Mind Control Comics Forum

Coming Tuesday, February 5th!

I....I'm not sure quite where this one is headed.  This could be Derek recovering from his shock to toss the apartment.  It could be Vik's attempt to cope or to find a weapon to restore some justice to his world.  It could be Zenon's next move or Claudia's next move.  It could be a flashback to Erin's night with Raven.  It could be Laura stocking up for Girls' Night before having fun with Adrian herself.  It could be a euphemism for Laura and Adrian coupling--or this could be Weston's skeeviness emerging with his ego.  Or...something else entirely.

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We don't know where Raven lives.  It might be nice to find out, but there's no way she's still hanging out at the SJI--although, her snooping through Erin's stuff and tripping over the Watch might have some possibilities.

Hitomi?  With that title, the only thing I could think of would be a flashback to what she did after Cait left.  If we see her alone in the dorm room in this issue, the title makes it sound like she's pawing through Cait's closet and bureau looking for fantasy fodder.

Well Derek found panty in the drawer
That panty the owen to Daielle
Now they know that Daielle have the watch!!!

look out Daielle

That particular phrase doesn't strike me as highly ubiquitous (like Juicy some years back).  Why did Dani have (at least) two pairs of these?  Did she really like the joke even before her first round of programming?  Remember, she was wearing underwear with the same phrase (though it might have been white) the night she first met Adrian...I think it was episode 3.

Also, even when the blind squirrel finds a nut, he can't express it.  Derek made it sound like he found the girl, when what he found was the ID.  What idiotic syntax from him--though quite typical of his character.  I guess we have to hope that the guy at the desk or El Magnifico take the opportunity to break his nose and dislocate at least one of his shoulders before he can get back to Claudia.

This issue reopens what for me is the biggest mystery of the comic - who is Danielle, and what happened to make her leave the harem?  And why does she have the watch?

So Claudia, Zenon and Derek are after the watch.  They know it's in Kearsarge, or at least linked with someone in Kearsarge.  Derek actually dated Danielle, presumably as part of his secret mission to investigate Wilmot's women.  But he, Claudia and Zenon were unable to make that connection?

I have faith that this will all make sense in due time, but in the mean time, I'm trying to come up with plausible explanations for how this happened.

re: this issue in particular, three things stand out.  First, I really like the closeup of Claudia in panel 4 - very nicely done; secondly, no sign of what disgusted Derek last issue - still wonder what it was; third (and this is in the 'probably reading too much into things' area), what's on the floor in the bottom left corner of panel 2?  Is it just some clothes that landed in a weird way?

Lastly: I'm really glad this happened in terms of plot development - with Dani having visions of her previous life, and with Claudia et al. now aware of her importance, the stage has really been set. 

The New York harem Master
He love Danielle and trust her, For her to control the Harem Girls. So she use the watch ( side note she only know how to do hypnos with watch when she is  hypnosis)
See page SJI 54, 60-62

we do not know how she get out of the Harem?

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I was (not surprisingly) unclear.  I didn't mean to imply that Zenon or Derek had a connection with the harem prior to their current assignment - it's more that Zenon actually had Dani in his office, hypnotized, and she didn't behave the way Caitlyn or Laura did, which should have raised some suspicion; Derek actually dated her.  They were both 'on assignment', they both had very close contact with Danielle, and neither was able to make any connection.  Until this issue, neither of them managed to do so, and Zenon had as his assignment the hypnosis of Kearsarge's women to locate the watch!

GodWilling, you put it much better: the polaroids and the computer actually locate Dani and Claudia together.  They know there's something in Kearsarge.

My point was just that I don't understand how Dani could 1) get out of the harem; 2) get the watch; 3) not know about the watch until 'activated'; 4) date someone who came to town specifically to find the watch; 5) go to a hypnosis session with someone who came to town specifically to find the watch; and 6) still fly under the radar until identified by her underwear in today's issue.  Did the original owner of the watch use it to remove all memories of Dani's harem life from Claudia and Dani?  It (to me, anyway) is the most interesting unresolved question of the backstory (and I have many), and I'm excited to see some development on it.

