On Mind Alteration · 6:22pm Mar 20th, 2015

Okay, not even gonna try and justify my last break. I was tired, stressed, and wanted a little escape, which ended up turning into a bit of an extended hiatus. And yet, somehow, several months barely felt like a few days. Blegh. Oh well. Funny thing is, what really got me is a case of being in the wrong place at the right time. Or wrong time, rather. Everything about it seemed wrong. But anyway, I'll just go ahead and say that there's a story in the feature box which pisses me off quite a bit. Like, quite a bit. As in, it was enough to get me to briefly lose my shit over and decide to write up this blog without really thinking ahead. I don't plan on properly reviewing that story, though -- there's already a good deal of comments there that highlight the issues lying with the story itself, and there's no point in blathering on about all that again. (Though, I have a feeling I'll be calling up a lot of stuff from it anyway...)

What I will blather on about, however, is the main problem that such a story contained: memory alteration. Or "mindrape", as many choose to eloquently refer to it as, but it's still somewhat appropriate in this case. The issue is that some people don't seem to regard such a thing as a big deal, and simultaneously fail to realize that their own thoughts and feelings obviously won't reflect on others--and thus, shoehorning such personal and controversial opinions into a story is always a recipe for disaster. Maybe some people are fine with it, maybe some people are strongly opposed to it. Mind control is a pretty heavy and scary topic for some people. In the case of that story, the sheer amount of non-understanding and disrespect is sickening.

So, what's the big deal? Why exactly is this a problem, and might I be able to explain it as clearly as I can? (I can try, at least.)

Okay, see, let's not cut any bullshit or pull any punches. Mindrape is bad. Bad bad bad. It's about the worst thing you can do to a person, apart from actual rape itself (and yet, that somehow manages to get much more universal hate, as opposed to this). It's one thing to physically abuse someone's body, but this is abusing someone's MIND. Y'know, the mind? Your brain? That is what you are. What YOU are. It's what you are, what you have been, and all you will ever be, all stacked up in that big bundle of neurons. Those memories of prom, your first date, or the last time you remember giving dear old mother a hug? Those are just synapses firing in your noggin, sending little pulses of information hither and yon. In the scale of everything, pretty insignificant, but still quite a marvel of biology. Even today, people still haven't completely figured out entirely how the thing functions. It's the most personal thing you will ever have, because NO ONE can read into your thoughts, and NO ONE will have the same personality and thought process that you have. Minds change and mature over time, and develop naturally and fluidly. The mind is you, and you are the mind. You have a body, yeah, but without your mind to go along with it, it's just a useless hunk of bone and flesh. The moment someone else were to change that thought process, alter your memories, or whatever else... you're not "you" anymore. Sounds a little cheesy, I know, but you've pretty much lost that precious and, dare I say, "sacred" identity that is your mind.

Would YOU let someone fuck around with your mind? Twist it to their will? Let them screw with it, even if it's supposedly for the better? I sure as hell wouldn't. Maybe some people are okay with being brainwashed (I'm pretty sure it's a fetish for some, actually), but that doesn't mean everyone else would be. In the story I referred to, the mindrape occurred without consent. That is, Twilight knowingly altered her friend's memories (it requires a little context, I know, so it'd help if you actually read the story first) to better fit their current situation, without asking them for the go-ahead, without at least telling them about it, and without even entertaining the idea of exploring the other options. This is NOT okay. You can justify mindrape itself all you want, so long as it's consensual, but you can NOT -- in ANY universe -- justify mindraping someone without consent. It's disturbing, invasive, and completely destroys who that person is at their innermost core. Honestly? I would be TERRIFIED if I had a friend that decided to do something like that to me, even if it was well-intentioned. You know what they say about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions, after all.

I could go as far as to say that mindrape is just as bad -- if not WORSE -- than actual, bodily rape. The obvious difference between them is that, clearly, mindrape can result in the victim being left unaware of the fact that they've had such a thing done to them in the first place, whereas rape victims are all-too-aware of it and have to cope with the aftermath. Perhaps this makes mindrape seem not quite as bad to some, but honestly, it's still pretty fucking horrible. Think about it: you're living a lie. Something about you has changed, at your very core -- be it your personality, your memories, whatever -- and you're none the wiser. You've had your personal identity violated in the worst way possible. One day you could be a nice, kindly ol' chap, and then the next, someone could brainwash you into being hateful and pessimistic. You could be made someone's slave, and you'd be mindfucked to the point where you always submit to it, when you would have put up a fight otherwise. It's tragic, really. The endless possibility of cruelty via brainwashing is almost literally mind-numbing. To see it being used in such a context is... disgusting, to say the least.

