Subject: I'll have to wait until you all forget it, then.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-22 16:51:00 UTC
And then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, it will happen.
And I will sit there laughing amidst crying Boarders.
/bricked
Accidents are kind of expected to happen on missions, but there's one that just popped into my head and I couldn't find anything on the Wiki, so...
What would happen if an agent accidentally got neuralyzed (doing other PPC work elsewhere while their partner got ready to neuralyze and coming back to get the full blast of it, for instance)? I would guess take them to Fic Psych and try to restore their memories, but I don't know how that would work...
...with the MiB continuum is a good idea just to use their de-Neuralyser. After all, any lockdown on the MiB Headquarters seems to flush those in the de-Neuralyser chamber out of Headquarters entirely.
Might I suggest finding something the Almost Human-verse? Especially if the agent has android/cyborg components. They do a lot of work with memories and stuff. There's a guy called the Recollectionist who helps restore old memories.
The only difference is that the Agent then heard the explanation of what happened and believes it… And their parter then has to hunt them down and drag them back to Fic Psych by their hair.
My spins on this sort of idea are always so much more violent than everybody else's...
I remember reading an exchange in one mission to the effect that the speaking agent must be competent with a neuralyzer because she remembers her neuralyzer training. I can't tell you off-hand which mission that was, though.
Maybe that's part of what mission reports are meant for, reminding an agent who forgets which end is the flashy one what s/he's been up to for the past few years?
Well, there's always the possibility of said agent being immune to it, buuuut given that there's a canonical machine in the MIB 'verse to deneuralyze someone (ala the whole driving force behind the 'Let's get Agent K back from retirement' arc in the second movie), they'd probably just have to be given a temporary set of memories (maybe something like 'we work together, that sparkly thing is an idiot and must die, don't freak out') and then treated, or shoved through a portal to Medical with a note saying who they were and what happened while their partner finished the mission, assuming it wasn't already done.
IIRC, neuralysers can be set to erase varying periods of time, from the past few minutes to hours, days or even several years. It can turn out however best fits the story, but there's no reason to assume it'd necessarily wipe out the agent's entire life. Maybe FicPsych or Medical has a de-neuralyser machine for exactly these kinds of incidents, or some shenanigans ensue with the past day or so being gone from the person's memory so they have no idea why they're standing in the middle of Medical.
Admittedly, that thing was ramshackle at best, but it was much smaller than the MIB one.
I can't recall them exactly, since it's been a while since I've seen Men in Black II and that movie was not the sort of experience I store in the favored areas of my memory, but I believe it was something to the effect that a bootleg neuralyzer would fry your brain inside your head if it didn't work precisely perfectly, and even if it did, the memories would be patchy at best for an undetermined length of time before everything fit back in place. I'd say that it would be best to find some way outside of the MIB movieverse to get the memories back, and even then, there should at least be a little time before their restoration to exploit the comedic and/or character-building potential of having one's mind erased, or the whole affair would be sort of pointless.
I had an idea bouncing around in my head for something like an agent getting mind wiped... It could maybe culminate in an illegal mission into the MiB universe to try and get their memories back and of course they'd get in trouble for that.
Also it's been so long since I saw the MiB movies that I only remember the sphere that burned off J's fingerprints. And some other details. *shamed*
...bought all three MIB movies, I can probably find you an answer once I'm done marathoning the lot. Or you could, potentially, find something outside the MIB universe.
The first and third ones were pretty good, though. The third had some rather noticable plot holes, but it was still a fun movie, and the plot holes were mostly inconsistencies in how their version of time travel works and how it influences events rather than the usual plot hole format of people just making incredibly stupid choices for no good reason.
That's where I got the idea of Bleepolate milk fixing temporal distortions.
Milk wouldn't repair a distortion, after all. How would that even happen? The closest I can think of is that it might be able to close rifts or cracks in time if it was poured over them, but that is such a phenomenally silly idea that even the campiest of fictional worlds would discard the concept as ridiculous.
"Don't worry, Romana! We'll heal the breaks in space-time with the twin powers of calcium and Vitamin D!"
Yeah, is making for good story material. I'll admit I do agree that the nature of the stuff at Medical's hands can make a lot of spinoffs seem oddly consequence-free sometimes.
I like the idea of an Agent getting Neuralysed and having to Deal With It. Brb, filing it away for future arcs...
(It would totally suck if one of the E/C duo lost all memories of them being in a relationship. Which means this is an excellent idea that I should keep on file.)
And then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, it will happen.
And I will sit there laughing amidst crying Boarders.
/bricked
Could be interesting though, whatever way you go with it.
As in, you would be going around neuralyzing people so that they would forget about the potential arc plot point, and then you would write it while everyone is dazed and convinced that your post was about llama wrestling or something.
Wait, did explaining that I got the joke that you didn't actually directly make ruin the potential fun for everyone else? Is it an Uncertainty Principle thing, so that after an undefined joke is defined it stops being funny for anyone? If that's the case, I am terribly sorry.
-FLASH-
...You never saw anything. You did not see anything about any sort of plot twist. Nope. You are now looking at the horns sprouting on Steven Moffat's head.
And how did he turn into a Zabrak? He's been messing with that James Bond-verse DNA replacement technology, hasn't he? We've got to stop him before he goes full Doctor Animo and starts creating human-alien hybrids!
(rushes off, foggy-minded and thoroughly distracted)
And yes, you're right, neuralyzers can be set to varying periods of time; I think K had several decades wiped from his memory. At least twenty-thirty, IIRC. But no, you're right, it wouldn't (or rather, shouldn't, unless something absolutely catastrophic happens) wipe out the agent's entire life.