Hi ! ! So I’m working on a Eyeless Jack rewrite, and up starting with his origin, based on the one written by La-Mishi-Mish.
I went into research about cults, seeing as in that story, the cult was treated like every other trope, and not built upon at all.
In my rewrite, I want Jack to be indoctrinated through the guise of a community of people his age who share his interests. Y’know, before the sacrifice thing.
General Cult Structure Notes
I have a recording of me talking about it and giving more information, it’s about an hour long. If you think i should post it on here or somewhere else, let me know and I’ll see if I can.
Remote retreat - (Far from the world. Cabin in the woods, isolated compounds, communes in forest. Distance equals power. Tying to remove you from society, to control your access to information, sense of time, your ability to leave. Physical isolation makes emotional isolation easier to enforce. No cell survice, only roads out go on for miles.)
Urban (Modest apartment building, basement beneath a priate buildings in an upscale neighborhood.)
Digital (Wellness forum, mental health subreddits, discord servers, charismatic live steamer. No compound because they live in your devices. They prey on isolation, enforcing control through the algorithm. Descent slower, subtler, harder to leave because of communities.)
Cults often disguise the true motives, advertising as self-help program, wellness retreats, spiritual communities, activist groups or support circles
Groups centered on healing, purpose connection, and transformation
Target people struggling (i.e. grief, looniness, addiction, heartbreak, low self-esteem)
Take you in when it feels like no one else will, and they do it happily
Not many connection to others
Tell you what you want to hear (trauma healing)
Throughout the relationship small demands creep in (i.e. donation, weekly retreat, new diet, required reading) to isoate character from their old self
Before coercion comes into play, cults use seduction, the promise of whatever you’re looking for
Psycolgical Warfare disguised as spiritual progress. Guilt and shame are weapons
Doubt is weakness and questioning their doctrine is disobedience
Punishments (i.e. public shaming, solitary confinement (from the cult) loss of status)
Thereats to such: Purpose, family, identity, salvation
Indoctrination methods most used is love-bombing, isolation, and control
Love-bombing with attention and connection
Slowly breaking your ties to the outside world
Goal: Depend on the cult for emotional regularity, community, and sense of self
1. What does the cult fufill for your character? (Safety, idenity, redemption)
2. How do they use affirmation and language to gain control?
3. When does your character begin using the groups phrases when thinking?
4. When is the outside world no longer real to them?
5. What are they willing to do to protect this new world they found?
Language is one of their most important tools
Creation of internal language / loaded language
Words are given other meanings, phrases replace critical thinking
Goal: Limit thoughts you can have (i.e. truth becomes what the leader says, doubt is attack, words like cleansing, light, purification, and ascension sound positive, but are used as threats for punishment, death, or absolute obedience. Using ‘love’ and 'community’
Cults want you to believe in their theology
Reshape the mind through love, isolation, and language
Top / leader. Usually Charismatic, who manipulates through language to become the axis the word orbits around
Below are the elders, officers, high-ranking initiates who enforce members will and ensure ideological purity throughout the ranks
These ‘middle managers’ may have once ben victims, but often become enforcers, abusers, or gatereepers
Lower down are the general members, often divided by status
Cults use unstated ranks to manipulate the members into further obedience
Members ‘earn’ status for proving themselves loyal (i. e. Sacrificing things, turning in others who ‘broke rules’, or those trying to leave
Goal: Use internal competition for control. The members mind is focused on climbing up the rank ladder, or net falling down that theres not room to question what else is going on
Doctrine - Belief System (Often twist something into something deadly)
Structure: Here’s why you’re suffering, here’s how stop it, and here’s what to do next
Cult theology often has a cosmic enemy like an outsider group or force that treatens their safety. The leaders create doubt for the outside further by creating distrust for anyone outside the cult
Fear allows the cult justification for busically anything (Secrecy, Violence)
(Followers, chosen. Outsiders, dangerous)
Rituals at core are behavioral conditioning. It provides rhythm, structure and sense of belonging. Repetition reshapes the brain
Rituals could be in any form. (i.e. prayer, fasting, confession, dancing, chanting, sleep deprivation, sometimes sexual cleansing
Binds members together in shared action, create emotional intensity tied to belief, and they weaken the body and wind
Making the person more easily swayed and complicit.
