#advantage of. And then lengths some cults go to. It's horrible. It's awful

[ratcandy]

also whats weird is like, that mushroom gotta be like ATTACHED to his brain?? no way he doesnt have brain damage from that. also its not hard to imagine that with all his intense mushroom use, that he'd have some sort of substance use disorder. and he is, suddenly, in a DEATH CULT. actually. i dont feel like anyone talks about the last part. ?? doesnt anyone wonder how hard it would be to adjust just suddenly. being in a cult? we dont really know how his life was before but if he wasnt in a cult beforehand then id imagine all the Cult Stuff would be at least a little uncomfortable.

I guess it would depend to what extent we're leaning into the parasite actually being a cordycep. Because if we're going full throttle on that, teeechnically cordyceps don't attach to the brain at all and only control the musculature; hence why I always hc'd that there's two different mushrooms involved, with the menticide doing the brain fuckery and the cordycep doing. The everything else

But at the same time it could very well just be advanced cordycep and we can make up whatever rules we want ! But YES, regardless, there is some brain nonsense happening that would ABSOLUTELY have everlasting effects on this ant. Not to mention if the cordyceps DID have control of his muscular system, then his entire body has got to be feeling the effects of it as well.

So he's here, in a death cult, probably having to re-learn how to walk and suffering extreme withdrawal symptoms as well as memory loss.

ANd no nobody ever considers the full ramifications of the death cult because everybody is a coward and won't consider how horrifying cults actually are!!!!!! And to be a disabled old man suddenly thrust into a scary ass scenario where people are being sacrificed and brought back to life around you while you can't even remember how old you are or where you've been the past few years because time was fucked while you were Shroomed, it HAS to be HORRIFYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But at the same time it really just works out from a cultist perspective. He's already isolated, vulnerable, and probably only halfway lucid at any given point. He'd be extremely easy to manipulate and keep dependent on the cult. After all, they're keeping him safe there, it's dangerous out there. (Not to mention him just feeling some inherent loyalty to the Lamb upon becoming sober, which certainly wouldn't do him any favors)

Like what's he going to do? Leave? Stumble out, suffering withdrawl, into the Lands of the Old Faith?? As an old man??????????

He has no CHOICE but to make peace with where he is. Despite all the questions about if his FAMILY is even STILL ALIVE. Despite having no idea what he DID while under the influence. Despite the HORRORS around every CORNER

It's FUCKED!!!!! It's AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[violent-backed-starling]

An Essay For your Consideration

The Manson Family, Heaven’s Gate, The People’s Temple; all are fairly well-known cults. They are known because of what they did. They all made the news in the worst possible way. The Manson Family murdered innocents because their prophet commanded them to. Heaven’s Gate ended in a mass suicide. The People’s Temple ended with a mass murder/suicide. These are all traumatic and shocking events. It is because these are so well known and present in the public eye that these cults in particular have shaped the way people portray cults in the pieces of fiction they write. This is evident from The Order in the Silent Hill Series by Keiichiro Toyama to The Village by M. Night Shyamalan. The cults in the media are always dark, unhinged, or at the least upsetting to most people, which is why the viewer generally ends up rooting for the hero. In a particular fictional cult they express several of the above traits. In the 2019 horror comedy musical Black Friday, written by Matt and Nick Lang with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim, there is a cult that goes about the mall doing similar crimes. This kind of behavior is extreme. In general, cults while still awful and problematic in their own rights, do not go to such horrific lengths. The Wiggly cult in Black Friday has extreme behaviors, even by cult standards.

When the cult first formed in the mall in Black Friday it was not completely horrible, unhinged yes, but not completely irredeemable. Over the course of a few mere hours they turned to savage actions in order to get what they wanted. It started off with just burning down the Cinnabon in the mall as a “sacrifice to a dark god”. Their actions only escalated from there. The cult’s prophet, Linda Monroe, slit the throat of the manager at Toy Zone when he could not get her a Wiggly doll immediately, even though he tried to bargain with her saying that he could contact the manufacturer and get her a Wiggly doll. She later tried to have one of the cultists murder a teenage worker at Toy Zone, presumably for lying about having one of the Wiggly dolls. She lied about the Wiggly doll to protect her sister who carried it, unknowingly, in her backpack. The teen worker managed to escape and find help in the end, but she was supposed to be murdered. The cultists also ended up finding this worker’s sister and taking her back to Linda who threatened her with a knife when she found out the sister no longer had the Wiggly doll. She most likely would have been murdered by Linda if there had not been help coming from her sister. The cult eventually died in a fire when the whole mall burned down due to the Wiggly doll being set on fire, because they refused to leave the Wiggly doll that they had gotten ahold of and were fighting over who would be the new prophet since Linda had been shot and killed. The cultists literally burned alive instead of escaping because of their cult and them wanting to be the new prophet. That is an absolutely horrific and painful way to die. Them burning alive for their god is a prime example of extreme behavior. Even when it comes to the more extreme cults, they generally do not end up with cultists burning alive, voluntarily. This kind of behavior is why the Wiggly cult in Black Friday is not a regular cult.

