Wounds become wisdom. Tragedy is both a source of strength and a weapon we too often turn against ourselves. This one is glad to see the King rises once again.
1944 Gates or orange and blue lead to the dead end of insanity and loneliness
Like a blacksmith burning impurities out of iron by folding and hammering it back into itself countless times, the character of a man is forged by how he handles the flames of hardship. Does he grip the wheel like the blacksmith grips his hammer? Or does he succumb to mental enfeeblement and crack, only to be cast away with the pig iron?
Though the leg was extant and attached, BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-123 visualises the leg as marked in the same way as the eye and the arm. This indicates that it was damaged to the point of needing replacement, perhaps internal damage like broken bones or torn muscle.
There was never really a possibility of her coming back as she was. We have two examples of devils being rebound, including Cio herself, and while they retained memories they both came back as different people. She’ll likely remember Allison and their relationship, but whether there is a genuine connection there or if they’ll even be all that compatible is totally up in the air, I feel.
It’s deeply bittersweet. She may return, but things will never be the same
Which is the point. The things that happen to us change us inevitably. Events happen, we falter, we adapt, we learn, we grow, we persevere. Sometimes that means relationships end, or evolve with us.
Well said. However,
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
The first enemy to be defeated is a big-ass tree, the second is the self. I look forward to learning the remaining 5,999,999,998 parts of this soon-to-be world famous proverb!
maybe she’ll replace them with nothing
maybe she’ll replace them with pain for those she’s lost
maybe she’ll replace them with crystal violence
maybe she’ll replace them with royalty
I direct you to the cover image for this book.
She seems to leave the eye gone, but arranges for a prosthetic arm and leg.
There’s some wiggle room here, in that the image may depict “future Allison”, and there’s no guarantee that her (future Allison’s) actions in the present won’t change what our (current) Allison will do.
She didn’t destroy them (though she apparently mangled the flesh she grew over them), she just ripped them off and threw them back. There doesn’t seem to be any more…gentle method of removal.
Those nicer prosthetics are a pretty prison made by the Demiurge of Sloth to trick her into thinking she can just be a normal person again. Now that Allison realizes that, she can’t keep them on principle. One-legged travel will not be fun, but it’ll be the first time she walks on her own since Cio died.
Principle certainly can look like semantic quibble. Maybe a better philosopher than I could prove that Allison’s actions were objectively pointless, but they seem to mean half of the world to her. (Get it, because the eye… I’m terrible)
She didn’t destroy the prosthetics for the nature of prosthetics, but for their intention of hiding her pain. The new ones (the ones in the cover) cannot be mistaken for actual flesh, actual healing.
I’d guess my difficulty is its use as a metaphor. If hiding the “pain” is bad, any sort of replacement seems bad. Especially as Allison mentioned that there is no healing from it. There seems to be no reason that, just because the limbs look natural, they weren’t useful. There was some indication that there might be something off about the eye (although Allison accquiring “Jadis-vision” could also be a sign of a change in her perspective), but the arm and leg seemed value neutral.
I think the problem isn’t that Allison was hiding her pain, but that the physical marks of that pain were being hidden from her, without her consent and under false pretenses. She was told her limbs were regenerated, not replaced, and she never got to consent to the removal of her scars either.
It’s not prosthetics as a concept that are the problem, it’s the ones that Jadis forced on her while she was comatose specifically. I don’t think it’s even that she thinks she can never heal, but she can’t have that healing forced onto her by someone lying to her face.
Jadis: “But you haven’t recovered.”
Allison: “No. I don’t think that I ever will. As much as I will never be that girl of four years ago. Half of me… will always be pain.”
4-169 – 4-170
Allison herself makes it sound that she now accepts the pain that it is part of her, but that it will never go away. Healing is explicitly denied.
Which again makes the metaphor of the prosthetics seem… peculiar, at least to me.
My view on it is that that’s a rejection of Jadis’s idea of what healing is, which is stasis and complete denial that the hurt ever happened. Allison can’t ever be the girl she was before this comic started, of course she can’t. I just don’t think that that means she thinks she can’t heal AT ALL, because even here, she’s saying she could be happy again. Maybe, in spite of all the pain, in spite of the stuff she’s gonna bear to her grave, she could still be happy.
That’s a kind of healing too. You can remove a scar, but you can’t undo the breaking of the skin that put it there in the first place. You make your peace and you move forward.
There are but two paths. Inherit the order of this world or…. Destroy it.
But only a true monarch can make such a choice.
Only… Is this the only choice?
Sale today! Personal growth and volition, cheap! Only costs an arm and a leg!
