#cults and conspiracies

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows In The Cave - Threat Analysis - Dreaming Big

This is a final report on OPERATION ECHOING HYMN, successfully completed on XX/ XX/201X in the suburb of XXX, New Jersey. K-CELL, as the closest available PATRIOT Agents, operated without official support and went above and beyond the call of duty doing so. Despite some losses, K-CELL (and AGENT KEVEN in particular) acted heroically and decisively to destroy an unprecedently dangerous cult before their rituals began risking the whole neighborhood around them. 

The Agents were mobilized by E-CELL through the usual channels after confused reports surfaced of a homeless man hiding dozens or hundreds of snakes in his clothing, and of those snakes attacking passersby who approached him. K-CELL is mostly located within New York, but relocated for the Operation. The lack of criminal investigation to take over or friendly assets to liaise with made investigations difficult, but K-CELL persevered. Identifying the ‘homeless man’ as a parishioner of a local strip mall church,  K-CELL began surveilling its staff and attendees. Over the course of several weeks observation, K-CELL verified that one particular Thursday evening sermon was always followed by a handful of attendees falling into hours-to-days long fugue states.  

Agents KEVIN, KATIE and KADE approached and attempted to interview several of these parishioners. In all cases, this proved more difficult (and dangerous) than expected. The targets were all consumed by powerful delusions, and something that occurred during the service caused those delusions to begin bleeding through into reality. Biting snakes and scorpions, liquids suddenly become disgusting and contaminated with filth, and the profusion of pus-filled, weeping sores across the bodies of anyone near the target were all observed first- or second-hand. The changes to reality ceased whenever the target was no longer able to carry on with their delusions (Agent KEVIN made the lucky discovery with the third target approached that unconsciousness also achieved this) but any damage caused by it remained. 

K-CELL was not able to determine what made that particular sermon the focal point of FOREIGN influence, but took decisive action to deal with the threat permanently. The assault was successful, and destroyed a far more powerful and dangerous cult than anyone had realized. As K-CELL entered the church, it was discovered to be utterly transformed from how it appeared on publicly available videos and during previous surveillance. The congregation was engaged in ecstatic worship as one of their members (not an ordained pastor, apparently picked at random from the crowd) read from the book that was the center of the FOREIGN incursion. Tragically, Agent KADE was lost in the course of the Operation - but Agent KEVIN was able to eliminate the preacher before he could finish reading a passage from the tome and complete whatever wound to reality was being cut. 

The tome, along with all other religious texts and strange material found around the church, was destroyed with prejudice. The neighborhood and character of most parishioners made passing the Operation off as the result of violence among addicts easy enough Unfortunately, retrieving the preacher’s remains proved impossible. Still, it is safe to say that the Threat has been dealt with, especially after two weeks were taken to identify every known attendee of the dangerous sermons in question. K-CELL can confidently report that every member of the cult has now been dealt with, and the Threat is eradicated. 

* * *

Alright, so. This is one of Mr. K’s jobs, though no clue if it’s from him or just through him. Someone shat the bed, and someone else wants things tidied up before it starts attracting flies. Maybe they have business close by they don’t want disrupted, maybe they figure they’re running out of luck and want to get some red out of the ledger before it’s time to read it, maybe it’s none of any of our fucking buisness. Options! Gossip when the work is done. 

There are some sick people wandering around out there, and they’re starting to spread it. I’ve spoken with Grandmother, and it’s already fucked and getting worse and worse. People, animals, buildings, hours of the day. No, no idea where from. Don’t think Mr. K knows either, but again, not your business. Some idiot somewhere pissed all over the floor and you lucky assholes are the ones mopping it up. There’s something like a dozen broken souls out there, loose ends full of rot that’s trying to latch on to something for support before it falls apart. 

Bad day for them, since falling apart is the only safe thing any of ‘em can do. Half of them are so badly off that it’s all they’re managing anyway, those you’re giving a bit of mercy. The rest would get stable if we let them - so be smart and double-tap them to be sure. Grandmother’s asked for any undamaged hands, eyes or tongues, but absolutely absolutely do not fucking get cute trying to keep those whole for the bonuses. 

