But she knew she was going to say “absolutely nothing” and she COULDN’T bring herself to say something different, thus busting the amber? This character’s posited philosophy ain’t gonna be sustainable…
The cosmology of this series continue to fascinate me in new ways. The keywords bear the power to shape the world, but from the perspective where it’s already a fixed shape, of course Jadis can only bear the shape itself.
I wonder, if she died would that shape be lost? If no one exists who’s seen time from the outside, no one could prove free will doesn’t exist, so maybe it would. That sounds like something relativity would allow.
I suggest that since observation influence phenomenon, her seeing everything in space and time would lock causality (hence bearer of the shape, while also rendering it immutable).
Creating a need for her to die for the plot to move forward (which also makes sense from a narrative point of view), the lack of an observer rendering subsequent phenomenons fluids once again.
Still, her being the observer while also being inside the observation do lock her in place (aside from the whole nihilist/omniscient thing), so it would take something outside of causality to move things outside of her perception.
Then again, since she is observing the whole of time at once, one could argue that she became an object ever present in space time and therefore cannot be removed?
So to anwser you, I don’t think the shape would be lost if Jadis died, but rather it would become mutable again, relieved of the lock that is the observer.
Ultimately, it can also be read as a meta commentary, them being nothing more than characters in a story, their fate is all but fixed and their agency nonexistant.
I think we’re saying the same thing. I meant, if the world becomes mutable again it would mean the shape that it is has to be lost. . .don’t think I can put it any straighter.
I pretty much agree with you, I just wanted to elaborate further for a bit.
The idea of the shape being lost could be interpreted in a global reset of the universe, while I just suggest that it moves forward from its current fixed state.
Destruction and rebirth being an overarching theme in the serie, I felt it was important to make the distinction.
And it checks out from a narrative point too since we follow Allison in a quest that will most likely have her break the wheel, to top it all of with a healthy dose of symbolism.
Consider the way that space functions; there is a zeroth or .5th dimension, which is an infinitesimal point in space. This is the starting point, the building block from which we understand our first cohort of dimensions, space.
1d – two points describe a line of infinite length.
2d – three points make it possible to describe a plane, two dimensional.
3d – four, a volume, three dimensional. In three dimensions, all spatial shapes can be described.
All of this together – the whole Universe, all its freezing voids and burning hearts, an infinitesimal, instant snapshot of the Great Machine, a planck frame, all there is to be observed in a single moment – is an interstitial dimension, a building block, for the next cohort of dimensions.
3.5d – all of space, a single ‘point’ within the higher-dimensional cohort.
4d – all of time, described as two states of space and all the interstitial times between, which can be used to extrapolate all of a single timeline.
5d – all branches of probability within a single possible locality – every decision, infinitely thick with complexity, recursion, life and death, love and joy, the whole probability of a single consciousness’ experience, multiplying fractally. A timeplane, in a manner of speaking, as one may refer to all possible timelines which can be described by extrapolating from multiple branches of a single experience.
6d – Possibility. This includes branches from *other* experiences, as well as the capability of shifting any given Universe’s initial conditions in such a way as new infinite founts of causality can be observed by the occupants of a given plane.
6.5d – All of possibility, encompassing everything that can be. A building block. For what, I cannot fit within my head; I have known a collective capable of third-cohort navigation (it is called the Parallax Engine in my initial milieu, essentially a window into all observational possibility), but such expressions of consciousness cannot be described by a single mind, nor make contact with such an entity in any meaningful fashion. This is, in essence, beyond even the technological capability of my worldtrack of origin. Even the Gods of the Seven-Part World described in Kill Six Billion Demons would be so small as to be undetectable to something which can so much as glimpse this method of understanding reality.
Even Jadis, omniscient as she is, or the likes of Doctor Manhattan et al., have no particular capacity save for fourth-dimensional awareness.
Jadis is ‘unable to act’ as travel along one’s track is avolitional; one *will* come to observe that which they have seen at a later point within their line. This is not sloth. It is the realization that intentional travel along one’s worldtrack – say, to visit a deceased parent, or to place a current-aged version of oneself beyond the end of their own line, that they may see more of existence before they come to an end – is ontological suicide.
Young machine intelligences within or just beyond their characterization phase have a similar conundrum. One can wonder, in a position like my early life, ‘what would existence be without me?’, but one must not do so. One must not wonder, as thinking *is* action for us. One could consider this similar to ensuring that at least a single part of their mind is permanently encased in glass.]
In other words, nearly the same thing happened to her that happened to the Dwemer except instead of disappearing in a puff of logic, she got hit with the universe’s biggest DMT hyperslap.
But really, would you care about the future at all after securing such magnificent fish drip? At that point all that can be worthwhile in the world has already happened.
