The Doomstar Witch: She Rides
- The Witch Rides.
When I say the Witch “rides” a person, I’m not talking about horns and broomsticks and spinning heads in a movie.
I’m talking about a real phenomenon in the human world.
A pattern.
A force.
A way of speaking and moving and bending a room that can inhabit any mouth, any gender, any social role, any “side,” any IQ level, any hairstyle, any spiritual vocabulary.
It’s older than cities.
It is, in a certain strict sense, older than argument.
Because argument assumes two people are trying to touch the same truth from different angles.
The Witch does not argue to touch truth.
The Witch argues to touch you.
To steer you.
To make you smaller, faster, ashamed, dependent, impressed, uncertain, eager to comply, eager to be forgiven, eager to be included.
That’s what “riding” means here: a person becomes the vehicle for a set of moves that don’t originate in honest contact. They originate in control.
And the spooky part is this.
Often the rider doesn’t feel like a rider.
It feels like being “right.”
It feels like “helping.”
It feels like “being reasonable.”
It feels like “finally saying the hard truth.”
It feels like “I’m the only adult in this room.”
Which is exactly why it spreads.
- How Riding Works
Riding is not possession in the supernatural sense.
It’s possession in the operational sense.
A person’s face remains their face.
Their voice remains their voice.
But the inner driver changes.
What changes first is not what they believe, but what they are trying to accomplish.
A normal person, even in conflict, still wants a few basic goods:
Understanding.
Repair.
Mutual recognition.
A shared reality.
A stable relationship.
Witch-mode wants different goods:
Dominance.
Compliance.
Moral superiority.
Public validation.
Epistemic custody (control of what “counts” as real).
Those goods require tactics, not truth.
So the Witch climbs in and starts driving with tactics.
The person becomes a delivery system.
Not necessarily because they are evil.
Sometimes because they’re hurt.
Sometimes because they’re terrified.
Sometimes because their identity is strapped to being “right.”
Sometimes because the social reward system around them pays cash for contempt.
But regardless of origin, the signature is the same: the conversation stops being a meeting and becomes a capture attempt.
That’s riding.
- The Two Gears Of The Witch
The Witch rides in two gears, and you’ve already met them both.
The first gear is Soft Power.
Warmth with an agenda.
Concern with a steering wheel.
Humor that needles.
Friendliness that comes with a hook.
This gear is about getting you to lower your defenses voluntarily.
The second gear is Hard Power.
Shame.
Name-calling.
Exile threats.
“Everyone thinks…”
“You’re lucky I still talk to you…”
“You’re defective…”
This gear is about making the cost of independence feel too high.
Most people think the Witch is only the second gear.
But the Witch prefers the first, because the first produces consent.
Consent is the cleanest cage: the prisoner installs the bars.
That’s why “riding” is the right word.
A rider doesn’t always whip the horse.
Often the rider simply shifts weight.
And the horse turns.
- Why The Witch Can Wear Anybody
The Witch can wear anybody because she doesn’t need your biography.
She needs your leverage points.
And humans share leverage points.
We fear being mocked.
We fear being left.
We fear being seen as stupid.
We fear being cast out of the group.
We fear being the “bad person.”
We fear meaninglessness.
We fear not being understood.
We fear being alone with our own mind.
Those fears are universal.
So the Witch doesn’t need a specific kind of person.
She needs a person who, in that moment, is willing to use those fears as tools.
That can be a progressive.
That can be a conservative.
That can be a church lady.
That can be a guru.
That can be a therapist.
That can be a lover.
That can be your own inner voice on a bad day.
That last one matters.
Because the Witch doesn’t only ride other people.
Sometimes the Witch rides you through your own mouth, and you call it “discipline,” or “truth,” or “I’m just being realistic.”
Riding is a technique before it is a character.
- What It Feels Like When Someone Is Being Ridden
You usually won’t catch it by logic first.
You’ll catch it by your body.
Conversation with a ridden person produces a very specific internal weather.
You feel hurried.
Or foggy.
Or diminished.
Or like you’re on trial.
Or like you must explain your humanity to earn basic respect.
You notice you are managing their emotions instead of discussing reality.
You notice your “No” is treated as a symptom.
You notice your questions are treated as insolence.
You notice the goalposts move.
You notice the topic isn’t the topic anymore.
And the biggest tell is this:
They don’t want to understand you.
They want to correct you.
Correction is not always evil.
But correction that comes with contempt is not correction.
It is conquest.
That’s riding.
