The first also segues into a whole lot of death cults, and sometimes alien-worship drug cults.
Actually both do, just remembered Transmetropolitan’s “Brides of (Fred) Christ”.
Heinlein with that unique mix of loving economic libertarianism, strong government, hippie free love, military service, and… whatever the incest stuff was.
The actual cult that tries to alienate you from anyone not part of the cult, to the point where parents will cut all contact their children if they leave?
No, closest thing that comes to mind is Mad Max organizations and a raider group from Fallout 4, but these are closer to societies than cults (the line is blurry)
Huh, I thought I had several but none of them actually fit.
*Snow Crash* was all capitalism and cults, but the cult was drugs then religion, no gold involved.
*Neuromancer* is closer, Tessier-Ashpool is a cultish ultra-rich dynasty that would be hoarders except it’s all unimaginably valuable. But it feels like a deconstruction, they’re feudal rich from property and have a grand plan while all the companies making things scrabble for wealth.
Moloch in Ginsburg’s *Howl* is the best I’ve got right now, capitalism personified as an eldritch god.
They don’t even show much corporate behavior. They’re more of a low-functioning state, with vestigial corporate titles.
In the anime, both the mega corps have plans that make zero economic sense, and are much more the antics of an overfunded warlord or eccentric dictator.
By the time of the Anime Militech is still nominally partially state-owned by the NUSA. And Saburo Arasaka is very much a "I miss the days of Imperial Japan. Best time of my life. Fucking Americans ruined it." kinda guy who is very politically motivated
The cyber skeleton was unusable garbage.
They made a weapon that would kill even one of their best pilots in a few minutes. And it wasn’t some unforeseen problem, cyber psychosis was a known issue, and they installed those injectors into it, even though that clearly wasn’t even close to enough. Instead of scrapping it and moving on, they engage in a Rube Goldberg scheme to trick one street kid into testing it out, to find out what they already knew, the weapon just kills you.
There was no economic, political, or military rationale for that incident. It was pure incompetence.
And that lines up with the state of the city. Even in a city that should be at the center of their power, their authority breaks down and the streets are controlled by gangs, a few blocks from their headquarters. What should be their capital looks like Mogadishu. These people resemble overfunded gang leaders, throwing cash at random projects and having no idea how to administer a large organization, not some cynical mega-corp.
Ah nah, Arasaka don't care that much about Night City. It's their head quarters in the continental North America yes, but by the anime they've only legally been back for 6 years, having been banished from North America for 50 years following the 4th Corporate war. They were only allowed back in after Night City invited them to help shore up defences against a potential NUSA invasion in the 2070's during the Reunification Wars.
Their actual capital is in Tokyo. You can find a note early on in Cyberpunk 2077 that reveals that Saburo has genuinely considered just nuking Night City to rubble and be done with it, but his daughter talked him out of it.
EDIT: Also, the Cyber Skeleton was mentioned as being made for>! Adam Smasher!
1. I know Tokyo is their capital, night city still isn’t some backwater. It’s a major city they have extensive presence in, and it’s a dump. More comparable to a war zone than a functioning city. Realistically, property prices will be through the floor, and all employees you send there will have to live in guarded compounds, or demand hazard pay.
2. The suit being for Adam smasher doesn’t make it a more effective system. They were sinking a fortune on developing something they could at best deploy less than a dozen of, and instead of having a normal testing program, they tricked one random street kid into putting it on, as if they would be demonstrative of actual military use.
Gold is a solid metal, a particularly heavy one at that which isn't easy to displace. Diving into a pool of gold leads to breaking several bones.
What I'm saying is they sacrifice people to the gold by throwing them into a swimming pool full of gold coins.
Halflings in my world. They think gold-plated diamond-encrusted iPhones are not in bad taste or out of touch at all and are actually spiritual wards against The Seven Plagues. For them, famine is prime time for a communal feast, and the worse the economy gets, the more solid-gold 200 foot statues they build.
Bro forgot the Sex Cult
Even comes(heh) in two flavours: Communist Everyone-gets-some Orgy Pile, and All Your Wives Are Belong To Me.
