 We've all done things we wish we could forget. In the SCP foundation, and with amnestics, you don't have to wish. You just get to forget. But the history of amnestics on the wiki is a wild and complex one, and the usage of it as a writing device is often very problematic. So let's set the record straight. And first of all, let's get something fairly obvious and important out of the way. Amnestics have been used since the earliest days of the wiki, but they went by another name for a very long time. If you're digging through older articles, you can still find the word amnesiac being used to define a thing that makes people forget. Another reason that changed is pretty simple. The word amnesiac is already a real word with a defined meaning that's related to memory. It's actually the word for a person who's suffering from amnesia. And basically the idea has always been if you're gonna make up a brand new word to fit your made up thing, it definitely should not already exist and have a related but completely different meaning. That just causes confusion. As you can imagine, changing this on the website led to quite a lot of debate. And like all changes, it was resisted simply because it was a change to how things were already being done. But ultimately the word amnestic became the standard word to describe a thing that makes you forget on the wiki. So what's an amnesiac? It's a person that's suffering from amnesia. An amnesia is literally a deficit in memory. You've seen it before in fiction, the amnesiac hero who doesn't know who he is, like say in the born identity, where the main character still possesses a dangerous set of skills from their past life that they can't remember. And there's actually two different kinds of amnesia, retrograde and enterograde. Retrograde is the more commonly portrayed version where the individual can't remember who they are or where they came from. And enterograde is when you can't form new long term memories. Think the movie Memento, or if you got bad taste in movies, Fifty First Dates. It should be noted because nuance is important, amnesia is not a one size fits all term. It varies wildly from person to person in incident to incident. And the causes can be anything from emotional trauma to temporary amnesia induced from application of sedatives to actual physical damage to the parts of the brain that house or help form new memories. But with the terminology out of the way, what is an amnestic on the wiki? Well, that is actually pretty vaguely defined from article to article, even for the wiki. The widest accepted interpretation is that they are drugs of some kind with a variety of strengths, but they all work pretty much the same way in the end. They make you forget things. And this is something that comes up in pop culture all the time as well, especially in the realm of conspiracy fiction. I mean, almost everyone's seen one of those men in black movies where they use a neuralizer to make people forget events that just happened. And of course, creative use of that can lead to even more memory alterations. But the closest analog to how the foundation uses amnestics is probably from 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which focuses on a memory reset itself. The primary protagonist is how to relationship in badly and wants to erase it from his memory. And in this version of the future, that is something people can actually do through a medical process. Now that process is medical and requires a bit of time to administer, which is very similar to how it's used in the SCP Foundation. The core works on the wiki that helped to explain amnestics are the amnestic use guide, which was written by Lurked D in mid 2014, and the additional updated amnestics guide, which was written in 2018. And for completeness sake, we're going to talk a little bit about them both. I'm going to be consolidating the information from both guides and where they differ. I'm going to reach a middle ground. But remember, there is no cannon on the wiki. So what exactly an amnestic is to you can be different to what it is to someone else. These are more guidelines, not rules you have to follow. Now both guides classify amnestics in English letter based categorizations with earlier letters in the alphabet defining less effective or less dangerous versions of amnestics. Class A amnestics are the least invasive and most commonly used. They can be applied to a population by an aerosol and are effective for up to six hours of memories. The class A amnestic can be used to selectively remove certain memories by having people recall those memories whilst under the effects of the drug. A class B is a bit simpler and it just makes you forget everything that happened in the last 24 hours. It requires a pill and an injection together to work. Now a class C is probably closer to what people think of when they think of amnestics. It's a more effective and more targetable amnestic. It's applied while the subject is literally having their brain image defined and remove specific memories. This is the amnestic you use in a D class prior to their scheduled release or on a civilian who has been living with an anomalous object or person for years and needs to have that specific person or object removed from their long-term memories. However this one is a medical procedure. There's no pills or quick injections. You've got to strap someone down and start mucking with their brains for this to work. So it's