I talk a lot about status quo when I do these trope talks Mostly because most tropes that jar or surprise the audience do so by messing with an established status quo Stories can be hard to get into without an established status quo for your audience to get invested in and an easy way to structure a story or sub-story is start off by disrupting the status quo and then have the characters either fix it or deal with the lasting consequenses In character driven stories the status quo is basically rooted in what characters are present and how they interact with one another I talked about this a little bit in the Power of Friendship and Character Death Trope Talks and character driven status quos can be somewhat tricky to disrupt without doing something drastic unless you're willing to kill a character your options are largely limited to temporary ejecting a character from the story in one way or another or messing with an established character relationship and while there's plenty of ways to do both of those things, they can be annoying to set up and tricky to handle without pulling anyone out of character but there's something of a "holy grail" of efficiency when it comes to character disrupting sub-plots and that's mind control Mind control is the umbrella trope for when a character is controlled, manipulated, or otherwise influenced by some external and generally malevolent force Practically speaking, for the duration of the character's time mind controlled they've functionally been replaced by a different character usually rather more mindless and rather less friendly The status quo shake up here is obvious with a character acting like a different character their entire dynamic with the other characters changes drastically and MOST of the time, dramatically In the process of confronting this mind controlled stranger who looks like their friend other characters are frequently forced to expand outside their normal ranges of characterization quiet characters might get loud when antagonized in highly personal directions the comic relief might get serious if they think that's how to get through to their buddy emotionally repressed characters can get honest for the same reason friendly powerhouses who get mind controlled can show off how utterly terrifying they could be if they wanted to There's loads of possibilities for the mind controlee and the characters dealing with the consequences As a characterization stretching trope, mind control is very versatile and even in the less emotionally charged cases it can be used to orchestrate scenarios that would otherwise be very difficult to justify like an all out fight between two solidly allied characters or an honest confrontation between two very repressed characters Mind control is a trope that varies wildly in severity from instance to instance Sometimes it's a pretty casual thing, like "oh no, the princess has been hypnotized and she's gonna marry the villan unless we stop it within the next 15 minutes" and sometimes it's very serious, like "oh no, I thought this friend or ally was dead but it turns out they were just captured, brainwashed, and tortured into a living weapon and now I have to save them from themself" and then there's mid-range versions where it's more of a plot device like, "oh no, the bad guy has a McGuffin that'll mind control everyone unless we stop them in time" Anyway, all this in mind it's very easy to see why mind control as a concept is so widely used It's a writing tool that can be used for quick and easy implausible scenario construction and it let's you play character's off of each other in otherwise very impractical ways and because the tone varies so wildly, it's not restricted to certain flavors of stories and can potentially appear anywhere from wholesome kids media, to some truly dark and horrifying contexts So with that established, lets break this trope down Mind control is frequently vaguely hand-waved in a generic sort of way but some stories deign to give us specifics of the mechanics of the mind control inside and out and there are basically six common variants in wide spread use The first and most grounded option is Brainwashing Wherein a character is reconditioned to be evil and/or believe something otherwise completely antithetical to their normal ideals This kind of mind control is fairly hands off instead of directly getting into someones head, you just manipulate and reshape them into who you want them to be and then turn them loose on an unsuspecting world The controlee usually isn't unaware of their actions but is very likely to end up regretting any and all evil done under the influence of brainwashing once they snap out of it all the way Unsurprisingly, this version is HEAVY on the angst Especially since brainwashing is usually done though some kind of horrible torture scenario it isn't easily undone without some kind of lasting trauma or other negative consequences On the extreme OTHER end of the realism spectrum is Possesion Where a character's will is directly superseded by another sentient entity who's directing them to do bad stuff either subtlety or unsubtlety Some possessions are more insidious where the character starts off with almost total control of themselves until the influence gradually grows stronger and the suggestion becomes something more like a