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thepringlesofblood · 3 months

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An Attempt at Explaining Bulbian Church Theology

so I watched ACOC a year or two ago, and I watched TRW as it came out, and now I’m going back and re-watching ACOC with that context in mind, and I have many questions.

a few disclaimers

this shit rules. it’s wild how much thought and effort Brennan & Matt put into Bulbian theology and the history and inner workings of the church. at no point am I implying anything to the contrary. this is “tf, guys? (affectionate)” not “tf, guys? (derogatory)”

the order of things is fucked up bc prequel, and bc Matt necessarily did a bunch of it w/out Brennan bc he was a PC. some things have the simple Doylist explanation of “Brennan didn’t think they were ever coming back to that bit” or “it’s a metric fuckload of lore written several years before Matt came onto the project, of course some things are going to contradict.” I know and agree with these reasons. I am coming at this from as Watsonian a perspective as I can - trying to find in-world reasons for things rather than real-life reasons - because I think it’s a fun thought exercise.

at no point am I talking shit about either Brennan or Matt. ik people have a lot of feelings about Matt’s DMing in TRW, but I think he did great, and he added some fascinating new lore about the theology of Calorum which I am eager to sink my teeth into. he seems like a cool dude, he and Brennan wrote some extremely cool lore, and that’s all I’ll say about that.

so. let’s get crack-a-lackin’

Let’s define our terms.

we got our two Big Terms from ACOC - the Prophidian Heresy and the Ramsian Doctrine. The Prophidian Heresy is the only one to re-appear in TRW, as the Prophidian Theodicy. this is bc it was not declared to be heresy (aka fake/against the church’s beliefs) yet, so it was just another theory within the church

we’ve got about four big factions, very unequal in power:

Belizabeth Brassica (& the church under her rule)

the Sanctis Putris

the Archbishop Camille Colliflour (aka the Avatar of Deus Pa’Zuul)

The Few Good Individuals in The Church*

we’re mostly talking about Brassica and Sanctis Putris.

*Saint Citrina, local churches in Candia, certain Bulbians in the Dairy Islands, individual churches here and there across the continent that are mentioned as rejecting the Ramsian Doctrine in ACOC.

The Prophidian Heresy/Theodicy

What it says:

The Hungry One is just as powerful as The Bulb

Reasoning:

this is an attempt to explain the questions of “if the Bulb is good and all-powerful, why are there bad things in the world? If the Bulb is more powerful than the Hungry One, why hasn’t it beat the shit out of him yet, if it is truly a force for good?”

What it means in the world:

this is a part of Brassica’s plot to start the apocalypse, but is not the most important thing for her.

It is however important for the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris, who fight to keep the Hungry One at bay.

Questions/observations:

In ACOC Ep.13, when Brennan first mentions the Sanctis Putris, he describes them as “an order of the Church that did not subscribe to the Prophidian Heresy at all. It looks like they are not about the Ramsian Doctrine and causing the apocalypse.”

I think this is a mixing up of words, and that he meant to say “the Ramsian Doctrine” both times, since the Sanctis Putris is against the Ramsian Doctrine. at this point in the campaign the two beliefs have gotten kind of conflated bc they’re both part of the big Brassica Apocalypse Plot.

the in-world explanation could be that after the war the Sanctis Putris pivoted to a different belief - perhaps that the Hungry One is more powerful than the Bulb. very interesting...

in TRW ep 3 Colliflour says “We know the clarity of the Prophidian Theodicy and the terrible shadow that grows outside of the Bulb's light”

so we do know that before the war at least the Sanctis Putris were into it.

The Ramsian Doctrine

What it says:

The Hungry One cannot be destroyed and the final salvation of all souls cannot occur until the Hungry One devours the world

Some souls are healthy and delicious, but some are unhealthy and garbage - Junk Food (Candians)

The Junk Food souls prevent the Hungry One from devouring the world because it wants a “healthy meal”

Reasoning:

in order to work towards this prized final salvation of all souls and destruction of the Hungry One, one must first work towards the apocalypse. Junk Food must be eradicated from the world for that to happen - whether by conversion to the Bulbian faith* or by death.

