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Showing results for tags 'possibly just a ramble'.
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So, this is my 800th post! I saw that I got to this point and thought that I might as well utilize it for something I considered doing. I'll see how this works and act accordingly in the future. My reason for doing this is that I sometimes randomly come up with a topic that I want to ramble - and discuss - about. I tried writing the ramblings as status updates, but it didn't produce any discussion. Perhaps here it'll end up similarly. Perhaps I should try writing shorter posts, or try something else, like a YouTube channel or a blog. Anyway, without further ado, let's start talking about the actual topic. I came out with this topic after realizing that a relatively surprising amount of fictional works I touched lately - be it books (mostly) or a TV series (just this one, when I come to think of it... but I wanted to include it) - included some kind of manipulation that might be awfully close to mind control. I thought of sorting the types of manipulation on a scale from most forceful to most subtle. So, let's begin. Spoiler alerts: first paragraph - extremely minor Animorphs, some InterWorld near the end. Second through forth paragraph - the Conch Bearer. Near the end of the forth paragraph - Divergent. Fifth paragraph - references to the Owl House, Mistborn and Inception. First and foremost (and not much spoilery, I'm glad to say): the most forceful method of mind control I can currently think of is the Yeerks from the book series Animorphs (K. A. Applegate). Those are slug-like sapient alien parasites that enter the head of other sapient beings through the ear canals (yeah, it doesn't really work. Ignore it for the moment), and take control of their bodies by detaching the nervous system from the brain and attaching it to themselves. In addition, they wrap the whole brain and can read the mind of the victim at will. The victims themselves are prisoners in their own mind, unable to do anything but scream inside their heads. In this method, the Controller basically pushes the controlled aside. Technically, it can't be called mind control, since the mind is still intact; yet, I think it deserves a mention here. It should be mentioned that there were occasions, throughout the series, that a controlled person regained some control of his/her body, but it happens rarely and isn't referred to as much of an option. In addition, the heroes of the series, who have the power to acquire and morph any living creature with a DNA, sometimes consider morphing into sapient beings as mind control, which is basically just as forceful. I, personally, disagree with their point, but I digress. A method just as forceful, though enacted differently, is present in the book InterWorld (Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves), when Lady Indigo bewitches people to follow her every order. This method basically pushes the original personality to the corner and places instead an infinitely loyal to the witch personality. Thus, I believe it belongs to the same class as the Yeerks: forceful personality repression, or FPR (acronyms!). If the most forceful method was overpowering the existing personality, the next one will be having a different personality in your head that don't necessarily overpower the existing one; namely, the method used in the Conch Bearer (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni). Now, it's been a while since I've read this book, so please forgive me if I misremember a thing or two. I was randomly reminded of it lately, and considering the fact that this kind of manipulation appeared there, I think it deserves a mention. In the book, the antagonist, Surbhanu, gets to have a few moments alone with the protagonists, Anand and Nisha, and as he says later in the book, builds a nest inside their minds. He tries to use it on Anand to trick him into killing his mentor, Abhaydatta, but Anand succeeds to overpower him and throw him out, with some help from the titular Conch (IIRC). Nisha, though, serves Surbhanu - up until he harms her pet, which actually was Abhaydatta all along... But never mind that. As it seems to me, this type of manipulation consists of putting a representation of the controller in the controlled mind, and suggesting actions from there - perhaps by simulating situations that'll cause the controlled to act the way you wish him/her to. Kind of reminds me of Divergent (Veronica Roth) and the way I assume the simulations worked there, though this method is probably more subtle. This'd be forceful suggestive alteration, or FSA, I guess. I'm writing it all messy, in case someone bothers reading this far and comment - help'd be appreciated. And, you know what? I'll stop here, for now. I intend to talk about a couple of other thing, like memory alteration (which I believe was used in the recent episode of the Owl House), emotional manipulation (allomancy, which I see as relatively forceful, though Breeze uses it with amazing subtlety) and subconscious suggestion (hypnosis, plus inseption from the film Inception) and perhaps some other stuff that I might think of later. If you can think of a book/movie/TV series that touches this topic - feel free to mention it. Perhaps you'd better write inside spoilers in such cases - I don't have the willpower to do it here. Sorry if it's a little messy. I'm not completely concentrated on this while typing, so that might explain that. Maybe I'll do better another day. Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it (at least a little)! Happy Equinox! (I don't celebrate it, not do I know of anyone who does, but it still is a special occasion!)
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