command Sometimes the possession is VERY direct and basically immediately gives someone else remote control of your body and brain either way, this variant is strongly susceptible to the power of love or friendship in part because it shows up a surprising amount in kids media and is overall more audience friendly than torture-brainwashing-nightmare mind control Most of the time whoever's being possessed is still conscious of their actions on some level and, post possession, might angst about all the bad stuff they did while out of control but in general, they're not usually seen as responsible for their actions while under the influence of evil 'n stuff Close to possession, but not quite in the same wheelhouse is People-Puppeting where instead of controlling the body by way of the mind the remote controlling entity bypasses that song and dance and just puppets the body around directly This almost doesn't.. count as mind control since, technically speaking, the mind has nothing to do with it but the practical effect is largely the same with the added fact that the people puppet is generally conscious and probably loudly complaining the whole time The most classical version of mind control is garden variety hypnosis where the controlee is basically put into a trance and follows instructions kinda like a sleepwalker Hypnosis is usually both very simple and very easy to snap someone out of it's not the sturdiest form of mind control out there Hypnotized characters can sometimes be snapped out of it with something as simple as a slap The controlee is generally not conscious while hypnotized and due to its fragility, hypnosis usually isn't used when writers want characters doing anything really heinous Hypnosis shows up most commonly in VERY kid friendly, non-serious media, frequently for comedic purposes it's probably the lightest kind of mind control out there Hypnosis(TM) : "diet mind control" One of the more uncommon, but fairly interesting forms of mind control is The Indirect Perception Manipulation where a character is in full control of themselves but their perceptions are being altered by some outside force Under this kind of manipulation characters might fight their friends thinking they're enemies steal stuff they shouldn't, under the impression that it's something that already belongs to them and generally get up to shenanigans This kind of mind control also generally doesn't last very long, but it has a lot of potential while in use An other uncommon, but fun, version is The Virus Where the mind control in question functions more like an infection than a possesion The person is basically gradually overwritten with a completely new personality A lot of forms of lycanthropy work like this It's usually a curse or an alien infection or something or in A.I. or robot characters it can be a literal virus Sometimes this can be cured but it often has irreversible effects especially if accompanied by some kind of monstrous physical transformation Rather than necessarily being an explicit form of control by an outside party It's more like the character is being gradually superseded by an evil version of themselves which is usually in turn happening because of some outside influence While the character can frequently heroically resist the evil influence They usually can't fight it off completely unless they're Batman which is very unusual for mind control This one is, unsurprisingly, frequently angst heavy In story, characters can get mind controlled for all sorts of reasons but most commonly, it's one of three things Either the villain wants to pit the heroes against one another as a way to distract them from their personal evil plan or the hero has an ability the villain needs for their evil plans so they mind control them to get them on their side or the villain is doing it to gloat and taunt the hero with how their friend is definitely, 100% their puppet now That last one has a 100% failure rate, and yet for some reason, villains never learn The second variant has the most staying power and can sometimes last for arcs at a time While the first is likely to be broken within minutes with a good old fashioned, i know you're in there somewhere fight to snap the good guy out of it and we'll get back to that later Longer lasting, more serious mind control variants like full on brainwashing and The Virus are more likely to have full story lines devoted to them and their consequences while shorter, less serious versions might get one-shot subplots instead It's unsurprisingly a very versatile trope that runs the full spectrum from silly to serious, and short to story defining which of course means it's got a lot of different related tropes that frequently play off of its assorted manifestations The mildest off-shoot trope is that frequently mind controlled characters wont just physically attack their friends they'll get REALLY personal with their psychological attacks like exploiting insecurities or weaknesses in their buddies or just saying stuff especially hurtful to their friend because it's coming from them This is usually the villain behind the control trying to antagonize the good guys into fighting their buddy for real mostly for the evils but sometimes it's a legitimate distraction technique to keep the heroes off their case by roping them into heated emotional