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Dani's timeline is all over the place.  She could have been recruited on a college trip to Wilmot, but the insinuation from her flashback episode seems to be that she was abducted in New York on that puddle-jumper the last time she saw her father.

I don't believe in coincidences that amazing.

In Zenon's defense--Dani's reaction to hypnosis was weird, but the story she verbalized was somewhat plausible, and didn't directly point to The Watch.  In addition, that was his first session with her.  He probably thought he'd get another opportunity or that Derek would do his job--heck, that might have been what Derek was there to do during the "hypnotism tango" and everything went pear-shaped.

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Maybe the logo on the panties is a trigger phrase?

I just can not find another picture Danielle have those panty?
not this one (158)

I may be miss pages?

That's something I never really understood: Why Derek?  If all he's doing is making use of hypnotic triggers put in place by Zenon then it's difficult to see how he could turn up any information that Zenon himself could not.  If Danielle's knowledge of the watch is suppressed enough that Zenon couldn't dig it out during her therapy session then why would we expect Derek to do any better?  A lot of the confusion over what Danielle knew, when she knew it, and under what circumstances really comes down to this question.

Or perhaps Derek was just hired on as muscle and wasn't supposed to be making use of Zenon's triggers as part of the search at all?  That is sort of implied by Claudia's comments in #114: "The sex slaves were your reward.  Not part of the operation."  It's also possible that Danielle knew about the watch all along but simply didn't want to use it until she was hypnotized and found herself in a position where doing so could help out her new master.  If she was an escapee from the New York harem I could understand that -- although her remembering such an experience would make her willingness to be hypnotized again, by anyone, for any reason a bit harder to swallow.

Update: Actually, the dialog in #60-62 makes it pretty clear that Danielle doesn't remember the watch when she isn't hypnotized, so forget about that possibility.

It gets mentioned at the bottom of the page in the fourth comic.  sji-i004.

Yeah, she's wearing them or a white version of them the night she meets Adrian--which is why it seems highly unlikely that the phrase is a trigger because then Erin could have kicked all this off months sooner just from her comment.

I took the chastisement in the interrogation to mean that Derek wasn't supposed to sample the goods until after he'd thoroughly investigated each subject (presumably with the aid of the hypnotic triggers the doc implanted).  From what we've seen of Derek's "investigation" it looked like he skipped the investigating part and went straight to the fun.

Also, just as it's unclear what Dani knew how and under what circumstances she remembers what she knows or remembers what she's supposed to forget or not know at all--it's equally unclear exactly what happened during that hypnotism tango.  We don't know what exactly Derek's trigger was, but it looks like Adrian somewhat accidentally mimicked it without being aware that he did anything.  He wasn't really aware of anything hinky going on until after Dani came back downstairs in the French maid outfit.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the pun?  "Remove before flight" as in before the airplane takes off... or before fleeing the harem.  Heh.

Thank you Chettbaker was word Now I remember

Yes I got the pun "Remove before flight"
Most I have see is the red tags are on bombs. the last safe thing before take off

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Well, he DID, but most of that time was spent in some sort of Star Wars fantasy, and then having his nose broken.

There are a lot of pieces here that still don't fit.  Why did Adrian's hypnocock gag work?  If the trigger really is a catchphrase why would Derek EVEN Derek be stupid enough to try it on someone Zenon hadn't treated?

I would also say that Derek's investigations were spectacularly ineffective because he didn't do any actual investigating when he was with the appropriate targets.  For instance, he didn't even know Amy had a sister.

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Except, there's a conversation on New Year's that makes no sense.  Derek is brushing off someone he just calls "Dude."  Now, it would make more sense if it were Gil or someone from his old life, but he is tactless enough to have said that to Zenon if he were busy enjoying his fun.

Also, we appear to be talking across one another.  My contention is that Derek didn't do any fact-finding beyond "She has the trigger, what can I make her do?" with any of his part-time thralls, even Danielle.  As such, if he's the "on the ground" investigator--he spectacularly failed in that he didn't even attempt to do his job (unless he was actually trying to activate a trigger he was sure would be there in Dani).