This is a chance for all of you to prove your balls actually dropped at some point and get your name in front of Mr. K’s eyes - or at least to get me to actually remember who you are as something other than someone’s fuckup cousin. So don’t fuck up, yeah? Great. 

* * *

Good morning Brooke, 

Hope you’ve had a lovely holiday season!

I’m reaching out because I have a very exciting update from our talent scouting program. As you know, promising opportunities for the Andersoon Trust to support have been a bit thin on the ground after the shakeups early last year - so I’m incredibly happy to say that we’ve identified multiple prospects already this year! As you can imagine, we’re all overjoyed with how fast the changes that you recommended are bearing fruit. 

There are three live prospects at the moment - one here in California, one in Colorado, one international - but two of them are still in very early stages and might turn out to be false alarms (we’ve certainly had enough of those to get used to it). It’s the prospect in Denver that made me so excited to reach out - we’ve been working closely with them for more than two months now, and even if cultural fit and governance issues are concerns, I can say with absolute confidence that they are a real opportunity to achieve something amazing - to change the world. 

They were admittedly a bit of a leap of faith - but Josh is our best talent scout because he has such an intuition for these things. I’ve already made sure the paperwork is filled out in accordance with all legal requirements, so as long as it’s Gregory handling any audits or financial reviews there shouldn’t be any problems with having started to provide support before the proposals came in (or questions about the exact legal status of the entity we’re providing the grant to). 

Mr. Torres, the prospect in question, was in quite a state when Josh found him, totally incapable of interfacing with the rest of society. The level of trauma he’s survived is honestly horrifying - but just makes what he’s already achieved with our support so much more inspirational. Josh and Selena were able to get him to the point where he could move under his own power and get back into the same frame of reference as the rest of the city (and, once he was there, set him up with food, clothing, and a place to live). His memories and communication skills are both still very unstable, but from my understanding (second-hand only, of course) he was part of a new religious movement somewhere on the east coast that was destroyed by a real brutal targeted attack that occurred while he was presiding over a weekly meeting. Even he’s unclear on how he got from there to the Rockies. 

At the moment he’s focusing on his own recovery, and forcing himself to relieve those very difficult memories for more details or anything that could be used to check the status of his former comrades would be too dangerous for him. 

From what Selena has been able to say around patient-client confidentiality, that recovery hasn’t been easy, but Josh was entirely correct - Mr. Torres is already a lucid (and waking) dreamer on a level that conventional science considers impossible, and we have not come close to probing the limits of his abilities. 

* * *

The Agents of K-CELL are all seasoned veterans, with AGENT KHALID having taken part in six distinct operations across his career with XXXX. So it should be taken incredibly seriously that no Agent involved had ever seen a THREAT as obviously supernatural or dangerous to the sanctity of reality as a whole than what was encountered disrupting the ritual at the heart of ECHOING HYMNAL. 

The FOREIGN energies were blatant and impossible to dismiss, and caused permanent, obvious physical changes to the world without needing to work through some insane or possessed victim. The book the preacher read from was clearly the linchpin of the THREAT, with every word he spoke in an unknown and probably FOREIGN language causing noticeable physical damage to the preacher, and obvious changes to the world around them. When K-CELL intervened, the baptismal font had been filled with what seemed to be blood, and parishioners were pulling forearm-sized leeches from it to offer their own flesh to. As the cell attacked (thankfully equipped with light military small arms sourced via non-traditional methods), several of those leeches instead burrowed into the stomach cavity or rib cage of the parishioner holding them. The blood was then spilled across the floor and wasp-like insects flew out of it en mass. Individual agent reports become unclear and contradictory from that point, but it is clear things continued to escalate. It was only when Agent KEVIN used an unorthodox technique acquired from a FRIENDLY asset in a previous OPERATION and submerged the preacher into the baptismal blood (from which he struggled as if drowning before sinking and vanishing entirely) that the building stopped shifting and the air quality returned to normal. At which point dealing with the remaining parishioners who had not fled through the suddenly-unblocked door became simple. 

