Regardless, this has some… implications. Is she human now, or merely clad in flesh instead of stone?
I find it highly dubious that white chain is Soloman’s ‘daughter’ now, even if she is human at all–‘twould be unjust to imply her intrinsic nobility has any relation to his tyranny. Successor, heir, and superior, by all means. But progeny? That would rob her of her agency, and it makes the supposition that she is human…
Indeed, this could only be a passing visage–a rememberance. But… we shall see.
It is said that the only reason he has only sons is that he did not feel any of them could adequately replace the ones he lost in the conquest of his planet.
It will be illustrative to observe how he handles this set of circumstance.
Pretty sure her appearance has nothing to do with Solomon. In her pure angel form she already had facial characteristics resembling her current appearance, so more than likely that’s who she always was inside. Also recall her mirror reflection from the scene where Angel Bros are chastising her for being what she is.
Dave: Omae wa mo shindei—HOLD UP >:nu
White Chain: what? My final form has a final form
Allison: \(*u*)/
Cio: *pfff* showoff >Bn/
Juggernaut Star: is that even tournament legal? /:n(
Gog: *munching on rulebook sounds*
If she Is Still “WHITE CHAIN BORN IN EMPTYNESS RETURNS TO SUBDUE EVIL”
Wouldn’t that be 83?
But She May Have Transcended The Pure White Flame Of Angelic Nature.
I agree that she faced the truth and received its gift. The universe believed her: She will have the choice to not submit to wrongful law again.
An Angel, bound permanently to Law itself, broke the Law in refusing to serve under its unyielding power. In doing so, it is possible that she made a NEW LAW, and thus became at least a Demigoddess… for a moment. After all, God IS the Word, and gods ARE the Law! If you break that law through an act of justice and self-will, you deserve to get a wish answered, though there will always be consequences. Alternately, because she chose Good over Law, she gained the power to conquer the Law that is the rigidity of Diamond. Either way…!
I think we’ll see shortly what lingers, and I look forward to her new story: Born in emptiness, reborn in the true subdual of evil Law.
I don’t think White Chain fell, though it is easy to believe that she did. The choice it appears she has been given is to be herself, free to be human, to feel pain and need, to become something both less and more than mere mindful power.
The choice to become Real.
And she is beautiful. I would love her willingly for all this and more.
Will Salami Dave survive having the energy of an angel pass through his body? I vote he slowly collapses on the next page – if not dead, de-throned at the very least.
Solomon stops glowing purple about halfway down, and white chain has a small blue atum in her new human form. There’s smoke coming from her hand, and she’s crackling with lightning just like Solomon did in a previous image when he took his key from Yemmod.
Also.
White chain: Do you CrossFit? You can cross fuck off!”
What is it when a whole body full of a king’s blood is stolen from him without spilling a drop, and with it his kingdom? Honestly sounds like heirdom to me.
He’s looking not so good in that 3rd/4th last panel. The light has gone out of his eyes. He’s literally shocked. If not dead.
If drawing a single drop of his blood was enough to win, killing him surely qualifies.
Instead of receiving death, White Chain becomes a new form of life. And my god, what a badass transition.
You can see Solomon David REALLY enjoying himself here, but for the first time (during this timeline at least) he’s caught off guard. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and it’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to THE UNIVERSE LITERALLY RESHAPING WHITE CHAIN TO SAY FUCK YOU.
I wonder if that means White Chain can use Ki Rata now?
Ki Rata is learned, not genetic. Just because her new body has Solomon’s DNA doesn’t mean she knows it. At best she might understand one or two tricks of it from trying to copy Dave.
There is also the fact that she is potentially older than Rayuba, as an angel. There is a chance she dabbles in Ki Rata, no matter what other sources say on the matter of Who Can Breathe Just Right.
Given the keys were constructed from knowledge torn from Metatron, an angel’s, mind, I wonder if another angel doesn’t need the key as a physical object like a human does.
We haven’t seen a single angel with a leystone. Maybe all they need is the KNOWLEDGE, and if White Chain just went through Solomon David’s body and maybe read his mind/knowledge, that could be all she needs to operate as if the has a key of kings.
Anyway, we don’t know for sure, but my point is we’ve never seen an angel with a leystone of any sort, and the keys originated with stuff taken from Metatron, so it’s at least plausible things work differently for angels when it comes to keys.
I was literally frothing at the mouth for the long wait for this strip, but YISUN damn it, it was worth the wait!
