Mindfuckery and Storytelling: A History
Jan. 16th, 2009 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alificentAs previously mentioned, I've been watching Babylon 5 for the first time, and loving it. It contains much intriguery, which I love, and much soldiering, which I also love.
It also contains much mindfuckery, which... well, which I suppose I also love, as storytelling device, but which I also find the scariest thing in fantasy/sci-fi. This started early in my life, when I was about thirteen years old.
Spoilers for (in no particular order) Babylon 5, Marvel's Inferno arc, the movie Willow, Conan the Barbarian, and probably Warcraft III/World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade. Oh, and SaGa Frontier. I am not involving Zelda: OOT, because that is timefuckery, which never ends well and is a whole different thing.
WARNING THIS IS VERY LONG AND ILL-ORGANIZED. It was difficult for me to get my thoughts in order SORRY.
My first two introductions to blatant mindfuckery, aside from the Force having a strong influence on the weakminded, came close together. The movie Willow, in 1988, and Marvel Comics' Inferno Arc, a crossover spanning pretty much all the titles that a mutant with an X in it had ever touched.
In Willow, young Ali was introduced to the Ritual of Obliteration. The movie calls it this, but doesn't really get into it in detail. The novelization does; said ritual is not intended to kill Elora Danan. It is meant to destroy all that she is, was, and will ever be. It is meant to erase her, mind, body, and soul. I believe this is the reason it freaks me out so badly. There is violation of the body, there is violation of the mind, and there is violation of the soul. We here in the real world really only have to deal with the first one, although it may have EFFECTS on the mind, no one can truly TAKE your mind or your soul.
"You may take this body, but it will not be me. It will not be me." - Marian, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves; "How can anyone own a soul?" Lucifer, Season of Mists.
One of these quotes deals with every teenage girl's favorite fanfic plot device: rape, one deals with the Devil telling Dream that everyone in Hell chose to be there, consciously or no; he didn't make them come there, nor did God.
This is why it scares me, and this is why I think it's so fascinating as a device of e-vil and the varying grades thereof. It gets into what makes you a sentient being, and whether we have anything at all we can truly call our own.
Shortly after Willow, I went to visit my cousins in Nashville. My cousin Tim wasn't there, but I read some of his comic books. At the time I had never heard of the X-Men or any of their friends. I had no idea who Nightcrawler was, or Meggan, or N'Astirh, and wouldn't know until several years later, when I was in high school. Nonetheless, this panel stuck in my brain, and I remembered it until then, when I tracked the issue down again and bought a copy of it for myself.
N'Astirh refers to this as ripping away Meggan's humanity. This is interesting because Meggan is later revealed to... not be human, but N'Astirh is kind of busy and I sort of have a weird demonic crush on him for being an awesome villian, so I will forgive him. Anyway, I remembered that panel for YEARS, because of the way Megs is presenting herself LIKE A FREAKING RITUAL SACRIFICE, arms thrown back, throat exposed, up on her toes like Odette ensorcelled: JESUS CHRIST MEGGAN. Also: he makes Nightcrawler watch. :( I AM SURE THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW KURT'S RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS NOT BEST PLEASED, and also: he is at this time in love with Megs.
BUT I AM AHEAD OF MYSELF. Just for some background here, the inferno arc begins when N'Astirh, who I cannot believe didn't rate my best villians list a few years back, tricks Illyana Rasputin (Magik) into opening a portal to Limbo, where the demons hang out. Then N'Astirh keeps it open. Illyana is not best pleased, as she thought she was opening it to save her friends and get them out of Limbo. N'Astirh then defined for me an integral part of being a demon, which remains as how I characterize them to this day:
I always thought that it was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT that N'Astirh isn't lying when he says he loves Illyana. He tricks her into opening the portal by telling her this, essentially, that he loves her as her demonic self, and is thus helping her friends escape. He also doesn't deny he betrayed her: he is, as Meej said, perfectly reasonable about it. He is what he is, and is frankly kind of surprised she is surprised. You knew what I was when we began this, Rasputin: what did you expect to happen?