Also, I don't think Claudia was seconds away from succeeding, because Derek seems to go from activation to fun-time with no stops.  If Adrian hadn't been there, Derek might have eventually figured it out, but he never would have let Dani percolate the way Adrian did.  He'd have moved her to his dump of a house, and not let her explore her own inclinations.  Eventually, the Watch might have come up, but it would have taken a considerable amount of time.


With regard to Zenon, I can believe that they never formally met, but I would think they'd have to coordinate somehow so Derek didn't suffer multiple incidents like the one with Jacqui.

If he'd never met or spoken to Zenon, wouldn'this resonse to being admonished be "Who the hell is Zenon?" ???

On a side note--Isn't 159 slated to be posted tomorrow?  Are we due for a Valentine's Day special next week?  Has anyone heard anything?

I don't think it makes any sense to assume that being hypnotized would automatically make Danielle pull the watch out.  She didn't actually do so until it was needed to fix the problem caused by her 'dropping in' on Erin and Adrian.  And given that she knows about the watch when hypnotized, how hard would it be for Zenon to just ask "Do you have a watch that turns women into sex slaves?"

Here's a hypothesis: Zenon doesn't know about the watch.  All Claudia asked him to do was implant the triggers and let her know what the activation phrase was; she didn't tell him why.  Perhaps she was afraid that if he knew about the watch he'd try to take it for himself -- not an implausible fear when dealing with a talented and unethical hypnotist.  That would give Derek a purpose: he's not smart or ambitious enough to make off with the watch on his own when he finds it.  He'll be happy with Zenon's triggers and the control they give him over the other women in Kearsage.  It would also explain why Danielle's behavior when he hypnotized her didn't set off any red flags for him: he wasn't part of the search and thus couldn't make the connection.  Derek does make the connection in #158 because he now has a piece of physical evidence that ties Danielle back to the New York harem.

So the plan would have been:

• Zenon implants triggers in the women in town, and tells Claudia the triggers.
• Claudia tells Derek the trigger phrase.
• Derek uses the trigger on the women as he gets the chance, asking each of them about the watch.
• Eventually one of them knows about it, he retrieves it and returns it to Claudia, then lives happily ever after with the remaining thralls.

The plan went off the rails for two reasons.  First, Derek got too caught up in enjoying the sex slaves before he found the watch.  Second, when he triggered Danielle she went off with Adrian before he had a chance to ask her about the watch.  He didn't ask her before because he couldn't have triggered her before -- Zenon had only just implanted the trigger minutes before.  They came very close to success, but a miss is as good as a mile in this case.

This hypothesis has one other interesting implication: Claudia doesn't remember Danielle.  Perhaps her memory was somehow erased during the events surrounding Danielle's departure from the New York harem?  I have a hypothesis about that too, but this post is already getting a bit long.

Well stated, and it is quite possible that Claudia wouldn't trust Zenon with information about the Watch or the perfume (if she knows about it) or the belltower (which, in all likelihood she doesn't know about).

However, this would indicate a fatal flaw in her planning.  She has everything compartmentalized so no one can sabotage her or provide information to competitors to thwart her--but she doesn't have enough organization to get anything done efficiently.  Shouldn't there be a lieutenant she trusts with the keys to the kingdom, even if it's a lieutenant thrall?

Another question--if she was instrumental in recruiting Echo, why doesn't Adrian's name produce an electrifying response when Derek mentions him?  For Echo, obviously she's mostly blank slate, but it might be interesting in flashback to see the half-quiver of an almost expression of recognition cross her face and then disappear.  However, Claudia should certainly have heard of him and...shouldn't she find that intriguing, amusing, annoying...somehow noteworthy?

Perhaps.  Of course, we don't know how many other balls Claudia is trying to keep in the air or what other constraints she's operating under.  It's possible, for example, that her control over the other women in the harem is based on a lie ("the Master left me in charge") and she has to worry about what would happen if the rest of the New York harem found out.  But this is something that would call for explanation.