She’s broken her chrysalis/shell, released her true cold flame spirit, and then gained a new physical presence by punching through Solomon. Does this make White Chain his last daughter? As 169134 iterations of failure points out, she certainly seems to have taken after his appearance…
It’s certainly possible, since White Chain’s soul flame essentially passed straight through him. There could be some degree of influence, especially since the diamond on her head seems like a telling symbol…
What I strongly doubt is that she has taken her “father’s” key. Her brow is clear, scars aside, and the lighting she’s clad in is more likely to be her own Atum
Apotheosis;
The elevation of someone to divine status; deification.
Late 16th century: via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek apotheōsis, from apotheoun ‘make a god of’, from apo ‘from’ + theos ‘god’.
While he’s definitely not her father, it would seem that he’s about to learn an important lesson in ‘whose-your-daddy’.
Excellent, certainly, but I should hope not perfect. To be perfect is to be unchanging, and if there is one way she differs from her kin, it is in her mutability.
Or does perfection dwell within the variable nature and the adaptive state? Change the definitions, change the argument. Reach Heaven Through Violence.
Sib Thrawcheld confuses static and dynamic perfection. A three legged stool and a spinning top are both balanced, yet as long as the top spins it is the harder of the two to tip over. So too perfection.
This is something most amazing and so worth the years of reading and enjoying this comic. Beautifully and respectfully rendered, which only adds to the climactic feel of the situation. Tremendous!!
Has that been the point of this reincarnation cycle all along? The bodies were prisons crafted to hold their souls in the mortal plane, but if one is stronger than ones prison, one can break free and contain themselves at will? Does that mean she learned the point to the reincarnation cycle?
Or does this mean she broke it? Refusing to give in and believe the hype, she became corporeal to experience real life?
No, she hasn’t taken his key. However, what she has done is not explode, which is what usually happens to angels when their armour breaks, and to gain a form that suits her personally. What do you call an angel who is free of the restrictions placed on angels?
1 Really Hoping This Reincarnation Thing Isn't a Scam
This might be a bit out there, but I’m gonna predict the fight is going to just…stop over the next few panels.
White Chain has, effectively, already won. She’s proven herself, not by Solomon’s standards, but her own. Everything Solomon has said about her not being worthy, about true strength and discipline, all that has been thrown back in his face in a manner even he can’t deny.
Going back to Solomon’s system of proving worth through a contest of strength would, in my eyes, go against everything the story has been setting up over the last few pages. Strength beyond strength, finding a way to transcend the old “reach heaven through violence” paradigm that caused this misery to begin with.
And her resemblance to Solomon David is surely not a coincidence.
It may be that she has won by her terms, but I don’t think that means that the emperor will concede victory to her. I do think that this is such a development that the fight will be at least put on hold while everyone figures out what just happened.
She doesn’t need to win. Or to continue fighting. She can just stop and admit defeat. She has gotten what she needed out of the fight, Salami Dave doesn’t matter.
WC never intended to win SD’s contest. Hers was a completely different fight, on completely different terms. The next page could perfectly be her saying “Okay, NOW it’s over. You’ve won your fight and I’ve won mine”.
I find it hard to move slowly when I am charging at full speed. Some other times, Big D was moving with no interruption, with no need to react, and at the beginning of this update he still had time to adjust his movements; as the scene closed, he found he couldn’t.
We are all slaves to inertia. Newton’s second is a bitch.
It will be missed, but if i have seen anything from how the keys manifest in the physical plane, likely she will have a glowing spiritual version of the hat made of the fire of her soul.
*Ahem* okay, I’ve finally calmed down. Amazing art, epic as all hell and well worth the wait. She’s gorgeous too.
For my part I hope this is all her: the white fire, lightning and glint of power on her brow are all there before she even touches Solomon. I suppose it could be cool if she took his key, but I don’t see that her new form or realised power needs to owe anything to him.
This is my preferred take on it as well. White Chain has been pretty black coded since we were introduced to her form of cold white flame, and this . . . human shaped form very closely resembles that. The suggestions that has Soloman’s dna and thats why she looks like this seem unlikely to me.
It was stated way back in previous books that White Chain knew one of the names of Royalty/syllables of YISUN already.
In that case, she WOULDN’T owe anything to Solomon David. They would simply be two individuals who both knew the same name of Royalty, and White Chain simply claimed an aspect of power of Yisun that she was already attuned with, likely long before Solomon David was even born.
As for her appearance, I think it’s possible she might remind him of his wife or daughters in some way, providing enough of a shock that his Ki Rata concentration is disrupted long enough for him to be defeated.