Back to Megs.
This was also my first introduction to the MO of what I consider demons: they take your best and brightest, and turn them against you. Megs is a pure, innocent soul. She is also an empath, and has the least chance whatsoever of resisting N'Astirh's pull. There is some good foreshadowing in the issue where Megs unconsciously shapeshifts because some sailors are ogling her; the ground is set that she tends to, without meaning to, shape herself by the feelings of those around her. Then she flies into N'Astirh's radius and bitch: it is over.
She is corrupted most terribly, as she is basically an empty vessel, and becomes the gobbolin princess, di-rectly underneath my girl Mads the Goblin Queen. She does some horrible things to the man she loves, but we won't discuss that because I hate Captain Britian and think he deserves it. Instead, we will address the other best and brightest, the other pure soul N'Astirh eats for dinner:
Longshot is emo'ing there about the fact that he was mistakenly dating both Dazzler and Rogue. This is not because he is a playah douche; it is because he has ALREADY BEEN THE VICTIM OF SOME MINDFUCKERY IN THE MOJOVERSE and has no understanding of how people work. HE HAD NO IDEA THEY WERE DATING; seriously. He thought they were all just friends. Rogue is kind of cool with this, DAZZLER IS NOT, and they totally had a fight about it just before this, which is why my boy is all, "Havoc told me I did a bad thing, BUT I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY IT IS A BAD THING BECAUSE I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS EARTH WORD LOVE."
GUESS WHAT THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO BE INTRODUCED TO IT IS.
I WOULD GUESS THAT IS PRETTY CLOSE. OH GOD. OH GOD NO: WORST MAKEUP SEX EVER. Also please note: it is later implied that they HAVE NEVER HAD THE SEX BEFORE. SO THEIR FIRST TIME WAS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF SOULEATING. Oh, and during? He eats her soul too, because the next time you see her she's as fucked up as he is. After it is all fixed again, he completely freaks out, because now he does understand love, and he does realize that Dazz is the one he loves, AND CANNOT DEAL WITH WHAT HE DID TO HER. Like, tells her not to talk to him OR EVEN LOOK AT HIM.
AND THEN HE GETS REALLY EMO.
He loses his powers. See, my boy's powers are based on his motives being pure. He believes his motives will never be pure again, because he has sexed up his lady love while under the influence, and HE WILL NEVER EVER BE PURE AGAIN, and so: done. You could say he is pretty broke up about it.
Later in a scene not appearing in this article, he literally goes back to the mojoverse in pieces. He never really gets over this shit, but since I am not a mean lady I will tell you that the eels do not actually get him at this time; he actually ends up marrying Dazzler and finally killing Mojo. Despite the fact that it is no longer the eighties, during this story arc he still wears the mullet.
SO ANYWAY: what I learned from this was, the demons will go for your purest, best, most beloved first, because without them, the rest of you are totally fucked. You know who has to pull the X-Men out of this fucking fire? JEAN, that is who. Much like Aerith, she has to everything around here. Oh, and Havoc, who immolates N'Astirh with the blinding force of the very sun. (I wish Illyana had gotten to do it.)
This is why the demons went for Kael, you guys. And Arthas. And young master Stormrage, and Grom Hellscream. All I can say is: LOOK OUT, THRALL. (Jaina will kill them if they try anything.)
Oh, and then my father's best friend left this shit at my house in 1990.