Cults show up on the news on occasion. Those cults are generally more violent and upsetting because what they do or what they did has to be something awful to get them onto the news. NXIVM is a cult that has made headlines semi recently since they did awful things like brand women and make women give them blackmail materials so they could not leave the cult once they joined. This sounds bad and horrific and is only scratching the surface on what truly was going on, but they did not commit murder or mass suicide. This is also just one case, a case that made headlines no less. When it comes to the easily recognizable hallmarks of cults the ones that come to mind are the manipulation of their members, brainwashing, and the separation of members from their family and friends. Cults usually end up separating the members away from their family and friends in order to make them more vulnerable and likely to stay within the cult. The cults also sometimes take money from their followers who, believing that will be put to a good cause, give it to the leader. That money is usually used to benefit the leader of the cult in some unorthodox way, like buying a sports car or nice worldly possessions. While that sucks and no one should take advantage of people like that, it is still far better than murder. In Wiggly’s cult they were willing to kill for one of the Wiggly dolls. Their prophet wanted four of them, but not a single person in the cult had one until the end and when they finally got one it was Linda’s, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The people that also were part of the cult had problems because that was how Wiggly ensnared them. They were part of the cult of comfort because of their own issues and wanted relief.  That is the same reason why many people joined NXIVM. Keith Raniere presented his cult as an MLM that sold courses for self improvement. In Black Friday Linda had an affair with her lawyer and desperately wanted to be adored. The other cultists had similar issues, one had recently lost a job, another was homeless and so on. This cult of comfort had people under its thumb believing in their new god, Wiggly.

There is also the issue where people blend the lines between cults and religions. The fact is that they do overlap in areas, and many cults are based upon being a religion. Thomas Robbins explains that the ways religions have become more cult like has affected the studies of the sociology of these religions. Then the other group that cults overlap with is political parties. There are a number of political cults as well. The Cult of Cheka in Russia is a big one. The public sees that “the FSB continues to promote a positive image of the Cheka in the public imagination”. This cult is pushed to be in the public eye and is supposed to be thought of as good. It is literally a government supported cult. That is because this is a secret police kind of deal. That implies that this lies on the more extreme side of cults as well, but that is the way most of the well known ones are. Wiggly’s cult has both of these aspects to it. Linda is Wiggly’s prophet because he is a dark god from another dimension, but the reason people love and believe in him is capitalism. Wiggly is not only an interdimensional being with the powers of a god, he is also the little dolls that were sold in the Toy Zone, and all over the USA. The commercial for those dolls promised relief from the woes of the world to his followers. They were convinced that this product would make everything better. That is why they were willing to burn with the doll rather than just letting it go.

Most cults that end do not do so by such tragic means but rather they just split apart or fizzle out on their own. Sometimes there are legal issues, but they are generally something smaller scale than murder, such as tax fraud, insurance fraud, etc. Those are still crimes and they are seriously wrong but not nearly as bad as killing someone. 

The time in a cult does affect the mental health of the individual. The ex-members of some organizations would say that they suffered from “cognitive deficiencies (e.g., memory, perception, decision-making, or information-processing deficits) and emotional impairments”. The separation from family and friends makes it harder for people to leave. The cults do, generally, let people leave though, and people do choose to leave. This is not the most common, but nor is it completely unexpected. While people who leave their cult do consider it to be rewarding, they also have problems afterwards. They can have physical issues, emotional issues, psychological issues, or some combination of them. These are regular cults, the more extreme variety could have one committing serious crimes like murdering, being an accomplice to murder, or straight up ending with them dead, whether by their own hands or not. Those people in Wiggly’s cult did not leave; they would rather die than leave their cult of comfort, so they did. 