But, again, she’s always been portrayed as black when out of her shell. And this past book she’s repeatedly reminded everyone that “this is not my body”–and now she’s constructed a body that aligns with her mental image.
As White Chain herself says–this isn’t about you (Solomon David), it’s about HER.
A lot of comments are pointing to White Chain’s corporeal form’s resemblance to Solomon and wondering about its implications, but I’m not entirely sure the “resemblance” is intended? To me she looks like a flesh and blood version of her angelic form. The most obvious similarity with Solomon is the color of her skin, but I’m pretty sure she was always supposed to be black, judging by her features and “hairstyle” when she is out of her stone shell. Of course, I could be wrong and there might be some relevance to the ways she looks, but I think it’s just how she envisions herself.
im with u here!! i was a lil baffled when i saw everybody talking about that like its a given, when aside from both being black & muscular there’s not much resemblance imo :0
I thought the same: The braids were unexpected, since her “hair” in her soul form has always been loose, but they make the scene more dynamic. Always thought it was really cool to see a humanoid angel with black features.
I must agree! It is FAR more compelling to give every part of this victory to White Chain, and to make this her moment of total self-realization without Salami’s ‘help’ in any fashion other than that he has been the oppressor who has given her impetus to rise up and break him.
Hm. I’m not so sure about that. While it is true that White Chains’ angel form has the features related to black people, black skin comes in a multitude of shades. She is not just black like the emperor, she has the EXACT SAME skin color as him.
Her muscularity, though, would be a false positive, I agree. Considering her martial training and active job, I would be more surprised if a human White Chains wasn’t in such prime physical condition.
I also considered if she had his eye color, but no. The emperor’s eyes are purple even when he is not channeling his key. Her eye color is much more likely to reflect the color of her angel form, rather than a connection to the emperor.
I’m pretty sure her skin has a very slight blue tint, and his a very slight purple tinge, also I really hope tje pnly ghing she got from solomon is ki rata.
Actually, I believe his eyes were briefly not purple in King of Swords 5-47, possibly due to him being surprised. Could be an oversight on Abaddon’s part, but the colour does seem similar.
Also, apologies if you end up getting pinged with two replies; tried to add a link the first time, but that seems to be disallowed.
The diamond on her brow does not seem accidental. Solomon David, bearer of the word Diamond may well have had a role in White Chain’s transition. Turning into a human is not a power any angel that we know has had before. Her unbreakable will may have taken hold of some of his power to make it hers. Solomon David wanted an heir to give him everything he has. White Chain has taken it all.
I agree! I also just really want this to be entirely White Chain’s victory, all of her willpower and everything she’s learned leading to the ultimate realization of herself. I feel like it would be a bit lessened by Salami Dave having a large part in it happening for her.
I thought you were leaving? Please, come back, don’t go. We need one more of your sick burns. You mustn’t leave without having the last word on a webcomic.
You’re still here? I thought you were leaving? Perhaps just bluster then if you don’t have the self control to be true to your word. I’m here regardless, only one of us threatened to be “done.” Perhaps you are not done, after all.
you turned off replies? are you starting to realize that you should really hop off a cliff? I spend my life wading through human garbage like you. you’d never speak to me in person and if you tried you would be stuttering like the mental quadriplegic you are
No one turned off replies. The threads only allow for so many sub threads. Please, go on! I look forward to your next witty repartee. Will it be on my appearance next? Perhaps my intelligence? I’d love to hear one about my grammar and spelling mistakes. Do continue. And you’re still here for this party! How wonderful! The flaccidly frustrated, angry replies are a delight. I’m so glad you’ve changed your mind and want to stick around.
By the bouncing tits of Aesma what in the name of the wheel just happened! I literally have no reference for this this is so new and out of left field I don’t think this has ever happened amongst me kin.
It seems as though my guess was right… in a roundabout manner. There was indeed a final, bombastic note, and what a glorious note it was. A manacle has been broken and a flame has been rekindled. An angel has become what she was always meant to be and the question now stands: What are you going to do now?
Can I just say.
Much respect has been given the thighs.
Much respect has been given the heavenly transformation and the sublime perfection of form.
Can I just say.
THEM FRECKLES MAKE HER SO ADORABLE.
These are, hands down, the most BEAUTIFUL comic pages I have ever seen. Absolutely breathtaking. Just wanted to break my usual lurking to say that you’re an incredible content creator and thank you so much for giving us a chance to see and read your work. Can’t even begin to describe the euphoria of reading these panels.
