#church is illusion obv

[oorevitcejda]

i wish toh was one of those shows that went on for like 10 years and spawnned hundreds of aus and are ala adventure time and ppl made their own witchesonas/demonsonas and palisman bc ive only seen a little bit of au-ifying and loved every bit, but theres not like... a whole bunch

[subzeroparade]

I finished!!! With DLC and everything, now I’m a squid baby hanging out with the Doll for the rest of eternity. Super excited that my self-imposed ban on lore videos and fics are lifted, and now I can read!

Not to diss Elden Ring, gods know I love the Lands Between, but Bloodborne’s story just hits different. With ER it feels like it’s all a giant family squabble, but in Bloodborne it’s the collective human hubris that fucked everything up. The Great Ones in BB seem to be way more sympathetic and often victims of men’s actions, where in ER the Outer Gods appear to be more malevolent. Idk, it’s almost like Marika and the Greater Will is a success story of how to commune with the Great Ones properly and establish a mutually beneficial world order compared to whatever they were trying to do in BB. From a “all soulsborne games are connected” perspective it’s pretty neat.

With that said, I’m dying to know your takes on the lore. I’ve always felt in the beginning (the beginning of the game as well, to a certain extend) everything was your normal level of Victorian horror——vampires, werewolves, hunters, scholars that seek higher knowledge, but all under control and supernatural events were few and far between, known only to certain individuals. It’s only until the event of the Fishing Hamlet and the establishment of the Healing Church, or even after the schism of the Choir and the Mensis, that things went publicly tits up. Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game (I want to say 30ish years based on Willem’s age and since he’s the only one alive from that time it’s a good time indicator. But then again is he actually alive? Extending his existence through unnatural means sounds like something he’d totally do)? Did our action really change anything? Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”? Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst. But I don’t know how plausible that theory is.

So sorry for my rambling, I just have so many thoughts in my head and excited to share them with you before I do the same in your comment section 😭 Anyway, since AO3 is back up it’s great time to start diving into BB fics!

Wow this sure is An Ask :’)

First of all, congrats on becoming A Squid! Enjoy godhood. 

The rest of this under the cut for length.

BB and ER are certainly vastly different in their storytelling. I remain a big fan of how the spectrum of ER’s themes run from Greek tragedy to medieval succession struggles. Personally, I find the familial plot points of it to be the most interesting - as well as the vast passage of time and sense of decay and mythology imbued in the world. Admittedly I don’t care as much for shipping in ER - outside of writing Godwyn/Fortissax, obvs - because the legacy and mythos parts of it seem so incredibly rich by comparison (hence why I don’t write BB characters as being related, as many people seem to - I burnt out on family drama themes writing for ER).  

BB, by contrast, is somehow very immediate in its history, in its active crisis, and it feels very grounded in humanity in a way that ER does not. In ER I feel constantly reminded that we are a shitty little lowly Tarnished and cannot pretend to understand the millennia that have past - even since the Shattering - or the scraps we’re now sniffing at in the wake of all that. But humans in BB feel close enough to the gods that they’re compelled to reach for them - scholars, clergymen, institutions, etc - only to realise the gods are crueler and more incomprehensible than even those of ER, while the consequences of their actions are significantly and viscerally more personal. ER has gods as a product of divinity and mythmaking, and BB has them, in a weird sense, as a facet of the Promethean impulse gone horribly wrong. If you really want to know my take on some of these specific questions, I’ve answered similar ones under the ask tag - but am occasionally cagey about some of these, because I use them for plot points in future fics. I’d rather a reader go in not being too familiar with my speculation, and that my conjecture is a means to an end (storytelling) rather than just info-dumping of “here’s what I think happened” - but that’s just my personal inclination. (Which is not to say I don’t appreciate other people’s elaborate lore speculation because I do, and there are some great and heavily-researched headcanons that I don’t always share but love to rotisserie in my head.)

As for what I can answer - 

Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? 

