#in conclusion fuck Bobby Dawn he needs to die

[skuttlesstrawberry]

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.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

You have piqued my curiosity: what is your rant about Kitty? She's a fave of mine, but I never saw X-men: Apocalypse, so I don't know what to be salty about.

DEARLY BELOVED, BUCKLE THE FUCK UP FOR THE KITTY PRYDE AND DAYS OF FUTURE PAST RANT.

This is a very popular plot arc and has been done in at least three adaptations that I can think of apart from the comics (two animated series and the movie), AND YET, you know what the major goddamn difference is?

IN THE COMICS, KITTY GODDAMN PRYDE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER.

So, it’s been...a minute since I watched the DoFP movie, but you know who the main character is?  NOT KITTY.  And like listen, I like Wolverine as much as the next person, but guys.  GUYS.  Maybe we could have...not done that.  Because everything else aside, the plot is...way more interesting with Kitty as the main character.  Where Logan is basically a prickly emotionally repressed ball of anger--he gets adopted by the X-Men like a dog pulled out of a fighting ring--Kitty grew up with the X-Men.  She was raised at the school from the time she was thirteen, these people are her family, and in the DoFP future, she’s watching her family die.  Hell, in the comics, the X-Men are down to four--Storm, Rachel Summers, Colossus, and Kitty.  There’s no last stand of alliance between the Brotherhood and the X-Men.  There’s a lovingly illustrated and heartbreaking shot of a graveyard, with the name of every superpowered hero and villain on an endless series of headstones, and it is terrible and wonderful and everything I need.

And in the comics, Kitty is sent back in time, a thirty-something woman sent into a sixteen-ish body, and it hurts.  It hurts because Kitty--Kate, her older self goes by Kate, is seeing all her family again, and they’re all alive, and they don’t trust her.  She’s a stranger to them, even though she knows them all perfectly.  Even Colossus--they’re married in the future, I think they even had kids, there’s a Terrible Goodbye Scene and I love it--doesn’t really know her, suspects her of being an imposter or under someone’s control.  Wolverine, on the other hand, isn’t in contact with the X-Men at the time, so all the emotional impact is based on the viewer already being familiar with Xavier and everyone (I really dislike the DoFP movie), and moreover is very clumsily executed.  In Kate’s future, she’s watched everyone she loves die, and she’s sacrificing her life to save them, and they distrust her for it and want Kitty back, and it aches, it’s an independently painful plotline.  Sure, Logan’s setup is very much the same, but no one fucking knows who he is!  So it rather desperately lacks the same punch.

Furthermore, WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL CAN’T WE HAVE KITTY STARRING?  She’s clever, she’s funny, she’s willing to express emotions which is a tremendous asset in a plotline like DoFP (again, I love Logan, but seriously), and she’s a woman.  Moreover, she’s Jewish, which adds a huge level of meaning to the DoFP timeline, where superhumans with mutant abilities are being hunted by the Sentinels.  And trust me, the writers knew what was up--there’s a flashback of captured mutants being marched away to be killed and they knew EXACTLY what they were doing with that frame.  The Bobby/Kitty romance that got randomly slam dunked into the movie is confusing to me, but yeah, okay, having a romance in the future that doesn’t yet exist in the present is compelling--but it’s only compelling if one of the members of the romance goes back in time and meets their future partner.  Kitty probably hasn’t even been BORN in the ‘modern day’ of the DoFP movie, let alone meeting someone her future self is in love with, and of course Logan Has No Feelings, so we’re not getting that from him.

I’m just kidding, I know why we can’t have Kitty Pryde as the main character of an X-Men movie.  She’s a woman, she’s Jewish, and she’s played by a lesbian.  God fucking forbid she have a lead role in a beloved and popular plotline that was originally constructed entirely around her character.

ADDITIONALLY, while we’re all here, how the fuck does Kitty send Logan back in the movie?????  Bitch, she can walk through walls, not through timelines.  That makes no sense.  If you’re not going to adhere to the fact that the Summers family line is basically the Skywalkers of the X-Men universe and therefore not include Rachel Summers as your timeline hopping psychic of choice, at least make Xavier do it???  Like, at least he can read minds, and he’s alive and well in this adaptation???????  But no, apparently Kitty can just miraculously do the thing.  At least have the balls to admit that you only gave her that role because you were too much of a fragile manchild to give her the lead.

In conclusion, fuck DoFP and I will die on the hill of Kitty Pryde getting emotionally meaningful, narratively influential plotlines.

I’ll be waiting for the director of DoFP behind the building that used to be the restaurant that was being haunted by the Dennys, whenever Bryan Singer is willing to show his face.  BYO crowbar, motherfucker, we duel at dawn.

[skuttlesstrawberry]

Hey, so while watching the season finale, I noticed that Bobby Dawn is actually also the High Priest of Sol. When combined with the stinger, I’m pretty sure that my previous post is now officially my argument for Why I Personally Now Need Fantasy High Senior Year To Someday Exist.

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.