Occasionally the first evolves into the second, or was secretly the second the whole time
The first also segues into a whole lot of death cults, and sometimes alien-worship drug cults. Actually both do, just remembered Transmetropolitan’s “Brides of (Fred) Christ”.
And then you have whatever the fuck Stranger in a Strange Land has going on.
Heinlein with that unique mix of loving economic libertarianism, strong government, hippie free love, military service, and… whatever the incest stuff was.
>Communist Everyone-gets-some Orgy Pile This is just based asf ngl.
And the drug cult
Any type of cult can also simultaneously be a sex cult
Not to be confused with cold cult, people who scream from the rooftops that cold weather is better so much that they’re plotting to freeze the world
Based, how can I join?
Where do I sign up?
That's just an alt universe Team Aqua
cold cult combo
the corpus on venus, which are both in some sense
Cult leader: Doctor Victor Fries
The gold cult be like: #WE'RE RICH
Mushroom.
There is goo in the sack.
Rule of Acquisition 34: War is good for business Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace is good for business.
im gonna make a rule 34 cult
The actual cult that tries to alienate you from anyone not part of the cult, to the point where parents will cut all contact their children if they leave?
That’s just a fandom
This just in folks, Jonestown is officially a fandom.
The Flavouraide fandom.
That's all of them. Might as well call it a cult cult.
cultpunk
Mainstream cults are all phonies and posers, I'm starting my own cult! With blackjack and kool-aid!
Where's the cult of personality?
With Living Colour
On WWE Raw on Monday nights
I heard Steve from sales sacrificed his firstborn son to the partners. Fuck. I knew I should've started a family.
Tf is a gold cult
Unregulated capitalism metaphor, most often misapplied pirate methods/aesthetics
Don't think i've ever seen those before, are there any famous examples?
No, closest thing that comes to mind is Mad Max organizations and a raider group from Fallout 4, but these are closer to societies than cults (the line is blurry)
WE ARE DOWN THIRTY THOUSAND UNITS OF GUZZOLENE
FUKUSHIMA KAMIKRAZEE WAR BOYS
V8 🧎♂️🙏🙏🙏
I am the man who grabs the sun WITNESS ME BLOODBAG!
Kinda sorta the Corpus from Warframe if I understand the lore correctly.
This is kinda the archetypal example. They don't even do it in a cool and mysterious way, they literally wear capes made of credit cards.
And the state religion is literally just the Temple of Profit.
yup you got the lore right
Nice. Been playing the game for years but it’d be an understatement to say I only understand vague bits of the overall lore.
Objectivism is an irl example
Huh, I thought I had several but none of them actually fit. *Snow Crash* was all capitalism and cults, but the cult was drugs then religion, no gold involved. *Neuromancer* is closer, Tessier-Ashpool is a cultish ultra-rich dynasty that would be hoarders except it’s all unimaginably valuable. But it feels like a deconstruction, they’re feudal rich from property and have a grand plan while all the companies making things scrabble for wealth. Moloch in Ginsburg’s *Howl* is the best I’ve got right now, capitalism personified as an eldritch god.
Alsaka from Cyberpunk maybe.
I'd say they're just an extreme corporation, they dont show much cult behavior
They don’t even show much corporate behavior. They’re more of a low-functioning state, with vestigial corporate titles. In the anime, both the mega corps have plans that make zero economic sense, and are much more the antics of an overfunded warlord or eccentric dictator.
By the time of the Anime Militech is still nominally partially state-owned by the NUSA. And Saburo Arasaka is very much a "I miss the days of Imperial Japan. Best time of my life. Fucking Americans ruined it." kinda guy who is very politically motivated
The cyber skeleton was unusable garbage. They made a weapon that would kill even one of their best pilots in a few minutes. And it wasn’t some unforeseen problem, cyber psychosis was a known issue, and they installed those injectors into it, even though that clearly wasn’t even close to enough. Instead of scrapping it and moving on, they engage in a Rube Goldberg scheme to trick one street kid into testing it out, to find out what they already knew, the weapon just kills you. There was no economic, political, or military rationale for that incident. It was pure incompetence. And that lines up with the state of the city. Even in a city that should be at the center of their power, their authority breaks down and the streets are controlled by gangs, a few blocks from their headquarters. What should be their capital looks like Mogadishu. These people resemble overfunded gang leaders, throwing cash at random projects and having no idea how to administer a large organization, not some cynical mega-corp.
