#cleric cassandra

[strawberryscare]

ally confirming in the adventuring party that kristen still wants to be a cleric and still a follower of cassandra is both comforting and sad. there’s been speculation abt kristen switching to monk/sorcerer/etc and while that would be really interesting narratively, it would sort of throw the last three episodes of sophomore year out the window in doing so.

i also think this last episode mirrors/reaffirms her commitment (in that she opted to allow cassandra to turn their anger onto her willingly), hence the comforting aspect of her keeping her class. but it is really sad bc as ally said: it’s not that kristen’s not caring, but she’s truly disorganized and so young. in a perfect world someone else would have been cassandra’s prophet, and kristen could just be a normal cleric of cassandra.

the unique role she’s in now, as cass’s sole follower AND prophet, is so similar to the life she left behind as helio’s “chosen one” that i can’t imagine it WOULDN’T be triggering. in a way she’s been almost set up to fail.

[shaeshark42]

“The goddess of conviction and the goddess of doubt are more than friends. They need each other. The one without the other would be incomplete. And also, they love each other, they care for each other, they choose each other. They are both aware of how much better things are when they work together. Doubt with no hint of conviction is terror, conviction with no hint of doubt is tyranny. When we let our Doubt and Conviction choose to walk hand in hand, we see the world as it is.”

— St. Kristen Applebees of the pantheon of Cassandra and Ankarna

[bacchuschucklefuck]

dreaming abt sophomore year class swap bard!riz

[voxmilia]

The difference between helio and logran soulforger kills me.

helio's chosen asks him an existential question and he waves her away

one of logran's clerics, not even his chosen just ONE of his clerics, calls him out for his silence and he looks her dead in the eye and says "I'm sorry, you deserve to be spoken to."

when helio's chosen strays from the path to forge one of her own, helio himself doesn't even seek her out - it's sol and galicaea who have to talk to kristen. helio himself never makes amends for his part in his chosen turning from his light on his own, without prompting from his father and aunt.

ostentatia, by contrast, hears that sincere apology and is able to see how hard her god is working. That his silence is not uncaring, his silence is caring TOO much about too many things. And she takes up a pair of tongs and forges at his side. And her devotion is rewarded - she's given near prophethood, a miraculous divine intervention, she saves countless jobs including her father's.

Because she was willing to raise her concerns and logran was willing to listen.

[dawnarts]

image description: digital fanart of fantasy high. The drawing is set up similar to the Accolade by Edmund Leighton. kristen applebees is on a small platform knighting a kneeling fig faeth. kristen wears a white short woth a bolo tie, jeans, cowboy boots and a stenton hat with salsa in it. she is holding a silver sword over figs shoulder. fig is wearing a leather jacket with a large red back patch "teenage rebellion", a plaid skirt and boots. there is a stained glass window of cassandra behind kristen. it is signed dawnarts. end image description.

fig becoming a paladin for cassandra is really so fun I'm here for this

image description: a close up of the stained glass of cassandra, who is colored in shades of purple and blue with stars patterned throughout and outlined in yellow and gold and has curling hair in a ponytail and pale eyes. signed dawnarts. end image description.

+ a close up of the glass, which turned out reallly cool

[omnipresentlemon]

I am begging Kristen Applebees to go check on her brother Bucky I know there’s a million other things happening but Brennan keeps dropping hints and reminders that something is going on with Bucky and I need Kristen to do something before it’s too late!!!

[jewfrogs]

zac deciding that k2 had no clue what was happening and didn't know who any of these people were is so fucking funny but also fitting. living a half-life full of confusion and sacrificing yourself reaching out to the goddess of holding your hand in the dark

[storygremlin]

The insanity and deep fucked up romanticism of two sapphic goddesses fucked over by the politicking of the homophobic followers of Helio/Sol to be forcibly corrupted into darker forms in order to survive which resulted in their separation for centuries only to be reunited in death is so poignant and so good

On a totally unrelated note, dark!Bad Kids au where Fig and Kristin become the lead cleric and paladin of these darker forms instead of redeeming them and absolutely destroy the Helio-ic religion in vengeance

[haaam-guuuurl]

Inspired by how Rekha was actually supposed to be in the first season instead of Ally, you know what would be an interesting AU? If Katja was a member of the Bad Kids and Kristen was with the Seven

[radiocrypt-id]

I got- I can't!

