Saint James Infirmary 404: Never Say Never.

[Daphne]

[macavity]

Just to be clear Hayley, have you reconsidered your position?

[Haight]

Hopefully she has an mc-assisted change of heart....

[jmundt29]

It might not be strictly necessary for her to undergo more "treatment" after the Pink Clouds cure she experienced at the clinic.  But, it would probably be reassuring.

[Haight]

Didn't that just make her temporarily super horny, as opposed to any permanent loss of inhibitions vis a vis Adrian?

[jmundt29]

Yes, but she enjoyed the experience immensely.  And I think reminding her of that, or making that more important to her than the potential weirdness of the situation will help the calm in the house and increase her pleasure now.  Isn't that Laura behind her?

[laguna85]

Well yes that is Laura behind Her!
Look walk down the Hall is Danielle.
sh! look at this

[mns_95125]

So now they're using the pendant on people while Adrian is in the room?  Either they're sure he'll approve or they're sure he's too distracted to notice.  My guess is the latter.

[laguna85]

well if I count right That make it 11 lady in his control

[Haight]

So now they're using the pendant on people while Adrian is in the room?  Either they're sure he'll approve or they're sure he's too distracted to notice.  My guess is the latter.

I think they're in the kitchen while Adrian is in the living room? Either way, pretty close.

I just hope we get to see Amy reprogram her sister this time....

[mns_95125]

A quick thought.  The SJI folks now know, because of Caitlyn's experience with Julian, that the pendant doesn't work on people who have been subjected to Watch programming.  Perhaps they've gone all pendant-happy in part as a way of testing whether these other women are Watch-programmed moles for Jakob?  That's a reasonable concern, at least as far as Miriam and Einfreidur are concerned.  (Haley, less so.)

[GodWilling]

The only problem I have with that - or at least with Caitlyn's experience at the airport - is that we had no indication that any of them really knew about the pendant or the likelihood of it being used against them. Julian produced the pendant and Caitlyn responded to it exactly as he would have expected her to - and she did so immediately. True, she'd had at least one session with Zenon. But it would be remarkably quick thinking to see the pendant, recognize it, realize that it had an inherent hypnotic effect on her before, realize that it wasn't having that effect now, and choose (for reasons I still can't fathom) to pretend that it was having that effect.

Also, presumably this was the basis of the operation Claudia set up with Zenon and Derek: the pendant wouldn't work on the woman who had the watch. We do know that Claudia was aware of this, after all.

And we have an inkling now how Julian would have known that Zenon had the pendant. But if that's the case, surely he'd have also understood the basis of the plan? Cherry apparently knew that the watch had been used on Caitlyn. Julian probably did too. Wouldn't they have known that the pendant wouldn't work on her?

I'm also confused how Dani (presumably) faked being affected by the pendant when Zenon used it on her (and it did look as though she was faking), yet still wound up being susceptible to the trigger and went off and created the SJI harem under its influence.

If the presumption was that the woman would fake a reaction to the pendant, that might explain why Derek was needed. But it's not clear to me how what Derek was doing would weed her out. Dani might have been faking again when Derek used the trigger on her for the second time later that evening, but both times she was still put into a state where she knew how to use the watch. Unless she was faking in 60 when she "woke up" and had no idea how to use the watch...

[jmundt29]

The early progression with Dani is a puzzle.  It's conceivable she could have been faking for Zenon which is why her story for him doesn't match any other version of her recollections of the past.  But, then again, she has about six or seven versions of the past and we can't tell which elements of which story are true, which she's faking, which are confabulations, and which (if any) are implanted "alternate histories" to make her accept her programming.

If we assume for a moment that Dani was faking for Zenon, then GW has hit on the biggest and crucial question.  Why did Derek's trigger work on her to awaken her to using The Watch?  Even if she was faking for Zenon, I don't think she can have been faking "waking up" and forgetting about the Watch, or her reaction to Derek's second attempt.  I can't see her compartmentalizing to that degree, though she could be.

Where's the pole in the living room by the way?  Has it been disassembled since Harem Night?  There have been a lot of views of that room recently where it's tough to locate that particular piece of furniture.

Adrian's agenda seems like an area for fun speculation, though.  Right now he's with Jacqui and Erin.  Laura's next, and it seems she intends to bring Hayley along.  So, is our Icelandic Import part of the third group?   

[GodWilling]

The stories are those of a woman who has been hypnotized but doesn't know it. All the watch victims we've heard from seem to be aware that the watch has been used on them. So, yes, she could be making them up as a front. (Perhaps they're the kind of stories Zenon will have been hearing from a lot of Wilmot women?) One way or another they're probably not true anyway. But if she was making them up, that raises the possibility that her history as a victim of mind control is a lot simpler than it might appear.

But it's not really a question of the stories she tells. If the watch had been used on her then the pendant shouldn't have worked, so she shouldn't have entered a hypnotic state when it appeared. The hypnotic effect of the pendant must have been important, otherwise why was Zenon using it? He needed it to get the desired result. The version of the truth Julian told Derek at the airport suggests that it was the pendant - one Julian could just mention without having to explain further to Derek. Claudia, Derek, Cherry, Julian - they all know about the pendant. But it was Zenon who had it. That suggests that unless Zenon had a prior direct connection with Jakob's operations, he must have been supplied with the pendant by Claudia.

When it was used, Dani didn't wait to be asked to take her clothes off and she asked him if she should masturbate without him having to make the suggestion. One interpretation would be that she knew what was supposed to happen and she did that to an almost parodic degree.

But I should say I think that we're jumping to the conclusion here that the pendant doesn't work at all on watch victims. I'm not sure we've been told exactly that. It's possible that it works but the spell can be broken if, say, an instruction is given that's at odds with the watch programming.

[jmundt29]

All possible and interesting.

It does seem that Claudia provided Zenon with the pendant since she was nominally running the search.

However, if she's faking on the pendant so that she isn't identified as on the run from Jakob's harem, what in the Sam Hill happened on the steps when she was apparently activated by both Derek and Adrian events began to fall so that she built Adrian a love harem?  And furthermore, if she's not under, why would the trigger "work" either on the steps or at Derek's house?

Was it a "Close your eyes and think of Quebec" situation?  It's very interesting...but quite confusing.

ETA--We've seen two types of programming at odds before (Pink Clouds vs. The Watch).  The Watch programming is more powerful, but it's a strain which is why the "Super Horny Cure" was necessary.

However, with Caitlyn at the airport, it seemed that her programming with the Watch entirely cancelled out the new try with The Pendant.  Is that because The Watch is stronger, because it wasn't her first Pendant treatment, or because of specific information or programming that she received from Dani before she headed to the airport?  Or something else entirely?