Has a fundie ever inspired a story or character out of you?

[AtroposHeart]

I have read many female fundies who have inspired villians in the stories I am working on. In this dystopia (that I am still working on) I have Mary (Mainly inspired after sunshinemary) who is one of the leading women of a reducation center for women who voted, worked, went to college, divorced, or had sex outside marriage.

 

She is extremely hateful and abusive to the women in her "care" and she finds way to break them in order to mold them into perfect fundie women.

 

Have you ever got an idea like that by a fundie?

[Minerva]

I think if I was going to write a fundy character, it'd just be your typical escape from fundyland story because I'm not as creative as you. And because I just want them all to escape and have happy endings.

Hehe, happy endings.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Yeah, they have.

One of the characters in a story I am writing is somewhat based on Michelle Duggar, but is a crazy cat lady as her children have all left home. It follows some of her 12 children, who arent based on anyone in particular. They have a cousin based on Hellena/Lauren, just because I wanted to give some children batshit crazy names and sparkling neglect.

[crazyforkate]

I have written about a few fundie-lite families, and once I started a novel about an abortion clinic where several main characters were fundie-lite, but I've never gone full fundie. Mostly because I think some of them would be pretty unbelievable characters! You know what they say, the truth is stranger...

[Cannelle]

I'm planning out my next novel (going to start sending out my current one soon, as soon as I stop vomiting uncontrollably every time I think of someone else reading it, lol), and it's going to be about a young woman fundie escaping her family.

[Kitty]

I have a whole universe/series based on fundies. It started with the Duggars, and now encompasses Lori, Kendal, and the Maxwells. Some of their names are loosely based off those who are fundies.

My 'backstory' characters are directly based on the Maxwells, plus the House of Tudor. The patriarch, Mark Henning, is a fun-hating/"traditional" douchenozzle who really wants a son to follow in his footsteps. But he doesn't start off fundie. He's a pretty good guy until he turns fundie and becomes obsessed with his first wife Kate's "baggage," then divorces her when he can't take it anymore. He then marries Grace, who is the opposite of Kate personality-wise. As Mark dives deeper and deeper into fundamentalism, he begins to turn on Grace as well, and has her sent off to a re-education center. And divorces her and takes their daughter to another part of the state. He then finds Jenna, who is the perfect fundie housewife... but she dies in childbirth, because medical knowledge is about what you'd expect it to be in a Tea Party/fundie country.

Then there are two women who have large families of their own, both of whom have very successful businesses/"ministries." One of them focuses more on housekeeping, the other focuses on discipline and homeschooling and is meant to be a slightly younger version of Debbie Pearl... or maybe a slightly older Kendal. She's vicious, but unlike either one of them, she's pretty damn smart and values education. The other one, though, is not so smart, she gets by on manipulating everyone. They feature in two stories. The Debi Pearl/Kendal mix has a daughter who is supposed to be her assistant for workshops, but runs away one night and is never heard from again (she actually is heard from again, she joins the resistance). The other woman has a mother's helper named Jana. Jana is just trying to pay for college, but her employer is batshit, and she winds up running away.

[tuckerphez]

The eventual husband of one of my characters is a fundie escapee. Growing up, his biggest fear was having to be a headship and having a billion kids.

Also the strict gender-roles of fundiedom scared him.

He's partly inspired by John-David, and he has a twin sister that he feels really guilty about "leaving behind." At some point, he and his wife visit his sister.

[ILoveJellybeans]

One of my recent stories is about a gay couple who adopt a group of siblings who came to them after being taken from an abusive family who were involved in a cult (which is based on ATI).

After little things from their lives came out, I decided to write them an official backstory cause I was bored. Its somewhat based on the normal sort of stuff that happens to fundie kids (blanket training, beating with plumbing line, emotional repression) with a few extra horrifying bits which I made up myself and hope that no fundie parent has ever tried....I am going to put it in spoilers because its horrifying...

The teenage daughter tells her mom that the cult leader has been touching her, mom gives birth prematurely due to the effort it took to beat her for sinning and defrauding a man of God and the baby dies because the mom prays over her instead of takes her to the hospital (theyre major conspiracy theorists as well, who think doctors and science are evil). To punish the daughter for this, she finds a very unethical backstreet doctor to do a uterus transplant, that nearly kills them both and doesnt work. Mom goes crazy after losing her uterus and starts being even more abusive and isolates the kids so much that the Maxwells would think she was insane. Dad takes the sister mom thing to a new extreme, and gets his oldest daughter (who is 20) pregnant, and she runs away from home. They nearly get the kids taken away the first time after the moms sister reports them after they kick out their teenage son for being gay and he goes to his aunt's house and tells them what happened. Fearing the government, the parents refuse to let the social worker in (as is recommended in fundie circles). That night they take the kids and run, planning to leave the country with them. The teenage girl and her sister (10 months younger than her) take their buddies and run away from their group and attempt to live rough for a bit with them but then they are taken into foster care end up with the family they are with for the rest of the story, who eventually adopt them. The other five siblings (who dont appear in the main story at all) are also taken away from their parents as they raised suspicion at the airport cause they dont have passports (or even birth certificates or anything-they chose not to register their kids births as they didnt want the government involved in their lives) for their children, who were also filthy, barefoot and had obvious bruises.

The dad is a bit like the PP, as he is a major conspiracy theorist and anti government and also a shouty "Everyone is going to Hell" type preacher, with a bit of WBC bigotry protests. The mom is a bit like Debi Pearl (but with Michelle Duggar's baby hunger taken to a new level), as the personality she shows everyone is the perfectly submissive fundie housewife, but she has an evil sadistic child torturing streak. Also anything that ever happens to the children (other than the really extreme bits) is totally okay and a good thing to do according to TTUAC.