Part 2 of my interview with Callidus

And here it is, folks: the conclusion to my epic live interview with Callidus.

We start out talking about MC (and the surprising lack thereof) in the various Marvel franchises. This section includes an impromptu visualization of a scene I'd like to have seen played out on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Listening to the audio again, I realize I actually left Callidus speechless for a couple of seconds. I'm proud of that. ;-) From there we move on to a debate about how to fit MC into the Matrix storyverse, we reminisce about the better plot for Alien 3 that we came up with together, and we gradually veer off into hilarious full-on geekery. I think you'll enjoy it all.

a perfect trance

In case you've been living under a rock and hadn't noticed, YouTube is stuffed with snippets from TV shows and movies of people getting MC'ed. I have no idea who most of the posters are, although I have a hunch many of them are the same person. You don't come up with a nickname like "jbvljkvwlfh" unless you're tapping random keys on your keyboard to create one of many disposable accounts. The snippets themselves have random titles too, things like "Mind Control 37" or an all-caps abbreviation of a TV show/movie title, anything to throw production studios off the scent. Well, hell, I don't mind!

Unfortunately, most of these videos don't do anything for me. I don't like bimbofication, I don't think possession counts as mind control, and I don't like it when I can't can't tell the character is being controlled (i.e., when a good character I'm not familiar with suddenly turns evil. How am I supposed to know they're not always evil?).

On the other side of the coin there are excellent MC videos like the one I'm linking to below. It's not embeddable, but I promise you it's worth clicking. This clip hits almost all my fetish buttons: total destruction of personality and will; a slow, dazed walk with the woman's hands flat at her sides; deep trance in public with no one noticing or helping her; robotic responses in public with people still not noticing or helping her; and as the coup de grace, betrayal of the heroes to their enemies.

It doesn't get much better than this.

Best brainwashing helmet ever

I fell down a rabbit hole on YouTube last night, rummaging through clips of characters on TV shows and in movies being brainwashed. Most of it didn't satisfy my picky tastes, but the one I'm sharing here rocked my socks off.

The first link at the bottom of this post goes to a HD video of the whole movie. This video was only recently uploaded, and I don't expect it to stay put long; so if you like what you see, you'd better download it as quickly as you can. But just in case the full movie disappears, I'll give you a second link to a low-quality clip of the brainwashing scene by itself.

Here's the setup. The main character here is a corporate spy who goes to conventions and secretly records presentations. But during this particular presentation, he realizes the people around him are falling into trance. He's wide awake, but he has to pretend that he's hypnotized too in order to avoid detection. The problem is that once the bad guys activate the helmet, it might not matter that he was awake. That thing is a really powerful, scary brainwashing device.

I deliberately chose a screen grab that doesn't show the whole device in action, or the whole room of zombified convention-goers. To see that, you'll have to follow one of the links below. Trust me, it's worth it:

Link to the whole movie in HD, beginning at the start of the brainwashing scene

Link to the brainwashing scene by itself, in low quality

In the pipeline

Just a short one today since I know a lot of my readers are vacationing this weekend. I'm currently working on my next ebook, which will be a rewrite of "Avatar" - a name I can no longer use, for obvious reasons. It will now be called "Colonized," and the whole second half will be brand spanking new. I was never happy with the old ending, and now I have a chance to change it.

At left is the comp version of the image I'll be using to make my cover. Tell me what you think of it.