*it’s at least implied by Calroy’s letter to Brassica in ep. 13 that since he “renounced his pagan ways” and wants to be re-baptized in the Bulbian faith, he gets to live. whether this is true or not we do not find out.

What it means in the world:

This is the excuse Brassica needs to invade and destroy Candia and its magic. Fun fact: she was actually planning to launch a crusade on the Meatlands too before she got got.

Meat isn’t junk food (i don’t think??), so it’s clear that what she’s really after is destroying the rest of Calorum’s ability to access magic - making it so they have to go through the church to get “miracles” rather than using the magic of the deities in their homelands. that’s not Ramsian, it’s just Brassica being power-hungry and mean.

In regards to the Sanctis Putris, they believe they are preventing the apocalypse by bringing rot and mold into the world. they don’t want the Hungry One to devour the world, and since they believe the Hungry One is as powerful as the Bulb, they want to work to bring mold and rot into the world themselves, to give the Bulb a leg up on the opposition, so to speak.

so, the idea that the Hungry One could devour the world, and that that would be a sort of apocalypse, is shared between Brassica and the Sanctis Putris. the difference is, Brassica wants that to happen so the Bulb can finally defeat the Hungry One, and the Sanctis Putris does not want that to happen, so they bring mold and rot into the world so the Hungry One can’t devour it.

Questions/observations:

So while it sounds kind of like the Sanctis Putris are buying into the last tenant of the Ramsian Doctrine - that the Hungry One will only eat a “healthy meal” - they’re not buying into the rest of it, because their definition of “healthy” is different from the one outlined in the rest of the Ramsian Doctrine. The Sanctis Putris don’t seem to care about “Junk Food”, just rot & mold.

TRW ep. 3 Colliflour: “Through prosperity and peace, Calorum becomes ripe and pliable. It becomes the perfect meal to forever roil and burn within its belly. The hidden scripture, the Festered Tome, it holds the truth that will save us all. The Hungry One will not eat that which is spoiled...Only through death can the lands be stained and unclean. Only through rot can the world be saved and endure under the Great Bulb's light”

the Sanctis Putris depend on conflict vs peace and rot vs growth across the whole of Calorum, while the Ramsian Doctrine depends upon specific people (Candians) being eradicated

in ACOC ep. 13 Brennan says this “The correspondence between the Archbishop Oliver Onionpatch and the Sanctus Putris saying the Sanctus Putris has located the home and high temple of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, and have found the Ice Cream Temple. The date they give, they say that their expedition should arrive there the morning of Harvest Dawn the seventh”

onion boy is a Brassica lackey - a Ramsian. swapping letters with the Sanctis Putris, famously anti-Ramsian. ???

my question is this - why are the Sanctis Putris running errands for Brassica if they have fundamentally opposing beliefs? why are they sending out an expedition on the orders of someone trying to start an apocalypse that they’re trying to prevent?

3 potential reasons

blackmail - Brassica says “I am the head of the Church, this is what’s happening, put up or shut up. Do what I want or I eradicate you”

quid pro quo - a favor for a favor, Brassica is giving them something in exchange for them doing this for her

common enemy

it serves the Sanctis Putris to have the Church be more powerful since a lot of their people are in the Church, and of course it serves Brassica to empower the Church. Killing the Sugar Plum Fairy is one way to do that.

im uncertain though, as the Sanctis Putris has people from all over the place, and potentially at least one Candian who is against it.

although, if the Sanctis Putris intend to split with Brassica, if may also not serve them to have the Church be more powerful.

Compare/contrasting Brassica v Sanctis Putris

Both beliefs are Prophidian, since for the Hungry One to eat everything it would need to be at least equal in power to the Bulb (both groups believe in the Bulb’s inherent goodness, and that if it had the power it would stop the Hungry One from doing this).

Both see themselves as helping the Bulb overpower the Hungry One, Brassica by causing the Apocalypse and the Sanctis Putris by preventing it.