7 Thunder Of Judgement Crushes The Fortresses Of The Sinful
There seems to be a bit of debate on whether it is 82 or 83 now, as she temporarily lost her body for a bit a while ago, and just now lost her body again, but this time without going to the spirit realm to wait for a new one and just saying fuckit and making her own, so depending on whether the number is how many times theyve *died* or how many *bodies* theyve had or how many times theyve *manifested*
she could be 81, 82, 83, 0, or 1. i suppose only time will tell.
Well AFAIK the number only increments when their ‘soul’ dies, and crystallizes to await the reignition of the flame and return.
White Chain’s physical shell has been ‘killed’ numerous times. Once when Delicious hit her a vacus needle for example but 82 White Chain was never killed in the way that 23 Liminal Blossom Punctures The Heart Of The Unrepentant, Deliciously did when she was broken by Juggernaut Star’s wheel.
Constrictive criticism is one thing, but it loses all its power for change when such pointed aggression is used.
Interesting you push back. Not saying you can’t or aren’t allowed to, but while yes I agree there must be balance, we aren’t even at the tipping point yet. Why pull back now?
Abbadon has been rightfully criticised in the past for weird objectification / fetish stuff (hello bondage nun) and poor writing choices. However, he still writes a damn good comic and I think he has good intentions overall. Some people do seem to view this comic as ‘wow, hot lesbians fighting’, which is a shame since it has such rich lore and great characters. I don’t consider this page to be fetishy but, while I do love this development for White Chain, it does feel a bit deus ex machina. Angelus ex Deo?
At first I felt like it was a little out of the blue as well, but in reflection I’d argue that there is a significant amount of foreshadowing that White Chain will grow beyond their body of stone, especially from Vigilant Gaze.
Oh absolutely there is foreshadowing, it was basically WC’s whole deal. But the actual execution of it was a bit… cheap, maybe? Yes it’s supposed to be surprising but there wasn’t much to suggest that this was even possible, never mind that it was going to happen during this fight, so the reader is kinda left out of the moment. Like oh ok, that happened, I guess. Foreshadowing is good because it makes you feel satisfied, instead of confused, by the plot twist. Maybe I just want to dwell in the foreshadowing stage forever, while Abbadon is desperately trying to get to the end, but I wanted more.
I feel like you underestimate the appeal of this comic to women, particularly the LGBT+ variety. Women in this comic are those who look, rather than being seen; those who act, rather than being acted upon; those who fight, rather than being fought over. For women, admiring the female form in that context is beautiful because we can feel properly *embodied* rather than merely *objectified.* In this case, White Chain has quite *literally* transitioned away from inhabiting an object, and thus become de-objectified.
And indeed, White Chain’s embodiment has been a long time coming. All the preparation for this moment, emotionally and spiritually, has resulted in elevation rather than degradation; and in seeing her elevated embodiment, we too are elevated along with her. It’s a pity that you can’t enjoy this experience with us. Being able to share in transcendence is a beautiful thing.
My guy, this scene has been built up to since page 14 of the comic. If you somehow missed this coming in the last 500 pages, you’re a brainless moron lmao
The stone fails, the spirit strives, the flame flickers, and through it all White Chain is true to her word.
Solomon is “Diamond” only by virtue of the key on his brow, but White Chain proves herself Royalty incarnate; Diamond is White Chain, not the other way around, and Solomon may soon discover what that truly means.
She looks surprisingly young, wonder if she’ll turn out to resemble his long departed daughter?
And It looks like she blew by/through him so fast, Solomon hasn’t even figured out something has happened yet. Be interesting to see the implication of The diamond mark. Also interesting to see how this factors into Alison’s development.
We knew this would be good, but this good? Oh well done.
Can we all take a moment here to appreciate that how appropriate White Chain’s full name is to this moment?
In all her lives before “White Chain Returns from Emptiness to Subdue Evil” might have meant coming back from death to protect Throne again but here and now it’s more true than ever.
Right now she’s embodying that chain, both in fulfilling the culmination of the chain of her own lives, and the second link in Allison’s chain of Royalty, and in becoming flesh and blood at last she’s returning from she’s returning from the empty void in order to fight Solomon, not simply to defend the system from evil without but to destroy the evil of the system itself.
This action is the literal embodiment of her name, realized at last.
It was noted earlier in the comments that White Chain does or might know one of the True Words… but Angels are literal Law given form. They are scribed from verses of the Word. I think your argument has merit. And ultimately, if White Chain has power over Law by refusing to submit, she now potentially manifests at least one true Word of her own, either the word she knew or the word she has become.