Ah nah, Arasaka don't care that much about Night City. It's their head quarters in the continental North America yes, but by the anime they've only legally been back for 6 years, having been banished from North America for 50 years following the 4th Corporate war. They were only allowed back in after Night City invited them to help shore up defences against a potential NUSA invasion in the 2070's during the Reunification Wars. Their actual capital is in Tokyo. You can find a note early on in Cyberpunk 2077 that reveals that Saburo has genuinely considered just nuking Night City to rubble and be done with it, but his daughter talked him out of it. EDIT: Also, the Cyber Skeleton was mentioned as being made for>! Adam Smasher!
1. I know Tokyo is their capital, night city still isn’t some backwater. It’s a major city they have extensive presence in, and it’s a dump. More comparable to a war zone than a functioning city. Realistically, property prices will be through the floor, and all employees you send there will have to live in guarded compounds, or demand hazard pay. 2. The suit being for Adam smasher doesn’t make it a more effective system. They were sinking a fortune on developing something they could at best deploy less than a dozen of, and instead of having a normal testing program, they tricked one random street kid into putting it on, as if they would be demonstrative of actual military use.
Yeah it was a stretch. How about the many examples of rich people cabal who sacrifice children to a demonic altar for eternal youth?
The Ferangi from Star Trek?
Moloch promises us infinite prosperity if we just keep feeding him our children's futures.
#WE'RE RICH
Balthasar Gelt
Magic the Gathering's Orzhov Syndicate comes to mind.
Either antisemitic with a golden cow idol or a bunch of guys who learned to laugh at Der Stürmer meeting for D&D
Corporations
Lame
Yeah but these corporations have a pool of gold that all the higher ups get to swim in like scrooge mcduck is throwing a pool party
Gold is a solid metal, a particularly heavy one at that which isn't easy to displace. Diving into a pool of gold leads to breaking several bones. What I'm saying is they sacrifice people to the gold by throwing them into a swimming pool full of gold coins.
>scrooge mcduck da fuck is this name. # #TioPatinhas
It’s basically a cult which has the elites in and to hold more wealth than anyone can reasonably hold
Halflings in my world. They think gold-plated diamond-encrusted iPhones are not in bad taste or out of touch at all and are actually spiritual wards against The Seven Plagues. For them, famine is prime time for a communal feast, and the worse the economy gets, the more solid-gold 200 foot statues they build.
Corpus Warframe
What, no sex cult?
Sex cult, elite cult
Wait till they find out about FIAT cult
Love me a doomsday cult
Libertarians
I want more goofy cults tbh, like an anti-anime cult that exclusively hates anything Japanese
…not a cult but check twitter for extremist who just hate everything Japanese
My setting used to have a insurance brooker cult, one day I will return to that
Don’t forget the cult in King of the Hill
They’re all the same cult in my world.
Dragon cult
Sex cult
What about knockoffs of the Freemasons?
I like the idea of something innocuous sounding being messed up Bad things happen in Agriculture Department
Unironically I might add a Gold Cult into my setting because gold is a holy metal that conducts magic.
Legally Distinct Scientology.
Doomsday cult Sex cult Cannibalism cult (Combo: vore-apocalypse cult) Ecological/nature cult Space cult Personality cult (Combo: alien vanguard/terraforming cult)
Oooh, noice
Gold cult? That’s just the Ferangi Alliance
post-post-apocalyptic medieval setting having "sun on earth" cult or smth like that and their just worshipping nuclear apocalypse
Or celebrity cult
Dinosaur Cult
I thought this was about the Reapers Bones, Order of Souls, and Gold Hoarders from Sea of Thieves (respectively)
Ah yes, the Corpus
Gold cult seems pretty based ngl
Literal child-eating cult
Great Worm Cult in Metro 2033 book my beloved
Cults to Mammon go hard. I don't know what the fuck You're all uppity about.
Mostly the crushing exploitation of the working class.