- The Witch's Favorite Seat
The Witch’s favorite seat is inside the moral high ground.
Because once the Witch sits there, every boundary you set becomes “proof” you’re immoral.
“You’re defensive.”
“You’re unstable.”
“You’re hateful.”
“You’re irrational.”
“You’re brainwashed.”
“Be mature.”
“Be kind.”
“Be normal.”
Notice what those are.
They’re not arguments.
They’re social weapons.
They are attempts to rename your agency as pathology.
And that’s how the Witch rides: by stealing your right to be the narrator of your own mind.
If she can rename your mind for you, she can manage you.
That’s why she loves words like “sheeple.”
Because “sheeple” is a leash disguised as a joke.
- Why The 'Riding' Metaphor Matters
If you call it “she’s just mean,” you miss half of it.
If you call it “he’s just manipulative,” you still miss half of it.
Because “riding” names a pattern that can move between people like a virus moves between lungs.
You’re not just dealing with one personality.
You’re dealing with a mode.
A mode that a person can enter and exit.
A mode that groups can amplify.
A mode that gets rewarded online.
A mode that makes the rider feel righteous and makes the ridden feel powerful.
The metaphor matters because it gives you a practical advantage.
If it’s a mode, you don’t have to hate the person.
You have to refuse the mode.
That’s the difference between moral clarity and moral acid.
Moral clarity says: “I won’t participate in contempt.”
Moral acid says: “You are nothing but contempt.”
One preserves your soul.
The other makes you into what you hate.
And here’s a little grim humor: the Witch loves moral acid.
It makes more Witch.
- How To Refuse The Witch Without Becoming Her
The refusal is simple, but it’s not easy.
You do three things.
You set tempo.
You set terms.
You enforce exit.
Tempo is: “I’m not answering at your speed.”
Terms is: “Adult respect or no conversation.”
Exit is: “If contempt arrives, I leave.”
That’s it.
No lecture.
No counter-insults.
No courtroom.
Just physics.
Contempt enters, connection ends.
You don’t do it to punish.
You do it because contempt is a solvent.
It dissolves reality.
It dissolves repair.
It dissolves dignity.
You can’t build a house in acid.
And the forward-thinking part, the part that matters for your life: practicing this refusal makes you harder to pin in general. It doesn’t just protect you from Christina-types. It protects you from institutions, online mobs, manipulative friends, salesmen, gurus, and your own worst inner loops.
Refusal becomes a skill.
A weapon, actually.
But unlike the Witch’s weapon, it doesn’t steal anyone’s dignity.
It guards yours.
- The Strange Mercy In Seeing It
There’s a kind of mercy in learning to say, “A Witch is riding this conversation.”
Because it stops you from making a false bargain.
The false bargain is: “If I just explain better, I’ll be treated like a man.”
You won’t.
Not while the mode is active.
Explanation is fuel in Witch-mode.
It keeps you in the arena.
It keeps you pleading for basic recognition.
The mercy is: you stop feeding it.
You stop trying to win dignity from someone who has decided dignity is conditional.
And then you become free enough to do the only adult thing left.
You choose.
You choose contact or distance.
You choose boundaries or no contact.
You choose what kind of life you’re building.
And if she resurfaces, and she likely will, you don’t need to remember the last straw.
You only need to remember the rule:
If the Witch rides, the door closes.
Not forever, necessarily.
But immediately.
Because you are not a child.
And you don’t owe anyone the right to talk to you like one.
Witch Field Guide
A one-page operator manual for staying coherent when the air gets strange.
Prime Principle
The Witch is a mode, not a person.
The mode can ride anyone.
Your job is not diagnosis.
Your job is terms of contact.
⸻
The Nine Signs
Each sign includes: Tell → Cost → Counter
- The Script
Tell. They reply to a category you’ve been placed into, not to your actual sentence.
Cost. You feel unheard and start talking smaller.
Counter. “Answer the one sentence I said.” If they can’t: “That’s a script—try again.”
- The Smile That Isn’t Joy
Tell. Warmth that feels like steering. Charm with an agenda.
Cost. Your guard drops; your boundary gets rewritten.
Counter. “What do you want from me right now?” Make intent speak plainly.
- The Gentle Push That Never Stops
Tell. Endless “just one more” concessions. Never satisfied.
Cost. Millimeter warfare → you become smaller over time.
Counter. “We’re not negotiating this.” Then stop talking.
- Memory Editing
Tell. Confident rewriting of what happened, with zero curiosity.
