#cult victims

[defire]

Ghost of Seattle Chapter 33

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Content: child soldier, gang violence, cult victims, killing, chokehold, captured whumpee

Buddy and Ghost burst through the trees just in front of the main group, weapons out. 

Most everyone was fleeing into a building, which was equipped with shutters, but they weren't getting them shut in time.

"We come in peace." Buddy declared at the top of her voice, holding out her pistol in her right hand.

She didn't give a fuck about technique when she was trying to be intimidating. It worked.

Ghost followed, walking boldly in front with her. That was what Oldman had said to do.

A shot was fired from around the corner of the long, low building.

Buddy lifted her pistol, but didn't waste a bullet.

"If you come in peace,--" The voice started to threaten.

"You wanna die?" Buddy yelled. "Come out with your hands up."

 They had like a minute before an actual gang war started; that was how fast the rest of the Cult would be to arrive. 

A kid came out, white to the lips, hands over his head.

"Please. I don't even wanna be a soldier." He begged.

"Tell everyone under the age of 18 to go to Offshoot." Buddy said, jerking a thumb behind the Shivers.

Connor had sent some people to guide the kids out of Cult territory.

"Why just the kids?" 

"Go." Buddy said. Or we execute all of you Tell 'em." 

The boy cringed back and banged on the door, repeating Buddy's message.

"Oh yeah," Buddy added. "Bloody Connor sent us."

The boy turned with a mixture of awe and relief.

Ghost heard excited voices. Suddenly the doors opened and the kids poured out and fled past the Shivers.

There were only 2 adults among them. Only adults were allowed to paint the Cult's yellow crosses on their white clothes. Their elitism would kill them today.

The Shivers grabbed them, letting the kids go. They were tired, bruised, and scared. But most of all right now, excited.

The Shivers threw the two adults to their knees and knifed them.

Ghost bared his teeth against the grimace, making himself look at the teens instead. If only all he'd done today was help some kids.

The compound's purpose seemed to have been changed. The center of the building was piled with recovered steel and smaller piles of wood, plastic scraps and cord. A few tools lined the walls and floor.

There was a massive trapdoor, already propped open, with a staircase that led down to a carefully collected treasure: an arsenal of crossbows. There were even a few guns and a case of .22 rounds.

The Shivers rushed in with a consensus of mad excitement. They seized the weapons carelessly, grabbed ammunition; cleaned the place out in 15 seconds. They knew they'd split the loot afterward, and knew to keep an arm free, for, what was already happening outside. 

More shots coming from 3 or 4 different directions.

Ghost melted into the cover of a haunted lean-to filled with garbage. The shade projected such a powerful sense of stillness that it felt like no one could possibly be there.

As soon as he saw where the main force was coming in from, he could guess where they'd hide shooters, based on the angle it would require to hit the Shivers without shooting their own. 

With how randomly they were arriving, though, it was unlikely they had that sense. Other people panicked when fighting started. Ghost didn't anymore.

Ghost retreated behind the building, scouting for an alternative route out, since the way in was clogged with escaping Shivers and Cultist teens. He wanted to get into the area that the Shiver snipers were covering, if possible. The area he was going to run into was essentially an overgrown park. He heard someone coming in front of the building. Friend or enemy, he didn't want to be seen--even a friend would show tell-tale recognition. 

He backed up, then glanced around a moment too late as an arm came smoothly around his neck, closing in neatly and pressing in on the arteries on either side. Ghost instinctively squeezed shut his eyes in a grimace, expecting to be stabbed or something. He lifted his rebar to swing it into a knee or shin, and a cold hand closed over his narrow wrist in an icy grip. 

"The Ghost, huh?" A man's voice with a grim smile said from behind his head. Ghost kicked at the guy's shins. No reaction, except that the arm around his neck tightened, pressing Ghost's skull against the man's chest. Ghost grunted and winced. He could still breathe, but the pressure in his head was bad.

He tried to smash at the guy's crotch with his left hand, and the guy chuckled and shoved his leg behind Ghost's back so he was stretched backward over the man's thigh. He panicked, eyes rolling back to see a smirk over a scruffy beard.

"Nice to meet you too." The guy said. "I'm Crippler."

Tag list: @joyjoygorl @cepheusgalaxy

Let me know if you want to be tagged!

Kindle book: Masterpost: Next:

[creature-wizard]

A lot of people need to have more compassion for people who end up in cults and toxic spiritual movements in general. Nobody misinforms themselves and joins something bad on purpose.

[theonewhohyperfixates]

Took a break from studying to doodle.

