Card 47: Flying Monkeys

Once Upon a Time: The Wicked Witch’s Winged Monkeys

In Oz, the Wicked Witch doesn’t chase Dorothy herself. She sends her flying monkeys, creatures bound to serve whoever holds the Golden Cap, and the Witch has put it on. They do her bidding. They’re not evil; they’re enslaved. But their talons still tear.

This is how it works. The manipulator doesn’t confront you directly. They send others. “Your sister told me you said...” “Everyone thinks you’re being unreasonable.” “I heard from three people that you...” The monkeys carry the attack. The witch keeps her hands clean.

The monkeys may be family, friends, coworkers, anyone who’s been recruited, consciously or not, into the witch’s service. They believe they’re helping. They believe the story they’ve been told. They don’t know someone else is wearing the cap.

The Decoder: When the attack comes from unexpected directions, look for who released the monkeys.

The Pattern: Recruiting others to do their bidding

What They Say/Do:

• Mutual friends relay messages
• Family members pressure you on their behalf
• “They feel terrible. Maybe you should talk to them.”
• Others advocate for their position
• Your support system turns into their messengers

What the Pattern Usually Does: They’re extending their reach through others. By recruiting allies, they multiply their influence while appearing innocent.

How It Hooks You: Pressure comes from multiple sources. People you trust carry their message. You feel surrounded and question your own position.

Your Power Move: Set boundaries with the messengers too. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m not discussing [person] with third parties. If they want to talk to me, they can reach out directly.”

The Captured-Professional Variant

Flying monkeys get recruited. Captured professionals are already there.

A therapist the whole family sees. A pastor who counseled your parents long before he counseled you. A family doctor who delivered you and still takes your mother’s calls. A lawyer who “knows the family” and whose loyalty was decided before you ever walked in.

In individualist systems, you assume a therapist is yours, a pastor is spiritual counsel, a lawyer is your advocate. In collectivist systems, these roles are often already inside the family network. No recruitment required, they were there first.

Why the distinction matters for the decoder: Flying monkeys can sometimes be redirected, “tell them to talk to me directly” works when the messenger is peripheral. Captured professionals often can’t be redirected, because they were never separate from the family to begin with. The decoder move is different: you may need to find someone outside the system entirely to hold the neutral role they cannot hold.

Chapters 7 and 9 of The Narcissism Decoder explore what this feels like in the room.

The Small World Variant

Flying monkeys get recruited one at a time. A small world doesn’t recruit. It encloses.

Picture the Disney ride: a slow boat through animatronic figures in matching gowns, every region of the globe rendered in the same pastels, every doll mouthing the same chorus about how alike we all are. Bounded track, fixed loop, unity on rails. You don’t notice you’re on rails because the song is gentle and the chorus feels warm.

Communities can do this. A spiritual scene, a chosen family, a recovery circle, a fandom, an immigrant congregation, a workplace clique, any system that presents itself as warm, inclusive, “we are all one,” and uses that presentation to make exit unthinkable. The longer you’re inside, the smaller the outside gets: fewer outside friends, fewer outside inputs, fewer outside reference points. Disagreement gets reframed as betrayal. Outsiders are pre-labeled, lost, broken, dangerous, unawakened, so their critique can’t land. “After everything we’ve been through, you’d tear it apart?” is the song the ride keeps singing.

Why the distinction matters for the decoder: With flying monkeys, you can sometimes set boundaries with the messenger. With a small world, there is no individual messenger, the system itself is the message. The decoder move is different: notice when your world has been getting smaller, name it as a feature of the system rather than a failure of yours, and rebuild outside reference points before you need them.

Chapters 1 and 2 of The Power Moves sit inside this same enclosure: the collectivist extinction burst, and “Two Patterns: The Wolf in the Pulpit and the Wolf in the Pews”.