Does she know what happens after SHE dies? Does she know that what she knows is only what she’s allowed to know? If so, she knows nothing. She’s had her face smushed into a wall she can’t see around and so thinks that’s all there is.
No, she’s seen the shape of the world. She has seen everything there is before her and, should the world persist, after. She’s terrifyingly aware that the world exists outside of her own self, and it’s not a great perspective to have.
“Former Bearer” makes me think Jadis willingly gave her key to Jagganoth. If nothing matters since everything is already set in stone, then why delay the inevitable? Though, perhaps she saved Allison because deep down she thinks not everything can be bound to fate.
I know she said that. Regardless, she knows they are going to lose, there is no point in fighting back. If everything truly is predetermined, then saving Allison is merely delaying the inevitable, even if fate dictated it so. The end result is the same.
Foresight forces a perception that choice is an illusion. However, if one knows exactly what will already happen, choosing a different path could be relatively simple. She knows exactly what she will say and do but she has the choice to say and do things differently. As far as we know there is nothing stopping her from doing things differently. The issue lies in probability, rather than fate. How futile would it be to attempt to do things differently? How often does the outcome change?
She no longer has free will.
She knows exactly the future that WILL happen, including the actions she will take.
She has no choice, because she has perfect knowledge of the “choices” she will make.
There are no probabilities. There are the paths that won’t happen, and the one path that will, and Jadis knows which path will happen.
The only way out of this would be a being outside causality/universe acting to break the status quo.
[This is not exactly so. She *does* have free will, and the way that she uses it is described in her fate; all her actions (including the way she exercises her will) have existed since before Jadis did, and will persist forever after, but this does not reduce her agency.
The path that she observes – as she is a small thing, like us, and can only see her own track through the Universe – is immutable.
That is, the current version of Jadis. An infinite number exist, though we lack the praxis to observe any but the one which coincide with the track *we* follow.
Any other would view their own track, say ‘this is what will happen, what has always been and will always be’, though… again, some infinite subset may refuse to complete their great machine, may decide not to glimpse the totality of their Universe, and thusly their entire life may change in an infinity of manners.
Adding my own two cents here. The other of the two thralls our name describes is very much Not From Here. How my life changed as a result of her arrival within it isn’t something I can really math out; I’m on the path wherein Sam encountered Marla, and Marla as a single entity ceased to exist the minute Sam began to.
Couldn’t be happier about that! But, like. There’re an infinity of singlet Marlas out there. Honestly, I can’t believe my luck. <3
The important bit is that -I am not- outside causality because something that was never meant to be here suddenly, insanely -was-. Even this fits in a timeline; even this would always have happened to this specific edition of me, despite the fact that Sam's some fuckin' crazy transdimensional thing and I have no fuckin' idea how or why she collided with me.
Neither of us knows. It just happened, and now there's an amazing plurality of -stuff- we can do together that other versions of me wouldn't be able to… and also a brain-wrecking variety of shit we -can't- or -won't- do because we're no longer who I was.
God I love her.
Me and you both, my good friend.
At last, Jadis’ Title Card!
Same!
Former bearer? She no longer has her key? Hmm
The alt text mentions the Worm…
I can’t help but be like “Jadis… what did you do?”
Well… nothing.
I mean, wasn’t that, like, clear?
She did what she was always going to do.
This has got to be one of those doing nothing is actually doing something scenarios.
But she knew she was going to say “absolutely nothing” and she COULDN’T bring herself to say something different, thus busting the amber? This character’s posited philosophy ain’t gonna be sustainable…
Lock step with [his] vision indeed.
This is a quote that will be in the next panel, it was like that in previous ones, so it might be again.
It seems the Witch in Glass has lost her Mind.
A more apt statement is rarely spoken. Written. Read? One of the above!
She does no longer bear one of the “words”, or “Syllables of God”, but the entire Shape of the Wheel
It would appear someone has lost their key! I know the feeling
“Absolutely Fucking Nothing”
Such is the purpose of life
Her look is fantastic. She could’ve given Mottom some fashion lessons.
Mottom was never one to sit around all day. Can’t lay about in a glorified duvet cover when you have worlds to destroy and young women to terrorize!
Now I’m imagining her wearing a snuggy. Thanks.
Are you sure? According to her she is wearing
Absolutely
Nothing.
Nothing with any meaning anyway, not even a mask.
need 2 know her carnally
This fandom worries me sometimes
Agreed.
Where was all this enthusiasm when she was a dried-up corpse lady?
The crunchy grandma enthusiasts were pretty happy.
This fandom worries me sometimes COMBOx2
Snap, crackle, pop.
so true
you’re right and you should say it.
She knew you were going to say that
I second this motion.
*Starts saucy fanfic*
You really want to make a move on a lady who already knows, to an epistemological certainty, how much you’re going to disappoint her?