Imagine being 15, you've grown up your whole life with this one belief in this one God and you were told you were Chosen by Him, for Him. And you're 15. You believe so fully in the spirit of your religion, not necessarily the word, that you want to go to a non-religious school to try and help other kids maybe find your God because you genuinely believe that could be helpful to some of them, because it's all you know, and it's helped other strangers (human trafficking victims she helped in the black pit before) so why not other kids her age? You're 15 and all you can think about is helping others. And you start thinking about your religion, and reading books, and asking questions and you come to the conclusion that maybe your God and His Father aren't actually all that great. Maybe the church you're in has done some really bad things that you can't possibly make up for. Maybe that church is still doing bad things. And then you find out your family is actually in a cult for that God, not just part of the normal church, and you suddenly have to undo all the cult shit in your brain you were raised with, while that cult stuff you know about is actually useful to your friends, like having that knowledge is helpful for them! You're 15 and you stop going home. You have no real adult supervision or carer, just your other 15 year old friends.

Imagine you're 16, you're gay and figuring that out on top of navigating your first full romantic relationship and being the sole creator and cleric to a new God that you honestly find to be very two dimensional and empty. You're on a quest to find an evil being and stop them. You nearly die. Your friends nearly die. You're 16. You're 16 and feel something calling out to you, you know it's divine because you've felt that sort of pull before, but you've never felt one like this. You find memories and hints and pieces and you figure out that the evil being you have to stop, isn't evil, she's just hurting. She's hurt and She's a God. She's your God, and she's so happy to see you, and she has so many ideas, and so many hopes.

You're 17. You've spent your rest time (summer vacation) tearing across the world chasing down and defeating another evil thing that you and your friends accidentally released in the first place. Your God is with you, you have no time for Her. No time for anything but trying to survive and stay sane. You know She's disappointed in you, but you're one person -ONE PERSON- and you're 17. You missed your birthday. again. You've saved the world; again. You're so fucking tired -like always. You're Chosen, and alone, and have no idea what to do with your life, let alone your God. You aren't very good at school, but you go to every class. You're drowning as you try to rewrite your understanding of the world from what you grew up with, having no idea how to do anything without a book and godly hand to guide you. You only ever followed before, your new God is demanding you Lead. You don't know how. You're only 17. You see your horrible, abusive parents spitting abuse and racist rhetoric at your baby brother, who you haven't seen in two years, on the front steps to your school and for the first time ever you are filled with righteous fury. Your God answers your call, not knowing what you need but so eager to help, eager for your attention, she starts talking to you but you're busy -why can't she understand that you're fucking busy? trying to not die, trying to be safe, trying to keep your friends alive, trying to navigate a world that hates you, you're 17 and you're busy goddammit just wait!- and she snaps back at you and flees. The next time you see Her, maybe an hour later, She's got a creature with Her that nearly destroyed you and your friends last year sitting in her lap, so smug to see you again.

You're 17- no, 16- no, 15 years old and you're expected to build and carry the world on your shoulders, Chosen from birth, raised a lamb to follow a Shepard, not to be followed behind. You have no one and nothing and everyone expects everything and you can't back up, you can't pause because if you do someone dies and doesn't come back. You have to be a hero, a chosen, a saint. The steps behind you crumble to dust with each step you take forward and the new one is already cracking under your weight. There are only wrong choices. There's no hand reaching for you. God, you were taught, will save and guide you. God knows best. Why is your God looking to you, a mortal human, to be saved, raised and guided? You're a child.

You're just a child.

You just want to go home, wherever that is. You thought it was your God, but She's not exactly helping you out either, is She? She's just disappointed. Like everyone else. Like you.

You're 17. You think it would have been better to never do any of this. It would have been easier to stay, blind and naive. Sometimes you think you should have stayed in heaven. Sometimes you think about the God you killed by not being good enough for it. Sometimes you lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and pretend you don't exist for awhile. Sometimes you work your body so hard you forget it's there and your mind shuts up and you exist without being you. Sometimes you wish you never asked any questions or read any books. You're 17, but sometimes you wish you were 15, with no idea yet.

You're 17. You wish you were good enough.

[not-all-who-wanda-are-lost]

Tumblr messed with the quality a little but this is my first crack at digital art! I really loved this interaction between Kristen and Cassandra and have had this as a mental image since I saw it. I'm proud of it!!! Only took me 31hrs, got to a point where i just said enough was enough because i was not getting the lighting right 😵‍💫

Only 9 more hours till ep 13!!! HOOT GROWL!!!!!

@dimension20official

[adaines-furious-feast]

The more I think about it, the more Jace "100% put everything into charisma at the expense of everything else" Stardiamond is just what Kristen's church is missing.

Kristen gets all the high religious stuff, the theology and the what-not. But she is just not very good at talking. Her inspiring speeches have never been good. She just cannot communicate her ideas in a way that doesn't give other people anxiety.

I think Jace gets Cassandra on an intuitive (ha, innate) level, and is just so good at speaking that he doesn't really have to "understand" it like Kristen does. So his congregation does well (and has the benefit of being for people coming back to a place they were driven out of).