Way to fuel my fire there, dad. I was freaked out by this for years. I am still freaked out by this. WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO TELL HER WHAT YOU WERE DOING TO HER BEFORE YOU DID IT? Yes: because the sorceress is EVIL, do you guys even read Conan? But seriously OH MY GOD HER MIND CEASES TO BE? IT JUST CEASES TO BE? :( :( :(
This is what the psi-corps did to Talia, and to Ivanova. It was the worst possible thing they could have done. Talia is a sleeper for the corps. The person the crew knows as Talia never existed; she is a false persona imprinted on the real one, designed to gain trust and be loved, and love in return, so that the real one can learn your deepest darkest secrets. And use them against you, should the psi-corp wake the sleeper. When Talia is awakened, the "false" persona is completely replaced by the real one, the sleeper planted on the station long ago. The Talia the crew knew, and loved, ceases to exist.
This is the worst possible thing that could have been done to Ivanova. Not only does the woman she thinks she maybe loved not exist; that woman never existed, never will exist, and oh, and it confirmed for her that she should never trust anyone, ever, ever, ever, EVER, also: ever. Or let them close to her. It is fucking horrifying.
A similar thing happens in the Conan issue, although it is WAY more personal. The sorceress did this to this girl so she could give Baelin hope and then take it away from him, specifically ruin this one man. At least Talia was not specifically targeted to ruin Ivanova. (It was just a side bonus.)
I'm not sure whether I consider this fuckery of the mind, or of the soul. Possibly both. It gets into whether a false, imprinted vessel can have a soul (Inferno also gets into this with my girl Mads, who is a clone of La Jean imprinted with some of her memories), and I don't even want to go there right now so we won't. We'll call it fuckery of the soul, though. It certainly was for Ivanova.
Yeah. She bails on the body after pretending to be into long enough to make him think he has a life again. He's pretty upset.
B5 also deals with straightup fuckery of the mind, in that criminal felons, instead of being put to death, have their minds wiped clean and are put somewhere else, doing community service, as a completely different person. Also imprinted with another life, if you will. This is deemed more humane than the death penalty. Even if it ended well for everyone who goes through the process (secret: it doesn't), I would disagree. (So would Lu.)
So now you see my background in mindfuckery. It has influenced a lot of things I write. It is why I got so into Asellus' arc in SaGa Frontier; a central human belief is that no one can own your soul, a la Marion. They can take your body, maybe even your mind, but they can't take your soul. Only if you are a mystic? They can, because it never belonged to you in the first place. This is the understanding that Asellus has to come to with the mystics: she is human, her soul is her own. She cannot understand why the mystics don't just openly give their Lord the finger if they all think He is such a dick. The answer is: if they did, He would just make them no longer think that. This is why I find them so fascinating; each of the mystics who has free will has gained that in a different way, by making themselves too sadistic, too tainted, too insane, or too inconsequential, to bother Charming out of existence. One them even learns how to work the karma wheel so that when she kills herself, she's reincarnated as a human. This is also why the half-mystic ending is canon; by choosing neither side, Asellus neither abandons nor assumes ownership of the mystics. With a foot in both worlds, she is free to use her last wish to set them free, which she does. This is why Asellus is awesome, and is one of my favorite heroines ev-ar.
Those of you who have interacted with Lu have probably also figured out that this is why she is such a freak about mind reading. She doesn't really care about her body, and she is afraid she has already forfeited her soul. She can't call either of those her own; she already gave them up. But by god, her mind has always been her own, and YOU CANNOT HAVE IT: GET OUT.
This is ALSO why Lu's greatest fear is that one day the Legion will come back and the remainder of, or at least some of, the bloofs will be like Meggan, and just automatically lose their fucking sense of self: remember eating all that fel energy guys? Yeah, we've sort of come to collect on that. Plz present your throat, that we may rip it out and turn you on your brethren. Thanks! Nice doing business with you. Oh, stop screaming, it's not like it h... well, I guess to does. Sucks to be y'all!
Ladies and gentlemen: mindfuckery. It will influence everything I write, lo, until the day I die, and to me, it is the touchstone of the truly, TRULY evil.
And I am really, really, REALLY glad it cannot actually happen to me.
