(Cult of Thing 1/2) Context: Villain gets powers from a Thing that feeds off fear and pain; tells Child whom she has kidnapped as a baby from someone she hates, that Thing is the god that created the world and that they need to appease it to avoid its wrath. She tells Child "your birth mother abandoned you, I'm all you have" (which is a lie, Birth Mom doesn't know she's alive). Child believes her for years, devotes self to Cult of Thing out of fear/desperation for approval from Villain (...)
(Cult of Thing 2/2) (…) before seeing things that make her question it (she ends up leaving as a teen, switching sides to the “heroic” one). Villain firmly intends to flaunt the way she’s twisted Child to work for Villain’s Organization, to the person she hates (aka Child’s Birth Mom), which means she wants to keep Child alive, but Villain tends to be cruel and selfish. As stated, she’s raising Child in effectively a creepy cult so there’s “religious” conditioning. Thoughts on this situation?
Well it doesn’t seemunreasonable.
There’ve been cases ofpeople from one side of a conflict stealing young children and babies frompeople on the other side and raising them. The easiest cases to look up areprobably the ones in Argentina- searching for the Grandmothers of the Plaza deMayo will give you an overview and some interviews with people who went throughthis as children then found their birth relatives later.
Generally speaking howwell people cope with this sort of situation depends on their relationship withtheir adoptive parents and whether they know they were taken. Even a very goodrelationship with the adoptive parents takes a knock if/when the child findsout they were stolen.
The way you have yourvillain tackle that works: I’ve read cases where the adoptive parents have donethat in real life. When combined with genuinely good parenting it tends to meanthe children are firmly supportive of their adoptive parent’s ‘side’. Theymight see themselves as having been ‘rescued’.
When combined with thesort of poor parenting you’re describing though- well it seems perfectlyreasonable to have the ‘child’ character later switch sides.
A lot of how this sortof situation comes across is down to how it’s written though. It’s allplausible but I can see a lot of places where this could fall down, not interms of realism but in terms of writing.
Establishing thecharacter’s relationship with her adoptive mother is important but the readersare also going to need to see how the ‘child’ character changes with time, howshe comes to see her ‘mother’ differently and how this leads to her abandoningeverything she’s known. That’s an awful lot of character and relationshipprogression to fit in and I’ve seen a lot of stories muck up the pacing of thatsort of long term plot.
I don’t personallybelieve in absolute ‘rules’ for writing. I don’t think there is one guaranteedway write anything successfully. As a result my advice tends to be prettyflexible and general: I know that what works for me won’t necessarily work foryou.
I do really think thatthe pacing would be important when you write this though. How much you show oftheir relationship at different points and when you show it is going to reallyshape not just the overall story but how the readers see the characters.
Your audience is goingto have a very different view of the Villain if they’re introduced from the‘child’ characters pov when the child is still young. Seeing the Child gothrough that realisation that her ‘mum’ is bad, seeing the messy mix of loveand hate the character would have gone through- that’s going to leave a very differentimpression compared to seeing the Villain primarily from the hero’s pov.
I think how much spaceand time you devote to showing this relationship and how it develops is alsohugely important. Too much and it could easily swamp other aspects of the storyand other sub-plots. Too little and there’s a real risk readers won’t be ableto understand or sympathise with the Child character.
For me writing is aboutstriking a balance and the potential issues I see with this scenario are lessto do with realism, respect for victims etc and more to do with how youactually execute the story.
There’re a lot ofdifferent elements to balance here.
In terms of thecharacter progression the Child goes through- I think it’s probably best toignore the fact the Child was stolen to some extent. I don’t mean that doesn’tmatter. It’s more that it strikes me as something that will have a largereffect later when the Child haschanged sides and is in a position to learn the truth. When she’s still in theprocess of working out how she feels about her adoptive mum I think their relationship would be the moreimportant factor.
You haven’t beenentirely clear on- well just how bad the Villain is as a parent. I’d suggestavoiding outright physical abuse. Instead I think leaning into the toxicemotional aspects of the kind of parent-child relationship you’re buildingcould be more effective. Make it messy and complex. Perhaps have the Child tryto reconcile or ‘fix’ their relationship a few times before ultimately changingsides.
That could workespecially well if she tries to ‘fix’ it by impressing her adoptive parent withjust how much she can do for the Villain’s side. That could feed into yourstory very well whether she can follow through with the violence and cruelty ornot.
Anecdotally theresponses people have to awful parents vary considerably. One of theinteresting cases Fanon talks about in TheWretched of the Earth is a white French girl whose father was a torturer inthe Franco-Algerian war. She describes this total disconnect and disgust withher father, feeling almost relieved that he died. He sounded like a distantparent but not an overtly unkind one.
The girl in thisaccount didn’t do anything as overt as leaving her family or actively opposingher father, and the impression I got was that she felt too powerless to make adifference. That seems like it could be relevant to your characters andsituation. The Child might want to leave for a long time before she feelscapable of following through and acting.
I’ve read otheraccounts where people have struggled to reconcile the image of parents theyloved with the people who committed horrific crimes. That might be a morelikely response with good parenting.
A Darkling Plain has an interview witha man whose father was part of the SS, but having quickly looked through Idon’t think it could add much to your story- the father died before the man wasold enough to remember him.
The last thing I canthink of to keep in mind is that being raised in this Cult there’ll be a lot ofthings the Child character won’t question and will see as ‘normal’ until shehas a chance to see how things work outside. If she grows up seeing a lot ofviolence she’ll probably assume that’s what life is like everywhere- she mayeven feel her adoptive mother is a very goodparent for not inflicting that violence on her.
That doesn’t mean thatshe won’t be hurt, or affected by what happens to her and around her. It couldmean that she hangs on longer than she would otherwise, trying to be ‘better’for her mother though.
And I think that’s allI’ve got. I hope that helps. :)
