Proprioception
Proprioception
author: luinel
a Doctor Who "Magician's Apprentice"/"Witch's Familliar" episode addition/Perfect Sense review in the voice of Twelve (spoilers for both)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Perfect Sense belong to the BBC. Both of them make me cry (now and again).
Proprioception - perception governed by proprioceptors, as awareness of the position of one's body.
Humans are always so sure of themselves. They say that there are five senses, so of course there must be. I recently watched a film about senses while Clara was wasting time sleeping. The film was called Perfect Sense and followed a couple's tumultuous experience during an Earthwide pandemic. Humans, the entire population of planet Earth, were gradually losing the use of their senses one by one. They blamed it on a disease or a terrorist attack or something equally implausible, but of course this is completely ridiculous: there is no single disease that effects everyone on a planet, let alone without leaving a trace, as the case was in this film. No one was naturally immune, they couldn't isolate the virus, there was no way to fight back. There's always a way to fight back.
But let's just assume for a moment that it could be true, that there could be a disease in which everyone systematically lost the command of four out of their “five” senses. First, the infected became depressed for a couple of hours and afterwards lost their sense of smell. True depression lasts more than a couple of hours, but sure, okay, fine, whatever. Everyone needs to have a good cry now and again, I suppose.
A few months pass, people adapt and move on, and then one day the infected feel extreme fear for, let's say, half an hour, followed by extreme hunger, at which point he or she will eat anything on hand, and I do mean anything. They aren't picky about it, they just grab whatever they see and stick it in their mouths and masticate it for a while. It doesn't need to be edible, it can be disgusting, raw, condiment, bouquet. Whatever, whether it be flora, fauna, or chemical, they eat it until they come to their senses and realize they can't taste anymore and are wondering what the devil just happened. Extreme hunger, okay, but wouldn't it be a wee bit more plausible if they restricted themselves to foods that are actually esculent instead of mindlessly trying to kill themselves? Can you imagine the next 48 hours? The sick everywhere, the doctors and nurses too ill themselves to possibly attend to all of the poisoned and salmonelled? People might just not survive this time, they might just die with only two senses down and not live to see the next horror.
Months later, and the sudden anger. People go batshit crazy and tear apart everything within reach. They trash their apartment, beat up strangers, loot the neighborhood, and now things are looking really dire. All of a sudden society is breaking down. People cannot hear anymore, so it makes it difficult to apologize for acting so insane, which is just as well as not everyone wants to apologize. Hey, he couldn't control himself, and then she went and acted the same way an hour later, but we cannot think rationally about this, now, can we?
And finally, weeks later, the most unbelievable break of all, suddenly they do want to apologize, they do want to forgive. They must find one another, they must reunite, only our ill-fated couple just missed each other, cannot hear each other calling out to one another, are doomed to survive this tragically alone. But wait: she came back! They run towards each other down the middle of the street, and that's when their sight goes. Curtain falls.
Just let that sink in for a mo. How are they supposed to survive?!? What sort of masochist makes a film like this?!? What kind of people pay to watch it? It was beautiful, I'll be honest, I cried. You really have to go find it, I mean it, go! Drop everything and watch it now, it's on Netflix, or was, I'm not really sure. Clara should really change her password, I get too excited about streaming video and then I start talking to myself, or even worse, you.
Now, intellectually, the human race still has more senses at its disposal. They could take those last couple of steps toward one another and huddle in the middle of the street until some friend of theirs drives by in a similar state and goes blind behind the wheel and runs them over. Or they could stumble upstairs into her apartment and fumble their way about. How? Is it with only their sense of touch? Not exactly.
Even humans have a bit of psychic ability. For us Time Lords, it would be easy, at least, to find each other in the middle of the street while blind. We could feel each others' being, even if we were strangers, and hear each others thoughts if we opened up our minds and reached out, right? Certainly, if we were lovers, this would be as effortless as breathing. And then we could visualize the apartment around us and remember where everything was, count steps, keep from bumping into anything, sense our way through the maze. Sorry, you humans would not be as good at this, but you would gradually get better. You would figure it out that warmth means the lamp or the furnace and the rug is softer than the hardwood floor. Your other senses would strengthen in time, and you might not be as aware of these senses as a Time Lord is, but you still have them in your own limited way. You'd adapt, you'd move on, in a few years you would forget your old senses and at least be able to use the other senses that you simply take for granted at present. If you can figure out how to feed yourselves and keep the water running for that long, of course.
But Time Lords can do one better. Humans can sense where their hand is in relation to their face, even without looking (save when they are drunk or otherwise impaired), but we can sense where our loved ones our in relation to us, not just across a room or a city, but across time. If a Time Lord's timeline is wrapped strongly enough around another Time Lord's, he can feel where they are passing in relation to himself just as clearly as you can smell their perfume, hear them singing, feel their heartsbeats. We can shield our thoughts and feelings from one another, certainly, but it is extremely difficult to completely mask temporal proprioception, and nearly impossible to break that link once it is formed, not without a great schism, and even then it's still there, lying dormant, waiting to be rekindled. Even when separated by dimensions or rifts we can still sense friends. It's kind of like the feeling that you're being watched, and looking around and finding that you're alone, but you still know who is watching you and where that person is watching from. The only way for this sense to be completely lost is through death... of both friends.
