The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A storm of publicity has greeted Lupa Proseda’s long-awaited new novel Puppeteer, which deals with an often-overlooked but increasingly relevant genre, that of so-called mind-control erotica. And let me cut to the chase: all the fuss is entirely justified.

The themes will be familiar to those who know Proseda’s writing: notions of identity, both physical and mental; the fluid sexual archetypes of the feminine; free will and determinism. All are gratifyingly present and correct, and all expressed in the author’s uniquely exuberant and evocative prose.

Most crucially, in the iconic character of Cindy—her surname is never specified—Proseda has created a sympathetic heroine, a true everywoman for our age. The arc of the story is one of high and enduring relevance to our dysfunctional times; Cindy’s quest for fulfilment takes her on a journey of transformation towards a new, truer identity; an identity which—in an inspired feat of verbal prestidigitation that left this reviewer reeling—Proseda names ‘Sindy’.

Yet it is equally notable (and surely freighted with irony) that the eponymous shadowy Puppeteer is never named at all! His character is left as a lurking mystery, a heart of darkness, if you will, until the second half of the book, at which point, without giving away any crucial plot elements, all hell breaks loose.

The premise, of course, is classic Proseda. Cindy’s challenge, and her ultimate goal—the hungry need that drives this dazzling novel forward—is to simplify her life in the face of a recognisably modern maelstrom of pressures. She has a complex and demanding job, she is juggling multiple financial commitments, and she cannot seem to hold down a relationship. Her journey is brilliantly set up from the beginning, as Cindy contemplates the tangled skein of her life: everything was so damn stress-drowny, she thought. Too many options, decisions, responsibilities, too much everything. It was bafflestrange. Unhappy; afraid; decision-crippling paralysis by variance. Foods, media, clothes, junkstuff, all the money-waste on things she’d never use; her daycareer, nightfriends, sexypartners; she felt crumpled with choice…

Act one concerns Cindy’s increasingly frustrating struggle to free herself from these complications. However, as one complication is seemingly dealt with, in delicious Sisyphean irony two others arise—not least in the area of sexual fulfilment. The reader is immediately put in mind of the Lernaean Hydra. Clearly this is no coincidence, as the legendary creature is explicitly referenced towards the end of chapter twelve. First she had one unsatisfactory man, then two, and suddenly now there were four of them complexicating her life with demands incessant. As she sucked on another questing lovercock, frenziedly seeking elusive release, Cindy thought mighty Heracles himself should struggle with such a labour…

As Cindy descends ever further into a series of unfulfilling sexual liaisons with unnamed men, we learn, of course, that she is really seeking to escape from herself. (A recurring theme: Proseda has commented in a previous interview: ‘all my works concern reinvention of the self-ness, the eternal identistruggle in a change-shifting world that may not be real; even the short ones that are mainly just hotfucky sexplay’.)

The first part of the book climaxes with a revelatory scene that is both overpoweringly erotic and shocking, as Cindy allows herself to be bound and used like an object, in pursuit of longed-for oblivion. In this climactic scene, strapped to a bed and penetrated relentlessly in every conceivable variation, Cindy has an epiphany. In the violent throes of a twelfth orgasm, if your reviewer counted correctly, she realises that this is not enough—that it will never be enough—and that whatever escapist pleasures she may take, her challenges will still be there waiting for her afterwards. She has to find a way to cut the Gordian knot.

At this point, Proseda introduces us to the Puppeteer, who approaches Cindy on what at first seems like a random whim, a happy accident, fate; a deus ex machina. However, in another startlingly original twist, we quickly learn that the Puppeteer has been observing Cindy with interest for some time: Yes, I have watched you, Cindy. And I can tell your yearn, your seekmatter, your very soul-craving. I can give it to you, if you convince me you’re worthyful. But you’ll have to knee-beg me for it, first… The revelation is brutal.

The will-they-won’t-they push-me-pull-you dance of desire between the two provides the kernel of the novel, but in a nod to predestination, Proseda makes it clear that this dance can only end one way.

The notion of the subsuming of the self, the escape into submission, is in itself hardly new, but as a parable of the existential afflictions of Western society, Puppeteer is both compellingly timeless and starkly contemporary. As Cindy puts it, the first time she contemplates her impending transformation at the hands of the mysterious Puppeteer himself: She looked at him with a stare of lustfusion; transfixed under his gaze, her lacysoft breasts swelled for him, heaving, responding with life and eyes of their own. Her heart squealed like a cornered capybara. Her breath caught at the thought of what was to come, as he bent her over and thrust manliness into her wetbody. Dispense with choicefusion, once and for all. No, she thought, as she felt the erupt of another orgasm—in this mirage-world, there is only ever the illusion of choice…

However, her journey of self-discovery is by necessity a long one, and the heart of darkness is pitch black. At the book closes its second act, Cindy must indeed (both figuratively and literally) beg the Puppeteer to give her the freedom she craves. This is not simply the commonplace freedom of free will, of course, but a more fundamental freedom from thought, responsibility, and complication.