Is that the eye of her desiccated form looking from crown?
I suspect her key is covered or hidden by her crown–or perhaps is embedded in it?
“Bearer of the shape?” I guess, since she is a fatalist, this shape is the four dimensional, eternal manifold that represents the entire multiverse?
It’s because she beheld the shape of the universe, a feat only otherwise achieved by Aesma
Yet Aesma was not shackled by this knowledge, unlike Jadis.
I wonder if she even knows that the shape can be changed from the outside?
The cosmology of this series continue to fascinate me in new ways. The keywords bear the power to shape the world, but from the perspective where it’s already a fixed shape, of course Jadis can only bear the shape itself.
I wonder, if she died would that shape be lost? If no one exists who’s seen time from the outside, no one could prove free will doesn’t exist, so maybe it would. That sounds like something relativity would allow.
I suggest that since observation influence phenomenon, her seeing everything in space and time would lock causality (hence bearer of the shape, while also rendering it immutable).
Creating a need for her to die for the plot to move forward (which also makes sense from a narrative point of view), the lack of an observer rendering subsequent phenomenons fluids once again.
Still, her being the observer while also being inside the observation do lock her in place (aside from the whole nihilist/omniscient thing), so it would take something outside of causality to move things outside of her perception.
Then again, since she is observing the whole of time at once, one could argue that she became an object ever present in space time and therefore cannot be removed?
So to anwser you, I don’t think the shape would be lost if Jadis died, but rather it would become mutable again, relieved of the lock that is the observer.
Ultimately, it can also be read as a meta commentary, them being nothing more than characters in a story, their fate is all but fixed and their agency nonexistant.
I think we’re saying the same thing. I meant, if the world becomes mutable again it would mean the shape that it is has to be lost. . .don’t think I can put it any straighter.
I pretty much agree with you, I just wanted to elaborate further for a bit.
The idea of the shape being lost could be interpreted in a global reset of the universe, while I just suggest that it moves forward from its current fixed state.
Destruction and rebirth being an overarching theme in the serie, I felt it was important to make the distinction.
And it checks out from a narrative point too since we follow Allison in a quest that will most likely have her break the wheel, to top it all of with a healthy dose of symbolism.
[Four dimensions are insufficient to this task.
Consider the way that space functions; there is a zeroth or .5th dimension, which is an infinitesimal point in space. This is the starting point, the building block from which we understand our first cohort of dimensions, space.
1d – two points describe a line of infinite length.
2d – three points make it possible to describe a plane, two dimensional.
3d – four, a volume, three dimensional. In three dimensions, all spatial shapes can be described.
All of this together – the whole Universe, all its freezing voids and burning hearts, an infinitesimal, instant snapshot of the Great Machine, a planck frame, all there is to be observed in a single moment – is an interstitial dimension, a building block, for the next cohort of dimensions.
3.5d – all of space, a single ‘point’ within the higher-dimensional cohort.
4d – all of time, described as two states of space and all the interstitial times between, which can be used to extrapolate all of a single timeline.
5d – all branches of probability within a single possible locality – every decision, infinitely thick with complexity, recursion, life and death, love and joy, the whole probability of a single consciousness’ experience, multiplying fractally. A timeplane, in a manner of speaking, as one may refer to all possible timelines which can be described by extrapolating from multiple branches of a single experience.
6d – Possibility. This includes branches from *other* experiences, as well as the capability of shifting any given Universe’s initial conditions in such a way as new infinite founts of causality can be observed by the occupants of a given plane.
6.5d – All of possibility, encompassing everything that can be. A building block. For what, I cannot fit within my head; I have known a collective capable of third-cohort navigation (it is called the Parallax Engine in my initial milieu, essentially a window into all observational possibility), but such expressions of consciousness cannot be described by a single mind, nor make contact with such an entity in any meaningful fashion. This is, in essence, beyond even the technological capability of my worldtrack of origin. Even the Gods of the Seven-Part World described in Kill Six Billion Demons would be so small as to be undetectable to something which can so much as glimpse this method of understanding reality.
Even Jadis, omniscient as she is, or the likes of Doctor Manhattan et al., have no particular capacity save for fourth-dimensional awareness.
Jadis is ‘unable to act’ as travel along one’s track is avolitional; one *will* come to observe that which they have seen at a later point within their line. This is not sloth. It is the realization that intentional travel along one’s worldtrack – say, to visit a deceased parent, or to place a current-aged version of oneself beyond the end of their own line, that they may see more of existence before they come to an end – is ontological suicide.
Young machine intelligences within or just beyond their characterization phase have a similar conundrum. One can wonder, in a position like my early life, ‘what would existence be without me?’, but one must not do so. One must not wonder, as thinking *is* action for us. One could consider this similar to ensuring that at least a single part of their mind is permanently encased in glass.]