Semi-answered this in a previous ask here but since cosmic what-the-fuckery is pretty abundant otherwise, I like parts of lorecrafting to be pretty grounded in opposition to that - so I do believe Yharnam folk experience multiple nights of the Hunt, a rhythm of descent into madness influenced by the moon and the slow dissolution of the Church. I think dawn comes for them, but they know the next night will be worse, each new moon another instance of the city unravelling around them.  

How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game? 

Touched on this a bit here. This is based on the pacing I establish in my own writing, but I give the events between the Hamlet and the PC Hunter’s arrival about 50 years, give or take. 

But then again is he [Willem] actually alive? 

I think about catatonic rocking chair Willem like a potted plant on a windowsill. Decorative. 

Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”?

Hammering this out for an upcoming fic, because I haven’t entirely made up my mind - also about whether the Moon creates the Dream before Mensis usurps Mergo’s Nightmare, or vice versa - or whether the two happen around the same time, and what their separate or overlapping goals are. I do think Mensis has different goals than the Church, to a certain point. I’ve had some pretty interesting discussions with mutuals about this (and feel free to share thoughts if you have). 

Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? 

I tackle this with worldbuilding in The Feast We Were Promised, if you’re inclined to read it. Tldr: nothing exists in a vacuum, certainly not in a society with the kind of complexity demonstrable in Bloodborne, so obviously there was both a system of belief and system of government before the Healing Church politicked and/or strong-armed its way into power. 

As for cathedrals (and this is where being a historian by profession is pretty useful in worldbuilding): you could built pretty remarkable structures with pretty efficient timing, especially in the late 19th century. To use a nearby example of my own, Sacré-Coeur basilica at Montmartre took about 60 years from scratch in the latter half of the 19thc (as in there was nothing there before, no minor structure) and that’s considered long - it probably would’ve taken less time without the multiple wars and upheaval over that timespan. Likewise, a structure like Notre-Dame (the Paris one, not the Montreal one) underwent extensive restorations and additions in the 19th century, especially under Viollet-le-Duc (whose students would go on to do the same thing to gothic cathedrals elsewhere in France), but the baseline of the structure was already there - which is what I propose in the case of Yharnam: that much of the city’s civil and religious urban structure was already present (perhaps in the form of Pthumerian ruins in some cases). As in most European cities, buildings sometimes date from the Roman Empire and are gradually embellished, redone, or expanded upon over the course of the following centuries/millennia when funds are plenty and the ruling class is willing. If you think about what Haussmann did to Paris in less than twenty years, I imagine that to be the kind of equivalent of how the Church “cleans” up Yharnam and modernises it. But it’s my own preferred headcanon to imagine Yharnam was a little underwhelming before the Church’s public works; it could’ve also already been a splendid, thriving city.  (I did some work on Viollet-le-Duc's gargoyles like a decade ago, I highly encourage checking out his early drafts of them, they are remarkable images).

I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst.

I touch on this in Feast a bit as well, but I think it’s really open to interpretation and you can make all kinds of convincing and interesting arguments about Cainhurst’s Pthumerian legacy. Again, on a grounded level beyond cosmic fuckery, I imagine Cainhurst and Yharnam’s larger territories have a centuries-old conflict a la English vs the French type of situation, and every skirmish and hostility arises out of this longstanding hostility and struggle over land and resources. I do think Cainhurst is tied to Pthumeru, though, via actual legacy, in a way Yharnam is not; and so I think Cainhurst would have claim to the labyrinths and the Healing Blood in a way that would threaten the Church’s supremacy in Yharnam and have ultimately kicked off hostilities, etc etc, until you get to the Cainhurst Massacre. 

All that to say enjoy your squidhood and any BB fics you read :)

[yourmexahistory]

Did u know that mexico was once technically under the french empire?

Yeah, do you know the whole 5th of may thing? well it's a celebration of the battle that the mexican state (with the help of indigenous people) won against the french, but they didn't won the war.