I could understand a subdued reaction.  She had no particular reason to think that Adrian (or Danielle, ex hypothesi) were connected to the watch.  His name coming up could have just caused a "huh, small world" reaction.  I've seen weirder coincidences in real life provoke that kind of response.  For that matter, has Claudia ever been told Adrian's last name?  Does Derek even know it?  We don't actually know where Derek learned Adrian's name -- a quick archive scan doesn't show it ever being mentioned in his presence.  And a simple "Adrian" isn't exactly the same thing as "Adrian Kavanaugh, that guy whose girlfriend I stole for the Master."

It's also possible that Claudia's own memories have been tampered with.  The existence of the watch turns anybody who might have been exposed to it into an unreliable narrator.

Or... here's a serious epileptic tree theory.  (I don't think I actually believe this, but it would be a funky twist.)  Suppose Adrian was the master of the New York harem but got bored, so he decided to use the watch to erase his own memory and set himself up to rediscover the joys of mind control?  It could be that everything is playing out according to his design, or perhaps his own plans are spinning out of control now that his hand is no longer on the tiller.  Probably not, but amusing to think about.

I hate to ruin a really entertaining hypothesis, but that one is so good I just have to say: Damn, I wish I had thought of that. :)

It's an interesting theory, but I'm glad you didn't think of it or use a variation of it because under all the layers, after all the knots were untied, Adrian would be a particularly fiendish and ingenious version of Bertram.  Ugh, that's sick-making.  His care for the women in his harem, and people generally sets him apart from the vast majority of characters in this genre and even central characters on this site.  It makes him more appealing and gives you greater room to experiment.  Chucking that all for a Goodcat theory, even one as twisty and interesting as the one mns proposed is a high-risk, low-reward gamble.

It is amusing to consider, though because Adrian would have to be able to control and manipulate his appearance and his age (or apparent age), thus mastering both otherworldly stamina and the art of illusion and maintaining both subconsciously.  Certain aspects of the theory are like the Ritchie film Revolver where it turns out the villain of the piece is the ego of the character being examined--exposed as an insidious, nefarious, almost completely fictitious construct.  It's an excellent brain teaser, but it's usually better as a "what if" than as the central premise.

This is a really fascinating discussion, and has pointed out a few things I hadn't thought of before.  In particular, mms_95125's theory as to how Zenon and Derek were independently operating cogs in Claudia's plan sounds very plausible.

I'm trying to sort out what we know against what we've surmised or assumed, and I'm still sorting that out in my head.  I was really impressed with the idea that Derek nearly was literally seconds away from figuring it out but for Adrian's intervention back around issue #20 - I hadn't read that (still confusing to me) sequence in that way, and I think it's a good way to look at it.

(Edited to add: jmundt, I think you mean Brian, not Bertram.  I always took the beginning of Found Objects #6 to imply that Bertram was killed in a car crash on a particularly dangerous piece of road.  But this is way off topic, and we can take that discussion to the Bearing Gifts Folder.)

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Okay, I'm still having trouble with your reading of the situation.  I looked back at 114 (took me awhile to find it) and you're right, we never hear him give Adrian's last name...though it would be interesting to find out if and how he ever learned Adrian's last name.  Seems like Adrian's gotten the sort of Don Draper ubiquitous reputation around town since Dani reached for The Watch.

That said, I highly doubt that Derek was seconds away from stumbling onto The Watch.  Dani only reached for it to somooth things over after she fell out of the closet during what was supposed to be Adrian and Erin's first time together.  This happened accidentally because Adrian let things percolate and didn't try to control them.  In order for Dani to have gone into Maitresse mode to retrieve the Watch, Derek would have had to display the patience to NOT try to direct Dani once she was under his control.  Patience is not Derek's strong suit.  It's unclear when Dani would have ever escaped Derek's rathole of a house to allow her other programming to kick in.

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We have no idea when Z's first visit to New York was.  That could help us put some of this in context.

I guess I misstated my point again.  Adrian stumbled into the Harem because at the beginning, he just went with it.  The most active thing he did during the Harem formation was push Dani into the closet in a feeble attempt to hide the weird serendipity from Erin.  He was mostly passive and the construct enveloped him.