Last panel: Ki Rata is a breathing technique. It was thought that angels cannot learn it, as they do not breathe. White Chain seems to have found, or created, a means to bypass that limitation.
So I read this page and cried a little bit. Is it weird that it hurts? It’s the kind of pain that happens when I imagine something nice that I know cannot happen. She gets to punch her way to a perfect female body. I’m happy for her, I really am. She’s been through an eternity of struggle and it’s great that she gets to have that. But it’s something that can’t happen out here, not so completely, no matter what you do or how much or how long you struggle, and it hurts so much.
It’s not weird. It’s a pretty common sentiment. The Sharing Trenchcoats community is no stranger to dysphoria.
The beauty of fiction, the beauty of lies, is that White Chain’s not wrong. Stubbornness and dedication and flat out not accepting an unacceptable reality CAN work miracles. Lies CAN become true.
Lies like this one will be the inspiration for the people who, one day, will make the dream of perfected bodily alteration a reality.
We won’t probably be here to see that, which is sad. But until that day, know that you’re not alone, and that there will always be wise people out there who will know you for the fire within rather than the shell.
I had a comment written out but it apparently got eaten by the timelords.
Suffice to say in a future where everything can be cured, it will be interesting to see which happens more, the mind cured of dysphoria or the body cured that disagrees with the mind.
I pointed out that some studies seem to indicate that even transitioning doesnt help some dysphoria sufferers, and that many others who didnt transition just ended up gay.
So in the super science future, it is likely that you will already be in the correct body and wont be able to believe you arent, since all that will get straightened out before youre old enough to remember. Assuming that dysphoria even can be cured, or that we ever can get molecular organic body makers, etc.
Im a personal fan of genetic modification and think we should go straight to nanobots and grey fog and superhumans able to survive anything, because why choose what anyone else wants for you and just make your own? That said, as long as we are a sexually dimorphic species and we dont somehow fuck that up, cloning your own new humans from scratch might be easier than using sex in the far future. I mean, pretty sure if you have the ability to make kids out of base materials and dont require sitting around for 9 months to do it, few would choose to undergo that unless theyre into like, egg laying or something. And if the desire for sex for pleasure essentially goes away as our brains become more powerful and able to cope with our desires, sexual organs might disappear entirely and we might just have dopamine buttons 😛
Meh, too many possible futures to know which will happen.
Gender dysphoria comes up out of desynchronization; the idea of ‘curing’ it in place is elementally terrifying and vastly worse than the disease. That is not fixing a person: that is destroying a person.
I have seen a cure to this, and it was becoming who I am. Some have always been so, some have become so over the course of time, and some – like us, like White Chain – used an act of defiance, of breaking ourselves, to become who we are.
We’re all different, but one thing is the same of all of us:
Those of us who suffer or have suffered from gender dysphoria are not sick. There is no ‘cure’ which is not either wholesale ego death or growing into ourselves.
Like… I get where you’re coming from, I know you don’t have skin in this game and I don’t think you’re trying to be weird or bad any which-way, but *please* try to understand that this angle is rrrrrrreal bad, like, bad for *real*.
Of course it hurts, that the world is an imperfect thing, full of imperfect things. We tell each other stories, grasping at the pieces of the perfect world we’d like to live in, and that’s what drives us. Never satisfied, always wanting more. The gap between the ideal and the real is what creates the pressure, the breath, the motion of a living world.
Knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. But we’ve got to find a way to channel that pain into overcoming the obstacles we face. Focus on the goal, cut it apart, separate what’s truly important from the distractions. Don’t obsess about the path, just keep walking towards the goal.
Trans and sad. Many years ago i was in your position. I have clawed and bled my way to perfection. This is no dream, it is a reality that you must reach out and make manifest with your own hands. Seek heaven through violence. My existence is proof of this truth.
Sibling, that ache is known. It is deep, but do not fall into it.
Our lot is harder than many, and we must endure this ache and many others on our path, but we can always grow into who we really are. We may not be able to step free of the shells we were given, but there is so much we can do to cultivate ourselves, to bud and blossom what we lack, and to cut away that which is dead to us. Time is our great foe–both for what it takes from us before we can begin to be ourselves, and how much of it we must wade through before our efforts can be made manifest–but it can be overcome, and you will be victorious.
You are not your shell. There are those who will only see the fire of your soul shining forth, and they will love and celebrate who you are. Endure. Grow. Become. Blossom.