So, context. After mexico got its "independence" there were several other states that wanted to take over it: spain, britain, usa, and france. So the french try first through whats called "the war of the cakes" which sounds so much fun than it actually was (a lawsuit that some french bakers put out against the goverment after some people trashed their business). Anyways things happened and this powers (except the usa) decided that the mexican state owe them money so it started to pay whats called "the foreign debt or la deuda externa" which continues to exist 'till this day. Things happen again and now Benito Juarez, Jalisco native of indigineous heritage, masonero (sortof part of the ilumanti? i think?) and face of the Liberal Party whose motto was "The respect to the right of others makes peace", becames president, and decides to just stop paying said debt.

The european powers were angry and they threaten with invasion, but alas, Benito was like wait "abrazos no balazos or hugs not guns. " (reference to the current president of México) "and you win, I'll pay you the money", and the powers were like, you know what, yeah, and retreated. All except the french. (It was the third french empire? The one with Napoléon the third), who decided to invade México, again with around 6 thousand soldiers, which some die in the battle of puebla but at the end they were able to get into CDMX. Making it now part of the french empire.

However it wasn't like Napoleon the 3rd would've wanted to administrate the state/piece of land/ whatever it was at the time, plus he had wanted to established a local economy. So he talked to the Conservative party in México about what where their ideas for a candidate, and they said, a monarch (european obvs.) that was Catholic, and they ended up finding Maximiliano de Hasburgo, an austrian archiduque. Legend has it that the man was like "I'm not going unless the people in México want me to be their "king" or something like it. To which of course the conservative party was like "of course, they love you" (they didn't?? Like you'll see its weird).

Max de Asburgo arrived to Veracruz two years after the Battle of Puebla (aka 5th of May) in May, 1864 and then later made a big entrance to the Capital and all. He was the one that was like, you know what "we should built a castle near this lake that's called mountain of the crickets" which is why we now have the Castillo de Chapultepec, he put in vogue the fashion of having the president reside in a Castle until the presidential palace? home? in Los Pinos was created, which has been changed once again by the current president, who was like "fuck that, I'm staying at the castle" (i think, memory is a bit illusive). That being said, is important to note that Benito hadn't dissapeared, he still had a goverment, that changed headquarters everytime the conservative/imperial forces knocked, but he was there and he was fighting.

So, the arguments between the liberals and the conservatives, have to do with how the state is administrated in based of three key factors: 1st Republic (aka USA model) vz Monarchy (aka european model) 2nd Centralist vz Federalist and 3rd a lay goverment vz a religious one. And Conservatives where very you know, vocal about their religion and how México should be yk a Catholic State, and it WAS, but freedom of religion allowed to people to persue other spiritual/religious avenues therefore weakening the power of the church. And Max didn't only do that, he also took away the good of the chuch and nationalized them, and ecleciastic juristiction- which limit the role of the church in tribunals and stuff.

Max wasn't what conservatives expected. He did ruled under a monarchy, though I think we should know it wasn't an absolutist one, HE had the executive power and when he wasn't present her wife had it (She's a controversial figure some love her some hate her, she has a corrido in her name titled goodbye mom Carlota which refers to when she was exiled after her husband was murdered, but i'm getting ahead of myself). The lesgislative power was manged by the congress of ministers, and the judicial by the tribunal of accounts. But the most important part was that He made the law under which the empire would be mange in accordance to european LIBERAL principles as: personal freedom, equality under law, personal security, people not being able to enter your home without explicit permission, freedom of expresion (or more acurrately freedom of the press), freedom of work, and the most important for the historical context freedom of RELIGION.

Anyways, 2 years later the French lost against the Gringos in some battle, and they are like "we're out of north america" (they still had the french guayana, and i think still do? so they're still in america but they left México). So they retire the french troops that were in México and practically left Max and Carlota to fend for themselves. Things didn't look great for Max the conservatives hated him for being a liberal and the liberals for being a conservative, Benito had taken the opportunity of the french retiring to seized power and get back into the presidential seat. Benito told Max "Go back to where you came from" or something like it, and Max did wanted to go back to Austria but his mom and brother back there were like "And come back as a COWARD, a fail Monarch. No, you stay there and die like men".