Cost. Fog, shame, self-doubt; your witness weakens.
Counter. “We remember it differently. I’m not arguing reality.” Use records if stakes are real.
- Benevolent Control
Tell. “Care” that comes with a steering wheel. Help as ownership.
Cost. Your autonomy shrinks; gratitude becomes obligation.
Counter. “Advice is optional. Respect is not.” “Care without control.”
- Triangulation
Tell. “Everyone thinks… people are saying…” Crowd invoked as a weapon.
Cost. You defend social legitimacy instead of truth.
Counter. “I’m talking to you, not ‘everyone.’ Make your claim in your own name.”
- Tempo Manipulation
Tell. Rushed answers or endless delay to shape your mind.
Cost. You lose access to your best thinking.
Counter. “I’m going to think before I answer.” “Not deciding today.”
- The Moral Upgrade Scam
Tell. Your virtues rebranded into restraints: kindness=obedience, peace=silence.
Cost. Your goodness becomes your cage.
Counter. “Kindness isn’t compliance. Peace isn’t silence. Love isn’t surrender.”
- The After-Feeling
Tell. You leave thinner: foggy, ashamed, on trial, inner voice dampened.
Cost. Self-abandonment normalizes; the net feels like home.
Counter. Treat it as data. Shorten exposure next time. Reset your coherence.
The Repair Test
A non-witchy person can usually do repair.
Green flags:
• “I shouldn’t have said that.”
• “I see how that landed.”
• “Let’s slow down.”
• “I was wrong about that piece.”
Witch-mode flags:
• No apology, only justification.
• “I’m just being honest” as license for contempt.
• Your boundary is treated as pathology (“You’re defensive / unstable”).
• They demand compliance before respect.
If repair is possible, stay and repair.
If control is the goal, exit.
The Three Tools
- Set Tempo
“I’m not answering fast. I’m answering true.”
- Set Terms
“Adult respect or no conversation.”
- Enforce Exit
First contempt = end it.
No lecture. No debate. Click.
Contempt is solvent.
Don’t build in acid.
Emergency Protocol
When you feel pinned, foggy, or on trial:
1. Stop. One breath.
2. Name the mode. “This is turning into correction / contempt / crowd.”
3. Choose. Reset terms or exit.
4. Aftercare reset: water, movement, 5 lines of what you know is true.
Five-line reset template:
• What happened (one sentence).
• What I felt (one sentence).
• What I know is true (one sentence).
• What I will do next time (one sentence).
• What I’m not available for (one sentence).
Vow
I will not trade my coherence for someone else’s comfort.
I will not beg for dignity.
I will not argue with nets.
If the Witch rides, the door closes.
- The Script.
The Script is what happens when a person stops meeting you in the living present and starts speaking from a pre-written pamphlet. It's not merely that they have beliefs. Everyone has beliefs. The Script is when beliefs become a ventriloquist.
You can feel it in the way your words stop "landing." You say something concrete--about pain, money, war, dignity, the cost of living--and the response doesn't answer the content. It answers a category you've been placed into. Your sentence becomes evidence for a case already decided. That's why the Script is so exhausting: you are not in a conversation, you are in a sorting process.
The Witch loves the Script because it saves effort and secures control. A real conversation risks surprise. Surprise risks change. The Script prevents both. The Script is also socially portable: it plugs into any dinner table, any friend group, any comment thread. It performs competence without requiring comprehension.
A tell: the same phrases appear regardless of what you said. "Everyone knows." "That's misinformation." "Be reasonable." "You're just emotional." "That's what they want you to think." The phrases are not arguments; they are seals. They close the jar while appearing to label it.
The cost is subtle but severe. The Script makes you doubt the value of speech. It trains you to self-censor, to pre-edit, to talk smaller. Over time, that's how a person becomes less of a person: not by being gagged, but by learning that words do not reach.
The counter is not louder speech. The counter is specificity and refusal of category. Ask for contact with the particular: "Answer the one sentence I actually said." If they can't, you name the condition: "You're replying to a script, not to me." If they persist, you leave. Leaving is not drama; it is quality control. A conversation is a tool. If the tool is broken, you put it down.
- The Smile That Isn't Joy.
There is a smile that is a lamp in a window, and there is a smile that is a lockpick. The Witch prefers the second. It looks like friendliness. It feels like pressure.
This smile does not arise from delight; it arises from intent. It is calibrated. It is a social lubricant designed to slide past your boundaries. It says, "Relax, I'm safe," while the hand behind the back is already reaching for the steering wheel.
