BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-167 to 4-168
Chapter: 4
“Prim strode on, and the road stretched before her, taunting. The horizon unfurled itself again and again at each dawn, the sickening play of sunrise and sunset a never-ending, nauseating whirl, meaningless and endless.
After a thousand more days of walking, something broke in Prim, and her gaze no longer turned to the side of the road, nor caught on its many culverts, streams, or diversions. It no longer rested on the idea of a pleasant end, but the idea of ending. A primal dread and a terrible fury caught a hold of her and animated her limbs.
Prim began to run. And after a hundred days more, she began to sprint. She neither slept nor rested, and became a wild, tattered thing.”
– Prim masters the road.
damn
Yeah, that particular attitude doesn’t seem healthy either.
The narrative world is one that runs on metaphor. Dismembering oneself is not normally the best call, but when it’s to symbolize an acceptance of loss? Then it has he opposite effect.
Who needs limbs when you have the emotional resonance?
jadis’ face just says it. “bruh”
She has found the way again
AVeryLostTraveller is observant.
This path will not be a hard one, but when has the Rising King ever taken the safe and easy route?
Could they be the Rising King if they did?
Were they ever anything other than the Rising King?
Lose your eyes to truly see. The Greeks would approve.
Much time has passed since we last saw the white key blaze from her forehead, so this small sparkle is most promising.
Jadis really made a perfect *yikes* face in the 2nd to last panel
“I’ve known that was coming since before she was born and yet I’m still not comfortable actually seeing it happen”-Jadis, Probably
Oh now we’re going Berserk!
Finally, the 80-year slog of waiting for Allison to come back to us is over.
This sure would be impressive if it weren’t canonically confirmed that Allison is a being without agency, and is only making this decision because she was predestined to do so.
Perfect causality is not incompatible with free will. Of course it is predestined – the author knows the end of the story, and it’s course. This was never a cosmology with infinite parallel universes, just 777,777. The multiverse YISUN died for is a countable infinity, not an uncountable one, and therefore, with advanced enough powers of observation, it is perfectly predictable. Allison has agency – she was also just going to exercise it this way, because that’s who she is.
There are infinite realities, with 777,777 planes within each. Every choice that could be made is mapped out in it’s own reality, simultaneously existing in parallel.
Free will allows you to jump between each reality as your mind reaches each choice. Thus free will and determinism are both real.
Those Annoying Post Brothers were predestined to be annoying.
So that’s not true. The truth is, speaking bluntly, choices aren’t real. It’s through the fact that it’s impossible for us to perceive the infinite chains of cause-and-effect between all things.
because of this we came up with the concept of “choice”, and as a side effect, we belive that the cause-and-effect of our “choices” have more meaning and importance than the cause-and-effect of other things(like the position of 2 atoms at this exact moment, or the infinitely streaching pull of gravity caused by the mass of a single grain of sand)
Counter point: to do something pre-destined you still have to do it. Even if you were always going to do it doesn’t stop it from being an action taken. Just because an idea is paradoxical doesn’t mean they don’t co-exist. Like, A set of dominoes won’t fall unless something happens to make it fall even if they were always going to fall in a sequence and had to fall because of previous events. you still make choices regardless if you were always going to make that choice. All it means is that fundamentally there is no action taken that is more special then another. But in the end meaning can still be placed into events and pre-determined outcomes. More just in the end it’s up to individuals to really decide how they want to deal with that idea, and if they really even need a grand justification or care about any implications of it.
Your not wrong. It’s just that using the human concept of choices(or especially an arbitrary, singular choice) as a benchmark to define an alternate universe is a bit of a cop-out.
I’m not talking alternate universes though, more of “the cat can be living or dead until the case is opened.” I guess another way to look at it is if you program a level you have to program with the knowledge of all possibilities a player might do. But a possibility becomes a certainty only when it’s done, but it doesn’t stop the possibilities being as real or important as the outcome even if that was always going to happen.
Also I’m just terrible at explaining myself in text.