arguments with their brainwashed friend There's two ways to play this either the hurtful stuff is coming a genuine place basically stuff the mind controlled hero previously thought but would never actually say and sometimes it's cold reading on the part of the villain controlling them who's basically just trying to identify an exploitable weakness in the relationship between the heroes by throwing out jab after jab and hoping one of them hits a nerve Sometimes that second version will actually clue the good guys into the fact that the hero's under complete control rather than just turned evil Since if the villain has them say something too out of character, it'll kind of give the game away Anyway this generally doesn't go to far before it devolves into a full on fight which brings us to the next off-shoot trope, the I Know You're in There Somewhere fight Now I've already discussed the I Know You're in There Somewhere fight at length in previous Trope Talks but if you're unfamiliar, the short of it is A character has been mind controlled and another character must halfheartedly fight them while attempting to get through to the true personality trapped inside This usually requires that they get their but thoroughly kicked by their buddy until said buddy finally manages to snap themselves out of it Fights formatted like this almost always end with the mind controlled character being successfully snapped out of it although they don't always snap themselves out of it sometimes the hero just manages to destroy whatever mind controlling him in the process of the fight or sometimes the mind controlee will snap out of it just enough to not totally KILL their friend before lapsing back under control once the fight's over This is unsuprisingly a very drama heavy trope and is a gold mine of heartwarming character interactions because usually the person doing the snapping out of it has a very meaningful relationship with the person who needs snapping out of it and usually needs to delve into how meaningful their relationship is in order to shock their buddy back to reality for EXTRA bonus point, sometimes the person doing the snapping out has previously been unwilling to verbalize how important this person is to them. This kind of thing can run the full spectrum from platonic to romantic to... debatable??? Anyway, it's almost always highly dramatic and heartwarming although sometimes this can cross over into being a little overly drawn out since most I Know You're in There Somewhere fights are forgone conclusions and it can get kinda tiring waiting for the characters to snap out of it if you know it's gotta happen sooner or later I've seen some fights negate this problem by making it unclear if the mind controlee is even gonna survive which adds a whole new level of stakes to the fight Related to the I Know You're in There Somewhere fight is the trope of Fighting from the Inside where the mind controlee hasn't snapped out of it but is managing to resist the control in subtler ways In the simplest cases, this manifests as the controlled character getting random migranes whenever they try to do particularly evil stuff but in subtler cases the character might be surreptitiously sabotoging any evil plans they're participating in Tripping themselves up, or deliberately not noticing stuff the heroes are doing stuff like that This is an easy way for the writer to signal that the character isn't completely under control and potentially open up way for the character to snap out of it on their own at a plot critical juncture These tropes are fairly, universally applicable there's no context required to enable any of them This is not true of another popular off-shoot trope which is The Battle in the Center of the Mind where in the mind controlled character's internal conflict is presented visually as a highly symbolic, physical conflict taking place inside their head between themselves and some symbolic representation of whatever's controlling them While this trope can be invoked in most contexts if presented as a simple metaphor or like a dream sequence some stories will up the ante by presenting the conflict as much more literal by having other characters pop into their head to witness or help This is obviously not something you can pull off in every story setting cold hard realism doesn't lend itself well to psychic backup but more fantastical stories can throw in a magic spell or a brain connecting sci-fi gadget to justify other characters playing witness to your mind control victim's surrealist inner conflict Anyway, this trope is largely restricted to the Possession version of mind control but also shows up with The Virus mostly because those are the main mind control versions that involve an explicit malevolent sentience encroaching on a still conscious, but largely powerless protagonist Basically, it's the only version where you have two consciousnesses that are actually conscious enough to metaphorically duke it out Anyway, these are basically all tropes that relate to how the mind controlee snaps out of it but there's plenty that can be done with the aftermath too See, mind control presents something of an ethical problem that doesn't really exist in real life If you're literally under someone else's complete control then Are you responsible for your actions during that