No member of K-CELL is clear on just what sort of FOREIGN THREAT was behind this, but it’s an obvious shift and escalation from the isolated, feral cultists and addicts touched by some FOREIGN corruption that have been the real physical menace behind every human-based THREAT the Cell has encountered before. That K-CELL went above and beyond in destroying the THREAT does not mean that this shouldn’t be taken seriously going forward. 

* * *

Mr. K wasn’t exactly talkative, but Grandmother says it’s a dream plague. Something’s got into them that’s too big for whatever’s left of their brains to hold, and now it's leaking out. Gets worse when they get worked up or scared, so the fact that half of them are just rushing to drink, smoke or shoot themselves into comas to deal with it is a blessing. Don’t fucking waste it.

What leaks out? Blood, sweat and piss, same as anyone else. 

No, fine, fuck you yes it was funny. But watch the poor fucks less than shadows, puddles and dark corners around them. Especially puddles. Stuff’ll start crawling, slithering and flying out of them. Most of it’s only real enough to scare the shit out of you, but she says some might dig in enough to bite. None of you are dumb enough to need a warning not to let the fucking things bite you? Great. 

If they’re wearing heavy clothing, something like snakes might be hiding in them, so don’t get close unless you’re very sure there’s nothing moving. Grab a facemask and put it on if there’s any kind of haze or smoke in the air. And - and I swear to fucking god I hope none of you idiots need to be told this either - do not keep or use anything that was actually on one of their bodies. Mr. K wants belongings for his friends if you can bag ‘em and bring ‘em without touching skin or staying around the corpse too long. He’d also pay a nice little bonus for any of those snakes or other creepy shit that manifests, if they stick around once the guy creating them is dead - but again, don’t get too greedy to live. If you can’t handle and store ‘em safely, there’s a funeral home run by a friend of ours whose cremator will be taking the bodies, it can take everything else on them too. 

This is shit work for shitheads, but that doesn’t mean you can fuck around on it. Some idiot already did, and Grandmother says whatever all these poor assholes were part of was shattered and all of them with it. Now instead of one giant weed burrowing through all their dreams it’s a hundred roots starting to rot in the soil. You can call putting them down your good deed for the year. 

* * *

Despite his traumatic experiences, and the significant help with physical, emotional and mental reconstruction he has required since, Mr. Torres still has a connection to something beautiful. A whole new paradigm, a vision of reality that’s so much more vital and vivid than the modern hegemonic ideal. It’s a perspective on history, on religion, and the basic facts of biology that seem entirely incompatible with our own - the goal of his religious practice on the East Coast was communal visualization and actualization, imagining ways that our world and this idea of alien potential could overlap and coexist with each other, and then doing what they could to make them real. 

I know you’re a busy woman and this is all very granular and in-the-weeds from your perspective. But I think this is a project with real potential - a vision of a world without veils, where people by the billions live in vital connection with both the life around them and the vastness of the universe around them. And, more importantly, a proven way to make it real. With the right nurturing, guidance and support, this could really work!

Unfortunately, the material Mr. Torres’ religious practices were based around were destroyed before he came to our attention. Combined with the trauma he’s still recovering from our window into his world is blurry and vague. It’s only now - and only with the Trust’s continuing funding and support - that he will be able to begin forming a new community in Boulder and exploring the possibilities offered by the new environment and local culture. 

I’d be happy to provide more information you might be interested in, and any concerns you have will be taken very seriously. But otherwise, we’ve set him up on his own feet, and Josh has set himself up as our point of contact and is already managing the grant application and funding process on his behalf. With any luck, Mr. Torres will be able to begin his transformative work in earnest by the end of Q3. 

We’re looking at the start of something great here, I know it.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Alexandra Collwood

Grant Manager, Anderson Heritage Trust 

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"it's not that deep" not yet but I've got a shovel and fan theories and digging makes great exercise!