Mori does not give me ankle biter vibes, they give me dick biter vibes.

[yellowflowrs]

Concept design for my version of Lamb (The Carillonneur) in the reverse au

their personality is just me when i see a cat

[natalie000100]

Morning Can I be your little Sexy lady in Red today? I promise I dont bite❤️😍😘🥰

Telegram: @natalie000100

[littl3d0ll-art]

Narilamb but milk webkinz >:3

This is my peak

[malama-art]

thinking about milgram

[cultpastorkevin]

Cult Tips for AFTG writers

notes from the resident ex-cult pastor

If you’re in the cult, there is nothing bizarre abt what’s happening and in fact the normal stuff that happens outside of it is what’s bizarre to you. Target? Weird. McDonald’s? Even weirder. I can like guarantee Jean and Kevin never had McDonald’s until they left the Nest.

When you leave, you’re gonna be paranoid as fuck. All the time. Ngl at least for weeks but sometimes for years. Nightmares and insomnia 24/7. Hallucinations too lmao Riko is in every corner of empty rooms and you can hear his voice echo in the confines of the lockers.

I see a lot of Jean wanting to go back to the Nest, but not a lot of Kevin wanting to go back. He definitely struggled, 100%. In fact when he was in the pits of agony from his broken hand, was when he probably wanted to go back the most. Cult is home, cult is safe. Four walls you’ve always known and while it’s a cage at least it’s dependable. They hurt you but by god it always works out and the reward of pushing through this tragic incident is greater than the terror it caused in the first place. It’s a gift, actually. A gift from Riko. He saved Kevin. Cults save you. Cults make you wanna return to them like damn homing pigeons bruh. Give me more shattered hand Kevin screaming at Wymack to let him go back home and having a breakdown when he’s denied fics thanks

Piggybacking off the last one: cults are saviors; you’re nothing without them and they make sure you truly believe that; that everything that is done to you is for you and you’re blessed for it to be happening. You’re lucky even, to be allowed in it. Everything is as it’s supposed to be and order must never be challenged, because it works, and you’re the Edgar Allan Ravens, and this is the most honorable place you could be. All the pain you go through is you earning the right to be saved and to prove your worth every day on court. Only the worthy are honored.

You justify everything that happened and you will start fights and get angry with people who try to correct you and tell you it was wrong what went on.

On the other hand, you blame yourself for everything ever that happened there whether you were at fault or not. Hurting others, hurting yourself, gaslighting the fuck out of yourself over things maybe you could’ve prevented and over things you never could’ve stopped. The guilt is crippling and it eats you alive and haunts you.

There’s a lot of shame too. I see more guilt written than shame but shame is a huge portion of emotions that cult survivors have. Shits embarassing dude like “god how did I end up thinking this wack ass shit was normal” 😐 Shame comes later in the healing process usually, it’s after you have come to terms with shit that’s happened and you understand it. Looking back, you go “Jesus fucking Christ that was a red flag what the hell. Should’ve left then, or then, or then, or then” and then you’re just plain fuckin embarrassed.

Please look up how hive minds and brainwashing are created and work; also Stockholm Syndrome; understanding these would be incredibly helpful tbfh.

Diets are big; everyone eats the same thing; food is used as a reward and a punishment.

Hype hype hype. They whip up a frenzy of one singular emotion and use that to push you into a blind hysteria because you’re more suspectible to their influence when you’re out of your mind.

Drugs. Depends on the cult. But yeah these little bitches can be a huge factor for shit and can help with the brainwashing and hysteria and stockholm. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re being drugged or poisoned until you leave.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT. Dehumanization and then being treated like a person again can be traumatic as fuck yall!! Holy shit! Sometimes it feels worse than being dehumanized!

EDIT AGAIN: you don’t know what mental illness is !! Cults don’t fucking tell you these things lmao. if you show symptoms it’s your fault. Kevin being depressed his mom died was gonna get blamed on him and he was never going to be told grief is normal and it’s okay to be insanely sad. Jean also never got told his anger was correct or his trauma responses to being raped were realistic! They just got blamed for any reactions ever that weren’t neurotypical !! that is all; do with that what you will.