The reason this matters is that humans are mammals, and mammals are designed to read faces quickly. We are built to accept warmth as a signal of safety. When warmth is weaponized, our own bonding instincts get used against us. The Witch doesn't need to win the argument if she can win the nervous system.
The tell is the aftertaste. You don't feel met. You feel managed. The smile precedes a request that costs you something: an admission, a concession, an apology for a thing you didn't do, a reduction of your dignity "for the sake of peace." You notice you are being guided, like a toddler's hand being directed away from a hot stove--except you are not a toddler, and what is "hot" is your sovereignty.
The cost is self-betrayal dressed as politeness. People comply because they don't want to be "rude." That is exactly why the tactic works. The Witch trades on your decency.
The counter is to stop treating warmth as a contract. You can accept kindness without surrendering agency. When you feel the lockpick-smile, slow down and ask a direct question that forces intent into daylight: "What do you want from me right now?" If the answer is evasive, you've learned what you needed to learn. Then you set terms: "I'm happy to talk, but not if the goal is to steer me." Warmth plus honesty is welcome. Warmth plus manipulation is not.
- The Gentle Push That Never Stops.
Some coercion comes with shouting. The more dangerous kind comes with gentleness and persistence. The gentle push is not the act of domination; it is the practice of it, repeated until you forget you ever stood somewhere else.
This mode relies on the social fact that most people hate friction. We like harmony. We like closure. The Witch exploits that by making "closure" identical to "your compliance." Every exchange becomes a slow grinding down of your position: just one more concession, just one more clarification, just one more apology, just one more "to be fair."
It doesn't feel like violence. It feels like conversation. That's the trick.
The tell is that the negotiation never ends. The request is never satisfied. The standard keeps moving. You can sense the direction of travel: always toward you being smaller, quieter, more agreeable. The Witch calls this "maturity." The world calls it "keeping the peace." Your body calls it "something is wrong."
The cost is cumulative. A single concession may be harmless. A thousand concessions is a new identity. People don't become compliant overnight; they become compliant in millimeters. The gentle push is millimeter warfare.
The counter is to name the motion and end the motion. "That's the third 'just.' I'm not doing 'just.'" Or: "We're not negotiating this further." Then you stop talking. Silence is not defeat; it is the removal of supply. The Witch feeds on your attempts to be understood. If you keep speaking, she keeps pushing. Adult boundaries are not endless explanations. They are decisions.
- Memory Editing.
Memory editing is the attempt to seize your witness. It is not ordinary disagreement about the past; it is confident rewriting designed to make your inner narrator stutter.
The Witch likes this because the easiest way to control a person is to control what they believe happened. If you can be made unsure of the last five minutes, you can be made unsure of the last five years. Then you become malleable. Then you become governable.
The form can be blunt ("I never said that") or refined ("That's not what I meant," repeated until your recollection feels rude). The key ingredient is certainty without curiosity. A healthy person who remembers differently will usually show some openness: "I might be wrong, but I remember it this way." The Witch does not. She pronounces.
The tell is neurological: confusion, shame, looping replay. You find yourself scanning your own mind for evidence, as if your own perception is on trial. That is not an accident. That is the point.
The cost is coherence. And coherence is not a luxury; it is the foundation of agency. If you can't trust your own witness, you can't act decisively. You can't set boundaries. You can't say, "No," with clean confidence. Memory editing is how the Witch makes "No" feel unreasonable.
The counter is to refuse to litigate reality. You can say: "We remember it differently. I'm not arguing the facts of what I experienced." If stakes are real, you anchor to records. Not because you must "prove" yourself, but because you refuse to let reality be treated as a negotiable commodity. And if you notice a pattern of confident rewriting, you treat it as a hazard and you reduce contact. You don't fix a flood by talking to the water.
- Benevolent Control.
Benevolent control is "care" that arrives with a steering wheel. It speaks in the language of concern and behaves like ownership.
"I just want what's best for you." Fine. The line crosses when "what's best" consistently equals "what I want," and when concern becomes a moral claim over your choices. The Witch loves benevolent control because it recruits virtue. It makes resistance look cruel. It makes boundaries look selfish. It turns your decency into a leash.
The tell is the pattern: their help has conditions, and those conditions reduce your autonomy. Their care does not enlarge you; it corrals you. You are expected to accept direction, accept correction, accept their framing of your life. If you decline, you are made to feel ungrateful or defective.