Ascribing meaning is just another “choice.” In predeterminism there’s nothing special about assigning meaning except that it’s another thing you did.
Determinism is *necessary* for free will. If our actions were not determimable, they would be random, and thus not a choice at all. The act of perceiving a situation and deciding what to think or do about it is what a choice is.
Saying “it was predetermined and therefore you have no choice or free will” is a twisting of what those terms mean into a cosmic scope which they are nonsensical upon.
This argument rests on what these terms mean, so…:
Define free will.
Define a choice.
Describe how what Alison is going through does not fit those definitions, while also not being contradictory in your definitions and descriptions.
*claps* You are the only other person I have ever encountered who demonstrated that they understood this. Thank you.
Appreciate it! I think something along these lines was written about by David Hume, if you’re interested.
¿where did he write about it? I would really like to know more about that way of looking at agency.
Saying that actions are pre-determined, and yet the one taking them has agency sounds like a covert way of saying that they have free will.
Funny thing about canon is that it comes within the source material… so what form is canon when the narrator can be unreliable?
The first truth is that Yisun is an excellent liar. Everything else is suspect.
I hope my Lord is getting enough nutrients and fluids, ominous quotes can be a bit dry. How about some nice tasty blood.
When in her hubris Jadis behold the Shape, she only saw Yisun’s lie.
First Rule is the̶ D̶o̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ Yisun lies
Free will is a lie. Predestination is also a lie. If Allison has chosen the path of suffering, clearly it must be that she was always free to choose that path, or to choose another path. Therefore, one may choose the lie that seems most desirable, and pursue that lie at the expense of not pursuing other, less beautiful lies. So much for predestination.
And if the universe is a meaningless void of chaos and darkness, what is stopping one from declaring one’s own rules, mandates, and prohibitions, and choosing to live by those precepts? Therefore one may choose to do what seems best. Who or what will stop you? Other than a greater violence than that which one’s own self commands, of course.
One might say the path is blindingly clear.
Is there a substantial difference, in your mind, between being predestined to do something because by an external source and being predestined to something because your past experiences have shaped how you react to future events? Allison isn’t making the decision because that’s the decision she makes; Allison makes the decision because her beliefs, gained over her lifetime, tell her that it is the right thing to do.
So something fun abt fiction is that all characters actually have no agency and are destined to do the things they do (its literally written on the page), the cool thing is the meaning the audience interprets from their journey. Hope this helps
I think the issue is more with Jadis than Allison. I think fiction is definitely a story being told, and there is a very real frustration from a story making an unjustified step. Characters sorta exist to have a semi-consistent identity we can understand for driving the narrative, and the idea that there’s a character who is literally “I do not exist except to shift the narrative” is a weird jump. I’ll be honest that I’m kinda just ignoring the idea that Jadis is actually fully aware of all her future actions, because it’s a crap story device.
I’m not sure what makes it terrible. Jadis is literally being shown to be the most pitiful fucking creature in the universe. She even says so to Allison, the result of what she did to herself has essentially removed the ability to lie to herself that she is a living being.
One of the key tenats of the Webcomics story is that lies are powerful. Love and justice and fairness and good are lies, but Royalty– enlightenment– is the ability to make them real anyway. Jadis can’t do that, she must say what she is determined to say, even her omniscience cannot change those actions, she can’t even meaningfully react to them, be sure there is no separation in her perception from the universe and ‘self’. Jadis is another demiurge who has deluded themselves into thinking they know how the world works, she’s just the most direct about it.
If you have trouble digging with a spoon, get a shovel. If you’re stopped by a wall, build a door. And if you can’t build a door, ask yourself if you really need a door to pass through solid objects in the first place.
Jadis saw the shape of the Wheel, and the shape told her YOU ARE NOT. True power in K6BD is about asserting I AM in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. It’s about knowing you only see half the picture where everyone else thinks they see the whole thing. And that’s where all the demiurges failed.