The people that ended up in the cult in Black Friday were there because Wiggly and by extension Linda promised to fix the holes in their lives. They just blindly followed and believed her when it came to what Wiggly could and would do for them. They would not take responsibility for their own problems and try to solve them themself. The cultists wanted the fake promises of comfort Wiggly gave them rather than trying to fix them because it was easier to just rely on Wiggly. They wanted someone else to fix their problems like their failing marriage, losing their job, their messy divorce, losing custody of their kids, their dead wife, etc. This is something that probably drives real life people to join cults as well. Bad circumstances can have one turning to ill advised sources of comfort and relief. In some cases that ill advised source of relief could be cult. These are the kind of people that a real life cult would target to try to get them to join their ranks. These are people who might turn to a cult in times of trial which is exactly why a cult would try to convert them simply because they are easy targets. Even if the actions of Wiggly’s cult are extreme the member’s reasons for joining are ordinary and understandable. That gives this cult some sort of connection to a more realistic cult. The actions from this cult do align with some cults, namely The Manson Family and The People’s Church. 

The Manson Family was also a very extreme cult when it came down to it. The Manson family with the myriad of crimes they committed. Those crimes including murder, torture, hostage taking, the attempted assassination of the president and other lesser crimes like grand theft auto and forging a check from the treasury. The trial was no less disturbing with Charles Manson trying to represent himself and after a few days being found incapable of doing so. He also entered the courtroom with a cross carved into his forehead. Manson demanded to be allowed to testify and they agreed. He testified that he was a product of the criminal justice system since both his father and mother ended up in prison at some point. The court also ended up having members of the family testify and they told the truth of what Manson said and believed. They actually ended up testifying against Manson. The cult was following his orders and it was on his orders that they killed. They also believed what he was saying about Helter Skelter being a huge war of which the Family would come out on top of. Manson said that was the true meaning behind the Beatles song by the same name. The cult also had members afraid of Manson and they were scared to disobey so they did what was asked of them whether they wanted to or not. That kind of behavior from a cult is intense, extreme, and rare which is why it was in the public eye as much as it was. This is exactly the kind of cult behavior that Wiggly’s cult from Black Friday also expressed. They also had similar behavior to another cult, that cult being The People’s Temple.

The People’s Temple started out with good intentions, but ended up with a large amount of its members dead. It started as a genuine religion but changed for the darker as the leader, Jim Jones, started faking healings and doing drugs. The healings would bring in more people and more money and with that money eventually Jones started doing drugs which evidently caused him to change, personality wise. He started wearing his signature sunglasses at that point to hide the fact he would have been doing drugs. He eventually got so paranoid due to the drugs that he decided to start his own little paradise for his followers out in Guyana. He started a small village with cottages and called it Jonestown. Many of the followers flocked out there, but once they got there they were stuck. They did not have enough money to leave, Jones kept their passports in a locked box, and all of the mail coming in and out was monitored. Those combined conditions made it practically impossible for anyone to leave. Life in Jonestown was miserable; they did not have enough space or food for everyone. Eventually concerned family members were able to convince U. S. Congressman Leo Ryan to go check on Jonestown in 1978. He and a bunch of reporters visited on November 17th, 1978 and at first it was okay but Ryan invited the followers to leave with him. Jones got very upset at how many wanted to go and as a result one of his lieutenants attacked Ryan with a knife. He escaped without harm. Jones then ordered for Ryan and his companions to be killed. They were ambushed and murdered as they attempted to board planes to leave. Then Jones ordered everyone in the main pavilion where the older member and nurses injected the young with poisons and drank poisoned Kool Aid. That kind of thing is very extreme. It is uncommon and made the news. 

The extreme cults are rare and have radical ideas and views. Wiggly’s cult is extreme and so is The Manson Family and The People’s Temple. They are all alike in the committing murder area of cult behavior. They also promised to be the ones safe from the world and would be left alive when the apocalypse would come. Wiggly’s cult ended in suicide as did The People’s Church. That is an extreme reaction to the situation that was going on and there were far better options that just were not taken. Manson and Linda were alike in that they would delegate the murdering to someone else. Linda and Jones are alike in that they did actually get their hands dirty. Linda’s cult may have been fictional and had some serious supernatural elements, but it still reflected actual cults behaviors even if those behaviors were extreme and part of the one percent of cults.