I don’t usually soap-box, but I’m going to for a hot sec since this has been on my mind:
Cults are getting better branding, prettier leaders, hipper-sounding cosmologies, and wider reaches due to social media. They’re not all deity-focused. Thoughtful, intelligent people can get sucked into them. Just…stay safe out there, guys. Do your research, look at all your options, and trust your gut, not your guru.
I’m glad this is resonating with people.
I do want to emphasize, again, that cults (and toxic groups with cult-like attributes, I’m using this term pretty loosely) don’t usually look like what you’d expect. A lot of toxic and dangerous religious movements are tiny and you won’t find much about them via Google. Cultish non-religious movements are the same way.
Start-ups, multi-level marketing companies, activist groups, fan groups, political groups, and internet gurus who run retreats can all be cult-like and dangerous. Tune your BS detector, ask family, friends, and experts for advice.
Here are some warning signs:
Pressure – pressure to make quick decisions, to give (or pledge) considerable amounts of money, to move in with a group, to abandon family or cut off friends. Elevated Leaders – anyone claiming special insight, special powers, or that they aren’t human. Demanding special treatment (compared to other followers). Misuse of funds or money collecting at the top. physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse. Lack of accountability or oversight. Isolation – encouraging (or requiring) members to cut off family relationships, friendships with those outside of the group, leaving jobs, moving to isolated areas, taking away communication methods. Strong “us-vs-them” mentality. Vilification of ex-members. Love-bombing. Altered states of consciousness – long work hours, sleep deprivation, lack of access to adequate food or water. Otherwise unproblematic activities like meditation/prayer/chanting, but done for hours. Discouraging doubt – discouraging or punishing doubt and critical thinking.
If Feather Leather really is about Vax (yes) and if Scanlan really did write it (also yes) and the Wildemount campaign only takes place 20 years after the first, that means that after factoring in all the time it takes to plot and write a novel, all the time it takes to edit, all the time it takes to actually publish, and all the time it would take the book to make its way to Wildemount, after all that, it’s probably been quite a while, meaning at some point within only like, five years of Vax dying Scanlan sat down and cracked open a fresh page and was like “My dear friend is dead and you know what? I’d bet he’d want me to remember him by writing a couple hundred pages of pure and unadulterated smut featuring him as the main character” and that’s the most goddamned Scanlan thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and I absolutely guarantee that Vax approves 10,000%, and that over in the Shadowfell he somehow got a copy and is rolling around on the fucking ground and cackling so hard he’s fucking crying as the souls of the dead watch on in confusion and horror
Even better, the comments to this Twitter post were an absolute FIRESTORM of mostly dudes explaining to her that dials can’t only have 2 positions (not true) and that it wasn’t a very good piece (not true) that she was being disrespectful to her teacher (don’t care) and that it was a sign of her stupidity/rabid feminism/intellectual laziness/misandry/etc. that she couldn’t see any “middle ground.”
It became, in its way, a performance piece. I was absolutely mesmerised, even as I wished I could cock-punch people through the internet.
“Dials have more than one settimg” is the most hilarious response to this piece, because the implication of that statement is “just be a scootch more implicit in your own dehumanization. Not ALL the way. But like… a little more.”
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