video;

[craftlife]

[Deon's gaze is pointed slightly off-camera, and he looks pensive.]

Does anyone have any experience with cults?

Because I'm starting to come to some uncomfortable realizations.

[Not sleeping in the Arcade - or having access to it at all - is really clearing up that Fourthie brainrot.]

Comments

[redlightgreenlight]

[Valdis arches a brow when the question comes over video. Deon was an oddball she had yet to spend much time with, but he was...a more noticeable monster than some of the others here]

Were you a cultist or the object of worship?

[It's an important distinction, though she assumes she knows the answer]

[craftlife]

[He flicks one caracal ear, then the other, and his robot antennae go back, just a bit.]

The former.

[redlightgreenlight]

Ah.

[Her assumption was correct]

What do you need to know?

[craftlife]

How do you come back from it?

I'm now out of the influence and it's frightening how much of the Flavor-Aid I was drinking. I wasn't the worst - that side wasn't even the worst [he's getting de-Fourthpilled but he hates the Fog et al independently] - but I'm...I have to say I'm embarrassed.

[redlightgreenlight]

You seem pretty together to me.

I’d say the first step is recognizing that you aren’t the same person anymore. Either before or after.

[craftlife]

[Deon laughs, and it's bitter.] I'm glad I seem that way. I'm not.

No, I'm not the same person. Physically or mentally.

I wasn't always... [He gestures to himself.]

[redlightgreenlight]

[Did he mean physically different? Not many people had cat ears, a tail, wings and robot...ears. Well, none on her world unless they were in a costume.]

I can't say I remember everything.

[And perhaps it isn't nearly the same in essence.]

But it's like waking from a dream, or nightmare, and realizing you are different, and what you did why you were asleep wasn't really you, but you still have to move forward with the memories.

[craftlife]

That's the problem. I think it was really me. It was just so easy for me to be manipulated the way that I was.

I'm the person that place made me. I can't change that now.

[redlightgreenlight]

What makes you think it was really you?

[craftlife]

Who else would it have been? I have to take responsibility for myself and what I did. Even if it was for my own survival, and for mitigating damage, and...

[redlightgreenlight]

People do what is necessary to survive, allowing oneself to die without fighting for life goes against the nature of things.

[Clearly Deon is adamant about feeling guilty, which made little sense to her.]

If you mitigated something worse by acting as you did, then I'm afraid I don't understand why you are so distraught.

What exactly did you do?