not really useful on a wide scale or in an immediate sense. Now class D amnestics cause something more akin to the actual medical condition known as amnesia. It specifically starts with your earliest memories and then works its way forward. Now how far it goes forward depends on the dosage. Now class E is an interesting one. It removes the importance of things you remember without actually removing the memories themselves. Now think about how often you completely ignore small details around you on your way to work or throughout your day. A class E amnestic will make your memory of the 15 meter tall wolf with a dozen eyes that you saw taking down a building just as out of the ordinary as that homeless person you always pass on the way to work and you'll ignore it just the same as you do the homeless person. And finally the last one we're going to talk about is class F which literally blanks a human brain out. It's one of the more dangerous types of amnestics because it can wipe a person's personality out and allow them to be essentially replaced with someone the foundation wants you to be. There are even more classes of amnestics but they tend to have a more nuanced application and you can find tales that cover their creation or use in different ways. There's SCP 3000 which is supposed to be where some of the drugs come from. There's a tale out there right now where a guy literally makes people forget just through torture but if you want to read a few more you can look at the two guides I've been talking about just now in the links in the description below. Check them out after the video. So okay now we know what an amnestic is on the wiki but how are they used by riders on the wiki and more importantly how are they often incorrectly used? Well first of all the foundation deals with world ending and world altering threats all the time. There's a lot of ground you can cover with the idea that there are horrors just beyond the veil and you may not even get to remember them if you do discover them. The best stories involving amnestics tend to go into the consequences of their use and that's where a lot of riders can go wrong with them. See consequences are just an important part of any story at least if you're not writing a sitcom episode. If the world or even just our characters are exactly the same after a story as they were before the story started the reader is going to feel cheated. Either the story had no meaning the characters had no development. When a writer uses amnestics to prevent character development from taking hold they're doing a disservice to the story they spend all that time telling and in a way this is a lesson you can pick up incorrectly from modern media again especially from sitcoms. The story cycle of a standard sitcom generally requires that episode to episode the story doesn't alter our characters too much. Now season to season you might see growth in character development but in say friends Ross can't end up with Rachel after a single episode it's got to take multiple ones and in order for that to happen events have to be reset back to where they started. So they go back and forth for one or two seasons before anything changes but even when they do get together some event will cause a return to the status quo eventually. Now the issue is while that can work for a sitcom that's got 25 episodes in a season though I actually take issue with that from a writing standpoint but I can't deny that the formula is successful at the very least. It doesn't work so well in a short story or a piece of flash fiction and it really doesn't work in a novel at all. The status quo is a return to where you started. The reader has invested time and energy in following your story and if nothing happens of import along the way then you've betrayed the reader's expectations and readers don't like that. Amnestics are a plot device that all too readily allows a return to the status quo and hell in universe that's actually their purpose but don't let that be the end of it. Don't just say well that's how they work in universe so that's how they're going to work in my story because that's essentially just letting an amnestic be the excuse you have for not writing a compelling and satisfying story or an ending. If it makes sense for them to get used then explore the consequences of that decision. Don't end your story on a memory wipe. Use it to continue your story or if you want to write a story about amnestics you can talk about the ethical implications of making people forget things or the possible abuses of making people forget things. By the way I should note that this is actually a problem outside of amnestics and it happens in amateur fiction all the time but the excuse of amnestics on the wiki means it happens a lot more there. Don't fall into that trap. If you liked the video be sure to hit the subscribe button and definitely hit the notification bell next to that so you can be notified immediately as soon as I upload which I do every Tuesday and Thursday at the same time of day and if you really want to support this content head on over to patreon.com ford slash D Sumerian and pledge at any level like these fine folk have. I genuinely appreciate it and I hope to see more of you over there soon. By the way in case you were wondering the butt ghost won the poll that we ran to see who our D class was going to go up against next so be prepared for that. Anyway that's it. I'll see you on Thursday.