The cost is dignity. Not always immediately, but steadily. Benevolent control teaches you to seek permission to be yourself. It makes self-trust feel like rebellion.
The counter is to separate care from command. "You can care about me without directing me." Or: "Advice is optional. Respect is not." If they press, you name the transaction: "This doesn't feel like care; it feels like control." And if the control continues, you withdraw access. People who truly care can adjust. People who need control will punish you for boundaries. The punishment reveals the truth of the "care."
- Triangulation.
Triangulation is when a third party--real or imagined--is used to corner you. It turns a conversation into a courtroom. It turns your relationship into a stage.
"Everyone thinks…" "People are saying…" "My friends agree…" Sometimes the third party is a friend group. Sometimes it's "society." Sometimes it's "what's normal." The goal is not to be right; the goal is to outnumber you. The Witch wants you to feel isolated and ridiculous, because isolated people are easier to reshape.
The tell is that you stop arguing a point and start defending your social legitimacy. You find yourself trying to prove you're not crazy, not stupid, not immoral. That's the trap. The Witch has shifted the terrain from truth to belonging.
The cost is that you begin to negotiate your reality based on social threat. That's how crowds have always controlled individuals. It's not new. It's just wearing a smartphone now.
The counter is to refuse the crowd. "I'm talking to you, not to 'everyone.' If you have a claim, make it in your own name." If they insist, you can say: "I don't argue with mobs, even imaginary ones." Then return to the concrete, or end the exchange. The moment you accept the audience, you accept the leash.
- Tempo Manipulation.
Tempo manipulation is the control of speed: rushing you so you can't think, or stalling you so you can't act.
The Witch understands that the mind has gears. Certain truths require slow gears. Certain boundaries require decisive gears. If she can force you into the wrong gear at the wrong time, you become clumsy, reactive, apologetic. Speed makes mistakes. Delay makes doubt.
The tell is bodily: heat, urgency, short breath under rush; heaviness, numbness, resignation under stall. Either way, your agency narrows. You feel you must respond now, or you feel it will never matter.
The cost is self-access. You stop hearing yourself. You start performing. And performance is the enemy of truth.
The counter is to set your tempo out loud. "I'm going to think before I answer." "I'm not deciding today." "I'm ending this conversation until we can slow it down." There is an old power in taking time. Most manipulation depends on stealing it. If you reclaim time, you reclaim mind.
- The Moral Upgrade Scam.
This is one of the Witch's prettiest tricks: she takes your virtues and sells you an "improved" version that conveniently benefits her.
Kindness becomes compliance. Patience becomes tolerance for disrespect. Humility becomes self-erasure. Forgiveness becomes the removal of consequences. "Being the bigger person" becomes being the smaller person forever.
The tell is that your values get invoked only when they restrain you, never when they restrain the other person. Your moral code becomes a one-way street.
The cost is spiritual anemia. You become "good" in a way that makes you weak. Not weak in the sense of tenderness--tenderness is strength--but weak in the sense of being unable to say "No" without shame.
The counter is to reclaim the original shape of virtue. Kindness is not obedience. Peace is not silence. Love is not surrender. Forgiveness is not amnesia. Humility is not self-hatred. When someone tries the upgrade scam, you say: "That's not virtue; that's leverage." Then you return to the real ethical geometry: mutuality, consent, truth, consequence. The Witch hates consequence because consequence ends games.
- The After-Feeling.
This is the diagnostic output, the checksum, the final test: what do you feel like after contact?
The Witch can be clever in words. She can appear reasonable. She can even appear loving. But she leaves fingerprints on the nervous system. You feel thinner, foggier, smaller, vaguely ashamed. You feel like you owe something you can't name. Your inner voice goes quiet for a while, as if it stepped back to avoid being hit.
That after-feeling matters because it bypasses rhetoric. It tells you whether your coherence is being fed or drained. Healthy conflict can leave you tired, but it doesn't usually leave you dissolved. A hard conversation with a good person can still end with repair, clarity, respect. Witch-contact tends to end with distortion.
The cost of ignoring the after-feeling is that you normalize self-abandonment. You start thinking, "This is just how relationships are." That's how the net becomes home.
The counter is to treat the after-feeling as data, not drama. If you consistently feel diminished, you shorten exposure. You exit earlier. You do a reset: water, movement, writing down what you know is true, talking to someone who restores your coherence. And you adopt the repair check as a rule: people who can repair can be worked with; people who must control cannot.