Notes re: Shakespeare Never Wrote a Vampire Play

[rosiepaw.livejournal.com]

When I first started to think about this fic, I remembered reading that Rodney and John had had a misadventure in Salem (Out of Time). Not realizing that the boys had played a few tricks with time to get there, I took this mean that John had been turned some time before 1692.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t remember is that in Sensual Magic John states (twice) that he’s been a vampire for two centuries. By the time melagan pointed this out to me, I’d written about a third of the story and become rather attached to the idea of a pre-turned John in Elizabethan England. It just seemed to fit him. (Okay, I probably saw Shakespeare in Love too many times.)

So have I created an irreconcilable paradox? I don’t think so. In Out of Time instabilities in the time spirals tear John and Rodney apart. John wakes up alone, unable to remember Rodney. It follows logically that either John can’t remember the years he spent with Rodney at all or he has to have false memories of spending these years alone. Occam’s Razor suggests the former – creating false memories would be too much trouble. John has the vague sense that he’s been a vampire for 200 years because he can only remember 200 years.

If John were to make a list of all the memories he does have, he’d realize there’s a considerable gap because he’d have memories of clothing, weaponry, etc from before 1800. However, he’s unlikely to make such a list because:
1) Vampires are "shit for keeping records" (as John himself tells Rodney); and
2) Losing Rodney throws John into a depressive episode: "A miserable cold settled into his gut and the dark night felt like bitter frost on his bones. John bent his head in weary despair. This -- this was what it was like to wake up and know you’d lost your soul." John’s just not in the frame of mind where he’s going to say, wait a moment, something’s going on here, I’d better make a list of my memories.

Rodney does mention that John always knows where he is in time. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that John knows how he got there. In fact, MUPATS (McKay Uncertainty Principle Applied To Sheppard) suggests the opposite. According to MUPATS, the product of the uncertainty in John’s location and the uncertainty in his momentum (the product of his mass and his velocity) will always be greater than or equal to a small but non-zero number. Therefore, as the uncertainty in his location approaches zero, the uncertainty in his momentum approaches infinity.

Since John’s mass appears to be pretty much constant (no matter how much he eats), it must be his velocity that’s infinitely uncertain. Therefore, the more certain John is as to where he is, the less certain he is as to how he got there or where he’s going.

Links to the story itself:
Part 1
Part 2

Comments

[melagan.livejournal.com]

These notes are awesome and practically a story in itself.

I ♥ MUPATS!

*runs to read*

[rosiepaw.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I just hope my quantum chem prof doesn't read this - this probably *isn't* what she intended for me to take away from that class.

[gyri.livejournal.com]

I love the MUPATS!!

You have a wonderful gift of imagination!

[rosiepaw.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I kind of thought that MUPATS explains an awful lot about John's navigational abilities.

[wanted-a-pony.livejournal.com]

< chortle > MUPATS needs to be part of fanon now! It gives one the ~D'oh!~ feeling of reading an irrefutable fact which one just somehow hadn't seen explicitly stated before....
:-)

:: canters off to read the tempting tempting fics now ::

[rosiepaw.livejournal.com]

I almost didn't post the MUPATS section, as I felt it was a completely self-indugent bit of whimsy that no one else would think funny.

Okay, I can admit it when I'm wrong! :-)