It also contains much mindfuckery, which... well, which I suppose I also love, as storytelling device, but which I also find the scariest thing in fantasy/sci-fi. This started early in my life, when I was about thirteen years old.
Spoilers for (in no particular order) Babylon 5, Marvel's Inferno arc, the movie Willow, Conan the Barbarian, and probably Warcraft III/World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade. Oh, and SaGa Frontier. I am not involving Zelda: OOT, because that is timefuckery, which never ends well and is a whole different thing.
WARNING THIS IS VERY LONG AND ILL-ORGANIZED. It was difficult for me to get my thoughts in order SORRY.
My first two introductions to blatant mindfuckery, aside from the Force having a strong influence on the weakminded, came close together. The movie Willow, in 1988, and Marvel Comics' Inferno Arc, a crossover spanning pretty much all the titles that a mutant with an X in it had ever touched.
In Willow, young Ali was introduced to the Ritual of Obliteration. The movie calls it this, but doesn't really get into it in detail. The novelization does; said ritual is not intended to kill Elora Danan. It is meant to destroy all that she is, was, and will ever be. It is meant to erase her, mind, body, and soul. I believe this is the reason it freaks me out so badly. There is violation of the body, there is violation of the mind, and there is violation of the soul. We here in the real world really only have to deal with the first one, although it may have EFFECTS on the mind, no one can truly TAKE your mind or your soul.
"You may take this body, but it will not be me. It will not be me." - Marian, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves; "How can anyone own a soul?" Lucifer, Season of Mists.
One of these quotes deals with every teenage girl's favorite fanfic plot device: rape, one deals with the Devil telling Dream that everyone in Hell chose to be there, consciously or no; he didn't make them come there, nor did God.
This is why it scares me, and this is why I think it's so fascinating as a device of e-vil and the varying grades thereof. It gets into what makes you a sentient being, and whether we have anything at all we can truly call our own.
Shortly after Willow, I went to visit my cousins in Nashville. My cousin Tim wasn't there, but I read some of his comic books. At the time I had never heard of the X-Men or any of their friends. I had no idea who Nightcrawler was, or Meggan, or N'Astirh, and wouldn't know until several years later, when I was in high school. Nonetheless, this panel stuck in my brain, and I remembered it until then, when I tracked the issue down again and bought a copy of it for myself.
N'Astirh refers to this as ripping away Meggan's humanity. This is interesting because Meggan is later revealed to... not be human, but N'Astirh is kind of busy and I sort of have a weird demonic crush on him for being an awesome villian, so I will forgive him. Anyway, I remembered that panel for YEARS, because of the way Megs is presenting herself LIKE A FREAKING RITUAL SACRIFICE, arms thrown back, throat exposed, up on her toes like Odette ensorcelled: JESUS CHRIST MEGGAN. Also: he makes Nightcrawler watch. :( I AM SURE THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW KURT'S RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS NOT BEST PLEASED, and also: he is at this time in love with Megs.
BUT I AM AHEAD OF MYSELF. Just for some background here, the inferno arc begins when N'Astirh, who I cannot believe didn't rate my best villians list a few years back, tricks Illyana Rasputin (Magik) into opening a portal to Limbo, where the demons hang out. Then N'Astirh keeps it open. Illyana is not best pleased, as she thought she was opening it to save her friends and get them out of Limbo. N'Astirh then defined for me an integral part of being a demon, which remains as how I characterize them to this day:
I always thought that it was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT that N'Astirh isn't lying when he says he loves Illyana. He tricks her into opening the portal by telling her this, essentially, that he loves her as her demonic self, and is thus helping her friends escape. He also doesn't deny he betrayed her: he is, as Meej said, perfectly reasonable about it. He is what he is, and is frankly kind of surprised she is surprised. You knew what I was when we began this, Rasputin: what did you expect to happen?
Back to Megs.