If a Time Lord was suffering from the film's fourth break, the sudden need to forgive and be forgiven, there wouldn't be anything in the universe that could stop him or her from finding that loved one. One could use a Time Vortex Manipulator without coordinates, the psychic tie would be strong enough to safely reunite the two friends. Using a Tardis' telepathic circuits would be safer, of course, but where there is a will, there is a way. If one friend yanks hard enough, the other comes. There's always an escape. Life goes on. Life adapts. Humans would say that love reunites and heals...Time Lords know better. At least... I do.
Author's note: I've always thought that Time Lords must have a highly intricate and elevated sense of time (well, since i watched "Rose", i think, and Nine said:
Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That's who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.
So this has always been my fanon but i've never really written about it in the way i wanted to. But i also wanted to tie this into how the Time Lords always recognize/sense one another supposedly, even after regeneration. Only the Doctor didn't sense the Master when he was fob watched or when he was Saxon, so there must be some way to mask it. Anyways, i kind of want to write more about this idea but am not sure if this fic will actually tie into anything, i wrote this after watching "Under the Lake" (October 7, 2015) and thought about writing a fic about Missy's clever idea at the end of "Witch's Familliar" but nothing ever came of it. It's just obvious to me that the Doctor knew that Missy survived in "Death in Heaven" and that she would figure out how to get off Skaro, too. What i'm a little confused about is three sentences (not included) that i had tacked onto the end of this story (ETA: i figured out they were partially a quote from Dark Water) and have absolutely no idea what i was talking about. I'm guessing that i was referring to something on the show but i don't remember what it was a reference to now and will probably have to rewatch to figure it out.
If you're curious about how many senses humans have...i can't find the original article i read but i found some other interesting articles.
Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses
Sensing Your Body is More Complicated that You Realize (i admit i didn't finish this one)
Gateway of the Mind Experiments: Real or a Hoax? (this is referring to a supposed sensory deprivation study story that i stumbled upon late one night and, even though i could see it was obviously fake, seriously freaked me out)
Proprioception is actually the awareness of one's body parts in relation to one's other body parts, not one's body in relation to other objects, but that's what i named this when i wrote it and i'm not going to change it now that i'm finally posting it.
author: luinel
a Doctor Who "Magician's Apprentice"/"Witch's Familliar" episode addition/Perfect Sense review in the voice of Twelve (spoilers for both)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Perfect Sense belong to the BBC. Both of them make me cry (now and again).
Proprioception - perception governed by proprioceptors, as awareness of the position of one's body.
Humans are always so sure of themselves. They say that there are five senses, so of course there must be. I recently watched a film about senses while Clara was wasting time sleeping. The film was called Perfect Sense and followed a couple's tumultuous experience during an Earthwide pandemic. Humans, the entire population of planet Earth, were gradually losing the use of their senses one by one. They blamed it on a disease or a terrorist attack or something equally implausible, but of course this is completely ridiculous: there is no single disease that effects everyone on a planet, let alone without leaving a trace, as the case was in this film. No one was naturally immune, they couldn't isolate the virus, there was no way to fight back. There's always a way to fight back.
But let's just assume for a moment that it could be true, that there could be a disease in which everyone systematically lost the command of four out of their “five” senses. First, the infected became depressed for a couple of hours and afterwards lost their sense of smell. True depression lasts more than a couple of hours, but sure, okay, fine, whatever. Everyone needs to have a good cry now and again, I suppose.
A few months pass, people adapt and move on, and then one day the infected feel extreme fear for, let's say, half an hour, followed by extreme hunger, at which point he or she will eat anything on hand, and I do mean anything. They aren't picky about it, they just grab whatever they see and stick it in their mouths and masticate it for a while. It doesn't need to be edible, it can be disgusting, raw, condiment, bouquet. Whatever, whether it be flora, fauna, or chemical, they eat it until they come to their senses and realize they can't taste anymore and are wondering what the devil just happened. Extreme hunger, okay, but wouldn't it be a wee bit more plausible if they restricted themselves to foods that are actually esculent instead of mindlessly trying to kill themselves? Can you imagine the next 48 hours? The sick everywhere, the doctors and nurses too ill themselves to possibly attend to all of the poisoned and salmonelled? People might just not survive this time, they might just die with only two senses down and not live to see the next horror.
Months later, and the sudden anger. People go batshit crazy and tear apart everything within reach. They trash their apartment, beat up strangers, loot the neighborhood, and now things are looking really dire. All of a sudden society is breaking down. People cannot hear anymore, so it makes it difficult to apologize for acting so insane, which is just as well as not everyone wants to apologize. Hey, he couldn't control himself, and then she went and acted the same way an hour later, but we cannot think rationally about this, now, can we?
