#cw religion talk

[crystalsandbubbletea]

CW: Religion talk

(This is probably the only time I talk about my religion on this blog unless if people have questions-)

Well folks I should probably stop praying to my rain goddess for a while-

I asked for a light rain storm because I believed the grass needed it but instead I got a thunderstorm-

Normally I'm fine with thunderstorms but poor Squeak is terrified of them 😭

[z-1-wolfe]

happy pride :3 i offer religious trauma

[cruel-hiraeth]

if we think of the common extended metaphors used to describe love and sex—religion, violence, consumption—it’s apparent how we often weave these individual threads together when we talk about sharing a meal. it’s a sacred act, sitting down to break bread. there’s an intimacy in baring your hunger and indulging in front of someone else—only for them to witness and enjoy. there’s pleasure for both parties as both voyeurs and exhibitionists. and of course there’s a subtle violence to it all: stabbing and cutting food with utensils, tearing and crushing it with your teeth, consuming it; there’s a reason why eating with a lover is inherently erotic.

[valer13sval3ntine]

i had a dream about charlie slimecicle having a photoshoot posing as jesus christ and i thought it was real and i woke up and was so sad it wasnt, SO I MADE THIS IN 5 MINUTES

[nams2]

[dunmeshistash]

Something about the demon, the Winged Lion, made me think he could be a (fallen?) angel. The infinite energy dimension would then, of course be heaven. Made sense the elves didn't want people binding angels and sucking power out of heaven! I don't know where Kui would've gone with this, but I've wanted to see Japanese takes on biblical stuff ever since Neon Genesis Evangelion.

I think since everything in Dungeon Meshi is very intertwined with "nature" there isn't much of "divine" in that sense of a heaven or hell, after all Demon is just one of the names people call him doesn't mean he's our concept of a Demon.

I don't think anything in that sense would fit within the Dungeon Meshi universe, the demon's dimension couldn't be considered heaven because it is completely different from our universe, humans don't go there when they die and nothing indicates some sort of "creator god" inhabits that universe, when the demon first got into their dimension their world already existed so he's not god in that sense either nor a sort of angel since the whole dimension he comes from is made of "him". Magic in that world is part of nature so his powers are part of (a twisted) nature and not part of the divine? Although for some people nature is divine but I'm talking about divine in the biblical sense I guess, not that I understand much about that.

So it's not that the demon is divine in my opinion it's that it's nature is alien to ours, it's a different existence.

The Winged Lion is considered a Deity for the Golden Kingdom people so it's not like there isn't anything linking him to that (he also gave them visions of Laios and a prophecy to send them to him right?) plus the name "Demon" itself and at the end he does suck up everyone into his dimension so they would have every wish granted and that sounds a lot like a heaven of sorts, so I'm not saying there's nothing there but hopefully you get what I meant? Nothing against that reading tho.

If you wanna see anime takes on biblical stuff (angels demons satan etc) maybe you'd like to check Devilman Crybaby that was fun to watch for me (look at a trigger list if you're squeamish tho, it's R18 and lots of fucked up stuff happen)

Or idk that Jesus anime (I haven't watched)

[mygraine]

guys would i be clowned on if i made christianity - based mogai terms . . .

[agentearthling]

every time I find myself going back into a Mormon church building (never by choice I may add) I get hit with such an intense wave of uncomfortable deja vu but I also feel like I've lost something? like in a bittersweet nostalgic way. and at first I thought I wanted to go back and couldn't figure out WHY until I realized I just missed being sure of something. obviously now I know I was wrong about all of that but there's comfort in "knowing" your place in the universe even if it's not a place u wanna be. feeling like someone else is looking out for you and you don't have to be in charge. of course it wasn't worth it but I do miss the security and community sometimes. leaving the church is so freeing but it's also fucking terrifying and difficult to figure out how to be your own human

[taffywabbit]

Hey, sorry if this is a bit personal of a question, but I was in your stream last night when you were talking about dreams and mentioned being raised Mormon, and I'm curious: do you find yourself avoiding people who go to that church, or do you have friends from that time who still go that you keep up with? Do you find yourself in good company who respect your decision to leave or do you encounter mostly hostility?

honestly I'm not really sure! as someone who mostly socializes online these days as an openly queer leftist furry, I can't say I really run into any active church members very often haha. we don't really run in the same circles at all. the only ones I do still see are at family gatherings or whatever (most of my extended family are mormon too, and tbh I'm not even quite sure how many of them actually know i quit church 5 years ago - I get the feeling my parents didn't go around announcing it to everyone lol)