This was also my first introduction to the MO of what I consider demons: they take your best and brightest, and turn them against you. Megs is a pure, innocent soul. She is also an empath, and has the least chance whatsoever of resisting N'Astirh's pull. There is some good foreshadowing in the issue where Megs unconsciously shapeshifts because some sailors are ogling her; the ground is set that she tends to, without meaning to, shape herself by the feelings of those around her. Then she flies into N'Astirh's radius and bitch: it is over.
She is corrupted most terribly, as she is basically an empty vessel, and becomes the gobbolin princess, di-rectly underneath my girl Mads the Goblin Queen. She does some horrible things to the man she loves, but we won't discuss that because I hate Captain Britian and think he deserves it. Instead, we will address the other best and brightest, the other pure soul N'Astirh eats for dinner:
Longshot is emo'ing there about the fact that he was mistakenly dating both Dazzler and Rogue. This is not because he is a playah douche; it is because he has ALREADY BEEN THE VICTIM OF SOME MINDFUCKERY IN THE MOJOVERSE and has no understanding of how people work. HE HAD NO IDEA THEY WERE DATING; seriously. He thought they were all just friends. Rogue is kind of cool with this, DAZZLER IS NOT, and they totally had a fight about it just before this, which is why my boy is all, "Havoc told me I did a bad thing, BUT I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY IT IS A BAD THING BECAUSE I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS EARTH WORD LOVE."
GUESS WHAT THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO BE INTRODUCED TO IT IS.
I WOULD GUESS THAT IS PRETTY CLOSE. OH GOD. OH GOD NO: WORST MAKEUP SEX EVER. Also please note: it is later implied that they HAVE NEVER HAD THE SEX BEFORE. SO THEIR FIRST TIME WAS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF SOULEATING. Oh, and during? He eats her soul too, because the next time you see her she's as fucked up as he is. After it is all fixed again, he completely freaks out, because now he does understand love, and he does realize that Dazz is the one he loves, AND CANNOT DEAL WITH WHAT HE DID TO HER. Like, tells her not to talk to him OR EVEN LOOK AT HIM.
AND THEN HE GETS REALLY EMO.
He loses his powers. See, my boy's powers are based on his motives being pure. He believes his motives will never be pure again, because he has sexed up his lady love while under the influence, and HE WILL NEVER EVER BE PURE AGAIN, and so: done. You could say he is pretty broke up about it.
Later in a scene not appearing in this article, he literally goes back to the mojoverse in pieces. He never really gets over this shit, but since I am not a mean lady I will tell you that the eels do not actually get him at this time; he actually ends up marrying Dazzler and finally killing Mojo. Despite the fact that it is no longer the eighties, during this story arc he still wears the mullet.
SO ANYWAY: what I learned from this was, the demons will go for your purest, best, most beloved first, because without them, the rest of you are totally fucked. You know who has to pull the X-Men out of this fucking fire? JEAN, that is who. Much like Aerith, she has to everything around here. Oh, and Havoc, who immolates N'Astirh with the blinding force of the very sun. (I wish Illyana had gotten to do it.)
This is why the demons went for Kael, you guys. And Arthas. And young master Stormrage, and Grom Hellscream. All I can say is: LOOK OUT, THRALL. (Jaina will kill them if they try anything.)
Oh, and then my father's best friend left this shit at my house in 1990.
Way to fuel my fire there, dad. I was freaked out by this for years. I am still freaked out by this. WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO TELL HER WHAT YOU WERE DOING TO HER BEFORE YOU DID IT? Yes: because the sorceress is EVIL, do you guys even read Conan? But seriously OH MY GOD HER MIND CEASES TO BE? IT JUST CEASES TO BE? :( :( :(
This is what the psi-corps did to Talia, and to Ivanova. It was the worst possible thing they could have done. Talia is a sleeper for the corps. The person the crew knows as Talia never existed; she is a false persona imprinted on the real one, designed to gain trust and be loved, and love in return, so that the real one can learn your deepest darkest secrets. And use them against you, should the psi-corp wake the sleeper. When Talia is awakened, the "false" persona is completely replaced by the real one, the sleeper planted on the station long ago. The Talia the crew knew, and loved, ceases to exist.
