When did your interest in transformation and hypnosis first rear its head?
For me, I can recall two instances in popular culture.
(1) Pinocchio and Pleasure Island
I remember being as young as four and watching Disney’s animated version of Pinocchio. The transformation of the poorly-behaved boys (“making jackasses of themselves”) into donkeys captivated me. Seeing the character Lampert turn into a donkey in the pool-hall is so well-paced, with the music, the movement of the animated character, and the timing/expression of his gradual realization then panic at his transformation. It’s also amazing to watch as he transitions fully to on-all-fours, losing his voice as he calls for his mama, and seems to lose his intellect completely as he bucks and kicks and brays, destroying the room in the process. Nothing sexual in this context, but I can see that my fascinating in transformation erotic fiction is rooted in a long-standing fascination in transformation.
Somewhere between seeing a real life hypno show (to the extent that such things can be real life), watching that scene in Jungle Book that everyone here would know, and, actually, the same one as you, from Pinocchio. I don’t know which really truly sparked it. The hypno show was the first thing that ever made me cognizant of knowing that I wanted to be the hypnotist, but I don’t remember if it was triggered earlier than that.
I have a funny memory of being a very small kid, 7 or 8, just having learned to type, going on my mom’s computer and typing out something to prove my skills, and the only thing I could think to write was a story where a girl gets sucked into mind controlling mud in the ground. Baby’s first story, huh? I honestly wish I still had it. It would be a funny read knowing where I ended up.
I’m sure I had seen things on tv, but when I was a kid, I saw the 1962 movie Jack the Giant Killer. In it the leading lady undergoes a kind of hypnotic transformation into an evil servant of the warlock Pendragon. I LOVED it then (nearly 50 years ago) and I still love it today!
Like I said elsewhere, the cartoon Spiral Zone was the first cartoon where I realized I liked hypnosis. It was a central part of the story and really help to make it different from other cartoons; the fact that half the world was under the control of the villain and that you couldn’t kill people because they were under the mind control not only help met TV cartoon standards but made the story more complex as it confined both sides of the conflict to not killing. (It also helps that J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame wrote the pilot episode.) It help to reveal the differences between the two sides: the Zone Riders as good guys won’t kill because they’re trying to free people from the Zone while the Black Widows as bad guys won’t kill because they see everyone as potentially becoming their slaves in due time. This help to really make the moments when one of the Zone Riders actually succumbed to the Zone stand out as they could potentially be (and in the case of two soldiers actually were) ordered to fight their own teammates. That was the most memorable aspect of the story. Following nycboot’s example I posted a few shots of the show.
The fact that this has been written by JMS and it features mind control makes me interested in watching this old show. Do you know if it’s available anywhere in full length?
It was the Well World novels of Jack Chalker that really set me off on a fixation on transformation in my early teens. He wrote quite a few other novels featuring transformations, although often with unpleasant degradations of female characters. However the Well World computers and Obie are very obvious antecedents to the “Chronivac” and other reality altering devices.
It also is up on YouTube. JMS wrote the pilot episode “Mission into Evil” and then left once the story started to take a different direction from his vision. That makes me wonder what he would have done with the story if it were still going in a way he could work with. The nice thing that came with the DVD package is an interview with Pierre de Celles, the lead animator on the show, and he shows some of the early design sketches. It really is a great show that was ahead of its time.
You all know that nothing in all of cinematic history turns a young gay boy into future big chaser meth pig
Than Kaa hypnotizing Mowgli in the Jungle Book. Temptation
Satan’s serpent
Trust and obey
Lose your soul
Your free will
I am going to feed on you. You want me to kill you. You can’t resist
I love how before mowgli can even think
He no longer thinks
Power Rangers. I am pretty sure that show was my awakening for both being gay (Tommy was very hot) and also the whole hypno thing. That and probably Scooby Doo as there were many episodes where Shaggy and Freddy get hypnoed.
Actually a lot of shows have hypno content at some point in it, lol. But really I am pretty sure for me it was Power Rangers.
Now this is fun. The Jungle Book, of course, but also—this is weirder—does anyone remember the animated version of “The Phantom Tollbooth?” The song “Don’t Say There’s Nothing to Do in the Doldrums” got me GOING. It’s a slow, lethargic song that lulls people into being totally lazy and careless, wanting to do nothing but veg out. Even now, the first verse of that song works wonders for me.
For the rest there’s what others have said—all of the Power Rangers episodes featuring not just hypnosis, but personality changes because of evil magic; Smallville’s “Red,” when Red Kryptonite makes Clark turn reckless and evil; and a particular section in one “Give Yourself Goosebumps” book called “Elevator to Nowhere,” which featured bug bites that turn people into slow-talking, compliant zombies.
Funnily enough, even at that age women being hypnotized did nothing for me. I always felt frustrated and even aware that there was something weird about it (women being transformed or forced to be compliant slaves rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt anti-feminist. Yes, I was a liberal in some ways even then). Well, that, and gay as heck!
A LOT of Ghostbusters - the Animated Series got me fixated as a child; the episode where Peter becomes super-muscular, the episode where they are turned into cartoons (a pig, a dog, and a bird), etc. You really sent me down memory lane
Hahahahaha. It’s funny what you say about a lack of interest in women being hypnotized. When it started out for me, I was equally interested in hypnosis affecting both genders. I couldn’t care less as long as there was hypnotizing going on, and I certainly wasn’t thinking of it in political or feminist terms, lol. I think I only began preferring it happening to men when the rest of my sexuality came into play, at a later age, and I realized that I was attracted to men and not attracted to women. When I was first discovering hypnosis, I was way too young to know what sort of genitalia or figure I liked. I just knew that having control over other people’s minds was super fun Still stick by that.
I can’t remember the exact moment it hit me. I remember feeling a little strange whenever I saw someone, especially a boy or man, under mind control or getting hypnotized. There used to be a gothic Soap Opera called Dark Shadows that I would rush home to watch after school. One of the protagonists was a young boy named David Collins. Probably a little older than me at the time. I didn’t know at the time why I felt funny when he was on screen. But, my libido would especially go crazy when he was hypnotized, controlled, or possessed. But, after that I was hooked.And . just about died whenever I saw it on TV or in a movie.
My first foray into the TF world was browsing stories at home and college internet. I remember one specific story I have tried to find but can’t - it’s like 3-4 frat guys go to a beach/volcano?for new years, but they’re all naked and they celebrate the new year when the ground cracks open and Satan pops out (or they summon him idk) and his one cock splits into like 3-4 dicks to convert the friends. One dick swallows a friend, another dick ducks another friend, one pumps with a bj, one grows big and become basically a Fleshlight to suck out the souls. Then when the friends are fully tf’d into demons, they all plunge their cocks into the earth and cum and cause a volcanic eruption as they revel in the pleasure.
Now the details may be skewed by about 16-18 years of trying to find it.
Also my first muscle/gay loves were a tv guide with WWE wrestlers and a cereal box cartoon (generic brand) who had a boy with huge muscles, and a book called Meltdown Man where a kid gains laser eyes like a new video game.
Also I have to mention Animorphs. I loved that series.
The episode ‘Power Ranger Punks’, where Billy and Kimberley get drugged into acting (and dressing) like bullies, was a big tf milestone for me when I was young.
Similar scenes from shows of the main character turning bad included red kryptonite in Smallville and quite a few scenes in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Well, that, and gay as heck!