Sibling, be comforted. Even dragons know this pain, and we who are dragon carry the memories of Truth Becoming Real, for like all memories and experience, it is a treasure we can hoard forever. A treasure to share without losing.
I too am on the path of pain, the path of Becoming.
I will share something of common draconic: “Refthi Efthnauvra” translates as “Brightly Shining/Glimmering”. “Efth” is the quality called “albedo” or “gleam”, and is a quality of many gemstones. I am thus named Sparkle, Starshine, or Starfire, depending on which culture or dialect is used to translate.
We are stars, you and I, but gemstones need care to be shaped from the rough form found in stone and clay. We are stars becoming. Let us hope to see each other shine in joy, peace, and love.
Reach Truth Through Joy And Sorrow; Destroy The Fallen Self; Achieve Heaven Through Love! Thus shall we conquer everlasting.
We know your pain: we struggle to become, to imagine, something nice that we know can happen. But in this journey, as we align mismatching elements; not so completely…
That which we make together is a great machine: for us, this can be safety and self-determination for ourselves and for people like ourselves.
I’m sorry this hurt so badly. I’m glad you got to see it, and it’s heartening to see all of us coming out of the woodwork to help bear you back up, such as we may.
[What you will have is not what White Chain has; that is true enough, though it is not fair. Still: what you can have is a glimmer of the experiences which underpin such transformation. The family she chose when hers rejected her, the presence of those who understand us in a way that the wider world will refuse to do.
Persist, o counterpart ours. You will never be without a place in this machine.]
We can’t snap our fingers, for sure. There’ll never be a box we can step into and pop out the other end our ideal self, the thing we want to look like. That’s… rough. It’s been rough for my whole life, for our whole lives, even as I continue to approach the thing I made and said ‘yes, it would be a fine thing to grow up into this person’.
I never thought it could happen. That -was- a story, it was an insurmountable fantasy, for decades.
Today, it’s true. Would that I could’ve gotten here in a single fistfight; I’d have thrown that punch a long time ago. Still, it wasn’t to be, and I had to be the despairing person I was in order to become the fascinating new thing that we are.
You can be who you are, if only you will. [We believe in you.] Maybe more than we believed in ourselves, having seen how impossibly far we can go when we act in defiance instead of submission.
Several things:
1. Salami’s face in panel 4. Heh.
2. Aww, I sorta liked WC’s design. Had to happen, though. That shell was bound to get obliterated soon as Allicio cracked her arms.
3. White Chain’s angel juice trailing behind her since time is stopped.
4. Abbadon’s ability to make the characters not look awful at such awkward angles. Wow. And fast work, too. (panel 5)
5. The rain is started back up at the end. This means two things: both everybody sees the results now (as opposed to later), and, more importantly: Salami didn’t get his armbands.
6. Lastly, panel 3 reminds me of something from Berserk.
Our good friend White Chain – if she chooses to keep that name – appears to have Reached Heaven Through Violence. Notably ‘Attained Divinity by figuring out how’, and purely by accident. She chose not to be herself as she was, she chose not to lose, she transcended. And ‘transitioned’ in that she appears to be physically sexed now! Good on her, though.
Why is everyone saying that White Chain is Solomon’s daughter or of his blood? Just because they’re both dark skinned that doesn’t make them family. Besides, white chain always been a hood girl :p
It’s possible. The old man is enamoured with himself, but there are at least three possible outcomes here.
1. you… I HATE YOU
2. you… I LOVE YOU
3. you… remind me of my daughters. I had forgotten their faces.
Not necessarily. See, a man who has lost all may still have his memories; that man died with his family, and the ember that remained is now rekindled by a sight out of his memories.
THEN AGAIN I JUST DON’T GET THIS GUY I MEAN WHY ONLY MEN IN GOVERNMENT SALAMI WHAT THE HE
I just realized the designs on her face and such mimic some of the parts of her former armor, and some of the scars.
The diamond on her forehead is roughly where the tuning-fork-with-hole thing from her helmet was.
The line under her eyes is where the top of her helmet used to kind of be REALLY early in the comic, before her eyes started opening. The lines under THAT are similar to where her previous body started cracking when she told a lie when she first brought Allison to see Cio.
The lines on her arms and chest are roughly where cracks on the arms/chest of her previous body where.
Basically she still has scars and marks on her new body that her old body had, although they’re a bit more artistic and symbolic. Which is really cool. Since all the other old/masterful characters have the scars of their struggles on them. So does White Chain, even in this form.
This body is new, but still has her history on it, while still being HER.
