So I've recently been reading the novels for a series called "Kumo Desu ga, Nani Ka?" ("I'm a Spider, So What?") and I was very pleasantly surprised to see it had hypnosis as a major plot point ([spoilers]In Side Story chapter 20, the secondary protagonist who is a Hero-Prince is betrayed when his rival hypnotises many officials and charms his little sister into killing his father and framing him, enacting a coup with the help of the eldest prince[/spoilers]).

This got me wondering if anyone else knows of any stories where hypnosis becomes such a major factor? If so, please share them!

Couple off the top of my head:

In the fourth book of the Series of Unfortunate Events series, titled The Miserable Mill, Klaus is hypnotized by an optometrist who is in cahoots with Count Olaf. When the word "lucky" is spoken to him, he falls into a trance, and the word to snap him out of it is "inordinate".

The book Night Chills by Dean Koontz is exclusively about amoral scientists subliminally hypnotizing an entire town via the water supply and inducing obedient trances in people by uttering a trigger phrase to them.

There's the Molly Moon series which is almost entirely involved with hypnosis. I've only read the first 2 in the series a long time ago, so I can't really give specific details.

This is a nice thread. I'd recommend checking out <<translate.google.fr/trans...com%2Fblog-entry-394.html|this blog>>, that someone posted a while ago already, for manga at least (the manga scenes are called "Past clap picture summary").

As a kid, I remember reading this series called "Nerds", and the first one had a kid with hypnotic braces. It makes sense in context.

The Redwall series of books also have several occurences of hypnosis; villian snake characters usually use it to ensnare other characters in order to kill them, such as Asmodeus Poisonteeth the adder and Zassaliss, Harssacss, and Sesstra, a trio of snakes who are bound together by a badger's mace. There is also Ublaz Mad-Eyes, a pine marten emperor with hypnotic abilities so powerful that he could even use them to lull a venomous serpent to guard his treasure.

Sorry to keep posting here, but I can't believe I forgot to mention this one: in the third book in the Wayside School series, Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, there's a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Pickell who hypnotizes people with a pickle-shaped pendulum. He's good at his job, usually curing people through aversion therapy, but he also plays cruel jokes on people by making them respond to a random trigger word in embarrassing ways. For example, he hypnotizes a woman so that every time she tries to smoke a cigarette, she believes that it turns into a worm and she spits it out, but any time her husband says the word "potato", she is compelled to slap him in the face.
He eventually loses his license to practice psychiatry and becomes Wayside School's guidance counselor, where he hypnotizes one of the kids, Paul, so that he'll stop feeling compelled to grab his classmate Leslie's pigtails. However, Dr. Pickell also adds the command that any time Leslie says the word "pencil", Paul will feel compelled to eat her ears.

GAH! THE NOSTALGIA! IT BUUUUUUUUUUUUUURNS! That series was one of the things that helped form my fetishes! They actually made a TV show of it too. youtu.be/04MHAO0giUo?t=6m28s

Aw hell yea, I adore these books and the TV series. They actually got Tim Curry to voice Slagar the Cruel in season 2, that was dope as hell. But the descriptions for the snake hypnosis in the books were incredible to me, always loved re-reading those parts.

REALLY wish they would make a film adaptation for the first book.

I've actually still got a whole bunch of the books from when I was a kid. Hell, just because I can, here's a little taste:

"'Look at me, my little friend. I can see that you are a great warrior. You are not afraid to gaze into my eyes. Look at me.'
The eyes seemed to expand and dilate until they filled the whole of Matthias's vision. They dominated him. He could not tear his gaze away. Asmodeus continued in a persuasive undertone.
'See, they are the twin pools of eternity. Sink into them, and you will find darkness and rest.' . . . Matthias . . . felt overcome by an immense lethargy. The adder's voice was a cold, dark, green velvet fog that threatened to envelop him. He stared deep into the deadly eyes, his lids began to droop heavily . . . ."

And then Asmodeus ate him! THE END :D

Hahaha! Well, we both know that's when Martin's spirit just has to butt in and ruin everything XD I own all the books up until I think The Taggerung, but the first book never ceases to be my favorite, mostly because of ol' Asmodeus Poisonteeth. Of course, it goes against everything I stand for as an advocate of our scaly friends needing more positive representation in the media, but who cares, he's an amazing villain. XD

Damn ancient warrior ghosts, always interrupting dinner! I swear, it was Redwall and Kaa that really got me into snake vore and hypnosis. How is there no art of him around here or fanfics where he 'wins'? Someone needs to stand up for the little guy. And by little guy I mean proportionally huge adder.

It baffles me that Kaa is the one who gets all the fanart/fanfics when Asmodeus is like the sexiest evil motherfucker of all time. Plus he doesn't fall out of trees or swallow boulders like a goober. He gets his head cut off by an ancient warrior's sword that was forged from meteorite steel, made by a badger lord. That is so much more badass. XD

To be fair, the Kaa in the actual book was kind of badass. But also 94% less evil. From the stories I've read (and written lol) I think people just use Kaa as a placeholder name for any given hypnotic snake who likes eating people -- they don't really keep in mind his original personality. Kaa is probably more popular because more kids were exposed to Disney than Brian Jacques: if the latter were the case, I'm sure people would be using Asmodeus as a catch-all for hypno snakes instead. I agree he's a better character than the Kaa in the film, though. I just love how he talks, with his "twin pools of eternity" and his "darkness and rest". Maybe I'll write something with him one of these days, or use him in an RP or something.

Kaa in the books is the fucking coolest, and I am perpetually in a state of mild irritation that he has not been adapted properly to film yet. XD I want to see him dance and hypnotize the monkeys in glorious HD graphics, goddammit! That is all that I want! *slams fist*

And hell yeah, the words he uses when he hypnotizes small helpless animals is awesome. I say go for it, the snek needs more love. \o/