Both identify an aspect of the world that is preventing the Hungry One from devouring it. Brassica points to “junk food”, while the Sanctis Putris points to mold and rot.

I saw a post a while back that positioned the two terms as Belizabeth Brassica’s beliefs vs the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris. This is not the case.

The Ramsian Doctrine [in its totality] is exclusive to Brassica, yes, but the Prophidian Heresy does not encompass the totality of the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris. It just says that the Hungry One is as powerful as the Bulb. the rest of their shit is their own.

the Sanctis Putris do subscribe the last tenant of the Ramsian Doctrine (that the Hungry One wants a healthy meal), but interpret “healthy” as meaning something else, so I wouldn’t say their beliefs are Ramsian overall, even if one idea overlaps.

plus, Brassica also needs the Prophidian Heresy to exist, since it offers a reason for why the Bulb doesn’t just come down and make everything better - it can’t, since it and the Hungry One are equal in power.

now where the fuck does Deus Pa’Zuul fall into this?

Brennan described the feeling of discovering Deus Pa’Zuul as “eldritch horror” and frankly I agree. A lot of the genre of eldritch horror revolves around the unknown, and specifically the unknowable, so as a result we the audience know very little about it.

What we do know

it’s a garbage disposal, and all the implications that carries, included but not limited to

the place you dispose of rotten food

the physical description - blades, tearing, ripping, whirring

it is a force of pure destruction. the things it destroys are erased from existence. there is no eternity in the Hungry One’s stomach, no salvation in the light of the Bulb, you just end.

it can interact with the world of Calorum through visions and impart magic like the Bulb and the Hungry One do, but does so very, very rarely.

The only two Calorans we know of that it ever contacted directly were Colliflour and Raphaniel.

the rest of the Sanctis Putris had no clue that this was where their leader was taking them - Gemelli straight up fights it.

Speculations

while Colliflour certainly seems to think it fits into the main cosmology of the universe, it feels very clear, to me at least, that it does not.

the Hungry One and the Bulb have next to no physical manifestations in the world of Calorum the way Deus Pa’Zuul does.

sure, a spell might sound like a stomach rumble or emit holy light, but no one ever turns into a lightbulb.

The closest thing is that the Bulb is the Sun, but it remains untouchable and unknowable (until some crazy ass pepper shaker makes a spaceship or something).

the physicality of it makes me feel like it’s a smaller, though no less deadly, force than the Bulb and Hungry One.

there’s also the specificity - we’ve seen the magic of Bulb and Hungry One alike do a million different things. Deus Pa’Zuul’s magic seems less flexible - we only really hear it described or emphasized when Raphaniel casts a more destructive spell, like Shatter, and of course in the finale when it took over Colliflour’s body and the room around them.

(this is also probably bc TRW was a way shorter campaign and thus had much less opportunity to show off new fun ways for it to wreck shop)

The Bulb and the Hungry One are balanced - creation and destruction, light and dark. Deus Pa’Zuul feels like an extraplanar monster. I’d say “demon” but that implies that it’s working for the Hungry One, as he’s the Caloran equivalent of the Devil.

but then again, is that incorrect? in-world, it certainly feels separate from Bulb and Hungry One alike. but if we think about the implications of real-life garbage disposals...people are the ones that operate and control them. if the Hungry One is a person, he would be the one controlling what (and who) the disposal grinds up.

Finally, we have the Few Good Individuals in the Church.

Saint Citrina, in the limited scenes we have from her,

encourages Amethar to follow his heart and not divorce Catherine Ghee if he loves her.

creates a holy relic that forces you to tell the truth

has an argument with Archmage Lazuli about the goings-on with the Order of the Spinning Star

Queen Pamelia says in TRW ep. 1 - “Citrina and myself and many others have taken quite lovingly to the Book of Leaves. We just are careful with which sects of the church wish to impose disparate law and rule upon how we worship.”

later we see her sort of disagreeing with her mom as she is steered away from Raphaniel though, and we don’t really know what’s in the Book of Leaves, except that Saint Citrina enchanted it to force truth-telling at some point before her death.

is “useful” to Calroy and his conspirators until Brassica orders her killed. So, one can assume she was anti-Ramsian in some way.

