![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Claudia and the Mind Control Conspiracy
Since I support This Week in Fandom History on Patreon, I have access to their behind-the-scenes episodes, which are less focused on a particular topic than the ones in the main show, and often consist of the hosts nerding out about whatever strikes their fancy. (I usually dislike extensive tangents in other podcasts, but I'm okay with unfocused rambling if I know it's what I signed up for.) Sometimes they talk about books that were popular during their formative years, which were also my formative years. And if I had a nickel for every time Emily and V mentioned an installment of a YA pulp series that I needed to seek out immediately because it featured some form of mind control, despite never having read the series as a Youth, I would have two nickels. Which is not a lot of money but it's weird awesome that it happened twice.
The first one is Murder in Paradise, a Sweet Valley High Super Thriller, in which the Wakefield twins, their mom, and their best friends take a vacation at a spa, whose owner has a sinister agenda that involves plastic surgery and (most relevant to my interests) hypnotism. I was able to find a copy on the Internet Archive.
The second one is The Nancy Drew Files #80, Power of Suggestion, in which (I am led to understand) a supporting character gets involved in college psychology experiments that essentially turn him into a brainwashed sleeper agent. This one is proving a little bit harder to track down; it seems like my options at this point are Interlibrary Loan, ThriftBooks, or a used bookstore quest (the last of which can be extremely enjoyable in its own right).
But, when I was talking about this with Elle, I said something about mind control melodrama in The Baby-Sitters Club (which I did read when I was younger), and we somehow generated a fanfiction premise in which Claudia's sister, Janine, who canonically takes college courses despite being eternally in high school, becomes a brainwashed sleeper agent through some campus research project. We decided that her trigger was a math equation, and didn't speculate much further than that, but I am very tempted to write this fic now. (Since the original podcast conversation kept referencing the Winter Soldier, I keep wanting to call this a "crossover," but it doesn't necessarily have to be one.)
The first one is Murder in Paradise, a Sweet Valley High Super Thriller, in which the Wakefield twins, their mom, and their best friends take a vacation at a spa, whose owner has a sinister agenda that involves plastic surgery and (most relevant to my interests) hypnotism. I was able to find a copy on the Internet Archive.
The second one is The Nancy Drew Files #80, Power of Suggestion, in which (I am led to understand) a supporting character gets involved in college psychology experiments that essentially turn him into a brainwashed sleeper agent. This one is proving a little bit harder to track down; it seems like my options at this point are Interlibrary Loan, ThriftBooks, or a used bookstore quest (the last of which can be extremely enjoyable in its own right).
But, when I was talking about this with Elle, I said something about mind control melodrama in The Baby-Sitters Club (which I did read when I was younger), and we somehow generated a fanfiction premise in which Claudia's sister, Janine, who canonically takes college courses despite being eternally in high school, becomes a brainwashed sleeper agent through some campus research project. We decided that her trigger was a math equation, and didn't speculate much further than that, but I am very tempted to write this fic now. (Since the original podcast conversation kept referencing the Winter Soldier, I keep wanting to call this a "crossover," but it doesn't necessarily have to be one.)