BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-152 to 4-153
Chapter: 4
“In some cultures of the Wheel a coin is placed on the eyes of the dead as a fee to the guide of the afterlife. To me the implications of such a custom are wretched beyond belief – that even in death, the inevitable resting place, one must bear the unbearable weight of debt.”
-Payapop Pritram
Payapop Pritram says no to capitalism, very cool!!
Down with the haves and the have-nots in the afterlife!
spooooooky
No no, Payapop is an austerity fan.
Hates debt.
Hates charity.
Wants the dead to earn their own way.
Lazy gits.
Or Payapop Pritram is an idiot who doesn’t understand the meaning of the coins.
The coins themselves have no value to the dead. After all, they’re dead. It’s more often than not a symbolic gesture of thanks to the guide. “You have done me a service, and as thanks and acknowledgment of that service I will give you something of value.”
That “thing of value” could just as easily be a piece of art, food, clothing, LITERALLY ANYTHING, but coins just work easiest because everyone can agree what they’re worth.
I’ve always been prickly when it comes to jokes and criticisms of religion. Sorry.
I hadn’t considered that before; that’s pretty cool
Thats exactly what prim is talking about. Debt, eternal debt of being grateful, even in death, even finished it all, you have to borrow smth with you to be able be thanksfull to smbd for smth.. coins, arts, words – doesnt matter. You obliged with this duty even been DEAD!
Damn… THAT weight…
Who’s it fooling? It’s very own name is Pay-a-pop
You could literally die by being crushed in Jadis’ boobs, you need to remember that tbh
The great vast Breast of the Bearer of the Shape of the Universe
Is Allison not getting PT?
I work in healthcare, and while I understand being bedbound causes severe atrophy, allison SHOULD be gaining some weight and regaining limb coordination/function/tone after 2mo if she is getting PT. I work with old people, and have seen better 2mo recoveries. 🙁 Allison needs some Nurse Ratched in her life.
I don’t think she’s gotten out of bed. Or eaten.
I believe the implication is that she is refusing to move or eat. They are adding a drip and forcing nutritients in her.
I am remembering very hard rn
BEARER OF tHE WORD “DD”
From the studio that brought you Jaggahog, prepare yourself for… JADTITS!
I think that Jadis Is Not Your Friend.
I think she is sincere in wanting Allison to choose breakfast (and to stop self-tormenting).
She just has a vastly different perspective. And not the best bedside manner.
I might be wrong on this though, obviously. Can’t wait for next pages…
So far all the demiurges have been blood soaked monsters scrabbling at one another and desperate to die. Jag wants to end all of time. Mottom wanted someone to pull her plug. Solomon wants to be punched so hard he doesn’t have to be king anymore. Incubus wants someone to end him instantly. Mammon was full of ineffective swords. Gog is whatever. Does gog even know gog is alive?
Anyway, I bet Jadis can’t die when she’s cubed but really wants it
Incubus wants someone to end him instantly? Where did you get half of those ideas?
Mammon grew senile and doesn’t even remember what he wanted, but he does remember that the Count is important… for some reason.
Solomon doesn’t want to *die*, he just wants to stop being a king so he may go and do something else.
All Gog wants is a friend.
All Incubus ever wanted is to win.
Ugh that imagery of Allison in the ice is going to haunt me. I love this webcomic so much.
I do believe that’s Jadis trapped there. Her caretaker form is an illusion or something similar.
Also: Jadis is absolutely getting bigger as Allison’s hope wilts, right? Is she siphoning power from her hopelessness or something?
It’s possible, even probable, that Jadis has been constant and that Allison has been shrinking more and more in the mindscape the more she draws into herself.
Hmm yeas… my suspicion is that Jadis wants Allison to give up. this is all in Allison’s head and Jadis is trying to get her to die, to give up fighting, take the easy route with no pain, and just give up.
I’m trying to suss out what’s going on in the “if I didn’t exist” panel. Is that where Allison Actually is? This space hasn’t felt real since she went back to bed.
Does the Stone open up to reveal Jadis? It looks like the hole has been shrinking, maybe nearly closed. Is that how Jadis is communicating and why this is the last try? Whenever she’s there it does seem like things are less “Real”
I also wonder if showing Allison the outside of the Amber of time had an effect on her perspective enough to… move off the track set? Is Jadis able to do that prediction trick still? She seems less certain since then. Of course, it’s always possible she was preordained to act uncertain.
Oh wait, that’s clearly where JADIS physically is, the smaller stone with Allison is… a mental waystone or something? I feel like it’s significant, like a piece of the Great Machine that’s now a part of Allison since being cast into the hole and out of existence briefly.