(May additionally cost an eye, satisfaction explicitly not guaranteed, volition in a deterministic universe is an illusion, no money back, caveat emptor)
Admirable indeed, the strongest shackles are the hardest to remove. Though I do question the prudence of taking ‘one foot in front of the other’ to its reductio-ad-absurdium endpoint at this juncture. Apparently, this one will need to reach heaven through violent pogo-hopping for a time…
i have to say, the “ripeing off the fake parts means she’s stoped danying the truma” simbolizem seems a little ruined now, that she full on removed it.
…Albert Cam-who?
Y’know? This entire story could end right here on this very page and it would be complete.
the next page could be 5,999,999,998 demons getting killed, very small
We must imagine Allison to be happy
You must do nothing, but be all things.
Can you? Who are you, when your heart is so vast?
Wounds become wisdom. Tragedy is both a source of strength and a weapon we too often turn against ourselves. This one is glad to see the King rises once again.
Well, you know the old formula: Comedy equals tragedy plus time. So I guess it’s actually pretty funny when you do the math.
Like a blacksmith burning impurities out of iron by folding and hammering it back into itself countless times, the character of a man is forged by how he handles the flames of hardship. Does he grip the wheel like the blacksmith grips his hammer? Or does he succumb to mental enfeeblement and crack, only to be cast away with the pig iron?
>Wounds become wisdom
Last I checked Nadia, Incubus, Jadis, Jagganoth, and Solomon (possibly Mannon & Gog-Agog depending on your reading) were all wounded pretty badly.
Are they wise?
Did they learn from their mistakes?
Experience is the name for what little we can scavenge from the past.
From the RUBBLE of the past. It’s so annoying when you mess up your own attempt at a pithy quote.
Do not worry, it works either way.
Cast of the rather useful machinery for a fate unknown. Wait, didn’t our hero lose a leg too?
She did, and she discards it here.
Last panel is pure Berserk. Love it.
Aye, which adds a certain delightful tang to the dialogue.
“…stand on that…”
“…one foot in front of the other…”
Ah, delicious irony. One has a certain admiration for those mortal creatures who can not only look their own death in the eye, but also laugh.
> One has a certain admiration for those mortal creatures who can not only look their own death in the eye, but also laugh.
And for the truly great, Death laughs along with them.
I don’t believe so. BREAKER OF INFINITIES 3-117 to 3-119 Shoe Allison with two functioning legs.
Though the leg was extant and attached, BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-123 visualises the leg as marked in the same way as the eye and the arm. This indicates that it was damaged to the point of needing replacement, perhaps internal damage like broken bones or torn muscle.
… One foot FAR in front of the other, I guess
[a pale devil in the background drums out a rimshot]
I resemble that remark!
Thou hast beaten me to it, oh noble wordsmith
And so it revolves. Resolves. Rebels. Returns.
The conquering queen.
If we must imagine Sisyphus happy, is it so hard to imagine it for ourselves?
This gives me bad vibes for the possibility of Cio coming back, at least how she was.
But maybe Allison can be happy eventually anyway?
There was never really a possibility of her coming back as she was. We have two examples of devils being rebound, including Cio herself, and while they retained memories they both came back as different people. She’ll likely remember Allison and their relationship, but whether there is a genuine connection there or if they’ll even be all that compatible is totally up in the air, I feel.
It’s deeply bittersweet. She may return, but things will never be the same
Which is the point. The things that happen to us change us inevitably. Events happen, we falter, we adapt, we learn, we grow, we persevere. Sometimes that means relationships end, or evolve with us.
“non sum qualis eram”
Well said. However,
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
2/6,000,000,000
The first enemy to be defeated is a big-ass tree, the second is the self. I look forward to learning the remaining 5,999,999,998 parts of this soon-to-be world famous proverb!
God I love Allison
The King Marches Towards Her Inevitable Death, Long Live The King
Once the gods gave Sisyphus a High Score screen with daily times to beat he became entirely content, even motivated
We must imagine Sisyphus in a Skinner box.
We must imagine Sisyphus making microtransactions.
the only thing stronger than NOTHING; WHO CARES
We must imagine Sisyphus gitting gud.
Ok Alisson, sweetie, that cool, but please don’t bleed out. These prosthetic
Allison destroys her prosthetics, so that she can replace them with… clunkier prosthetics?
Bit of an odd flex.
maybe she’ll replace them with nothing
maybe she’ll replace them with pain for those she’s lost
maybe she’ll replace them with crystal violence
maybe she’ll replace them with royalty
i am eager to find out
I direct you to the cover image for this book.
She seems to leave the eye gone, but arranges for a prosthetic arm and leg.
