Is It Hypnosis? – Part Forty-Six

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I think one of the hardest parts to this particular series where I look at the hypnosis in stories and discuss its realism (and ethical practicability) is determining exactly where the line between “hypnosis” and “mind control actually is. Like, I skipped “Unaffected” for this installment because I felt like a brainwashing signal piped in a flash down the optic nerve was too close to nonsense technology, but I kept “Middle of the Night” where someone is being brainwashed in their sleep by a series of hypnosis files. The demarcation there is a little blurry, but I feel confident I’ve stayed on the right side of it as I tackle these next five stories. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Pink Cloud: This damn well better be both possible and practical, because I spent a good 3000 words showing what it’s like to negotiate a hypnokink scene between two consenting adults before I even started the induction and I’d hate to think I wasted all that time. Make no mistake, this was me very consciously writing a story that I could point to and say, “Hey, you want to see what real-world hypnosis play looks like when practiced ethically? This is a good model for your conduct and behavior. Negotiate, stick to what’s negotiated, and practice good aftercare.” I feel like I absolutely succeeded, and I will hold this up as a good standard-bearer for this series as a whole.

Middle of the Night: And by contrast, this one is both wildly implausible and something that should never be attempted outside of the realms of fantasy. I don’t think you can really do covert brainwashing to someone in their sleep – I certainly do think it’s possible to hypnotize a sleeping person, because we drift in and out of deep sleep several times a night and there would absolutely be times when you were awake enough to absorb the hypnosis but not awake enough to really think about what you were hearing, and I think you absolutely can use that to condition a subject who’s consciously bought into the idea of being programmed in their sleep, but I think hearing it from someone you didn’t already think of in that framework of a relationship dynamic would just wake you the hell up and you wouldn’t be susceptible to that person’s suggestions, either.

And again, even if you did, anything involving truly covert hypnosis is by definition non-consensual. Yes, you can have some fun times with faux-covert hypnosis where someone’s either given you blanket permission to hypnotize them in sneaky ways or where someone’s negotiated a specific scene involving amnesia suggestions and hypnosis they’ve agreed to and chosen to forget, but absent some major special pleading this is not that and Gillian is just gross. (But still, hot for fantasy’s sake.)

Keys to My Heart: And the absurd and nonsensical fantasy hypnosis keeps on coming! Sure, it’s a hot idea to use typing to trick the subconscious mind into thinking it’s getting buy-in from the conscious mind when it’s really not – it’s honestly the same trick Dominants pull whenever they have their submissive repeat what they say or even just cup their chins to move their heads up and down into a nod. Getting someone to agree with something, even if they think they’re just saying it to go along with the flow, is a powerful conditioning tool in the real world and it’s one of the reasons so many hypnotists love double binds – no matter what the subject says, they’re always buying in.

But it’s not this powerful. You can’t just get someone to the point of helplessly masturbating under your command in a single hypnotic session without any kind of initial rapport or consensual agreement on their part, and even if you could you shouldn’t. Just for the record, I am not anything like the writer in this story, it’s not even a teensy tiny bit autobiographical, and this should stay on the page where you can enjoy it as a not-real thing.

You Can’t Look Away: The hypnosis in this story is pretty much real and achievable, don’t get me wrong. But this is that kind of insidious consent violation that really does make me do this kind of blog post, because it’s very easy for me as a fictional writer to set up a scenario where yes, the two (or three, or four, or thirty-seven) characters involved in the story really are into each other and are just too shy to express it until one of them “takes charge” and makes a move without asking. In fiction, that’s hot. And in fiction, that always works out really well because both of the characters are exactly what the writer wants them to be and it’s easy to cheat.

But in the real world, if you assume someone’s as into you as you are into them and you just need to take charge and make the first move (and in this case hypnotize them) you might find that you are, in fact, just very badly misreading things and you’ve just committed sexual assault. Because that other person isn’t a character in your story, they’re a person, and you need to treat them with the respect that people are due. That’s why things like this stay on the page, and why Han Solo is a terrible relationship model but I won’t get into that right now.

Goddamn Trigger: Which is why it’s nice to have a fun, silly, entirely unproblematic relationship between two consenting adults who have made bratting and CNC into a part of their negotiated Master/sub dynamic and who enjoy every part of overcoming entirely mock resistance through entirely real and realistic hypnosis. About the only thing I can ding myself on here is that blog title, and this was before we knew what a shitbird JK Rowling was. (By the sequel she’s changed it to “fursona”, which is I believe the current acceptable vernacular for this kind of joke.) Everything in this story can be done, from drinking bacon soda to watching Critical Role to snacking on leftover Valentine’s Day candy, and everything in it is enjoyable, except perhaps for the bacon soda. But hey, to each their own.

And that’s five more stories! We are not catching up, I don’t think we’re even gaining ground, but that means just more time to spend in this particular fun thought exercise. See you next time for more!