DCML Digest Issue 34

[Don Rosa]

> From: Katie Sullivan <vazali at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Of Ducks and Dentists, and a note about Forgetting things
> I caught onto the gag in "Forget It!" right away, and laughed
> myself silly numerous times throughout the story.
> My dad had a little harder time getting into it, and here's
> why...  Magica's explanation reads in English: "When a
> victim is under its spell, once he hears his name spoken, his
> memory will be wiped clean of the knowledge related to the next
> word he hears!"
> Dad got caught up on the "the NEXT WORD" part, since the first
> time the spell is used, that would mean Scrooge would forget
> about the word "Just."

That is a good point... and it occurs to me that I would have considered
that when writing my dialogue and I would *not* have written it that way. So
I just went and looked at my original script (too bad I can't load an image
onto the ML to show the original storyboard-script). I recall thinking that
I could not have Magica say "...his memory will be wiped clean of the
general idea described by the next noun in the subsequent phrase as an
object of a preposition or a hanging indefinite participle in the sense of
the specific function and-slash-or definition of etc., etc."... I would
filled up the entire panel with text, and there would still be somebody who
would accuse me of being too unclear or holding hostages or something else.
Anyway, the dialogue in my original script is "... his memory will be wiped
clean of the next thing he hears"... "thing" being an indefinite reference,
not at all as specific (and actually incorrect) as is "word", and allowing
the reader to catch on to what the "thing" concept is when the Ducks'
blanking memories soon demonstrate it.