We know that Primsy and most Dairy Islanders are Bulbian, but don’t get much of their specific beliefs.

There is the scene in the Abbey of the Shimmering Cream with Saccharina, where we basically just learn that that abbey (and potentially area in general) is extremely anti-magic and terrible. We don’t get anything about their feelings vis-a-vis the Ramsian Doctrine though.

Primsy opposes the Ramsian Doctrine & Brassica in general once she hears about it though, so one can assume that she and the people around her don’t prioritize or agree with that in their worship.

We know Caramelinda is Bulbian, and she married Archmage Lazuli, so presumably she does not have the same issues with her use of “pagan” magic as Saint Citrina may have.

Other than that we don’t have a lot on her religious beliefs, except that she wasn’t super stoked about Saccharina as Queen, but I think that was less because of her magic and more because of how violently anti-Bulbian and generally chaotic Saccharina is.

When Brassica’s whole Ramsian Doctrine plan gets set into motion, she gets a whole bunch of letters from churches across the continent that are like “um no??? please don’t cause the apocalypse??”, mostly from Candians (who we can assume are generally anti-Ramsian because they don’t want to die) but also from all the other countries.

So. There we go. Lmk if there’s any inconsistencies or anything ^v^

#dnd #d20 #dimension 20 #d20 spoilers #dimension 20 spoilers #trw spoilers #trw #the ravening war #the ravening war spoilers #acoc spoilers #acoc #original post #theology #cw: religion #cw: religious themes #i'm having a neurodivergent 'i need to talk about this or i will die' episode #so here yall go #I lowkey forgot this post was in my drafts #or it would’ve been out while TRW was actually going on lol.

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thevalleyisjolly · 11 months

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The biggest source of information that we have about the details of the Prophidian Heresy comes, in-canon, from the book that Jet reads in ACOC when she began researching the Bulb. In that book, she learns not only about the Prophidian Heresy but also the Ramsian Doctrine. We also later find out that that’s not the only connection the two philosophies have - Belizabeth Brassica, a champion of the Ramsian Doctrine, was mentored and first ordained by a priest who adhered to (and was executed for) the Prophidian Heresy.

Which led me to think, what is the point of connection? How do these ideologies relate to each other, apart from being fringe beliefs of the Church? With what we’ve learned this season about the FDA, who uphold the Prophidian Heresy, the followers of the two beliefs seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. The FDA wants to stop the end of the world by filling the world with rot and decay, while Belizabeth wants to bring about the end of the world by ensuring that it is only made out of “healthy” food - hence the attempt to annihilate Candia in ACOC. On the surface, they appear to be foes, and Raphaniel even promotes the Ramsian Doctrine in an attempt to undermine the FDA.

Then I realized: sugar doesn’t rot. It can spoil if moisture gets in -Candians are more vulnerable than anyone else in Calorum to watersteel daggers- but sugar acts as a preservative. And so far, there aren’t any known Candians in the FDA.

It’s not about what they have in common ideologically but rather it’s what stands against them both. Although they may seem to have opposite goals -the FDA and the Prophidian Heresy want to “save” the world by preventing its destruction while the Ramsian Doctrine headed by Belizabeth wants the end of the world to come- where they are both similar is that there is room in neither philosophy for Candians. Sugar does not rot, that is a whole part of the world that theoretically remains palatable to the Hungry One. Sugar is “junk food” (according to the Ramsian Doctrine), the Hungry One will not eat the world so long as it is unhealthy. The followers of both heresies may be working to different ends but as per the details of their beliefs, neither group can succeed in their desired goals as long as Candians continue to exist.

I don’t know what, if anything, this means for The Ravening War. We know that the FDA’s plan does not succeed, although we don’t know how it happens. But I think it’s significant to the worldbuilding of Calorum that the biggest heresies of the Church (that we know of), the heresies which so many prominent Church leaders seem to hold to, are fundamentally hostile to the existence of Candia. And I think that even if the vast majority of ordinary Bulbians probably consider these beliefs fringe and heretical, it doesn’t mean that the leaders at the top who do adhere to them aren’t using their influence to promote subtler anti-Candian ideologies.