The ignorant fool pushes passed the limits of the possible because they are unaware that there are limits there in the first place. Lie to the universe hard enough to become God.
I want to point out something about that.
No matter how powerfull or strong you are, the fact remains the the fundamental rule of cause-and-affect means that all actions are predestined, even if you are a reality warping God that can reset time, you are still beholden to this logic.
And even if we get into abstract conepts, Any system(or even any concept), that can recieve and respond to feedback falls under this rule.
Now to illustrate the reason why jadis cannot actually do what you proposed and defy fate( And abbadon I belive has already hinted at this when jadis discussed her origins.)
Now jadis wasn’t the first person to get hooked up to the machine. She had several other siblings all get hooked in to the machine, each one simply dying without explanation.
Now there is a logical reason for this, and that’s because they would have tried to do what you just said, defy fate. Now the logic for this is pretty basic.
the fact that this is actual omniscience(creator has said so) and not just a vuage form of future sight, means that the system would have a way to feedback on itself, by the person hooked into it causing them SUCCESSFULY defy the shape of reality they saw. This would then alter said shape of reality. And the Issue is that this device would still see that, as it can observe itself and it’s own effects.
[Now in the MOST flexible scenario. . .]
This creates a bootstrap paradox, where the cause of the alteration(the subjects personality and response to seeing the wheel in truth) cannot be altered, but the result itself would alter, well, itself. and it would feedback into itself indefinately. A way to bluntly simplify this is “Z×Y=Z”. it is a paradox.
there are 2 ways this can be avoided if forcebly invoked.
One: time is deterministic, and thus such a scenario in itself would be a paradox, and the universe happens to fortunately have a built in anti-paradox system, and nueturs the instigator.
Two: time is linear, and the loop keeps going through different iterations in-sequence, untill it results in the subject UNWILLING to alter the future, and/or through this process, becomes INCAPEABLE of altering the future(this can be physically, like death, or in the case of jadis, psychologically)
The second option is kinda freaky if you think about it, and potentially explains why jadis seems to sound so contradictory. She can potentially say and do whatever, as long as it dosnt create a paradox. And the only way that works is if she dosnt have the potential to defy fate. . . because gaining omnipotence was fated to make her permanently depressed and nihllistic. Hooray.
Now there are some un-adressed parts of this, like how zoss and his console-reset teir plan works within this logic, which option 2 has a potential awnser for.
And also if the master key can give a mortal mind(such as allison) the potential to defy these rules, specifically without doing it in a way that results in the destruction of the very rules of reality that allow this entire setting to exist, and accidentally make everything vanish in a puff of logic.
Holy shit I butcherd that 5th paragraph really bad.
The assumption that a paradox can’t be occurring here seems flawed.
According to the setting, simply existing at all is a paradox, yet here we and the cast (well, apparently) are.
I don’t follow the creator or anything outside just reading the comic and occasionally browsing comments / rarely making comments myself. I’ve gathered from comments here, at least, that the creator has said that Jadis has attained perfect foresight from her harrowing, and has thus caught herself in a prescient trap a la Paul Atreides. Thus the whole of time is trapped in amber, crystalized, immutable, and unchanging.
We already know of several characters who exist outside of time. Zoss and Metatron come to mind. Jagganoth retains some vague sense of prior kalpas / cycles. Though I guess the argument to make is that the crystalization of time extends beyond the current cycle—that even Zoss is beholden to the same cause and effect that binds Alison and Jadis and everyone else. Maybe they are. Beyond that is Yisun, who is infinite, eternal, and requires no cause.
I’m kind of in a wait-and-see holding pattern about where the story goes right now, but for now I’m inclined to agree with Lou on this, that any supposed metaphysical paradox doesn’t really matter.
Mostly from ties to the comic setting’s similarities with the Elder Scrolls. The entire philosophy of Kill 6 Billion Demons is built upon Morrowind as scaffolding. “Reach heaven by violence” is even pulled directly from Vivec’s 16th Sermon. The purpose of existence is Arena. It’s a crucible for attaining true royalty. Refute “am not” with “am” in defiance of all logic or reason. Turn mortals into makers and makers into mortals. Zoss, like Vivec, got close, but came up short. At its basest foundation, the setting runs on the unlogic of pure belief.
