Mind Control Comics Forum

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Uh-oh.  Feels like things just got worse.

Well, the fact that Adrian's asking Dani questions here means he's not memetically possessed by her old master or anything like that; he wouldn't need to ask her that kind of information.

It's nice to get some information to support what we already suspected. It does beg the question that was asked in the other thread, though: why didn't Dani use the Watch on the new inductees as opposed to the crystal?

Perhaps so she was not strictly taking them into the harem, as she was not making any fundamental or permanent changes.


And.. does 'it can do anything' mean more than mental effetcs?

Way back when I wondered if it had  a BE switch...

Adrian told Erin that no one was to use the watch until he'd spoken to Rain. I don't think we've any reason to believe that that didn't get back to Dani.

I'm still not really clear whether the women are under Adrian's control here, or whether he's under theirs.

Frankly, it doesn't seem that their under his control or he's under theirs.  It feels like Jakob has now won (or is close to winning) simply as a ghost in the machine or rather a ghost in Pearl's head.  Yikes!

Well, I don't know. I doubt that what Adrian does is for Jakob's benefit; he might cause the protagonists to 'lose' even if he doesn't help Jakob win, however.

I think the question of whether or not he's under their control or they're under his is more talking about how so far in the comic, Adrian doesn't really take the lead on leveraging his control into satisfying his own needs, but rather lets the girls take the lead. Which I would probably chalk up to him being afraid to do something harmful to the women under his control; as talked about earlier in the series (primarily in a conversation with Laura), if Adrian could have gotten rid of the harem, he would have. Obviously he's motivated this way because every other instance of mind control he's run into has been pretty horrific (to his knowledge; what happened to his parents was kind of lovey-dovey), and he probably has some hangups about male-on-female dominance in general. I'm hoping he gets over that; it's not ideal that what Erin did is the cause, as it's almost overwriting parts of Adrian's personality, but as long as it's not literally him being possessed or controlled by Jakob then it could go fun places.

That's a very good point that I had forgotten.  Question answered, IMHO.

On the question of what's up with Adrian, here's a more positive speculation.  So far, Adrian's actions with regard to the harem have seemingly been driven by a desire to give them what they want.  Suppose that his experience with the dreamscape and mind-link leads him to realize that what they really want, now, is to be more aggressively dominated than he had previously believed.  The result could be a still independent and empathetic Adrian who nevertheless acts as a more proactive and dominant master.

It's certainly complicated. Erin appears to have fallen under the spell of a memory of Jakob using the pendant. But in a sense she was already under the spell of a memory of Jakob's programming, via the reactivation of Dani as the watch girl.

However politely he might treat them, Adrian's harem are enslaved exactly as they would have been under Jakob. We can't know exactly what their conditioned minds want, but we do know for example that they want to call him master - something he apparently tolerates for their sake.

It's not clear how Adrian supplanted Jakob in the dreamscape, but we certainly speculated that Adrian might be in there before we were made aware that he was being affected. It's only my suspicion, but I think that Erin's mind replaced Jakob with Adrian in the memory because Adrian is her master and no one else could fit that role. And I think that he in turn has been affected by her current way of thinking.

Regardless of who is actually in control here, Erin wanted the chance to try to heal Cherry with the help of the watch and it was Adrian who was reluctant to allow it. Now it seems that, maybe, Adrian is happy to give it a try. And it seems to me that it's Erin who (literally) changed his mind. If he is also now being something more akin to the sort of masterful master that they want, I think that's more down to them than to him.

Unclear that his new attitude is "the kind of Master they want."  Dani fled a previous master with this firm dismissive tone and MO.  I'm not sure the others are fully aware of what's happened to Adrian yet, but Cait seems to have mixed feelings about the new mindset.

I'm not clear either, but I'd say Caitlyn's concerns are mostly about the things going on that Adrian isn't telling her about; she appeared to be more than happy with the sexual aspect. Jakob was actively cruel; Adrian hasn't yet behaved anything like that. But regardless, it isn't clear that Dani fled from Jakob.