You don’t get to a genocidal crusade from nowhere. You don’t just declare one day that it’s going to happen, everyone get your armour on and grab a blade and torch, and people just listen to you. But if you spend years cultivating mystery and fear, spreading rumours but never confirmed facts of strange Candian alchemy, that’s how you start to other Candians so that by the time you get to the point where you’re ready to make a move against them, people perceive them as mysterious heathen others “not like us.”

#dimension 20 #the ravening war #dimension 20 spoilers #the ravening war spoilers #this is not very eloquent and is probably two different posts in one but i just think there's something telling here #how the most influential church leaders for decades and maybe centuries had beliefs or belonged to organizations #which were fundamentally at odds with candia #candia is singled out as the 'junk food' of the ramsian doctrine #candy does not rot (and ironically if the fda's plan succeeds; candians should be the people least affected by the mycelium)

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bandtrees · 9 months

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no interest in other people...

@mobpsychogirlweek day 1: tsubomi!!! i've always wanted to draw something artsy with her like this hehe.

#scribbles #takane tsubomi #mp100 girlweek #mp100 girlweek 2023 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #SO tickled by the amount of brassica heresy inspired art for today #cuz im like (points) my friend made that!!!#BUT ITS ALSO JUST. SO FUNNY. DAY 1 OF GIRLWEEK WATCH HER EXPERIENCE THE HORRORS #(and if you HAVENT read brassica heresy by scribefindegil on ao3: what are you doing! tsubomi protag divine tree arc horror au and so epic)#(AND made by my friend scribe who is a total sweetheart and whose writing SLAPS and deserves all the love in the world also.)#anyway all of that aside: this tsubomi art! was fun - getting csp has made me fall even more in love with digital painting haha #hope u all like ^.^ HAPPY GIRLWEEK

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dykeyaoi · 9 months

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HI omg I'm going nuts over that Brassica Heresy art you did!! It's amazing and I'm so glad you're enjoying the fic!!

thank you!!! I very much am, so glad you like it :D

#answers #scribefindegil #the brassica heresy

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waitineedaname · 24 days

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who are some of your favorite fanfic authors?

oh god this is such a hard question bc I'm really bad at keeping track of fics I like. I really should use the bookmarks function, but I do not <3

of the fic writers I can actually remember, I've got a couple from various fandoms I've been in the past few years! for hlvrai, it's absolutely @localdisasterisk. their narrative voice is so distinct and yet matches each character they write so perfectly, and I adore their dialogue. Scorched Grounds is to this day one of the funniest fics I've ever read. even if you know nothing about hlvrai, you should read this fic because it is hysterical. also risk has done the impossible, which is to incorporate ocs into fanfiction in a way that not only makes me care about them, but also makes me cry about them. what the fuck.

in the mp100 fandom, @scribefindegil definitely takes the cake. I'm realizing this is revealing what I really look for in a good fanfiction, but just like what I said for risk, scribe's narrative voice is fantastic and matches the pov characters spectacularly well. also scribe's handle on the themes™ and tone and tension?? chef's kiss. The Brassica Heresy is a masterpiece of vegetable based horror, but I'm especially partial to In Case Of Emergency because I love the ensemble cast and I really like the non-espers having to solve a psychic problem

also I haven't been able to keep up with most of the fics bc they've been coming out at a dizzying rate, but @thatneoncrisis deserves a shoutout for doing truly insane shit in the locked tomb fandom. no one is doing it like quinn. it's amazing. go read We Have Always Lived in the Apartment, it is truly something special

#asks #anonymous #this is just an excuse to brag about my talented friends <3 #there are people who write good and fun fanfiction #and then there are people who are on another fucking level as writers #and these three are absolutely on another level #y'all are amazing #i haven't gotten deep enough into mdzs fanfiction yet to say I have a favorite writer #though el_em_en_oh_pee might be a current favorite bc i'm eagerly gobbling up their trans fics #but I really haven't read enough to say i have a favorite yet #but yeah. go check these authors and fics out!#i realized while writing these descriptions that I think my favorite thing a writer can do #is have a distinct narrative voice that matches the characters + tone + source material #if you've got a good narrative voice i am THERE

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mistyunmoored · 11 months

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it’s unlikely, but hear me out:

Raphaniel is confused, desperate, pissed about what he’s done for the FDA but church leadership is in on it and he can’t work under wraps anymore.