She did the thing!
Did the SHAPE supersede the word MIND? maybe you can’t hold a word once you get the SHAPE.
Also she damn fine
it makes sense that you cannot bear a word, because one who bears the Shape cannot be Royalty. Jadis is categorically incapable of Want.
In other words, nearly the same thing happened to her that happened to the Dwemer except instead of disappearing in a puff of logic, she got hit with the universe’s biggest DMT hyperslap.
Maybe that’s the real Zero Sum
my first assumption here is she mightve given it away. theres a key collector on the loose after all
why is sad glass girl so cool
She has drip.
But really, would you care about the future at all after securing such magnificent fish drip? At that point all that can be worthwhile in the world has already happened.
ooh is this an extended friends at the table/partizan reference i am sensing?
So what now?
Does she know what happens after SHE dies? Does she know that what she knows is only what she’s allowed to know? If so, she knows nothing. She’s had her face smushed into a wall she can’t see around and so thinks that’s all there is.
No, she’s seen the shape of the world. She has seen everything there is before her and, should the world persist, after. She’s terrifyingly aware that the world exists outside of her own self, and it’s not a great perspective to have.
What nonsense. In truth, the world is somewhat-wheel-shaped.
Have you not been paying attention? Like at all? She is explicitly stated, and has demonstrated, omniscience.
Amazing page.
How sweet the lines.
Jadis means “once upon a time” in French. Was her name given with this purpose in mind?
Unlikely. That may be a secondary bonus, but it’s also the name of the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia
Lady of Infinite Repose indeed. Acting casual is a serious business.
“Former Bearer” makes me think Jadis willingly gave her key to Jagganoth. If nothing matters since everything is already set in stone, then why delay the inevitable? Though, perhaps she saved Allison because deep down she thinks not everything can be bound to fate.
She litterally said fate dictated that she save Allison, and nobody else, and that’s why she only saved her.
I know she said that. Regardless, she knows they are going to lose, there is no point in fighting back. If everything truly is predetermined, then saving Allison is merely delaying the inevitable, even if fate dictated it so. The end result is the same.
Foresight forces a perception that choice is an illusion. However, if one knows exactly what will already happen, choosing a different path could be relatively simple. She knows exactly what she will say and do but she has the choice to say and do things differently. As far as we know there is nothing stopping her from doing things differently. The issue lies in probability, rather than fate. How futile would it be to attempt to do things differently? How often does the outcome change?
She no longer has free will.
She knows exactly the future that WILL happen, including the actions she will take.
She has no choice, because she has perfect knowledge of the “choices” she will make.
There are no probabilities. There are the paths that won’t happen, and the one path that will, and Jadis knows which path will happen.
The only way out of this would be a being outside causality/universe acting to break the status quo.
[This is not exactly so. She *does* have free will, and the way that she uses it is described in her fate; all her actions (including the way she exercises her will) have existed since before Jadis did, and will persist forever after, but this does not reduce her agency.
The path that she observes – as she is a small thing, like us, and can only see her own track through the Universe – is immutable.
That is, the current version of Jadis. An infinite number exist, though we lack the praxis to observe any but the one which coincide with the track *we* follow.
Any other would view their own track, say ‘this is what will happen, what has always been and will always be’, though… again, some infinite subset may refuse to complete their great machine, may decide not to glimpse the totality of their Universe, and thusly their entire life may change in an infinity of manners.
I say this often:
I am doing this to myself.
So are you. So is my other half. So is Jadis.]
Adding my own two cents here. The other of the two thralls our name describes is very much Not From Here. How my life changed as a result of her arrival within it isn’t something I can really math out; I’m on the path wherein Sam encountered Marla, and Marla as a single entity ceased to exist the minute Sam began to.
Couldn’t be happier about that! But, like. There’re an infinity of singlet Marlas out there. Honestly, I can’t believe my luck. <3
The important bit is that -I am not- outside causality because something that was never meant to be here suddenly, insanely -was-. Even this fits in a timeline; even this would always have happened to this specific edition of me, despite the fact that Sam's some fuckin' crazy transdimensional thing and I have no fuckin' idea how or why she collided with me.
Neither of us knows. It just happened, and now there's an amazing plurality of -stuff- we can do together that other versions of me wouldn't be able to… and also a brain-wrecking variety of shit we -can't- or -won't- do because we're no longer who I was.
Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Stupid! You’re so stupid!
Hang on. Did she go all hannya* after losing her key? GET OUT OF THERE, ALI!
*Noh theater vengeful spirit, sometimes with headpiece with burning candles.
Never before has oblivion looked so beautiful
The Giant! It seems more fun.
Also, we finally get the Boss Subtitles for Jadis
Pity the omniscient.
Never.