There is a strange and surreal sense of omnipotence about the character of the Puppeteer. As Cindy debates her future with him, and he finally agrees to subjugate her into her longed-for state—what she describes as a mindless sexytoy—it is as if he is immune to recognisable human emotions. It is as if the Puppeteer, who seemingly fails at nothing, stands outside the fictive construct of the flawed human beings around him, almost god-like in his capabilities. As Cindy kneels in supplication, the imagery implies she is perhaps even literally praying to him; before the Puppeteer, Cindy is powerless, a fact she accepts and embraces willingly; a convert to a new faith. Indeed a true evangelist, as she cries and begs: Predate me, then, if you dare; chase me if you must; hunt-me-down, fierce wolf! Take me if you can; to your bed if you will, mind-master, and throw me there, your playtoy; subdue me, mentipulate me to heavenly orgblivion! Cockulate me to the very edge of the sky!

The scene is redolent of myth, all the more so when, asked directly for his motivation, the Puppeteer simply cackles maniacally and quotes Moby-Dick at Cindy: As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts…

Thus a bargain is struck, but its details and repercussions—and potential unintended consequences—are left to the imagination at this point.

Is it perhaps a Faustian bargain? Certainly, in the character of the Puppeteer there are analogous elements. Physical details are scant by design—he is painted in broad strokes: tall, dark haired, and charismatically handsome—but in his ability to grant such arcane wishes, his flashing eyes and wild laughter, and his dominating, portentous turn of phrase, there are surely echoes of Mephistopheles himself.

It must be said that the third act is not without its flaws. The momentum of the story is checked by a long and lovingly detailed discourse on the mechanics of the long-foreshadowed transformation of Cindy. A vast array of techniques and technologies are brought to bear. Nothing is glossed over. The techniques involved include, but are not limited to: addiction to stimuli, behavioural reinforcement, drugs, psychological and physical reward and punishment, hypnotism, nanotechnology, magical artefacts, subliminal visual and auditory messaging, hand-waving gadgetry, and things unspecified.

Here, readers may be reminded again of Moby-Dick, and of Melville’s lengthy symbolic (and literal) anatomisation of the whale itself, a tour-de-force that has had many a student weeping in frustrated boredom even as the implacable waves of prose sweep on. Yet as with Melville, all this too repays a closer examination; new riches and new meaning are revealed with every reading.

It is clear that many fans of the genre will appreciate the narrative detailing involved here, and there is no question it is as well written as the rest of the book. Take the following passage, a tellingly succinct deconstruction of the central ontological paradox at the heart of the novel: Cindy gasped as the joy-thing penetrised her. She struggled feebly against her bonds, palparevocably helpless to escape his powers. O pleasure intolerable! She could lose herself in this. She felt her womanweak mind moaning to obey, obey, obey! The Puppeteer smiled snakewickedly at her, enjoying the spectacle of her dissolution. “Give in to it, Cindy. Just become… Sindy? Then you can obey me, obey me forever…”

There is much more to savour in this vein. However, as Cindy becomes ever more what the Puppeteer poetically describes as a mind-slut, a playject, the techniques involved become more and more extreme. The reader begins to experience a creeping sense of disquiet, a fear for Cindy herself; her identity and her very sanity are surely at stake.

But in another staggering sleight of hand on the part of the author, by finally and seemingly irrevocably removing Cindy’s self-determination, we find the Puppeteer has created what is in effect a whole new and even more sympathetic character: the aforementioned Sindy.

Yes, Cindy is completely erased, effectively vanishing from the story without trace, but we do not mourn her absence for a moment; Sindy’s innocent, sunny, compliant disposition and lovably empty head are too fetching to resist.

Frankly, after all the preceding melodrama and angst she is a breath of fresh air.

The stunning and unexpected sleight-of-hand whereby ‘C’ is substituted with ‘S’ has intrigued many commentators. Some argue that whilst the shape of the ‘C’ represents a recursive arc—referencing the Sisyphean struggles of Cindy to de-complicate her life, yet always returning to the same place—the ‘S’ affords the sinuous sense of an onward journey, a winding pathway into the future.