UNTIL he’s approached by none other than Belizabeth Brassica, who disagrees with the heresy from Colliflour. They work together to remove the Archbishop and put Belizabeth in her place instead, which puts Belizabeth on the track to Primogen by acoc

#the ravening war #trw #bishop raphaniel charlock #belizabeth brassica #the ravening war spoilers

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scribefindegil · 8 months

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authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love❤

Yayy! Thanks Mary! <3 After agonizing it for a while, my top 5:

The Real World (Mob Psycho 100, post-Mogami arc) is absolutely my favorite fic I've ever written. It's some of my best prose, I'm really pleased with how concise and focused I was able to keep it despite touching on so many characters, and it let me distill down a lot of my thoughts on the themes of the show and why it's so important to me. And I wrote it during the absolute worst stretch of the curse, painstaking sentence by painstaking sentence over the course of half a year. I am so so so proud of it.

Fisherman's Knot (Gravity Falls, post-canon fic focusing on the Stans, their deeply-entrenched mental health issues, and their eventual recovery. Also there are selkies.) At 104k words, the longest piece of writing I've ever finished. Writing it was a journey; I took a long break but I'm so happy and proud that I managed to come back and finish it and that there were still people who were as excited as I was to get to the end. The response to this fic blew me away; it started out largely as a coping mechanism to deal with my own poorly-treated mental illness and I feel really honored that my writing resonated with so many people dealing with similar things. I grew so much as a writer over the course of it. Both the big moments of catharsis--Stan's glitter and Ford's realization by the harbor--were things that were so powerful and electric in my head that I worried I wouldn't be able to put them down in words that did the feelings justice, but I did!

Bloom (Discworld, a Glorious 25th of May fic set a few years after Night Watch) Everyone who sets out to write a Discworld fic is undertaking an extreme act of hubris, because not only are you trying to emulate a specific writing style, you're trying to write like Terry Pratchett, which as we all know is basically impossible. Still, I think I hit some good resonant Discworldy notes in this little piece and really nailed the Themes I was going for. Periodically the Tumblr post version gets a little burst of notes and it always makes me really happy that people are enjoying it.

First And Final Orders (Mob Psycho 100, Dimple character study) Hi. Have you heard of ring composition? I love ring composition. It is my single favorite literary device (and I love a LOT of literary devices), so I had to include one of my fics that makes heavy use of it. I also love pointing at a piece of media and going "Hey. Hey have you thought about how there's kind of some Discworld themes here? What if we thought about the Discworld themes together?" And ALSO i love DIMPLE!!! I hope this fic helps explain why.

Casualties (Gravity Falls, missing scene from the finale) So the reason this fic makes this list isn't so much its quality (though I do still really like it!) but the fact that it was my first-ever completed fanfiction. I'd idly poked at the idea of writing fic a couple times before but never made much progress. I hadn't actually done any creative writing for years at that point. I came to fandom late due to a combination of being scared of the internet and, when I did check out my real-life friends' fandom blogs, feeling like everything was so focused on shipping that there would be no place for me and the kinds of stories I cared about. Gravity Falls changed that. I'd made friends and felt like part of a community for the first time. I'd read fanfic that I loved and that focused on the sorts of relationships I really cared about. And so finally I decided that even though it still felt really scary, maybe I would try my hand at actually writing and posting a fic of my own.

360,000 words and 54 works later, I still think it was a pretty good idea.

#memeses #scribe writes #this is SO SAPPY bc that is just who i am as a person #also i limited this list to completed fics but #*flutters mine eyelashes*#have you heard of The Brassica Heresy?#I am very excited about The Brassica Heresy

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