All the Demiurges know how to do is lie, even to themselves. They are beholden to their own power, trapped in gilded cages. Is it any wonder Jadis would look into the future and see only one path?
Thats the point of free will. Everything that exists was ordained by YISUN as a part of creation and the story of the universe
But you have your own will and can defy that story, and modify it as you please.
Or! You are part of Yisun, and you are doing this because it is what you set out to do in the first place, at the moment of the First Division.
Keter in Malkuth. All existence flows from Aleph.
someone out there who knows my likes and preferences perfectly will be able to predict my actions, but that is not the same a removing my free will.
Right, because clearly Jadis is correct about everything… oh wait.
“So, you have chosen the path of suffering.”
Are these the words of a prophet who knows there was no choice, and only one path? No, the prophet despairs because the choices were not hers to make.
Is it any wonder you don’t understand half of the characters?
Jadis is not flawed, nor is she wrong. She is a victim of others thirst for knowledge.
Jadis isn’t human anymore. She was turned into a cosmic anamotronic, parodying itself, the moment she was hooked into the machine.
She said it herself, why she saved Allison. “I read the script”.
Everything we see her do is an arbitrary parody of what she was. Her words written by a logic we cannot completely comprehend.
She tries to speak from our perspective, because she was made to be a prophecy machine. Safe and convenient and comforting.
You don’t understand. It’s not that someone else decided what she was going to do. It is her decisions. Just that her decisions are known before she makes them.
We must imagine Sisyphus is happy.
Here actions have no point, obviously. You can either choose to wallow in that, or you can choose to do the absurd. You can try. Regardless of effect, you can be happy in the choosing.
It really wasn’t that long. Pacing seems perfect to me. Are you used to print comics?
it remindes me of dumbldor and harry’s talk in book 6 about the prophcey. spcaficley harry’s cummant about the diffreance between being trowen into an arena and walking into it with your head heald high-that harry wasant going to kill voldmort becuse the prophcey told him-even if it didont come true, harry would still kill voldmort, becuse thats just the kind of person he is. sure, it was “predestained”, but the only reason it was like that was the chrecters own nature.
While you’re comment is spot on, God damn I wish you used a spellchecker. Saves my ass all the time.
…there is a thing that can check my spelling?? where can i get it??
I’m usually on my phone when I comment here, so I just rely on its built-in spellcheck.
Not where I thought the arm slice was going, thankfully.
I guess it’s a metaphor for killing your fake self.
All the Demiurges know how to do is lie, even to themselves. They are beholden to their own power, trapped in gilded cages. Is it any wonder Jadis would look into the future and see only one path?
Plastic Skull is observant.
A baptism of Blood and Steel.
A sacrament of flesh and tears
BHLD THE SCCESR (behold the successor)
MSTR O WANT (master of want)
MY HER FGHT CONTNUE(may her fight continue)
ONC MRE (once more)
Well that’s very dramatic and all but you should probably keep the biomechanical prosthetics if you intend to fight.
If the book cover is to be taken literally, then she keeps the arm but not the eye.
That cyborganic eye does look painfully large though, sitting there in her hand. But the right leg Jadis gave her is yet to be flayed.
Retain the weapon; Reject the illusion that it is anything else.
….blood reaper, is that really you?? sweet slaanesh, i havent seen you here in a long time. have you been here between SOT to now, and i just havent noticed you?
I’m not sure how to read this one. Clearly what Jadis says makes a lot of sense, after all, up until now, Allison didn’t even feel the difference.
So the loss Allison is talking about is probably the loss of Cio and White Chain.
She does feel the difference, she complains about pain in her arm in the previous pages
the arm that hurts is her original one
Exactly. Pain is real. Pain tells you you are alive. Allison has forsaken false comfort in the name of truth.