The contrasts between Cindy and Sindy are lovingly drawn in Proseda’s trademark evocative prose. As the book begins to head towards its climax, and Cindy’s journey is complete, the words take flight and soar as we learn of the extent of the physical transformation, whereby Cindy’s body has been lovingly re-engineered into …a perfect sluttypuss. Sindy looked forward to pleasure-serving the Puppeteer, and all others too. Her jigglebreasts stood out, gravity-popping, and nibblecravingly squeeze-desperate for touch. Her lips tingled with succulence. ‘Please, mind-master, take me now’, was what she would have said, except he had told her to shut up and entertain herself while he worked on something more important. This Sindy diligently did, and she tried not to attentiongrab with her wriggling joy-squeals of selfpleasurable delight.

Ultimately, whereas Cindy is sharp-edged and challenging, a child of her times, Sindy is a sweet-natured and compliant figure, almost idealised, and she will do exactly as she is asked.

Consider: at one point, the Puppeteer asks—in fact, orders—Sindy to get down on her knees and fellate him. There is no logic to the Puppeteer’s order, no precursive cause and effect, no particular motivation implied; it simply comes out of the blue. But from Sindy’s point of view, we learn that …it was impossible for her to think about not obeying. Such a thought flippered briefly, fishlike, but was instantly panicsquashed. The thought of disobediture caused Sindy almost physical pain.

The process of becoming Sindy is interestingly described as exactly that—an ongoing process of becoming, as opposed to a one-off event. In illustration, while breakfasting, Sindy must watch a series of films provided by the Puppeteer for what he describes as her ‘daily enterstimulation’. The content of the films is, intriguingly, never made entirely clear, but it is evident that Proseda is referencing a species of behaviourist programme of conditioning and reinforcement for Sindy. It is also implied that Sindy herself features heavily in these films, perhaps a commentary on our shallow narcissistic age.

In another psychologically relevant passage, Proseda describes the pleasure that Sindy takes in her new role. The Puppeteer has briefly sent her out into the world to practice her skills, and he has got her a job in a strip club: Here, it was expected that the customers would enjoy her, because she was now supertractive, especially the way her enormous chestsets stuck out. Sindy had been programmed to gigglecourage their attentions. This was one of her favourite parts of the day, especially being fondlefucked on all four-limbs in one of the private rooms.

As the passage above illustrates, and as is often the case with Proseda, much of this is told through allusion and metaphor. Why a strip club, after all, and not a simple shop or bar or restaurant? It cannot be merely for the purposes of titillation. As always with Proseda, we must scratch the surface: the strip club, the writhing bodies of strangers, the fleeting sexual transactions; all are surely meant to symbolise the increasingly desperate and ephemeral exhibitionism of modern society, the quaking sense of insecurity, the terrifying thought that what is not seen by others does not truly exist.

The full sexual adventures of Sindy are, apparently, to be related more directly in a forthcoming sequel, tentatively entitled Puppeteer II: Sindy the Insatiable Sex Slave. If there is any tiny criticism to be had, it would be that Proseda could fruitfully have included a few more of these scenes in the final chapter of the book. Certainly, this reviewer would have appreciated it.

Overall, the notion of escaping a world beset by impenetrable complications and an overwhelming welter of decisions is compelling explored. As the book closes, the dizzying complexity and variety of Cindy’s all-too-familiar life has finally been replaced wholesale by the heartening predictability of Sindy’s. Every day Sindy wakes and reaches for her clothes, which are now, like every day, identical to yesterday’s. Whereas every day was different for Cindy, now Sindy follows a dutiful and uniform routine, without thought or digression. The simplicity and inevitability of Sindy’s routine is recounted using the recurring imperative ‘must’, as in: she must first get out of her restbed, then she must do her special sexercises, and after that she must wake the Puppeteer with his morning blowsuck. Then she must… and so on. Other commentators have noted the schematic rhymes of ‘must’ with ‘lust’, ‘bust’ and ‘thrust’, all of which are used repeatedly and to good effect in this pleasingly assonant section of narrative.

Yet Puppeteer ends on a delicately ambiguous note. Her old life forgotten, her body changed beyond recognition, her mind reprogrammed into a hypereroticised submissive state, the happy Sindy is seemingly now the perfect sex-slave for the Puppeteer. But is all truly resolved? What is the significance of the final thoughts that run through Sindy’s mind?