The story itself, though I'm aware I'm not here to try and review it, still fails from a plethora of standpoints. It fails logic and even basic canon by having Twilight knowingly alter the memories of her friends, even when it's pretty clear she would never do this. It fails morality for doing said things without any consent on the part of her friends. And it fails in storytelling, because it's used as a cop-out to avoid character development, and mishandles a lot of exposition -- it needed an author's note to EXPLAIN what a good deal of the story even MEANT. Protip: If you need to do that, then you aren't telling the story very well at all. As for the whole gender thing, they could have easily taken the option to merely adjust to it themselves, you know. Spend time adjusting to the situation, and then MAYBE resort to a CONSENSUAL mindfuck as a last measure. That might have made for something worth reading. Instead, the story reaches for a quick and dirty solution that leaves the whole thing a dark and depressing pile of slag with an ending that feels forced and contrived beyond any reasonable measure, and left me both confused and angry. What's worse about that? It wasn't even marketed as dark, nor did it even have the dark tag -- though it was finally added recently, under some pressure by commenters.

Also, it tried to shoehorn in a thing about transgenders out of nowhere near the end, which I found pretty damn offensive considering the "solution" to the problem. "Can't cope with being male? That's okay, we'll just mindfuck you into thinking you were always one! That'll fix you up!" Hahahahaha... fuck you, story. Fuck you.

Moving away from the story though (jesus christ I'm still feeling steamed over that), it should be pretty clear why screwing around with someone's mind is a big no-no. In fact, the more you dig into it, the more and more horrifying the whole concept becomes. I've seen other stories do things of this nature before, some worse than others, but that doesn't excuse the fact that mindraping isn't treated as seriously as it should be. Maybe this is a divided matter, but if you ask me, I'd sooner jump off Angel Falls to my (probable) death rather than let someone fuck around with my head. But, see, doing this to someone you dislike/hate is one thing, but it's ANOTHER thing entirely when it's done to people who are supposed to be your friend. Even if you yourself are okay with being mindfucked for the "greater good" or something, ask yourself: would your FRIENDS be fine with it? Just because you are, doesn't mean everyone else is. Again, I go back to the consent thing, because consent is pretty damn important here. Pretty much anything being done involving your body requires some level of consent.

If you think it's okay to mindfuck your friends without consent because, in some wild scenario, you think it's better for them that way, then you can just fuck right off. I don't care how you try and make it sound justified. You're not a person I'd want to be friends with. Hell, if I were already your friend, I'd probably be pretty damn afraid of you. I mean, knowingly changing their memories or something is something that frankly terrifies me. The thought or notion of ANYONE doing that is scary, but it coming from someone I was led to believe I could trust is even MORE terrifying. This isn't just some minor tweak, mind you; this is a complete and total transfer/rewrite of one's memories, which completely changes who they are as a person. Or pony, in this case, but you know what I mean.

That's not to say it can't be done WELL, of course. Mind alteration can be a great tool to use in anything from darkfics to... well, it's mostly the realm of darkfic, but lighter variants can be done as well. What bothers me most is that it ought to be done when it has PURPOSE to the story, and doesn't disconnect from a reader's experience. In the story I mentioned, the mindrape pretty much had no business being there, as it was just used as -- again -- a quick and dirty means to an end, and it's not even really elaborated upon much. Just a, "okay, mindraped, the end!" No, just... no. If you're going to resort to brainwashing of ANY kind, there needs to be a higher purpose for it, and it ought to be more of the focus of the story itself than just a tool for concluding a rushed story and sacrifice all development. Have characters be mentally altered, give it a purpose, make said characters more the focus, just... do SOMETHING with it. People might say, "Oh, it's just a darkfic/sadfic, they just do dark/sad things!" Was Hard Reset just a "dark story"? Was The Keepers of Discord just a "sadfic"? That's a pitiful excuse. One doesn't simply shoehorn in a bunch of sad/dark things because it serves the tag well, it has to serve the story's purpose and focus -- otherwise, the whole thing falls apart.

To summarize:
-Mindrape is bad, m'kay? (I consider that a moral absolute alongside rape and slavery.)
-Consent is always a priority, even if you're doing it to trusting friends.
-Especially if you're doing it to trusting friends.
-That goes even more so if you're writing horsewords, using beloved canon characters.
-Mindrape, like normal rape, can be a good plot element, but it must have purpose and be treated with respect.
-Don't use it as a cop-out. Please. That's just fucking stupid.

This rant ended up being more centered around that one story in particular, which wasn't really my intention at first, but I still hate seeing this shit in stories in general. Mindrape can be used to great effect, but in this case, it was so poorly done I felt like I needed to scrub myself afterward. And if you're wondering, yes, I decided to opt out of doing feature box reviews for the time being. But consider this my quote-unquote "unofficial, non-focused review" of a feature box fic, in which I bitched more about the morals and principles more than anything. Maybe I'm completely going off my rocker complaining about this, and maybe I'm being a little unreasonable or judging -- at the end of the day, we oughta remind ourselves that these are just horsewords, and the mind itself is little more than a series of chemical reactions -- but I couldn't hold it in anymore.

Goes to show, I guess. If something pisses me off enough, I just can't stay away...

~Blinkie

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