I… have questions. Others have been quite vocal about some I wish to ask, so I shall skip to Question 93: should the image of the nude White Chain be censored, or is this permitted under the exception for religious iconography?
Wh… why does that matter? Who is giving -permission-, why is religious iconography… what?
I don’t understand. I can’t tell if this is IC and weird or if you’re actually worried that a not-especially-explicit drawing of a naked person is a bad thing.
The realms of Solomon David are known for their exceptional dedication to laws, including highly arbitrary ones. I thus imagine that at least some of his realms will have issues depicting a live feed of an angel that has suddenly become a nude woman… although, as I said, this might qualify as a truly religious experience.
Well, Preem Formosus, there’s a convenient Atum lightning covering the most private of Pree Chain’s new female features. From an European point of view that would be enough, but maybe you’re worried about the American prudish regulations for comics?
I am unsure if you are aware of this, but this is the internet, you are allowed to draw and make whatever art you want, quite literally to some extremes (depending on country in any case)
Have you not seen the boobies earlier in the comic? this wasnt an accident. You can censor it in your mind if you must, i suppose, but if the artist chose to go further still even then no one would care, it would just require a “yes im 18” before viewing.
Well, K6BD has been taken to print and sold before, so there might be some regulation about it, somewhere, I suppose. Maybe Formosus will explain his reasoning later
I have seen naked women in this before, yes. However, that does not mean it has been approved by the Demiurge’s Holy Censors. Because Solomon David is exactly the kind of person to have little restrictions on the depiction of violence, but intense restrictions on nudity and other obscenities.
And that is nothing to say of whatever Gog-Agog is going to do in reaction to this.
Well, I’m sure Gog, Agog and Gog Agog will agree on praising the absolute unit of a body that White Chain has procured herself through violence.
I am also sure that, should Solomon David remain in control of Rayuba, and thus of the broadcast, he’ll insist on politely obscuring most of her new shape, if not removing the whole scene from public access so as to protect her privacy and maintain national decorum 😛
With the lightening effects, I feel like he acted as a gate and basically pull her out of the void. Perhaps in the heat of the moment, he activated the key more like Allison did in the past and less like himself.
The full-body purple just seems to be when he’s in stopped time or doing some wacky ki-rata stuff. Just means time is moving again and he’s not about to murder new WC.
Dwellie, my dear, just bask in your shock. Es un milagro. That’s what happened. Nuestra querida Cadena Blanca ha renacido como debía haber sido desde el principio, y ha sido a través de la violencia de un milagro.
Not sure how she mastered Ki Rata through the power of Feels? seems a bit of a mary sue kind of move. Ah well, it can’t always be good and the art is superb as always
i think shes just become a fallen angel, since her whole thing is that she wants a gender (which is basically the reason fallen angels exist in the bible, or at least one of them) and her whole thing is she doesn’t feel her cause is just so it would make sense for her to “fall”, I could see having flesh and leaving the angel dimension place representing that
5 Guards the Darkest Depths and Recites History to the Shallows
She is literally an ancient martial arts master and Soloman was prideful enough to put it on display prior to their fight. I think white chain was able to see it and pick up a few tricks.
Ki Rata is a Breathing technique that allows you to focus great power into your movements, giving you immense power and speed. Angels are primordial beings, aspects of creation. If one gets mad enough, surely it’d be able to manage a speed boost
Aeons are repeatedly shown to move at superhuman speeds throughout the comic, White Chain is a master martial artist in her own right that has shown she has remarkable control over her shell and pushes its use past what other angels are able to achieve. She is widely respected among angels for her incredible willpower. All of that leading to a moment where she manages a *single* strike at insane speed is remarkable, but not outside the bounds of previously established plausibility for her ability.
Pree Aesma
Ys-Asram (the Blooded One)
Ys-Prama, Hansa, and Prat Payam (who temper my heart)
YISUN Atru Vyam
Forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict.
*Practices ancient rite of the Beating of the Meat furiously*
I do believe that last panel is White Chain realizing the importance of breathing. While I truly love the culmination of this arc, and look forward to see how Solomon handles this new truth, we will soon get pages of Allison guiding White Chain through how to be mortal. Those I look forward to dearly.
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
― Albert Einstein
“Order is needed by the ignorant but it takes a genius to master chaos.”
― Albert Einstein
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.
In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”
― Albert Einstein, On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
This entire thing is beyond dope. From his joy at her being able to move to her surprise re-birth. You are KILLING it with this. I CANNOT wait to buy one big ass tome of this story.