The commenter below, Machineman, mentions a theory about Jadis switching places with Allison. I observe that Allison is becoming increasingly closer to Jadis’ mummified appearance. All we knew about Jadis prior was that she was in that crystal to preserve her body after witnessing the Shape. Given she is Sloth, and what we see here? I imagine the crystal is an ultimate life support for somebody who could no longer eat, move, or function due to a severe depression after seeing the Shape.
As for the “If I didn’t exist” panel, that’s Jadis, obviously. I feel like we’ll be getting something big with the next update, but for now? I can only guess the panel is showing that Allison doesn’t want to exist, like Jadis, or that Jadis is siphoning something in the real world.
I’m pretty sure that’s entirely symbolic. Caretaker Jadis represents a sort of soft nihilism, an absolving of pride and responsibility. Ice Jadis is hard nihilism — Death, and Inevitability, and The Wheel. Cutting towards ice Jadis there more represents Allilson’s state of mind than anything — at least how I interpreted it.
It’s seeming like the theory that Jadis wants to switch places with Allison might be true
Huh. Y’know, there are some interesting design parallels between the blue prism in panel 5 and Allison’s bed… perfectly rectangular, acolyte attendants, candles placed nearby. And while I first thought that panel 5 was Jadis, what if it isn’t? What if that’s Allison, being held in a nearly-complete glass prison of her own? Given that Allison’s mind has been known to rationalize Throne weirdness in Earth terms, it would make sense that her mind palace portrays her life support as strictly medical–despite her being in a magical bacta-prism. I dunno. Just throwing stuff at the wall I guess
In the fifth panel, it does look like Jadis is still in her crystal… not sure what those things on either side of her head are though. She always had her hands folded in front of her, not reaching up for her hair. Or was her crystal actually destroyed by Jagganoth and did her priests put her in a new one?
Either way, it looks much more likely now that all this is taking place in some mindscape and panel 5 is the first glimpse of reality we have seen in quite a while.
That would be a sash, my good fellow, but her appearance clothing-wise inside the glass has evolved somewhat throughout the story.
Sash? It could also just be her hair, she got those two strands left & right
This is the kind of suffering O’Brien went through every week on DS9.
lmao
just spent the last two days binge reading KSBD. here is my reaction:
what the fuck (affectionate)
anyway continue the great work
True Royalty would not WASTE FOOD, ALLISON.
True Royalty would BE FOOD
I wonder if Jadis is draining Alison’s own will…
No I think she is just terribly consumed by grief
I believe this is what a traveling companion of mine refers to as being in one’s “girlboss era”
How do you get all those coins?” asked Mort.
IN PAIRS.
–Terry Pratchett, Mort
Jadis more like (Sad)(is)
Ok but Jadis is seriously getting bigger, am I crazy?
You should think that with all the people that have to cross the Styx, that they would make a bridge by now.
… unless the Matrix makes a Hel instance just for you…
It hurts to see Allison wither away like this. She was splendid, radiant when she was at the height of her strength. She fought a monumental battle and lost. I know that she will eventually come around as there would be no story afterall but it still saddens me to see her in this state.
We’ve seen characters assume a giant form before… Notably, the Incubus influenced Alison who was rampaging around her mental landscape during the Vault incident.
If the current situation is similar, than Jadis’ increased size would be indicative of her increased influence on Alison’s mind. In the previous example, everything was taking place inside Alison’s “mindspace”, for lack of a better word, so it might also be the case that what we’re seeing (Jadis’ pyramid, etc.) might not be exactly reflect her true surroundings.
Hrmm… she needs to buck up and rebuild. To do that, we’re gonna need a montage…
I appreciate that Jadis doesn’t bother sticking to just one size. She is under no oigation to and doesn’t even try.
Obligation*
Ah. A bed for Allison is a crystal for Jadis.
I remember a story where if you cannot pay the ferryman’s fee, you must take up the oar and work off your debt. The thing is, the oars are shoddy and break easily, and replacing them increases your debt. Finally, the protagonist of the story manages to follow the ferryman and see what he’s spending these coins on. He’s using the coins to pay Poseidon to keep the river filled with impassable water, so that people continue to be forced to pay him to cross it.
The more I look at this, the more I like it. A normal life is not nothing. She gains great things, but when she loses, she doesn’t wind up “back to normal”. She winds up with nothing.
I understand why you needed to tell this story, like this.
Because when she gets up again…
That’s the story that saves lives.
How fitting it is that the thought of the dear readers was unreality. Allison walking in a decaying witch’s illusion. Beyond the scope of her dreams there is a very human glimmer of hope that Cio is alive. Perhaps somewhere beyond her, something will be ok.
Then, the crushing weight of reality hits. That terrible, unbearable weight.