The strange, dreamlike paragraph that concludes the book suggests that perhaps her future is not as predetermined as we have been led to believe: Sindy must go wherever the Puppeteer wanted her to go, and she must do what he said; to do notwise might lead to confundancy. Tonight she must body-please the Puppeteer as usual. After that she must sleepyhead. At that point—and this was very important—she must switch off, like a happygirl light bulb, like the simplehoney she was. She must not under any circumstances brain-dream, because to do so would complexicate things again, and Sindy did not want that.

Thus Proseda constructs a dichotomy to test the wisdom of Solomon. By the end, the reader is confronted with the deepest question of all: of the two, Cindy or Sindy, which is ultimately more quintessentially human? Which is more sympathetic, more likeable? Proseda challenges us to consider which we would most like to have in our life, in our home, in our bed, but offers no answers; the answers are ours and ours alone.

In summary, a few minor cavils notwithstanding, at over two hundred thousand words this magnum opus stands as a modern masterwork; a labour of love on the part of the author; part meditation on twenty-first century society and sexual politics, and part devastating critique of almost everything imaginable. Notwithstanding the quality of Proseda’s previous work, it is clear that Puppeteer stands alone and on its own terms as a classic re-imagining of a neglected genre.

As an aside, it is surely a glaring omission in Lupa Proseda’s glittering career that she has never been awarded a major literary prize. As she wittily commented last year, quoting Jorge Luis Borges himself: “Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me.”

The publication of Puppeteer offers a long-overdue opportunity for the literary establishment to redress this blatant injustice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lupa Proseda was born in 1972 in Melipilla, a small town between Santiago and San Antonio, Chile. Her father was a well-known local stage hypnotist and illusionist; her mother a writer of doggerel for travelling musicians. Proseda travelled to study comparative psychology at the University of Buenos Aires, a time she freely admits were her true formative years. The melange of cultural influences in the Argentine capital had a deep influence on Proseda, and it was there she began writing; in her own words to express the fiery erogenital tumult in my animal soul. Her early, now sadly lost, works are known to include Las Lesbianas Gauchos, a short story detailing the steamy adventures of a gang of pampas cowgirls as they ride through Patagonia, La Gran Ho de Babilonia, about a woman of extraordinarily loose morals, and El Hombre Muy Potente, which constitutes her first recorded foray into the erotic mind-control genre, and a possible precursor of Puppeteer.

After graduating, Proseda began writing in English to reach a wider audience. She turned her initially poor grasp of syntax into an asset, by consciously mangling words into new and expressive forms such as ‘mentipulation’, ‘orgblivion’, and ‘cockulate’, some of which have now entered accepted idiom. Her early works were well received amongst a small but steadily growing audience. Her breakthough novel, A Tale of Two Cheerleaders was the launchpad for a stellar career.

Typically described as ‘ravishingly, almost supernaturally beautiful,’ Ms Proseda lives in a very large apartment in Miami with her fourth husband, ninety-three-year-old billionaire property tycoon Alvin Schneibel. She is currently working on the planned sequel to Puppeteer, along with a collection of erotic poetry, Per Verse.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABSTRACTS

A Tale of Two Cheerleaders (1998)—Proseda’s first full length novel, a heartbreaking love triangle that surely must be veiled autobiography. Two cheerleaders (Randy and Mandy) heartlessly (and ill-advisedly) mock a shy weedy bloke (Mike). Mike is not happy at all, and strikes back using his incredibly advanced computer programming skills so that they have to obey his every command. But which will end up becoming his girlfriend…?

Hypnogeddon! (1999)—A complex allegory of the shifting late twentieth-century geo-political landscape. As the millennium approaches, Proseda offers a dystopian vision of a near future where Mindy wakes to find all the women on earth have become mind controlled drone-like sex toys through some unspecified event. All except her, that is, because she overslept and missed it. Now, can Mindy resist the unknown forces that have made them this way… or is her fate already sealed?

Bimbology State (2001)—A series of insightful short stories set in and around the town of Bimford, Bimbochusetts, home to the State University of Bimbology. The stories are notable for the kaleidoscopic variety of characters on display: amongst others, we meet Brandi the feisty troublemaker, who finds herself enrolled in remedial bimbo studies with hilarious effects; Tandi, the initially hyper-intelligent student who becomes increasingly distracted by her ever-growing assets and correspondingly diminishing capacity for critical thinking; and the unforgettable Candi, who has been stuck at the University for nearly ten years due to her inability to focus on anything besides sex for more than a few seconds.