This is the worst possible thing that could have been done to Ivanova. Not only does the woman she thinks she maybe loved not exist; that woman never existed, never will exist, and oh, and it confirmed for her that she should never trust anyone, ever, ever, ever, EVER, also: ever. Or let them close to her. It is fucking horrifying.
A similar thing happens in the Conan issue, although it is WAY more personal. The sorceress did this to this girl so she could give Baelin hope and then take it away from him, specifically ruin this one man. At least Talia was not specifically targeted to ruin Ivanova. (It was just a side bonus.)
I'm not sure whether I consider this fuckery of the mind, or of the soul. Possibly both. It gets into whether a false, imprinted vessel can have a soul (Inferno also gets into this with my girl Mads, who is a clone of La Jean imprinted with some of her memories), and I don't even want to go there right now so we won't. We'll call it fuckery of the soul, though. It certainly was for Ivanova.
Yeah. She bails on the body after pretending to be into long enough to make him think he has a life again. He's pretty upset.
B5 also deals with straightup fuckery of the mind, in that criminal felons, instead of being put to death, have their minds wiped clean and are put somewhere else, doing community service, as a completely different person. Also imprinted with another life, if you will. This is deemed more humane than the death penalty. Even if it ended well for everyone who goes through the process (secret: it doesn't), I would disagree. (So would Lu.)
So now you see my background in mindfuckery. It has influenced a lot of things I write. It is why I got so into Asellus' arc in SaGa Frontier; a central human belief is that no one can own your soul, a la Marion. They can take your body, maybe even your mind, but they can't take your soul. Only if you are a mystic? They can, because it never belonged to you in the first place. This is the understanding that Asellus has to come to with the mystics: she is human, her soul is her own. She cannot understand why the mystics don't just openly give their Lord the finger if they all think He is such a dick. The answer is: if they did, He would just make them no longer think that. This is why I find them so fascinating; each of the mystics who has free will has gained that in a different way, by making themselves too sadistic, too tainted, too insane, or too inconsequential, to bother Charming out of existence. One them even learns how to work the karma wheel so that when she kills herself, she's reincarnated as a human. This is also why the half-mystic ending is canon; by choosing neither side, Asellus neither abandons nor assumes ownership of the mystics. With a foot in both worlds, she is free to use her last wish to set them free, which she does. This is why Asellus is awesome, and is one of my favorite heroines ev-ar.
Those of you who have interacted with Lu have probably also figured out that this is why she is such a freak about mind reading. She doesn't really care about her body, and she is afraid she has already forfeited her soul. She can't call either of those her own; she already gave them up. But by god, her mind has always been her own, and YOU CANNOT HAVE IT: GET OUT.
This is ALSO why Lu's greatest fear is that one day the Legion will come back and the remainder of, or at least some of, the bloofs will be like Meggan, and just automatically lose their fucking sense of self: remember eating all that fel energy guys? Yeah, we've sort of come to collect on that. Plz present your throat, that we may rip it out and turn you on your brethren. Thanks! Nice doing business with you. Oh, stop screaming, it's not like it h... well, I guess to does. Sucks to be y'all!
Ladies and gentlemen: mindfuckery. It will influence everything I write, lo, until the day I die, and to me, it is the touchstone of the truly, TRULY evil.
And I am really, really, REALLY glad it cannot actually happen to me.
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Date: 2009-01-16 10:49 pm (UTC)Tell Luke "Mortcypedia" and I'm pretty sure he'll know which part I mean.
(I did in fact figure it was something like that with Lu, and am pleased to have been right.)
YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN ALL OF B5. OH GOD. SHUT UP MEEJ.