I do definitely avoid people I already used to know through church though. my old FB messages are full of unopened "hey how are things?" messages from former missionary companions and ppl from the young adult congregation I used to attend at the start of college, because (at least with the latter) i know my name probably came up in a meeting and they got assigned to reach out to me and figure out why i left church and how to get me back. I don't really bear ill will towards those people themselves, but I was in that church for 20+ years and I know EXACTLY how much persistence and borderline stalking the members are tasked with under the guise of "outreach" and "service". I've been on the other side of those meetings and efforts enough times. people talk about it being hard to leave for a reason, so I didn't take any chances. removed my contact info from the church directory, ignored any calls and texts I got, ghosted the guys I used to play D&D with, and obviously didn't tell anyone when I moved. I do think about some of the people I knew as a missionary or in that YSA branch fondly sometimes and wonder how they're doing, but I simply can't risk letting myself become known to the church again or I'll have missionaries showing up at my door to use all of their specially-trained 18yo guilt-tripping abilities to bring me back.

(all of this being said, my immediate family is at least a lot more accepting of my decision nowadays than most extended family members or other mormons who know I left the church. they were pretty upset when they first found out - tbf I HAD been openly lying to them for a few months before I decided to break the news - but I think at some point after seeing me in person again after a few years had passed, they saw i hadn't immediately become a meth dealer or whatever and seemed happy and stable and decided not to push the issue. they don't ask me to pray with them or attend church when I visit anymore, but they do still talk openly about their responsibilities in church because they know i understand what they're talking about, and I'm fine with that. as long as they don't put my current address and phone number back into the church directory, we're cool for the time being - at least until I come out to them, which might make things more complicated lol)

[ai-the-broccoli]

I had a fucking dream where I met Jesus, and I was Judas the whole time it happened????

[kintatsujo]

sometimes you'll see Christians complain when a Christian character is severely flawed and hypocritical about their faith and that just couldn't be me, I've spent too much time overhearing church kitchen conversations, I fucking love severely flawed hypocritical Christian characters, what planet do those people live on (they're just so fucking unselfaware they don't realize they're exactly the deeply flawed hypocritical character they're complaining about lmao)

[totheidiot]

"why are you making fun of christianity! if people said the same thing about islam, suddenly there would be an issue!" sweetheart, out of 10 posts about islam, nine of them are about how every single muslim in the world rapes/terrorizes/bombs/kills every non-muslim they see. clearly, people are somehow allowed to think the worse of islam.

[thepringlesofblood]

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^

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

In the road rn (when will it end) and I took the time to write down what I want/need to do as soon as I get home. But then I took a look at how insane the list ended up and I need to show you for whiplash purposes alone

Sums up who I am as a person tbh

[lena-kelley-oiar]

I think a lot about religion when it comes to my own life. My father was an atheist, my mother a Catholic. When my father passed away, she insisted I join the church.

I never believed in a literal God, though I found the concept fascinating. The idea of an all-powerful, omniscient higher power that will punish you if you disobey its holy word. After I left the church once more at the age of 23, just when I was starting my career at the OIAR, I soon realised I'd replaced that concept with the real thing. In this way, I had made God real. A God that monitored my every move. A God that punished me when I disobeyed. A God I worshipped out of fear. I was no longer a Catholic, but in a way, I was more religious than I had been back when I'd been studying to become a priest.

Another aspect of religion that fascinates me is the role of a man as compared to the role of a woman. The man, son of Adam, son of God, is a representation of humanity as a whole. Mankind. Whereas the woman is a mere extension of the man; Eve, Adam's rib, or a vessel for divinity; the Virgin Mary. The role of a woman is to be with a man, the role of a mother is to birth divinity into existence. Birth is an act of creation, and in this way, God is a mother, as well. The mother of all life.

My mother always treated me as her son. Her first and only child had to be a man, so she deluded herself into thinking I was something I wasn't, and made me play along. In the church, everyone seemed to accept me as a man with no further comment; I was an altar boy and a priest in training, I wore my father's old suits, I was the man of my household. The very image of the divine, holy, righteous masculine, in the body of a cisgender woman.

When I left the church, I didn't leave my cross necklace, nor my masculinity. These are things I held onto, things I gave a new meaning to. In this, I defied creation itself, I remade myself; the very image of ragged, contemptable, submissive masculinity. A man with no family, a man who worked on sundays instead of attending church, a man who turned to alcohol and lust to escape his worldly problems. A heretic and a sinner.

There is a pride in that, I suppose. In taking their holy masculinity, and twisting it to suit my own way of life. In knowing she's up there, shaking her head down at me in disappointment.

Look to me now, Holy Mother. Your firstborn son, with blood on his father's suit.

[grislyintentions]

[Each time I post yaoshi content, I get an ads like that....what is the grand cosmos trying to tell me I wonder :thinking:]