But if he and Kristen worked together, they'd do so well.

[rabdoidal]

thinking about my sad cleric and religious responsibility and trying to find controlled moments of chaos to feel like you have control over your life (and trying not to have gay feelings)

🌹 kofi link in bio if you’re feeling generous 🌹

[esmeamesart]

‘Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul’

- Cassandra , Taylor Swift

Cassandra from fantasy high. Her relationship with Kristen makes me oughhhahhhhggbhh

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

K but the fact that Kristen is just a regular human being. Just a standard, average person in a land filled with mystical beings and magic spilling from every crack, nook and cranny.

And here's Kristen Applebees, the first born child of typical suburban parents, born into a religious neighborhood where everyone goes to church every Sunday and prays every night and everyone has a white picket fence with a perfect manicured lawn and not-so-subtly shuns those who are in anyway different from them.

Was Kristen not chosen by her God, by Helio himself, because of her perfect average parents with their perfect average house in their perfect average neighborhood?

Kristen wasn't rich, she didn't have a powerful bloodline, her parents weren't important, there was no prophecy foretelling her birth. No, Kristen was an attainable goal. Kristen was a good example for the youth, an example of what could be achieved if you just played along and played your part.

Kristen was destined to be the perfect picture of a devoted follower of Helio. She was the poster child, born smack dab in the center of Helio's flock, surrounded on all sides by followers and moulded into the perfect unquestioning chosen one since birth.

But by choosing Kristen, by marking her as property of a God, Helio gave Kristen power. Power over him, power over good and evil, the divine and infernal. Because Kristen is promised to Helio, because she was chosen by him and prophesied to be his, Kristen wields the power to start the end of days and crumble nations with a snap of her fingers. Should she want to, Kristen could destroy the world by simply not doing that, by not ending up in Helio's afterlife to live for eternity by his side, by proving a God wrong.

And it's with this power, this leverage that Kristen holds over Helio's neck like the sword of Damocles, that Kristen is able to free herself from his grasp. It's slow, at first. Joining a 'risky' school, meeting people outside of the religion, questioning elders, researching history and religions. And she doesn't understand how much power she has, not at first, because the power she possesses isn't magic, but a divine promise and unspoken rules that govern a world that she was never supposed to know.

But despite not having magic, despite being chosen for her averageness, despite being trained to be naive and blinded to the realities of the world, Kristen is overpowered as, if you'll excuse the pun, hell.

Helio creates divine religious scholars to protect her when she doubts and strays from him. Helio creates an entire new deity and religion for Kristen, allowing her to think that YES! (and, later, YES?) is it's own separate power from his and he does all of this, not out of generosity or love, but because he needs to keep Kristen alive. Kristen cannot die before she rejoins Helio's flock or the divine promise will break and Helio would be fucked.

So Helio gave her power under the pretense of it being from elsewhere, solely so that he could keep Kristen alive until he changed her mind.

And then! And then Kristen dies! And is revived. And she's Saint Kristen Applebees now (but the Saint of who?) and Helio has fully given up on her and turned his back on her (but his prophecy cannot be unspoken and he cannot be proven wrong so does he really? Can he really?) and Kristen finds a new God, a broken God and Kristen chooses her.

Kristen names her, creates her, Cassandra the Goddess of Doubt and Night, and Kristen finally has her religion, a source of power that doesn't stem from Helio, she's finally escaped his grasp.

And yet.

And yet, Helio still spoke his prophecy, still chose Kristen and she will always have that power over him.

And yet, in his own foolish shortsighted attempt to keep Kristen within his grasp, Helio still created a deity for her, a separate divine entity that chose her as well.

And yet, Kristen is still the undying, the follower of Night and Doubt, Saint Applebees, Creator of Cassandra.

With no real magic to speak of, with nothing special in her bloodline, with no real talents or money to her name, the perfect picture of normalcy in every way, Kristen has managed to twist the divine sphere around her little pinky finger. She has so much power and she has so little awareness of it.

And also she's going to be President, bitch.

[tomurakii]

Look Kristen is a kid so its understandable and Ally is great and I'm sure has a plan for this. But Kristen should not be a cleric lol. I hope that after the wizard synogue incident Cassandra takes the Archfey deal to keep herself safe and Kristen loses her powers because honestly based on her RP that girl has NO wisdom. She has NEGATIVE wisdom. If you don't like the gods currently on offer but can't take responsibility for keeping a new one alive (because you're a kid) then you should just respec. Pick a charisma-based spellcaster class that doesn't require a bunch of work like the Int classes or responsibility like the Wis classes. Give up your soul to Fig (or just give it back to newly-Archfey Cassandra) for Warlock spells idk.