Mind Control Comics Forum

(http://cnt1.dvvent.com/dvv/open/mcc/sji/promos/sji-i368.jpg)

I certainly hope that means we'll understand things better!

No promises. :)

Who is that in the preview panel?  Pearl?

The face is Dani. The ear is Pearl. And the arm is holding up something... (those are my guesses…)

OK, I'm going there again: it's a picture of a girl with Pearl's ear in. It's a bit late for mistletoe. It must be Miriam's coat.

So, we ARE going there.  Some beautiful possibilities around the corner. ;)

Me more mind bending

I think you made my evening.

Nice! Here's hoping for a big splash page coming soon, hopefully with Miriam's induction...

Something about those faces in the last panel, though. Mmmm, hot.

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

Miriam gets added to the harem!  I have wanted this to happen since she was introduced...what, a year ago?  Longer?

Yes!

I don't know why, precisely, but something about mother/daughter pairs getting mind-controlled really turns me on.  Incest is not required; the MCer could be someone unrelated and the women don't have to be having sex with each other.  But for some reason the concept of mother/daughter both getting taken by the same controller is very sexy to me.  Ecstatic to see it happening here.

Okay.  What.  The.  Hell?? ???

"Thanks for walking Miriam home."  WHAT?  She lives at the SJI now?  Before programming?  Since when?  That made even less sense than if Johannes had grabbed his coat and said "Thanks for giving my pilot a place to stay.  I've felt for awhile now that she needs a permanent address, and you all are just so...warm and giving."

Does that make any sense?  Of course not.

On the DF front, I'm hearing rumblings of a very sad development.  Apparently, the gorgeous Daphne Rosen has decided to retire from the active business and just manage her site network.  Too bad.

All the more reason for the Waiting Room comic to make much more frequent appearances here.

See #367, first three panels. Miriam says she needs to get home, and Adrian offers to walk her home. FROM the SJI.

Separately, regarding #368: Hot damn! Awesome.

The way Ezra phrased it, it sounded as if he was sure it had already happened.  Of course, this is one of the vagaries of English, so it could be read either way.

Note, with that purple scarf or doo rag, or shawl on her head, Pearl's mix of black hair with purple highlights looks a bit similar to Raven's style.  Hmm.

Wow, does this ever raise some ethical conundrums.  Up until now, those that created/added to the harem were either relatively unknown to us, or added as a way of rescuing them (granted, this was all quite some time ago).  Now we have Pearl, who we have had a long time to get to know (relative to the publishing of the comic, anyway) and who we know was controlled in what has been portrayed in a 'bad way' (ie. made to believe things that were not true about her mother, and presumably prevented from having intercourse).  She would be seen as a victim, someone damaged by the watch/stone/jewel (whatever we are calling it). 

To then have Erin and Dani do the same thing (influence her against her will using the jewel) would seem to be horrifying on the surface (even though we know they are also under it's influence).

But here's the tricky thing about writing these kind of things - Daphne has made these ladies likeable, amiable, protagonists.  What THEY do to people we don't mind, because they are 'the good guys'; the white hats.

Daphne has set things up so that we are okay with 'good people' doing 'bad things' (relative to Pearl and her experience).

That's good writing.

NOTE:  yes, I know we've all wanted Pearl to go under the influence, and join the harem.  I'm right there with everyone else.  I am admiring Daphne for sticking something horrifying into the mix while we waited (Pearl being influenced by the bad guys), and THEN giving us what we want, so we would enjoy something that is pretty awful.

And here we have our unknowns crowding in.  Is it possible that the healing process begun with that ceremony isn't complete yet?  Remember, this could have been awful on the Night of the Watch and a lot of the questions we have about Pearl, we had about Jacqui.  So, let's give it some time.

When Ezra thanks Adrian for walking Miriam home, he is referring to a future event, not implying that Miriam is already home.

I'd think then he'd say thanks for offering...etc.  Just a weird sentence construction, and given what's already slipped past him under his nose, it was a little alarming.

Seemed perfectly normal to me.

I've heard "Thanks for (past/ongoing/future event)" all the time. If I heard someone say "Thanks for offering to walk her home", what I'd read is that there was an offer to walk someone home and it was turned down, or had the possibility of being turned down. An offer can be rejected. The other phrasing indicates certainty.

So If Adrian made the offer and was rejected, her father would say thanks for offering to walk her. If Adrian made the offer and Miriam hadn't indicated one way or the other, he'd say thanks for making the offer (which she may or may not accept). But she'd already accepted, so there was no offer on the table any more.

The mildly surprising thing here is that Ezra is leaving without saying goodbye to the blessed Miriam. Of course, we can guess how the plot might require him to do that.

So while it's clear he should have driven Miriam home himself before heading off, we should be equally clear that any consequences of this are not his fault. There was a very similar case of pandering to the plot when another important book was being pieced together and that has caused all sorts of trouble.

Let's not fall into the trap of blaming everything on the lawyers.