Season three extras!

[metropolis22786]

As a side note, WGBH is the Boston, MA public television station. Which made seeing a page called gbh.html just a bit weird.

For the icky weird side, consider that GBH is a date-rape drug and they're arranging a date....

Putting ickiness aside, given Danny's family situation, this is his equivalent of bringing Gray home to meet the folks.

That's GHB.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Soon to be content! For content's sake!

[TheIslander]

Excellent and exciting content!

[txanne]

Renee has vanished from the wiki! I wanted to reread her first appearance because I've forgotten most of it, including the name of the extra. But she's not there!

[tylik]

Oh, dear.

What a dreadfully elegant manifestation of the anomaly - protects her and hurts her all at once.

[tylik]

I would really love to know about the scope of her abilities, too - there are potential therapeutic applications. There's been a lot of work done on plasticity of memory, some of which indicates that taking something that generally inhibits memory formation while recalling traumatic events will tend to soften the memory and reduce the response to the trauma. The proposed theory (okay, I haven't been following this as well as I'd like, even though it gets close to my area) is that memory isn't really read only - you can't really recall it without at least in part re-writing it. So if Renee prompted people to think about traumatic experiences while talking to her, it's possible it could bleed off the emotional weight.

(Though I don't know how this would work in light of HM's experiences. Hm... because he was about to recall things that happened just fine before his hippocampal damage, and as far as I know those things were not subject to degradation - or at least abnormal degradation.)

[Korvar]

I would really love to know about the scope of her abilities, too - there are potential therapeutic applications. There's been a lot of work done on plasticity of memory, some of which indicates that taking something that generally inhibits memory formation while recalling traumatic events will tend to soften the memory and reduce the response to the trauma. The proposed theory (okay, I haven't been following this as well as I'd like, even though it gets close to my area) is that memory isn't really read only - you can't really recall it without at least in part re-writing it. So if Renee prompted people to think about traumatic experiences while talking to her, it's possible it could bleed off the emotional weight.

I've seen some of that too, but something about deliberately trying to remove things from one's memory makes me squirm.  I suppose it's a "My memories are me" kind of thing.

[txanne]

My memories are me, but if I chose--emphasis on both "I" and "chose"--to remove the worst emotional resonances from my worst memories, I'd still be me. Being able to think about the facts of what happened without reliving the emotional trauma would be immensely helpful. (I'd keep the misery of watching my cat fade slowly away right now, for instance, but I'd love to lose the lingering effects of being bullied thirty-odd years ago. That doesn't contribute in any meaningful way to who I want to be.)

[tylik]

I've seen some of that too, but something about deliberately trying to remove things from one's memory makes me squirm.  I suppose it's a "My memories are me" kind of thing.

Well, there's remove, and there's soften and tone down. Which isn't unrelated to remove, but a bit less abrupt and jagged... It would be interesting to tone down the emotional response without losing resolution on the rest of the memory, but I don't think that's a current option... and I wouldn't be surprised if emotional response is deeply enough ingrained into memory that it just doesn't work like that.

Kind of an ECR on the "my memories are me". The sense of self - illusory or otherwise ;-) - does, I think, in large part emerge from memory. And yet, when my memory doesn't work, or doesn't work the same way*am I someone else? Am I me, just less so (kind of me x 0.5, maybe?) No wonder I find the idea of not assuming continuity of self between one moment and the next so appealing...

* I am told that when impaired my memory is probably within normal bounds. I don't have any particular way of evaluating this for myself... well, okay, actually I could make one. I just don't want the opportunity to do the testing.

[Edmund Schweppe]

Renee has vanished from the wiki! I wanted to reread her first appearance because I've forgotten most of it, including the name of the extra. But she's not there!

I don't think that Renee had gotten into the wiki yet - until "Eight Second Rule", we hadn't actually seen her referred to by name, except in the Season 3 previews.

She's there now, though. (And that first appearance was in "Softer", BTW.)

[txanne]

Okay, weird, because when I saw the name "Renee," I was positive I was remembering it.

[Emma Bull]

Ed, maybe you just forgot she was there. 

[hawkwing_lb]

Interesting. And creepy. And well done.

[Edmund Schweppe]

The funny bit about this extra is that, even though it originally appeared in Season 3, it seems to be set near the end of Season 2. "Eight Second Rule" is set in May, 2009, as are both "Not Alone" (2x08) and The Unicorn Evils (3x01).

In Act III of "Not Alone", Nikki reacts very strongly to Hafidha's suggestion that a beta might be involved in the case:

"What if she wasn't a gamma?" Hafidha blurted. "What if she was a beta?"

"We only know of two betas and I'm looking at both of them." Lau bit her lip, startled by the intensity of her own outburst. Reaction formation, but what the hell was she reacting to? She pressed her forehead, wincing at the pressure of déjà vu, and sat down on the edge of Chaz's bed beside the wreckage of his dinner. "Sorry. Sorry. Headache."

In "Eight Second Rule", Nikki thinks that Renee is likely a beta before Renee's power makes Nikki forget. If the amnesia isn't perfect, that might explain Nikki's reaction (and headache) in "Not Alone". On the other hand, if "Eight Second Rule" was set after The Unicorn Evils, I'd expect Nikki to have some sort of reaction to seeing a skinny black female beta so soon after Hafidha was locked up in Idlewood.

[Edmund Schweppe]

Okay, weird, because when I saw the name "Renee," I was positive I was remembering it.

We did talk about her a lot on the Season 3 Promo thread. (I think glinda mentioned her first.)