SlutBoss (2002)—Proseda’s mastery of long form fiction begins to grow in this devastating dissection of Western corporate culture and workplace politics. Wendy is the boss of a company that specialises in retraining women for positions in various ‘service industries’. All the women who work for her are totally hot mind-controlled sluts, so she is ‘Boss of the Sluts’, or SlutBoss for short. But after an accident in the programming centre, Wendy’s nickname begins to take on an entirely different meaning…

The Reluctant Controller (2004)—A thinly-veiled critique of modern dating mores masquerading as a screwball romantic comedy. Devastatingly beautiful and intelligent Candy has a problem. She controls peoples’ minds automatically. She makes people do what she wants them to do, without even really thinking about it—and for some reason men are especially susceptible. The problem is, how does she know if they really love her for herself?

Dollifiers of Deneb (2006)—Yet another radical departure from Proseda, a daring wide-canvas sci-fi extravaganza, with actual aliens. The mysterious Dollifiers have travelled light years from the Deneb system in search of new raw material for their pan-galactic hive-mind-sex-drone-automaton assimilation programme. Initially there is no shortage of volunteers; life on Earth has got ever tougher in the 29th Century, and the Dollifiers offer good pay (also dental). But soon, plucky pneumatic blonde Interstellar Agent Sandy begins to suspect all is not what it seems. In a mission fraught with danger, she resolves to infiltrate the Dollifiers’ mothership and find out exactly what’s going on.

Mister Master (2008)—The first acclaimed outing for the mysterious Mister Master, the Maastricht millionaire megalomaniac. Mister Master is a man on a mission. From Manchester to Massachusets, many magnificent maidens are made mentally malleable by multiple means. Mister Master’s manipulative methods are manifold, and maddeningly moreish.

Mister Master spawned various slapdash and ill-conceived short stories, only published online. None of these were well reviewed, and Proseda herself admits they were written ‘because I had a tax bill to pay’. They include:

• Mister Master Goes To Munich (2009)
• A Minion For Mister Master (2009)
• Mister Master’s Mistress (2009)
• Mister Master and the Mad Meme (2010)
• Mister Master Meets His Match (2010)

(The latter is notable only for the scene in which Mister Master tries his methods on an out-of-control US military artificial intelligence, and is rebutted with the line Fuck you, mister man! I’m not one of your goddam two-bit Eurotrash whores, I’m a goddam AMERICAN!)

SuperPuta (2010)—During this relatively fallow period of her career, Proseda also briefly became involved in co-creating the revolutionary graphic novel SuperPuta. The central eponymous female character pursues two parallel careers: a super-powered crimefighter by day, and a high-end dominatrix by night. Thus Proseda re-examines the Goddess/Whore archetypes. Other notable characters include Ra-Ra-Rasputin, the supervillain from Saint Petersburg, and The Upcycler, SuperPuta’s partner in every sense of the word, whose main ability is to instantaneously create very dangerous machines out of bits of old tin cans, broken electronic devices, and whatever else happens to be lying around.

Relentlessly mocked at school for his stammer, Ra-Ra-Rasputin resolves to take revenge on the world by mind-controlling everyone into losing the power of articulate speech. SuperPuta and Upcycler combine to thwart him: Upcycler imprisons him within a cage of garbage, following which SuperPuta uses her Whip of Destiny to beat him into gibbering submission.

Dancing with the Duende (2013)—After a long break from writing to ‘fully remoisten the juices of creation’, Proseda returned in style with this magic realist fable. Drawing on folk tales from across South America, Proseda creates an erotic dreamscape where nothing is quite what it seems; magical artefacts have strange powers, men and women helplessly re-enact ancient myths, the dead won’t lie down, and things are generally all a bit odd. The Duende of the title is a sprite-like forest creature who lacks thumbs, and helps people who get lost in the forest find their way home (as long as they have sex first). The half-crazed cigar-smoking trickster figure of Caipora makes a hilarious appearance too, using his tricksterish skills to ensnare an innocent young woman into all kinds of enjoyably exotic behaviour.

Cnut (2014)—A curio, an allegorical retelling of the legend of the eponymous 10th century British king. At a mere thirty pages, Cnut tells the story of a young man who is constantly and unaccountably besieged by a relentlessly increasing number of beautiful large-breasted women, and is finally swallowed by the fragrant tides of female pulchritude. The metaphor of the implacable incoming waves and the protagonist’s ultimate powerlessness to resist them is clear, although many critics have argued that ‘cnut’ is simply one of those misspellings that occasionally crop up in Proseda’s work.

The author herself remains resolutely silent on this issue.