sentientsnakeskin

YAY YAY YIPPEE i have so many thoughts on this

So basically, Lottie is often characterized as a cult leader in fandom, which from an objective standpoint is very untrue. Shauna however is definitely a cult leader and I’ll explain why. For the purposes of this discussion we are talking about the contrast in Lottie’s reign as antler queen/leader vs Shauna’s.

A cult leader has a few defining characteristics, they don’t necessarily need to meet all of them but they have to meet at least some.

Cult leaders:

-are often charismatic

-seek power or financial gain over their cult

-lure in vulnerable people with promises of acceptance and community

-exhibit total or mostly total control of the group and do not tolerate dissent, with fear, violence, and perceived outside threats or disasters often being used to keep people in line

-operate alone or with a close inner circle where all truth comes from

Now, already, Lottie doesn’t fit the description. She does not want power or leadership as she stated herself, she was only leader because everyone else decided to make her leader due to her connection with the wilderness. Lottie never gave herself anything better than anyone else, she ate the same portions as everyone else and had no significant luxury over anyone

Lottie also does extend any real control about aspects of the group outside of spirituality. She never delivers orders to others about day to day cabin life, and she also never claims to be the sole source of truth from the wilderness- she actually goes out of her way to help others hear the wilderness and connect with it spiritually.

Most notably, Lottie never personally dishes out any sort of punishment for non belief. Shauna, Tai, Ben and Natalie were all avid disbelievers of the wilderness at some point or another, and Lottie never condemns them, punishes them, or ostracizes them. Any and all negative attention they received from not believing was perpetuated purely by other believers and not Lottie herself. She actually goes out of her way to protect non believers in her own way, like the rituals she did for Natalie and Travis in the morning, and takes the full force of Shauna’s post partum anger herself. Cult leaders are inherently selfish and self serving and Lottie can actually be surprisingly selfless.

The real smoking gun to Lottie not being a cult leader is her giving power over to Natalie. Cult leaders don’t really exchange power, and when they do it’s to those in their inner circle who will continue on with their beliefs. Lottie gave all her power to the biggest most vocal opponent of her religion, who proceeded to rule with rationality, not with religion. Cult leaders DO NOT DO THAT SHIT. Never in the history of ever has a cult leader handed over their power to an outsider. That one scene demolished any chance of her being a cult leader tbh

Overall, Lottie would be defined as a spiritual leader, not a cult leader

Shauna on the other hand, is definitively a cult leader.

Her explicit reason for wanting to be leader was because she felt like she deserved power and control over the group and she rules by fear. She first exploits the fear the others have about Ben and the cabin fire, creating an “us vs them” mindset about outsiders or dissenters that is picture perfect cult 101. And then, when she’s given the opportunity after Natalie murders Ben, she takes the foundations of the environment she created to create an alienation of people who don’t agree with her, like Natalie and Mari. She actually attempts to execute Natalie without trial, blocking Tai’s attempts to give a trial and stating that “we all know what happens now” implying that Natalie should be murdered.

The second she becomes leader, we see Shauna rule with fear, using Nat as an example for what happens when you break the rules, by forcing her to butcher Ben. That alone was like actual psychological torture because remember Shauna threatened her life like 2 seconds ago, if Nat had refused Shauna might have killed her. This also served to sow fear into the main group, I mean Mari was obviously terrified when she was trying to tell Nat that she did good

There’s more instances of Shauna implementing fear as a control factor- when Melissa turns against her, she shoots at her demonstrating to others she’s not afraid to use violence. There’s also what she says to Mari after Melissa got shot, “if she dies, you die”, the second direct threat on someone’s life she made. Also, she continues this overbearingly controlling behavior by initiating bed checks, as we see Shauna targeting Natalie at the least to ensure that she isn’t harboring any methods of resistance or escape. She also put Kodiak’s head on a pike and used it as target practice, a blatant visual reminder to everyone that that’s what happens to outsiders and people who dissent. After the hunt, she reinforces control by giving direct orders to others about how to prepare Mari’s body, and then proceeded to force who she thought was Nat to butcher the body. She then made a costume out of Mari’s hair that she wore while forcing everyone using fear once again to consume Mari’s body, the second time she’s used recreational cannibalism to enforce fear. She harbors the gun as a method of intimidation and control, and directly blocks rescue attempts twice, keeping them all there on purpose to exhibit more control.

Also, while Lottie was genuinely feeling the wilderness at the very least in her own mind and senses, Shauna uses the wilderness as a tool to fit what she wants to do, which is gain power. She doesn’t believe in an It, she says it multiple times. She agreed to the s3 hunt because she wanted to see violence happen, no other reason, amplified when it was Mari who drew the queen card

If anything, it’s Shauna’s fault for telling everyone to wait when Akilah said that they should help him. But even that i also understand because she would rather let someone die passively than have to actually kill someone herself (which she would have had to had they dragged him out because she’s apparently assigned executioner at birth or something).