There’s some wiggle room here, in that the image may depict “future Allison”, and there’s no guarantee that her (future Allison’s) actions in the present won’t change what our (current) Allison will do.
i see, i see; it has been a while since the cover image
nonetheless, eager
The prosthetic she has on the cover is also the one that Zoss wears on both arms.
I am also interested in discovering the nature of Shadow Jadis but I presume we’re about to find out.
She didn’t destroy them (though she apparently mangled the flesh she grew over them), she just ripped them off and threw them back. There doesn’t seem to be any more…gentle method of removal.
Those nicer prosthetics are a pretty prison made by the Demiurge of Sloth to trick her into thinking she can just be a normal person again. Now that Allison realizes that, she can’t keep them on principle. One-legged travel will not be fun, but it’ll be the first time she walks on her own since Cio died.
That seems like a semantic quibble, but I digress.
Allison will walk on her own… right up until the point where she gets her new prosthetic leg?
Principle certainly can look like semantic quibble. Maybe a better philosopher than I could prove that Allison’s actions were objectively pointless, but they seem to mean half of the world to her. (Get it, because the eye… I’m terrible)
She didn’t destroy the prosthetics for the nature of prosthetics, but for their intention of hiding her pain. The new ones (the ones in the cover) cannot be mistaken for actual flesh, actual healing.
I’d guess my difficulty is its use as a metaphor. If hiding the “pain” is bad, any sort of replacement seems bad. Especially as Allison mentioned that there is no healing from it. There seems to be no reason that, just because the limbs look natural, they weren’t useful. There was some indication that there might be something off about the eye (although Allison accquiring “Jadis-vision” could also be a sign of a change in her perspective), but the arm and leg seemed value neutral.
I think the problem isn’t that Allison was hiding her pain, but that the physical marks of that pain were being hidden from her, without her consent and under false pretenses. She was told her limbs were regenerated, not replaced, and she never got to consent to the removal of her scars either.
It’s not prosthetics as a concept that are the problem, it’s the ones that Jadis forced on her while she was comatose specifically. I don’t think it’s even that she thinks she can never heal, but she can’t have that healing forced onto her by someone lying to her face.
Jadis: “But you haven’t recovered.”
Allison: “No. I don’t think that I ever will. As much as I will never be that girl of four years ago. Half of me… will always be pain.”
4-169 – 4-170
Allison herself makes it sound that she now accepts the pain that it is part of her, but that it will never go away. Healing is explicitly denied.
Which again makes the metaphor of the prosthetics seem… peculiar, at least to me.
My view on it is that that’s a rejection of Jadis’s idea of what healing is, which is stasis and complete denial that the hurt ever happened. Allison can’t ever be the girl she was before this comic started, of course she can’t. I just don’t think that that means she thinks she can’t heal AT ALL, because even here, she’s saying she could be happy again. Maybe, in spite of all the pain, in spite of the stuff she’s gonna bear to her grave, she could still be happy.
That’s a kind of healing too. You can remove a scar, but you can’t undo the breaking of the skin that put it there in the first place. You make your peace and you move forward.
The indomitable human spirit vs the indifferent cruelty of the universe
There are but two paths. Inherit the order of this world or…. Destroy it.
But only a true monarch can make such a choice.
Only… Is this the only choice?
r o y a l t y
Okay, I know Jadis is entering her mummy phase. But what if, and hear me out, the booba remai
Two spheres of breast fat on a mummy is so hot right now!
“One foot in front of the other” is an interesting turn of phrase there, Alison. Not sure it’s correct though.
Goodbye, cool robot arm.
Sale today! Personal growth and volition, cheap! Only costs an arm and a leg!
(May additionally cost an eye, satisfaction explicitly not guaranteed, volition in a deterministic universe is an illusion, no money back, caveat emptor)
And At The End Of All Things, We Will Smile As We Fall, Knowing That In This Moment We Have Found Peace
And ONLY for five easy payments of $499!
Boh No is observant.
Edward Elric of Full Metal Alchemist fame wants to know your location.
I knew Camus would show up eventually, that rascal.
*Mumble something about being condemned to freedom while hitting pipe*
Admirable indeed, the strongest shackles are the hardest to remove. Though I do question the prudence of taking ‘one foot in front of the other’ to its reductio-ad-absurdium endpoint at this juncture. Apparently, this one will need to reach heaven through violent pogo-hopping for a time…
i have to say, the “ripeing off the fake parts means she’s stoped danying the truma” simbolizem seems a little ruined now, that she full on removed it.
cats?
And also it looks like she’s about to return the scars, judging by the energy on her face in the last panel.
Never skip leg day
“Against all the pain, derision and decay. All the curses of the world, this is your weapon?”
Hope…
The quintessential human delusion
Basically Allison is too dumb to give up, much like Aesma.