Rituals can be beatiful, strange, or deeply disturbing, but it should always mean something.
Ritual Creaton Question: What does this action reinforce? What lie does it make feel true?
Begins small (i.e. silent meals, group prayer, shared sleeping arrangements)
Deconstruction of individuality
Doctine works emotionally, not logically
Short excerpts, verses, and chants used in daily life (vague poetic)
Salvations 3 S’ (Suffering, Surrender, Service)
Setting: Mix of remote abandoned locations and urban collage
Loss of time / warp of time
Hard to leave (physically )
Reason: The group has several benefits from isolation as well as connection to places. This group has an interest in abandonded places, and could build more engagement from Jack through intrest. (Other benefits include privacy, secrecy, connection, lack of outsiders, etc.)
Reason: The group all attends the collage and can access these spaces more easily and quickly. They are less private and they have to stick to general group connection, rather then move spiritual conversation, and less open manipulating.
Phycology and Recruitment
Weakness Exploited: Lack of self, loneliness, lack of connection
Offer: Purpose, self-discovery, community, emotional regulation
Jack came from a smal town and a bad famity life to a big state collage. He grew up extremely dissociated and socially unaware of aything but the basics. He's been living his life on autopilot and doesn't really have his own sense of self. He wants to try and discover himself, but given that collage is his only time to try and do so, and he’s very concentrated on his work, which he does quickly and efficiently, again running on autopilot. He wants to know what hobbies has good at, what his spirtual belief is, just himself. They originally offer people to connect with, and a place to help discover himself.
They targeted him because manipulating and transforming someone sense of self when they don't know the old one is easy.
Jack used to depend on a dissosative state to survive, and then he grew to depend on the cult.
The worst punishment for him would be isolation from the cult. He asks to sleep in other members dorms, or ask them to sleep in his.
Love-Bombing: He's overwhelmed by it, so they introduce members slowly, and he gets mere comfortable with them
Breaking Connection: He wouldn’t notice unless someone brought it up with him
Sense of self, discovery of Self, communty, identity
They use subtle manipulative language the Jacks brain likes and attaches too, They realize that he associates good memories with people. Good memores with people equal good people, so sliding manipulative language into good memories helps
He repeats things he relates to, so them using their langage in a way that resonates with him would be easy, and he’d start kind of doing it on his own. As well as he's still learning to talk to others and socialize, so would kinda just adopt their inflections and phrases
Whenever he’s not talking or thinking about the cult. His brain goes back on autopilot. He's sad, he's depressed, he's dissociating. He feels empty, and now he knows that there’s happiness and comfort and ‘self’, hes mortified when his not there. He’d try to interact more with members, smaller rituals, reading lists, anything. It's not so much the outside doesn’t exist, it's that it does, and thats scary. He's very uncomfortable and empty-feeling without this coping mechanism
More indirect things. He's not gonna do something if it will directly hurt someone on either side, especially if it includes bodily harm
I don’t think Jack would care much for the ranks, 1. because having more say or infuence in the group doesn't really interest him, and 2., because it's a smaller group so ranks would be treated differently.
The parts he’s focused on are not falling behid in terms of self discovery progress, which at times, ranks are disguised as progress.
Why you're suffering. How to stop it. What to do next.
Why: Lack of self are community
How: Build relationship with this community that accepts him
What: Continue having this as his safe space
Salvation = Suffering + Surrender + Service
Suffering - Suffer with issues they can provide answers to, as well as suffer when not actively talking to the group. (Reliance)
Surrender - Letting them provide to you as well as yo provide to them, following without question. (Obedience)
Service - Providing whatever they need. (Equal Trade)
Thanks so much for reading! This only took me about two days to complete, but it’s been really fun.
This was the video I took notes from
Credit to Vultures Livestock and The Vultures Muse