That seems to be the arm that she pulls the splinter from
Do you know how long it took for Jadis to build that arm?
Like, two hours! TWO! HOURS!
And now all that work is gone!
Allison has no appreciation for good prosthesis work. Tsc tsc!
Jadis was able to build this arm in a CAVE with a box of SCRAPS!!
Lmao, this reference fits so well
Al-yisun is back! I have chronic depression, and I related sooo much to this arc! That there is no point in living and so on. It can be very hard to hear, but you have to decide to live, even if it is a little at a time.
It can be easy to just hide away and fade, when your joys and sorrows have grown numb, and all you have left is your fear, but it is worth the sorrows to fight your way back to your joys.
I remember the first time I wept in years, and how relived I was to know I could feel again.
And this will be the sense; Whatever that is which you love as you would your own right eye, if it offend you, that is, if it be an hindrance to your true happiness, cut it off and cast it from you.
Welcome back, Allison. We have a Wheel to break.
be kinda fucked up if she was Royalty now, but she’s walking the ten thousand mile path now
The act of choice, even in the face of inevitability, is the very essence of ROYALTY. Consider Hansa and his pipe. Hansa knew his pipe would kill him, yet he chose to keep it. He chose to keep it specifically as a reminder of inevitability.
Oh, that is HEAVY. Damn!
Allison getting to the heart of what it’s like to grieve for the lost. I’m glad she’s back. Doesn’t look she’s enjoying herself exactly, so it does hurt to see it. But I suppose it would be more worrisome if she *wasn’t* distressed.
Looks like despite everything, Jadis still couldn’t defeat her.
Having conquered the Goddess of Despair, the God of Violence will be nothing.
I feel like there’s a sensible middle ground between excising your prosthetics and in fully accepting the reality of suffering and loss instead of hiding from it.
But then again:
“And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Matthew 5:30
“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” – Matthew 18:9
It’s better to lose the prosthetics than to drown in despair forever. And if Alison can only see this as a binary choice then she’s at least making the better choice.
I get the impression the thing that bothers Allison isn’t the fact that she has prosthetics, but *hiding them*. She doesn’t want a lifelike arm and a perfect new biomechanical eye, she wants to wear the scars on her sleeve. To each their own – given the context, I think it’s a choice that makes sense!
Agreed. And considering she seems to have almost reached her “state” on the cover for Book 5, I have no impression that she’s getting rid of the prosthetic arm. She’s just not going to accept the lie that it’s a real arm.
What lie? It’s as real an arm as any. It even has touch. She was told it was grown and not mechanical, but what’s the difference?
Presentation.
Wonderful Megamind reference. I applaud you, good sir.
Yes, and judging by the what Jadis is saying, it seems like she hid the fact that it was a prosthetic until now (even if Allison suspected). Shady, Jadis.
She’s at least making a choice – quite a progress by itself
And there is no moving on. You can’t retread the steps you’ve already taken.
I would have it no other way.
To move on is to accept the reality of the steps you have already made, fair, foul, for better or for worse, and then to take another step.
‘Et verbum caro factum est’
And the word became flesh
The face Jadis is making there is the face I make when I’m constipated on the toilet
We must constantly seek salvation and perfection through division. Seek heaven through violence. Praise YISUN!
went like arnold in terminator 2 lmao
The hand copy should be destroyed before people can use advanced Jadis technology to build from it some sentient mechanism to wage war on each other
Holy hell. Let’s go, Allison!
Destroy the False Self, oh Rising King. Reveal thy true form.
Oh shiiiiit she’s becoming Zoss 2.0 new and improved version!!!
Love this.
What we’re seeing here is Allison rejecting Jadis by undoing Jadis’s first and most profound invalidation of Allison’s agency – the total reconstruction of her body.
How do you induce stasis? I imagine it helps to take away their journey. All the work Allison did, all that training, all that healing, all erased.
Not anymore!!
That’s really smart.