time? Since free will is pretty concrete IRL This isn't really a problem that we ever need to address outside of fiction and fiction doesn't really know what to do with it Some stories will forgive the mind controlee immediately after they snap out of it because it literally wasn't them doing that bad stuff, and were just glad to have them back Some stories will keep the characters grumpy at the mind controlee because even if they were under control it was still them doing those things this often varies between types of mind control Possesion, People Puppeting, and Hypnosis usually absolve the victim of responsibility because they're being completely suppressed but Brainwashing usually has an element of the real character in there somewhere albeit it buried very far down while The Virus directly turns a character into an evil or dick-ish version of themself without ever really superseding their free will the Perception Manipulation version is kind of in an awkward gray area where the character's acting as they think is right but what they think is right is being manipulated by someone who could be seen as responsible for their actions instead Anyway, it's tricky, and frequently the storyline will have each character draw their own conclusions about how responsible the character is for their actions under the influence Usually they're pretty forgiving but you sometimes get awkward senarios where a mind controlled character was a huge jerk in public and now their public opinion sucks or where a character is holding a personal grudge for something the mind controlee did and is blaming them in absence of anyone else to hold accountable The problem here is it's easy for your characters to reach a different conclusion than your audience Maybe your mind controlled character did a lot of really heinous stuff and it reads like your characters are forgiving them too easily or in contrast, your characters might be holding a grudge that your audience feels is unreasonable because all's well that ends well n' stuff This kind of disagreement is... kind of unavoidable since it's a moral question, and those have a tendency to make audiences wax philosophical and come to their own conclusions, and that's a GOOD thing No need to have a civil war over it ;) The prevalence of mind control in fiction has led to something of a Bait-and-Switch that's a trope in it's own right sometimes characters turn evil for seemingly no reason and the heroes assume it must be mind control, only to learn that Nope. Their friend has turned evil for realsies or in more knife-twisting examples has actually BEEN evil the whole time and is just showing their true colors This version isn't as widely used as just plain mind control but it's sometimes combined with stuff like The Virus where the character IS under an influence, but is still making the conscious decision to go ALL evil This version has some powerful knife-twisting potential especially if your protagonist tries to invoke the I Know You're in There Somewhere fight and gets utterly smacked down in the process because yeah they are in there, and they're totally on board with kicking their ass Most of the time, when a mind controlled character snaps out of it the status quo kicks back to normal, and the protagonist's group dynamic reverts without major lasting consequenses But some stories up the knife-twisting ante by killing the character almost immediatly after they snap out of it Usually by way of a heroic sacrifice This plays in to the greater trope that redemption equals death and for a character to be fully protagonistified in the eyes of the audience after being evil for a while they gotta have a nice heroic death but sometimes it's just there for the super sad shock factor on the even sadder end, sometimes characters will snap out of it AS they're dying with the implication being that the only way for them to free is to die This is sad... and sometimes overwrought It's a good way to make an already sad situation even sadder by having the good guy you once knew shining through at the last possible moment before they can die for realsies but don't worry, this doesn't happen a whole lot most mind control can be broken by much less drastic measures So in short, uhhh mind control is a very.. dramatic trope it has a lot of storytelling potential it opens a lot of channels for fun, kind of out of character interactions without actually being out of character The major risk is getting a little too overwrought and over dramatic and if you have a situation you're trying to make high stakes, but it winds up being a little bit too cliche you can end up with an audience that's just kind of waiting for you to get on with it but overall, it's a very versatile trope that sees a lot of use and it opens the door for a lot of very enthralling character interactions That otherwise wouldn't be very easy to make happen Yeah I'd file this one under good, clean, stupid, knife-twisting fun So... yeah
I seen this trope talk already.
As of now we don't know how Marcy's possession works. Does she have zero conscience, can she see but can't move any of her body, is she partly in control but being manipulated to act that way, but the core can also take full control of her anytime.
We'll have to see how it works. For all we know her mind might be overwritten.
Ok
Yes OSP!