Derek was active to the point that his role in the "plan" was completely useless.  He set off the triggers, but instead of waiting for developments (as one could argue Adrian did) or asking questions of pliant subjects so as togather information that he could asemble into some sort of report or could use to locate the item and the person he was there to locate, he just decided to have fun.  Adrian has two big advantages over Derek

1. Location--he lives at SJI and so doesn't have to direct things to come up with an opportunity and
2. He doesn't allow his own fantasies or his own impression of his own power to cut off experience.  He still doesn't.  Even to this point, the most proactive thing he did was unveil the Hypnocock gag.  We have yet to see if the questions about Raven or his answers to them were taken seriously.

Wow, high praise indeed.


It wouldn't necessarily have to work out that way.  Adrian could, on discovering who he used to be, decide that he didn't want to be that person any more.  That would turn it into a story of redemption.  "What can change the nature of a man" was a great theme for Planescape: Torment and I suspect it would work equally well in hypnofetish porn.  :)  Still, a moot point unless Daphne wants to steal the idea for some other comic.


I still believe that if Derek had simply asked Danielle about the watch she would have told him.  Claudia told him to (1) Use the trigger, (2) ask about the watch, and then (3) he could bang them as a reward.  I think the essence of Derek's mistake was to do this in the wrong order.  He would (1) Use the trigger, (2) bang the woman, and only then (3) ask about the watch.  For all the other girls this didn't cause any problems because they didn't know anything.  With Danielle it was a big deal.  He didn't get a chance to ask her the first time he used the trigger because Adrian swooped in and took her away.  He had plenty of time at his house but he wanted to bang her first, and Adrian showed up and took her away a second time before he could ask.  No wonder Claudia's pissed with him -- everything would have worked if Derek hadn't been thinking with his dick.


On reflection I think "seconds away" might have been overstating it.  A competent agent, who prioritized doing his job over having hot monkey sex with a hot blonde sex slave, would have been seconds away.  Derek, not being such an agent, had different priorities.  But that's why Claudia is ticked off at him: if he'd just followed orders he'd have made the connection -- if not in #21 then in #70.


In #73, Adrian asks a triggered Danielle "You know how to use the watch right, Dani?" and she says "Oui, Master!  Whatever you wish of me!"  That's pretty close to a direct answer.  Not 100% dispositive since Danielle knew that Adrian knew at that point, but it's suggestive.


I take this as evidence in support of my hypothesis that Zenon doesn't know about the watch.  He isn't putting triggers only in women who might have fled the New York harem with the watch -- he's putting triggers in all the women.  That makes perfect sense if he doesn't know about the watch.

However, here's the thing.  I don't think that Derek did the steps in the wrong order, I think he forgot there were supposed to be the three steps you outlined.

His entire MO indicates that he thought the entire procedure

1. Use the trigger

2. Bang the women

lather, rinse, repeat.  IF 2. gets boring, then

3. Think of "inventive" games to play with the women while you bang them.

In fact, he got so carried away with step 2, that at least with Jacqui, he forgot to implement step 1A., namely, "wait until the Doc implants the trigger before you try to activate it."

If Derek had remembered to ask about The Watch at all, I'd have expected that either

1. Multiple members of the second cohort would have mentioned it during or after The Ring

"we just thought the hypnocock thing was part of the game.  Odd that he'd ask about that Watch though." etc. or

2. Cait would have mentioned it to someone on Harem night or

3. Laura and Amy would have dsicussed Derek's interest in the Watch with Jacqui during the first Girls Night as an additional consideration to their lives in the Harem, or

4. Certainly, Amy would have brought it up as an asideduring her pillow talk with Adrian.

Maybe Laura's about to mention it on her date with Adrian.

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It's hard to say what's going on with Adrian - his family clearly has a history of being associated with the MC thing, and it's weird that he's so unaware of it.  

As far as Derek goes, he's not exactly doing something extremely unusual for someone in his position.  What my question really is is why does Claudia have to work through catspaws and not do dirty work herself?  She certainly seems competent.

It may not be that simple to use the watch.  Marliese was the one who 'figured it out' on the Night of the Watch, and her apparent connection to Rain makes it likely she knows more than she lets on.

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