And that's tecnically how México was part of the French empire under austrian administration. As always take anything I say with big excepticism, enjoy your 5th of May celebrations.

And die like men he did. The republican party, the one of Benito, held him a trial found him guilty and tie his hands, blindfolded him, and then shoot him to dead the 19 of July 1867. Legend has it that before he was shot he said the following words "Let the blood spilled by my death heal the wounds of México." His blood, however, did not heal any wounds.

[to-many-towered-camelot]

book notes

for anyone who is interested in a nuanced take on fairy beliefs vs the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, this book by Richard Firth Green was actually so good, if your library has it:

[Image: Front cover of the book ‘Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church’ by Richard Firth Green]

like, obvs it’s just one person’s take on a very complex topic, but it’s well-written, well-researched, and it uses a bunch of Arthurian examples throughout to explore this dynamic (see under cut)

really interesting exploration of how the Church’s response evolved from the early-High Middle Ages (”dude, you believe in fairies? hhhmmm, do penance for 10 days”) to the Late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period (”kill them for heresy and witchcraft!”) 

and how it enfolded vernacular/fairy beliefs into Christian doctrine as fairies being either a) demons or b) the illusions of demons (and how dangerous/bad these demons were depended on the time/location/cleric in question - some packaged fairies as “neutral” demons who fell when the rebel angels did, and who must be punished on Earth but will return to Heaven on Doomsday - potentially doing this to soften things for their parishioners, who often held these fairy beliefs and reconciled them with Christianity, uh, differently than the Church officially would prefer)

and enduring belief in fairies existed in both common and aristocratic circles (can see this in medieval romances, although they’re not the only source of evidence), rather than just being used as cultural “decoration” by a more sceptical upperclass

aaaaand because of this conflation of fairy = demon, you get a really interesting blend/overlap with medieval demonology and enduring “folk” beliefs (obvs not all of medieval demonology was just rebranded fairies, but some of it defs was - you see stories being retold with “devil” instead of “elf”, for example)

INCLUDING in Arthuriana - how you get Morgan the Fairy (”le Fay”) vs Morgan who was raised in a nunnery and learned dark magic there, the Lady of the Lake as a (largely) positive force, Merlin inexplicably as a (perceived to be...) Good Guy despite being the literal antichrist, the Green Knight and all the overlap with Christian symbolism in that story, etc, etc. and they all just either??? co-exist in the same stories or appear through either more fay or more ~Christian lenses depending on the version

and it creates a very interesting and very confusing soup of Stuff stemming from a very confusing - and sometimes dangerous - soup of official and unofficial beliefs evolving over hundreds of years

anyway, WRT Arthuriana it’s got (and ymmv on these, but they’re all interesting thoughts):

(i think in Gottfried’s Tristan???) apparently Tristan has a rainbow fairy dog called Petitcriu...name a knight less deserving of such a Good Boy smh

Chretien’s Yvain flooding out Laudine at the fountain (...jerk) as a continuation of the beliefs surrounding a magical Spring at Barenton 

Gingalain moving from being the son of Gawain and the fairy Blanchemal (and having a fairy love interest, Pucelle) in the French OG version (~1200-ish) to being the son of Gawain and his human mistress (with Pucelle also being human) in a later 15th-C Middle English version)

