That's right, I'm back bitches and here is another fan fic. AHEM.
After 9 straight hours pissing at my station, I zip up my pants and head to the cafeteria, 10 and a half gallons, I think I did a decent job. I grab my plate of some sort of mash that looks like potatoes but most likely isn't and a can of corn. Sitting down next to my friend Jaden Smith (Yes, he is a muppet that man is 100% a muppet.) who was hitting the mash with his spork, for those who are unaware, muppet piss is one of the most desired things that anyone could want, imagine normal piss but with ginger ale and banana flavoring and the chemical properties of heroin. Nearly 200 million americans suffer from muppet piss addictions, although most of the time it goes untreated. Drinking muppet piss is unethical practice since usually you must have piss slaves to produce the top tier urine, companies like amazon and nestle usually kidnap rouge muppets that they see on the streets and force them to piss. Usually if the muppets have a good enough lawyer they can live freely with a restraining order against them, although the big companies always win with a 99.99% success rate. But back to the story. Sitting with Jaden Smith, watching him hit his food, he looks up at me and asks, "All I wanted was to be in movies and create music, not to be a piss slave." clenching the spork in his hand and tears forming. I pat him on his back as I stomach the disgusting mash, "Unless you get the funds for a lawyer then we're stuck here." Then all of a sudden I hear my name called through the speakers, "MUPPET PISS SLAVE-220536 HEAD TO THE CHAMBERS PLEASE." Oh God. Please not today not now, I start kicking and screaming as I get dragged to the chambers, just to see a needle injected into me, then it all goes dark. What did I do? Wasn't I a good muppet? - Unnamed Muppet Piss slave.
I am too emotionally vulnerable for this right now
Sometimes Brennan’s degree in religious studies shines through in an awe-inspiring way. Take, for example, the Temple of the Fallen Sun from episode 17 of Fantasy High Junior Year: it is explicitly an imperial temple. Now, the obvious level is that its symbols are all about conquest, but on a deeper level, its very nature is an imperial conquest.
The reveal, towards the end of the Bad Kids’ time in the temple, that the Sunstone Empire did not originally build this place is also a reflection of the imperial project. It took a faith that was life-giving for its people and twisted it into something foul, something that in D&D was explicitly infernal, but it could not completely erase the underlying divinity. At the end, they could not remove the underlying uncorrupted temple infrastructure; at the end, they could not twist Ankarna’s core nature so much that she would be willing to kill her sister or her spouse. The imperial faith of conquest can take over a religion, Brennan seems to be telling us, but it cannot fully transform the spark of divinity at the core of the original faith.
So let’s now talk about Spyre’s Church of Sol.
Maybe it wasn’t planned that way, but the longer the Fantasy High saga goes on, the more clear it seems to me that the Church of Sol is in many ways the greater scope villain of the Bad Kids’ tale. For Junior Year, it’s not just that complete slimebag Bobby Dawn, the Church of Sol’s resident celebrity cleric, is actively onside with Porter’s plan to ascend to godhood; it’s also that in the Temple of the Fallen Sun, the Legend Lore spell told us that it was the Church of Sol who planted the idea with the Sunstones of transforming their god from a sun god to a god of war and conquest!
Note, importantly, that it is the Church of Sol and not Sol himself who planted this idea. Legend Lore told us that, actually, Sol himself was HAPPY with (re)uniting the various groups of Spyre’s gods into one community. Rather, it was Sol’s church that noticed their God’s domain was divided and decided to do something about it. Recall, also, that it was the Church of Sol that innovated Devil’s Nectar; it’s entirely possible that Sol was deliberately kept out of the loop when it came to the church’s plans to make him into the One True Sun God.
Now, we also know that there’s a kind of henotheistic trinity-like thing going on with Sol, Gallicaea, and Helio. There’s some sort of family thing going on with Sol as the top Father God and Helio as the Crystal Dragon Jesus son with the serial numbers filed off; witness the decidedly evangelical Christianity flavor of their related churches. There’s also the whole vibe from both the Church of Sol and Helio’s followers that their gods are the only correct deities to follow and any other faith (or way of life) is Dangerously Wrong. This plays directly into the way that they really kicked off the chaos of Freshman Year and therefore the Bad Kids saga.
Yeah, Kalvaxus was the big bad of Freshman Year, but he and his direct minions weren’t the first enemies that the Bad Kids fought. That would be Doreen and the Corn Cuties, who were themselves borne of the attempt by Coach Daybreak and the Harvestmen cult to corrupt their own faith’s chosen and break the world.
This is actually deeply important: while Kristen’s parents are assholes and directly tied to a doomsday cult version of Helioic faith, there’s always been an implication that beyond the Harvestmen there’s a healthier version of the church of Helio that we haven’t really been able to interact with. And that’s okay: even a healthier version of Helio probably wouldn’t have been healthy for Kristen, given the extent of religious trauma she’s had to deal with, so it makes sense that even in Freshman year Kristen was being offered by Heaven itself alternate ways to have faith.