And finally, weeks later, the most unbelievable break of all, suddenly they do want to apologize, they do want to forgive. They must find one another, they must reunite, only our ill-fated couple just missed each other, cannot hear each other calling out to one another, are doomed to survive this tragically alone. But wait: she came back! They run towards each other down the middle of the street, and that's when their sight goes. Curtain falls.
Just let that sink in for a mo. How are they supposed to survive?!? What sort of masochist makes a film like this?!? What kind of people pay to watch it? It was beautiful, I'll be honest, I cried. You really have to go find it, I mean it, go! Drop everything and watch it now, it's on Netflix, or was, I'm not really sure. Clara should really change her password, I get too excited about streaming video and then I start talking to myself, or even worse, you.
Now, intellectually, the human race still has more senses at its disposal. They could take those last couple of steps toward one another and huddle in the middle of the street until some friend of theirs drives by in a similar state and goes blind behind the wheel and runs them over. Or they could stumble upstairs into her apartment and fumble their way about. How? Is it with only their sense of touch? Not exactly.
Even humans have a bit of psychic ability. For us Time Lords, it would be easy, at least, to find each other in the middle of the street while blind. We could feel each others' being, even if we were strangers, and hear each others thoughts if we opened up our minds and reached out, right? Certainly, if we were lovers, this would be as effortless as breathing. And then we could visualize the apartment around us and remember where everything was, count steps, keep from bumping into anything, sense our way through the maze. Sorry, you humans would not be as good at this, but you would gradually get better. You would figure it out that warmth means the lamp or the furnace and the rug is softer than the hardwood floor. Your other senses would strengthen in time, and you might not be as aware of these senses as a Time Lord is, but you still have them in your own limited way. You'd adapt, you'd move on, in a few years you would forget your old senses and at least be able to use the other senses that you simply take for granted at present. If you can figure out how to feed yourselves and keep the water running for that long, of course.
But Time Lords can do one better. Humans can sense where their hand is in relation to their face, even without looking (save when they are drunk or otherwise impaired), but we can sense where our loved ones our in relation to us, not just across a room or a city, but across time. If a Time Lord's timeline is wrapped strongly enough around another Time Lord's, he can feel where they are passing in relation to himself just as clearly as you can smell their perfume, hear them singing, feel their heartsbeats. We can shield our thoughts and feelings from one another, certainly, but it is extremely difficult to completely mask temporal proprioception, and nearly impossible to break that link once it is formed, not without a great schism, and even then it's still there, lying dormant, waiting to be rekindled. Even when separated by dimensions or rifts we can still sense friends. It's kind of like the feeling that you're being watched, and looking around and finding that you're alone, but you still know who is watching you and where that person is watching from. The only way for this sense to be completely lost is through death... of both friends.
If a Time Lord was suffering from the film's fourth break, the sudden need to forgive and be forgiven, there wouldn't be anything in the universe that could stop him or her from finding that loved one. One could use a Time Vortex Manipulator without coordinates, the psychic tie would be strong enough to safely reunite the two friends. Using a Tardis' telepathic circuits would be safer, of course, but where there is a will, there is a way. If one friend yanks hard enough, the other comes. There's always an escape. Life goes on. Life adapts. Humans would say that love reunites and heals...Time Lords know better. At least... I do.
Author's note: I've always thought that Time Lords must have a highly intricate and elevated sense of time (well, since i watched "Rose", i think, and Nine said:
Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That's who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.
So this has always been my fanon but i've never really written about it in the way i wanted to. But i also wanted to tie this into how the Time Lords always recognize/sense one another supposedly, even after regeneration. Only the Doctor didn't sense the Master when he was fob watched or when he was Saxon, so there must be some way to mask it. Anyways, i kind of want to write more about this idea but am not sure if this fic will actually tie into anything, i wrote this after watching "Under the Lake" (October 7, 2015) and thought about writing a fic about Missy's clever idea at the end of "Witch's Familliar" but nothing ever came of it. It's just obvious to me that the Doctor knew that Missy survived in "Death in Heaven" and that she would figure out how to get off Skaro, too. What i'm a little confused about is three sentences (not included) that i had tacked onto the end of this story (ETA: i figured out they were partially a quote from Dark Water) and have absolutely no idea what i was talking about. I'm guessing that i was referring to something on the show but i don't remember what it was a reference to now and will probably have to rewatch to figure it out.
If you're curious about how many senses humans have...i can't find the original article i read but i found some other interesting articles.
Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses
Sensing Your Body is More Complicated that You Realize (i admit i didn't finish this one)
Gateway of the Mind Experiments: Real or a Hoax? (this is referring to a supposed sensory deprivation study story that i stumbled upon late one night and, even though i could see it was obviously fake, seriously freaked me out)
Proprioception is actually the awareness of one's body parts in relation to one's other body parts, not one's body in relation to other objects, but that's what i named this when i wrote it and i'm not going to change it now that i'm finally posting it.