AJDKN UJ IOE E Merlin’s conception, that one’s a wild ride - theologians REALLY didn’t like the idea of demons being fertile, and the work-arounds they came up with were...incredible. but skipping over that sheer comedy, the author draws links between Merlin’s conception and the general trend of claiming a fairy lover/whatever when a difficult-to-explain pregnancy arose. He also theorises that Geoffrey’s idea for Merlin’s father being a demon/fairy may have come from Nennius saying that Merlin/Ambrosius’ mother “never knew a man”. Later adaptations of this storyline made it even more fay-like (when they weren’t, like Robert de Boron, making it more fucked-up) by making Merlin’s father invisible (Wace) or a super attractive guy in swanky gold clothes (Layamon) - and Vortigern’s advisor explaining the creatures that lived between the earth and the moon until doomsday, etc, etc (walking that line between fairy and incubi, whichhhhhh was not clearly delineated in the Middle Ages the way it is now). also there’s one 13th-C Anglo-Norman poem where Merlin’s father is a bird that transforms into a dashing young squire, which isn’t terribly demon-y. So even though most versions of this story describe Merlin’s dad as an incubi-demon, what people understood this to mean may have been more fay-ish that we’d expect nowadays (depending on the reader, and also on authorial intention - some are pretty explicit that he’s a demon [many clerics keen to push this as the main narrative], while others refer to him as an elf or fairy). some contemporary scepticism during this time about Merlin having any sort of supernatural parentage as well

[none of the same Church anxieties about explaining away how the Plantagenets and other aristocratic families claim a female fairy ancestress - maybe bc there’s none of the stress about patrilineal bloodlines??? who knows! but yeah, much less thought given to those stories in ecclesiastical circles, and they were very popular in vernacular romances (male aristocratic wish fulfilment?). also, fairy enchantments =/= necromancy, so there are stories like the non-cyclic Lancelot where the Lady of the Lake is found out to be “a fairy by education, not by nature or heredity” (Elspeth Kennedy), with the spirits used in necromancy being demons, not fairies. also potential trend of female-associated magic becoming more passive and book-learned, gradually demonising it leading up to early-modern witch hunts.]

Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia and in the Vita Merlini being actually pretty circumspect about saying whether or not Arthur was alive/dead, returning/not returning, maybe due to his work/text being a (hypothesised) defence of the Welsh as being “civilised” (and having been so for centuries before the Normans came) - with the corollary that believing in Arthur’s return was somehow “uncivilised”. Author argues that this may be due to an association with fairy beliefs, and that Layamon is the one that makes Avalon explicitly fey. Also the author describes Arthur as living in a “feminised version of the Christian heaven” (iconic) and says that later writers and people could be very scornful of this belief held by the Britons/Welsh/etc, and that it was contrary to orthodox ways of thinking. 

Links the “discovery” of Arthur and Guinevere’s bodies in Glastonbury in the late 12th-C as similar to when individuals found the bodies of their loved ones, thus making it much harder to believe (and hope) that they were still alive in fairyland. Makes a suggestion that the monks in Glastonbury who “found” these bodies may have been trying to curry favour with the English crown (i.e. champion/hope of the Welsh isn’t coming back) but also may have been trying to “help”/”save”/correct the thoughts/ideology of the Welsh (i.e. “set them on the correct path to salvation”). Lots of medieval writers describing Arthur as living in “fairyland”. Precedent of people visiting fairyland and returning, so Avalon/fairyland =/= a place only for the dead (i.e. Arthur isn’t dead). An Arthurian example, albeit a less explicitly fay one, is Lancelot getting in and out of Gorre (with Gorre as a “typically supressed and rationalised” version of fairyland) in Chretien’s Knight of the Cart.

Some stuff about the wild horde (distinct from the wild hunt) being presented by some writers as very penitential (i.e. they are departed souls that may look like they’re bearing arms/hunting/whatever as they did in life, but really they are in agony e.g. because their weapons burn them) and tbh demonic (black armour, carrying torches, ominous aesthetic). Other writers thought maybe it was - once again! - demonic impersonators rather than actual mortal souls. (Should note also that the wild horde/wild hunt motifs were not always associated with their being dead). Relevant in the Arthurian context because Arthur and his court were sometimes associated with the idea of the wild horde (as in, sometimes the wild horde is described as Arthur’s court living it up in a cool, undying sort of way - “in the likeness of knights hunting or jousting, commonly known as the household of Hellequin or of Arthur” [Etienne de Bourbon, a medieval writer] - with Hellequin’s household often being used to encompass either the wild hunt or the wild horde). Ultimate point made by the author (props to him, he’s always like “if i’m right” lol) that for many clerical writers, it was very uncomfortable to leave people with the impression that Arthur and his court were living it up in fairyland (and similar for other figures associated with the wild hunt/horde) and this idea needed to be corrected/shaped to suit more orthodox perspectives - e.g. tying in with notions of purgatory, etc. 