In Sophomore Year, we got a glimpse of the conflict within Gallican faith, with Tracker discovering in Fallinel a more oppressive and passive version of her faith, and choosing essentially to stay behind to try and breathe new life into it. Importantly, we learned Fallinel Gallicaea has a relationship with Sol, and so their churches are intertwined; Brennan even talked in Sophomore Year about how Gallicaea in Fallinel was being shaped by her State Church followers there. It was that twisted Gallican church that duped Cassandra’s original followers into forcing her transformation into the Nightmare King, you may recall.
What this all seems to be pointing to is the existence of an organization entwined with the Church of Sol that discovered Devil’s Nectar and a way to twist divinity to their ends by manipulating followers into the shapes most suiting their ends. We know from Pok Gukgak’s cautious statements that even the celestial-level actors have some side eye for Sol’s supposed followers. We know from Bakur that there’s an open question as to whether Sol or his followers are REALLY calling the shots. So: if Sol’s followers have their own plans, what’s their goal in all this corruptive influence that they’ve been spreading around?
Now, here’s where we circle back around to Brennan’s knowledge of how real world religions and real world people work: the goal may simply be power and domination. In the real world, the connection between the State and some sort of organized Church power has always been a place where power and control could be minted. A cornerstone of the Roman Empire’s system of control was the idea of the Imperial Cult: you can absolutely continue worshipping your personal god as long as you also acknowledge that god’s place is subservient in the larger Roman order to Rome’s chosen divinity. On the other side of the world, China’s system emphasized having the Mandate of Heaven in order to rule; even their top divinity the August Personage of Jade would lose his job if he did not stay within the rules of the system.
In short: a group of folks who’ve figured out how to manipulate faith to make their positions indisputably Right are very dangerous in any world, and Brennan is absolutely correct to cast them as the villains behind the scenes manipulating everything.
Sahoni patch notes:
-Updated color pallet
-added more details like the corn husk dolly
-adjusted some elements of the ui
This is my fursona, something and someone deeply personal to me.
My fursona is a Wolf Person from my nations stories, but I tend to say red wolf (canis rufus) for simplicity's sake. It's easier than giving a cosmology lesson and recapping about 2 traditional sagas, a folktale, and a couple language jokes more times than not. A Wolf Person is not really a wolf, but a wolf-like magical creature and unparalleled hunter. And there are stories of them using magic and supernatural powers as they join hunting bands with legendary heroes, kill monsters, and even act as assassins.
Mine works as a Librarian, using those hunting skills to hunt down information. He practices southern cunning, a syncretic magic from my Appalachian home that combines the folk traditions of Tsalagi (my folks), Irish, Scottish, German, and West African peoples into something it's own. Helps with doing magical oddjobs for the magical and non-magical folks in the community.
I tried my best to layer meaning for me in there, things from home. The story he's based off of is deeply personal. There are tattoos for stories I grew up with, basket patterns, ribbons, and beading. Earrings a cousin of mine wears to powwow. I've been in this fandom a long time and having something that reads native and pushes back on some of the more racist elements of fandom is important to me. Especially considering this is basically me as a wolf (person). I hope y'all like him too.
royal is scrolling on Tumblr. it is almost 1:00. it got up at 11:30 ish. it has been playing games on its phone. all the food in its fucking house sucks.
royal noticed that it got increasingly irritated at the world for being boring. the world is boring. royal is bored. royal is irritated. additionally, royal notices that it's stomach hurts.
this is a sign of hunger.
royal does not get off the couch. royal instead continues playing game on phone.
the music it is listening to is getting increasingly mid. and irritating. because it's not giving royal the desired amount of dopamine.
there is literally no good food in the house.
royal is now sitting on the couch writing this post.
you may think, "royal, you're being cringe, writing about yourself in third person"
and to that he says "I literally could not give less of a fuck it is on you for finding this post especially if I don't tag it and especially especially if I don't even fucking post it hah checkmate bitch what does checkmate even mean I don't play chess anyway"
"royal go eat" come the distressed cries of the crowd. royal is being mean to them.
royal does not fucking care royal doesn't want to eat
go to your fridge, her brain says. go to your fucking fridge. there is some food.
for your information, dear reader, I do not want a tortilla with rice and cheese and chicken, and nor do I want quiche. I do not want to make grilled cheese nor do I want to make scrambled eggs.
I should eat. I don't know what food I even fucking want.
oh look I'm in first person this needs to change
royal says ":("
GET UP OFF YOUR COUCH AND GO TO FRIDGE. NOW.
I just tried playing my music again "there's no length I wouldn't go if it was you I had to save" dammit eurylochus you damn fucked up
good song I'm just pissed off at life
all my problems would probably be solved if I proper took care of my body
it's clarinet time bitches
it's not clarinet time bitches
I have cupcakes that I made yesterday
there's corn
I hate my life
WOULDNT YOU LIKE A TASTE OF THE POWER
right. it's tortilla time
OH MY GOD I CAN HAVE SPRITE :DD
bye losers <3
possible tags that I could not care less about tagging: ADHD