anything other than a different person from herself, and also has a personality that's distinct enough from her past self that she has some trouble, at first, passing herself off as past!Myfanwy, since her mannerisms and modes of interaction are very different. (For plot reasons, she needs to conceal her memory loss from most of the people who used to know her.) She's also lost all sense of connection to the people she used to know, so has to rebuild those relationships again, differently this time.
One of the things that drew me to Winter Soldier in the first place, as well as to this book, is that this kind of identity conundrum is fascinating to me (it's something that is addressed in various points in Kismet, too, since they have memory-editing technology, though the most direct exploration of this sort of thing is something I haven't gotten around to in the comic yet). However, the very clear delineation between new!Myfanwy and old!Myfanwy -- not just in the way that she thinks about her own identity, but also being a very distinct person from her old self, bold where old!Myfanwy was timid and so forth -- is something I've rarely seen people do in Cap2 fic. Even in fics in which present!Bucky identifies as a different person from past!Bucky -- and those definitely do exist -- he's still written as fundamentally the same person: a variation on the theme of Bucky, still informed by his past self's personality and experiences, not an essentially newborn personality.
I suppose a lot of it is because in canon, his amnesia isn't as complete as Myfanwy's -- he still remembers some things, while she retains nothing at all. And also, writing him as a whole new person means losing the connection to past!Bucky, as well as Bucky's connection to Steve, which I think is what draws most people to write about them in the first place, so it's not surprising that most people don't want to jettison that. I certainly never have; all of the fic I've written is from the perspective that, while his experiences have changed him, he'll retain some connections, and emotional connections, to his past life.
Still, since I do find the book's exploration of identity very interesting (and plausible, at least in light of Myfanwy's experiences and the way she's processing them), this is now making me consider how this particular take on memory and identity would carry over to Cap2 fandom. I've kicked around the idea in the past of writing something where present!Bucky doesn't really emerge with past!Bucky's moral compass, whether it's a matter of being too damaged or simply that he just isn't that person anymore; he ends up as a mercenary, a killer-for-hire. I backed away from doing that because it was just too damned depressing for me at the time, but now that I've walked down from the intensity of my initial feelings for the character ... I dunno, it would be an interesting thing to write, at least.
ETA: While I was writing this, MY SORRY EXCUSE FOR A LOVING HUSBAND STOLE MY BOOK. This is what I get for telling him it was good and he should read it. I meant after I was done.
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(One of the other things that I find interesting that nobody hones in on for ybeb-verse tho, actually, is that identity for Bucky very much WAS a matter of choice, his other choice just sucked a lot, and choosing to accept this one came with being loved and having a purpose and a place and having people willing to protect him and having questions like general moral compass things answered already.)
Tho I do have some neuro-psych based scepticism about there being NO tie, between past and present self.
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I really like that idea for Bucky fic, though you'd have to write something LONG to really nail it. And it would be hard on poor Steve.
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I think I did actually get that choice element, to some extent, in YBEB ... in a lot of Bucky fic, actually, it seems like there is an element of choice in choosing to accept that former identity or reject it, at least in the sense of who he wants to be going forward; however, there is rarely such a very strong dividing line between present and past self like in the book I'm reading. (Like, it's not even a matter of Myfanwy choosing to be past!Myfanwy or not, because she knows she's not that person. She can choose to take on Myfanwy's life and baggage, which is a choice she makes at the start of the book, but she can't be her.)
And yeah, it actually raises a whole slew of questions about the underpinnings of identity and personality, doesn't it? Like how much of personality is hardwired (this book is clearly going for the "not much of it" end of things). In the book, there was a supernatural element at work, and she was literally wiped completely - this is all I remember at this point; it was basically a murder - but the physical human architecture is still the same.
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And yeah, though as I was musing above, it would essentially amount to writing an OC, and losing the existing relationships. Which would be difficult from a fannish perspective.
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Which is why it's not the one I wrote: it would have been a valid story, a valid story about the Winter Soldier and redemption and made Steve deal with loss and change, and it would have made me viciously miserable to write, so I didn't want to. It doesn't go away: there's still a faint AU in my head where this is what happens, and somewhere in Syria there is a town with an extremely effective protector and a woman and her two kids in a complicated not-relationship with that protector and it's about family and war and stuff but it hurts me so I'm never going to write it.
*clears throat*
Yeah, the clearest statement is in "drop your guard" and he's still sooort of talking around it and Steve has an understandable d-n-w at fully contemplating the other scenario but the person at the beginning of YBEB . . . could have become someone very different, if he hadn't decided to accept the memories as real. It's only after he does that he starts showing personality traits that are overtly Bucky, rather than "could be anyone sufficiently fucked up and with a sardonic edge who's trying not to make his host have to kill him".
( . . . which on reflection I realize is HI LET'SBE ABOUT ME, sorry. -.-)
Yeah, my problem from the neuropsych perspective isn't so much "hardwired" if you mean "determined by genetics" so much as "experience alters the physical structure of the brain even if we don't have the narrative-memory of that experience", so while I'm totally up for believing Myfanwy would sever her identity from the previous-person, I'm a bit (well, a lot) sceptical of sharing NO observable personality traits/quirks/etc, or ones that could be derived from the previous + brain damage. (This is related to the architecture of the brain stuff behind massive mood and personality swings that can come from concussions/etc: the physical state of the brain matters to stuff like that, in a demonstrable way.)
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It would be an interesting story though! Because he still has powers, and now would have to make that choice of what to make of them, which is one of my favourite narratives, really.
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But yeah, I'm really looking forward to the sequel. :D
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... and I also have further thoughts re: memory etc, but right now I'm getting ready to go babysit for a friend, so that part will have to wait.
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Yay babysitting!
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ETA: While I was writing this, MY SORRY EXCUSE FOR A LOVING HUSBAND STOLE MY BOOK. This is what I get for telling him it was good and he should read it. I meant after I was done.
Please tell me you immediately stole it back? O_O