Aaaand this one was exciting to me just bc i’ve vaguely heard about Arthur and his knights snoozing under a hill, but for some reason i could only remember this being in Victoria-era-and-onwards poetry. 3 versions of the same tale, where a servant looks for his master’s lost horse on a Sicilian mountain. Version 1) servant of a bishop finds his master’s horse in the beautiful palace of Arthur’s court beneath Mt Etna. Aside from the fact that the ancient wound Arthur received from Mordred opens once a year, it’s not very purgatory-like. Version 2) a dean’s servant is told by an old man that King Arthur has the horse on Mt Gyber (Mt Etna). he is told that his master must attend Arthur’s court in 14 days, but the dean laughs it off...then sickens and dies on the appointed day (whoops). Enough differences to this story compared to the first to suggest an oral circulation. Also a note in the version/text that such mountains are said to be the mouth of hell, and only the wicked are sent there, not the chosen. Version 3) Etienne again! Also likely changed with intervening oral circulation. The master is not an ecclesiastical figure, and Arthur’s palace is now a populous city - also Arthur is not referred to, just a nameless prince. There is a gatekeeper who warns the servant not to eat or drink while he’s there (that...is a very fairy-ish proscription). This mountain is apparently reputed to be the site of purgatory. The book author (Richard, i mean) ties these versions in with other stories/accounts of different entrances to purgatory (e.g. one on an island in an Irish lake) as being part of a gradual process of “rendering [...] fairyland purgatorial”. 

Finally, Gawain in Roman van Walewein: To get to an ‘earthly paradise’ [i.e. King Assentijn’s garden with its fountain of youth - side note that ‘earthly paradises’ were often popularly described to be fairyland/where fairies live, in addition to their theological functions, e.g. Avalon was sometimes described as an earthly paradise...i should also say that purgatory was frequently thought to be located beside earthly paradise, so there’s the proximity element] and the castle containing it, Gawain must cross a river (guided by a magical talking fox) that a) has waters that burn like fire, and b) can only be crossed by using a bridge sharper than a razor. His reaction? “Is it the enchantment of elves or magic / that I see?”. He is then guided by the fox underneath the river through a tunnel, and is told that the river’s source is in the depths of hell, and “[the river] is the true purgatory / All souls, having departed from the body / Must come here to bathe.” So it’s a very strong intermingling of fairy and purgatorial imagery/ideas!

I dunno, I just found this very ??? satisfying to read

it leaned towards lit-crit at times (which, considering the subject matter, is honestly fair enough), but it was more respectful of vernacular beliefs than so many other academic takes i see (ofc ymmv re: anything to do with non-Christian major religions, but i think the author’s pretty solid on this!), and it had an explanation for the survival of these beliefs that imo made a lot of sense, especially from a pan-European perspective, not just a Celtic one 

plus it explored the undeniable damage done by Christianity over history without making up some “ranged battle between paganism and the Church” that i see  e v e r y w h e r e  in casual Arthurian circles...which, like, i empathise with the vibe, but also! that’s just straight-up historical revisionism! (i blame MZB and the 80′s for that one)

(there was a fantastic post floating around a while ago about how the religious syncretism in Arthurian literature is much more interesting than peeling away all of the Catholicism in the medieval lit (...you ?? don’t end up with much left?) and saying that this is more “accurate” to some obscure original)

anyway yeah yeah ymmv but it’s v interesting 😊