Reader’s Picks: utterlynaive
I’m “utterlynaive”, a mostly-straight submissive woman with a scarily compulsory hypnofetish. I gravitate towards stories where a submissive’s perspective is deeply explored, with good inductions, gazing deep into her psychology—especially at the moments where the control is actively seducing her half-awake mind into surrendering herself further. What I really find uniquely interesting, however, is consensual and romantic mind control. The knife’s edge between “I shouldn’t want this, this is extremely dangerous, but I desperately do want it” is where the white-hot core of a submissive lives, and mind control only intensifies that contrast.
Long and thorough exploration of good old-fashioned forms of mind control, that have the benefit of being real—classical and operant conditioning. A realistically written relationship goes through a realistically written reveal of the submissive’s fetish, and her immensely realistic-feeling slow devolution into a mindless puppy. The fact that she manipulates her husband into agreeing to collar her is the cherry on top that makes her complete taming, which happens faster and more thoroughly than either of them expected, immensely satisfying to read and to imagine happening to you.
An instance of the classic trope “man gains mind-control powers and proceeds to conquer”, which is usually the kind of dominant wish-fulfillment that I tend not to like. But the twist that our erstwhile mind controller is deeply fearful of his powers, and that it is his submissives that push him to embrace them, creates a thrilling twist in the dynamic. Combined with the excellent inductions throughout and a deeply wholesome romance, it’s a fantastic read. I should particularly highlight Chapter 7, it’s the part I always end up revisiting, a thorough exploration of using pleasure to erase a submissive’s memories.
In a world where everyone has chips in their brains, making mind control easy and normalized, a woman is hired to be blanked out and put on display. It consists largely of a single induction, but goodness is that induction extremely hot. A world where you’re expected to surrender this deeply and this erotically for just a regular job is great to imagine. You can almost write the scene afterwards in your head where she snaps out of her mindless devotion, groans in embarrassment and asks for the check, but secretly desires more of it.
The Starlight Lounge is an institution that uses whole-personality replacement through neural chips to create high-tech prostitutes specialized to a client’s specific desires. The worldbuilding here is evocative, and the culture of the entertainers all casually describing their complete and utter surrender, plus the option to wipe some of the more unsavory clients from your memory, paints a picture of a wonderfully sex-positive culture that’s just fun to place yourself in. Mind control here doesn’t feel dangerous, it’s something you can just casually dip your toes in, realize you to love to obey, and just casually forget to dip back out. It really highlights the oxymoronic nature of consenting to being mind controlled, which only deepens the fantasy.
A journalist investigates (what she thinks is) an evil billionaire’s brothel after he bribed politicians to allow him to lure in poor girls with the promise of wiping their debts, only to wipe their minds instead. Surely the journalist’s naivete will lead to her being captured by the evil billionaire to avoid his scheme being exposed, right? (Spoiler: it’s almost tooth-achingly consensual and wholesome and the induction is astonishingly well-written, feeling deep and hot despite being described from the perspective of a woman who barely re any of it.)
This one really perfectly balances the knife’s edge of consensual mind control. The controller is very well-conveyed as cold, calculating, and deeply evil. The submissive finds herself thrust into her own deepest fantasies, and she’s forced to quickly reckon with the taboo of it, the fear that the controller will perhaps not even use her sexually, the fear that she’ll surrender too much of herself, and the realization that she is willing to risk all of that, absolutely anything really, for a taste of true submission. Her disgust with herself combined with her incredible arousal is palpable, a feeling I’ve felt before. When she’s finally enslaved, the use of harness and bridle imagery in the descriptions of her surrender is incandescently hot.
Wiped is a short story of a classic style in erotica, for the reader in a hurry to finish. A man performs a short yet evocative induction, and then proceeds to relentlessly use and abuse his partner. But the clear love expressed in his concern for her, and how that love translates his casual-seeming use into taking care of her in the deepest way he can, is wonderfully romantic and elevates the story. The submissive does not realize how much she needs to submit, so she needs a little push. It’s a sweet, somewhat realistic exploration of how mind control can fit into a romantic relationship.
A fun story about two friends who only remain so only because of paper-thin plausible deniability finally learning to love each other openly, through the lens of some small sprinkles of incredibly deep mind control. Being a bit of a nerd myself, the operating system analogy used to help the submissive keep her mind under trance was pretty unique and sexy, and is the kind of thing that actually helps in real-life hypnosis, too. The confident man continuously telling the submissive not to rush things, ripping his control away from her as she begs for more, adds a delicious denial element that makes the resolution all the sweeter.
This story has sweet romance and downright villainous degradation in a steamy harmony with each other. Bimbofication is hard to get right from the submissive’s perspective in a way that makes sense and is appealing to my more cerebrally-minded tastes—it is often not as fun to hear how an induction is affecting a submissive’s mind if she herself doesn’t really understand at least on some level. But this story gets it right in a rare way, with its satisfying gradualness and “pink and pretty” imagery.
There’s very little I desire more than to be someone who can be hypnotized easily and deeply. The Tickle War is a romantic exploration of a submissive just like that, how she gets discovered in flirtation with a coworker, and how their relationship blossoms. The man’s reluctance to use his power is adorable, and the descriptions of the submissive under amnesia suggestions are amazingly evocative, which is really hard to get this right.