[the-phantom-peeves]

Contrapoints in her newest video “CONSPIRACY” an argument against the dualism found in many conspiracy theories

[dottysdokis]

i'm not seeing any posts about it here yet, but they solved the silas birchtree riddle on reddit and there's some pretty juicy lore! first, entering "paranoid" backwards nets this conspiracy board:

then, from the black letters in the corners of some of the pages people pieced together the code "connect the dots", backwards again, gets a whopping 12 page chapter about the ciphertology cult! it's...something.

so in summary, bill puppeted a guy's corpse, became a cult leader, seemingly married over a hundred people, mass-possessed his followers, tried to get them to build his portal. his lone dissenter was a spinster who made anti-bill chick tracts and started a fire. a waco-style shootout ensued, killing silas' already-rotting corpse a second time in a disturbingly detailed manner. at some point he made some of his followers drink the kool-aid too.

entering the lady's name, emmaline butternubbins, into the computer finally gets you the reward for solving all the riddles: hd wallpapers of various graphics from the book of bill. but frankly this is more interesting and fucked up to me.

(alt text under cut, wip)

[Image 1: A cluttered conspiracy board centered on Bill Cipher. Red string and pins connect various newspaper clippings, photos, drawings and pamphlets.]

[Image 2: A history-book style chapter page. Header "LESSER KNOWN AMERICAN CULTS."

"Have you ever heard of Orchard Lake, Kansas? Chances are you haven't. It was erased from every map, book, and historical record, and the US Government's official position on it is "stop calling us or we'll send a drone to your house." (I learned this the hard way.) But if you drive to the exact latitude and longitude of you'll see bullet casings, faded billboards, and bow ties strewn across the desert sands.

That's because Orchard Lake had another name before it was wiped off the record: BillVille.

CHAPTER 3: BillVille

The First Cult In History That Was Right

FIG A: A tumbillweced

As a historian of esoteric religions, I thought I'd discovered the strangest sects America had yct to offer (see "Chapter 3: Kevin's Gate") but that all changed when I found the following items tucked away in an old trunk in an estate sale on the out- skirts of Bootstrap, Missouri."]

[thedaddycomplex]

“Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.”

—Nina Jankowicz, author of How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict

[creature-wizard]

"How do people fall for irrational cult beliefs or conspiracy theories if they aren't mentally ill?"

Easy, most of them had an emotional or material vulnerability that the cult/conspiracy theory was able to exploit. They were so desperate that they were willing to let down their guard and believe whatever anyone who seemed to have the answers told them.

You - yes, you - have such a vulnerability yourself. Somewhere out there is a cult or conspiracy theory that could take advantage of you.

[g0atbra1nz]

meeting a timkon/timsteph shipper: :)

they hate bernard: >:(

[deadsetobsessions]

Court of Owls! Danny Phantom

A couple of possible scenarios:

- Danny helped found Gotham, but had to leave due to his ghostly duties or whatever. He comes back and boom, membership to an exclusive murder cult moon lighting as Gotham’s fucked up zombie version of the Illuminati. Bonus points if Danny was also somehow involved with the literal Illuminati. He’s so confused but there’s like a bunch undead ducklings following him.

- Danny somehow got adopted by a member and accidentally initiated a hostile takeover. He has no idea what’s going on but the Owls give him the creeps. Bonus points if Dani figures it out and infiltrates the Talons or something.

- the above but Danny 100% knows what’s happening and the hostile takeover was intentional.

- bonus points for both of the above if Danny just says “hoot hoot” to piss people off lol

- Danny goes evil. Enough said.

- Danny isn’t evil, but he’s bored and he might as well join a secret society for the shits and giggles. Bonus points if he makes friends with Bernard and Tim and just conspiracy the shit out of the Court of Owls. He provides Benard and Tim with some really specific and accurate details and Tim’s like “what to do if my best friend is a part of an evil secret society?” And the answer is either join him or help him take it down from the inside.

[bitchapalooza]

Do you think modern au Buggy would be a fake conspiracy theorist just for the online views and attention and then eventually accidentally make a literal cult? Because God I do and it's hilarious...

[epicallyepicepilogue]

⬆️🔊.

[ashley-kins]

Now that I won't be bashed in for saying this, I want to question why the Ashley Graves is asexual theory ever came to be.