Idk if I think of anything else I’ll write another one but that’s all for now; I haven’t slept much lmao 🫡

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

suguru loves it when you bite him but cult leader geto will straight up let you use him as a chewtoy

[exmo-diaries]

i wanna clear something up to nevermos real quick: most mormons don’t look at the full picture of their religion. most mormons are not being openly racist or zionistic or homophobic. most mormons don’t practice what they preach. most mormons do their daily readings and prayers and think about their church the way they’re supposed to, but most mormons don’t fully comprehend it. most mormons are cult victims who genuinely want to to what’s best in the way they believe is right. while racism, zionism, homophobia etc. are unavoidable in the scriptures, this doesn’t mean they understand what is being taught. those who do understand it often don’t support those specific parts of the scripture and speak out against them. many outsiders seem to forget mormons are their own individual people.

hate the church, not the person

[aerithisms]

i've been rotating shadowheart saying "stop being so gentle" in her dark justiciar sex scene in my head ever since i saw it bc it is so. SO devastatingly sad. here is a woman raised in a cult to believe pain is good and suffering is good and all the agony she suffered as a child and still suffers now in the name of her goddess was right. and then somebody comes along who loves her and they treat her with tenderness and she can't fucking bear it and she begs them to stop because if she thinks about the fact that being loved and cared for doesn't have to involve pain then she'll have to question what the point of all her suffering was and she's committed too many sins to look back now.

[just-null]

i am OBSESSED with that one yandere hantengu clone art! but i do wonder, did you change their appearance a bit to make them look alike but at the same time not? this is hard to explain, but i observed the clones nose shape, sekidos hair being more different than the others, and facial structures making them each being different. very sorry if this doesn’t make sense it’s hard explaining what i noticed (T ^ T)

I think I understand what you mean, don't worry! you did wonderfully!

and basically, yes and no!

Some things were probably accidental (like facial structure), but the purposeful tweaks were their eyes and hair yeah!

I wanted the viewer to be able to tell the difference between them without being explicitly told who's who.

[design yapping under the cut]

I've heard that depending on what expression you're making often, it changes how you rest your face, and I wanted that to translate into how i drew them!

that and if you look REALLY closely, there are some subtle differences between them all in the anime/manga, so i accentuated those and added my own spin to it too.

So, if i were to draw the four making a neutral expression, it'd look something like this!

And that would HOPEFULLY be enough to give you an idea about who's who while also keeping their faces EXTREMELY similar yet a little different at the same time

but knowing me....... i'd probably still make it super obvious.......

I changed their nose because Hantengu had a sharp nose, and I thought it'd be hot cool to see them with one! I have no excuse for the eye bags and dimples.. they look like they have the type of hot guy aura to have those traits............... orz

i try not to forget small details but i probably do sometimes making them look different //slams head against wall

[theonewhohyperfixates]

Am I ever going to be consistent with how I draw my Lamb? Probably not! All I know is I want them to be as cute as they are creepy.

.

.

Eventually I will finish this sketch and start posting on my main account.......

[catatombi]

im just playing dress up w/ them at this point lol

[deservedgrace]

this might be a bit scattered and vague because bringing attention to dissociation makes me dissociate more and forget things and struggle to explain stuff lol, but... i feel like evangelicalism kinda teaches you dissociation as a baseline? especially if you're raised in it as a child?

like, arguably equating being human to being sinful, human nature and sin nature being interchangeable phrases for the same concept, convincing people that they need to be separate from sin if they are to be good and therefore need to be separate from being human, calling your wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, etc sinful and needing to repent for simply being human and having a human experience, that "existing in the flesh is not what god intended for us", that almost requires dissociation on some level

but there's also the dissociation from "the world" and "worldly things", from common phrases like "we're in the world not of it", believing that we are so separate and distinct from the world that we're called to "save it", to the belief that this life isn't our "real" life, our "real" life is the one we have with god in heaven

and all of that is just, par for the course, extremely normal beliefs to constantly be exposed to: your human self is not your "real" self, this world is not the "real" world. and that's without even getting into the way they use music, prayer, chanting, etc, to induce hypnotic states and other thought/emotion stopping tactics to disconnect you from your thoughts and emotions if you start feeling or thinking the """wrong""" things

and like, i didn't realize until after i left and long into my mental health journey that my default is dissociation. i thought it was normal to just exist like this because i didn't really have anything to compare it to, especially because i was taught that worldly people were the ones running on autopilot and disconnected to their thoughts, actions, emotions, etc

i just... wonder how common it is, and how many people don't even realize it

[fave-fix]

hey guys do we realize that the main difference betwen how kai and midori developed is that kai was given the chance to learn what normal life and love and family was like by working with chidouins while midori was kept under asunaros thumb all his life. do we realize that just a few changes could have kai acting just as cruel and merciless as midori. do we realize that midori is a victim of asunaro too, and though that doesn't excuse his actions it does make them more tragic. do we realize this or are we all being serious when we say midori is the only character who isn't worth redemption.