It's surprising just how popular this theory was that it ended up being asked on the Q&A

Like, in the game she's seen to be the one to bring it up every single time. It's never been Andrew.

(and yes, this includes the devlog doodle too)

Like, it always made more sense to me that she was demi. She literally doesn't care about other people except Andrew. (Maybe other people too if they never got in her way of being with Andrew, as in, perhaps she'd give a shit if they didn't bully her or try to steal him away from her, but 🤷🏻‍♀️ we don't know)

Anyway, seriously, I'm really happy about the demisexual representation because this means Ashley Graves is the FIRST canonical demisexual character EVER represented in a video game.

Congratulations to her and oh my god, I will never stop talking about this.

[megsiepoo]

Serenity

This idea has been living in my head for days. Finally finished it though! Kind of a Conspiracies reference? Meant to be the clearing from chapter 3 but this isn't a specific scene.

[creature-wizard]

A warning for trauma survivors looking for online support

You may have come across the acronym "RAMCOA", which stands for "ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse."

If you search the Internet for RAMCOA, you might come across a result like this:

If you click the link, you'll be taken to a site that briefly describes what RAMCOA supposedly is, with content like:

MC - Mind Control. A shortened form of TBMC, standing for Torture Based Mind Control. MC is also known as programming, where victims are repeatedly tortured starting at a very young age to intentionally cause a system of dissociated parts that function perfectly to suit the abusers' needs.

alpha : a base program, one of the very first implemented. it trains the victim's mind to accept every order given by handlers willingly. parts with alpha programming will often have no will of their own, and very little personality outside of following orders.

aiw : alice in wonderland. typically split into 3 different sections : black alice, white alice, and crazy alice. ideally, a system scripted with aiw would have all three. white alice makes sure the system forgets the trauma, black alice makes the system feel like theyll be a danger to others if they remember the trauma, and crazy alice makes the system think theyre making it up or going insane if they ever remember it.

Literally all of this comes from a conspiracy theory - specifically, the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy. It was developed and pushed by far right conspiracy theorists. Most of what people run into specifically traces back to Fritz Springmeier, a man who claimed in the 90's that the fight for gay rights was part of a plot to enthrone the antichrist in the year 2000. The Project Monarch conspiracy theory was always adjacent to the Satanic Panic, if not a somewhat niche part of it. If you start checking citations, you will find many of these people citing Svali, a conspiracy theorist who gets a lot of her material from Springmeier. (Example 1, example 2.)

This is no accident. The term RAMCOA was created by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), which was created by and for psychologists who believed in the myths promoted during the Satanic Panic.

The RA part comes from "satanic ritual abuse," which was coined by Dr. Lawrence Pazder of Michelle Remembers (cw for descriptions of horrible abuses) fame. Lawrence Pazder is the man who effectively started the Satanic Panic. It cannot be overstated that Pazder, now a known malpractitioner, was considered the expert on ritual abuse during this time.

The MC part comes from "trauma-based mind control," which was coined to refer to the alleged abuses inflicted in Project Monarch. Parts of this conspiracy theory that can't be traced back to Fritz Springmeier can usually be traced back to Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips, two other (really racist) conspiracy theorists.

Ultimately, the entire conspiracy theory is constructed from tropes that go back to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (a known antisemitic hoax), blood libel, and early modern witch panic.

Searching the Internet for RAMCOA resources, ritual abuse, or trauma-based mind control will always bring you to conspiracy theorists.

(Also, the term OEA, which stands for "organized extreme abuse," will lead you to conspiracy theorists as well.)

So yeah, if you're looking for support, be very wary of this stuff. It will absolutely not help you heal; just the opposite.

[doitforthelentilsoup]

hm. requests..........

conspiracy guy (or cult leader) spreading medical misinformation, maybe?

why would he say that

[404daydreams]

"What a world we're in. The more the man hurts, the more they get paid."

-Me.

[mollysunder]

For a split second I thought Jinx's new shark hoodie was supposed to look like a void creature.

I thought Jinx helped Viktor unlock horrors beyond human comprehension through the hexcore, and then she made a cute hoodie about it.

At the time it felt pretty in character for her to do that.