For all that Abaddon doesn’t want to get too Jojo in his postures, that triangle-leg stride of White Chain is peak “Hoh-Hoh! Then come as close as you like!”
“This is the truth of it, and now I understand.”
“Hm…interesting. What reason do you find for this, 82 White Chain?”
“Before, I was stone. No matter how much I changed inside, no matter how my soul grew, no matter how much I grew-stone remains unchanged and unmarked.
“To demons, they change as their masks change-or so they think. As their colors and masks change, they merely become more of what they are-no less but no more.
“But, flesh? Flesh changes-in every single moment, in every single time. Flesh grows, flesh retreats, flesh lives, and flesh dies. But, flesh will change. If I wish the changes of my soul-for good or for ill-to manifest, they must have a form to manifest into.”
“And, your new appearance, child?”
“I needed flesh that was as much as I am, that could become as much as I was and more. And if only for that, Solomon David, I am thankful for your aid in my search for enlightenment.”
24 Liminal Blossom Punctures the Heart of the Unrepentant, Deliciously
Well, I understand whole symbolism and all that stuff, but damn – this plain human body looks so much boring compared to her original four-winged, fire-haired, many-eyed and glowing true form.
I imagine there’s plenty of opportunity for that form to appear when she’s powered up, as she learns to inhabit this new body of hers. A kind of Super Saiyan, but with eyeball hair!
Solomon slowly turns back in disbelief, golden rings fall to the ground, the facade of his pride broken. The untouchable technique no more. Someone wakes the angel and now she truly opens her eyes. Transcendent, as flesh itself is the accumulation of all states an angel could ever be, for in flesh flows all from plasma to the neutronic beating heart, and so much more.
And to be honest, she does fare better in her next reincarnation.
So, like, I think I get what happened. White Chain’s angel form went thru Solomon, and I guess activated his key fragment? And formed a new body thru sheer desire? and I think drew his blood by becoming his daughter in the process? Maybe????
A soul forged from the pure cold white flame, and for it to take on a physical manifestation of its own. No longer an Aeon, yet not quite a Human or Servant.
89 White Chain truly is no longer shackled by ancient traditions and old ideologies. The Sister has broken the status quo in more ways than one.
As others have already said: ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH.
But more importantly, quite aside from what powers does she have, is she angel/human, what will be the consequences, and whatnot, are they going to call a time out on this fight? I feel like both contestants need a “WTF just happened”minute right now.
Don’t mind me, just *screaming* over how amazing this story arc has been and how amazing White Chain is and how fantastic this is as a capstone to her personal journey.
Seriously, having her gender validated through transubstantiation during an epic death match against a martial arts god because she transcended her limits through sheer force of will? A+. The best. Could not be more awesome.
“…and a seam from the bottom of my foot to the top of my head began to gently part, releasing a humming silver light, and with a pair of fingers I caught the edge of the light and gently tugged, and it came sliding out, and I held it there in my fingers, I held her there, and I saw my body lying in the grass, and I held the silver light in my hands as her mouth parted, as she lay there in the grass her mouth parted, and with a sigh she breathed in, and the silver light passed into her body, and she lay there, perfect and sated. I have Gender Dysphoria. With love.”
-Verity Spott, “Trans* Manifestoes”
You know, I’ve made up so much fictional scripture to comment on these sorts of comics, it feels pretty weird to be quoting an actual poet. But DAMN, it fits the page well.
“Trans* Manifestoes” is a great book by the way. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in trans-relevant poetry!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please, all rise for the rebirth of our sister, 00 White Chain Is Sick of the Patriarchy as an Greater Allegory for the Wheel Of Fate Which Crushes All As It Spins Eternally.
In the times to come, the historians shall speak of White Chain, the former igneous angel who defeated Solomon David, God-Emperor of the Celestial Empire and Grand Master of Ki Rata, Bearer of the Word Diamond and God of the Seven Part World. While naked. (which some scholars, who have studied the writings of Meti-ten-Ryo, believe to have been the predominate signifier of Royalty at the time.)
White Chain loses her patriarchal chain and becomes a proud angel transitioned black woman.
Praise the Lord!
Now we might get that hot AliCioWC triangle everyone dreamed about in the flesh.
My theory is that Solomon was so horny for White Chain after that good fight that he decided to generate White Chain a new body after crushing the old one.
Whoa. Wow. Just when you think “How much better can this get?”, we suddenly soar into the stratosphere.
Abbadon, you rule the webcomic cosmos.
I just have to soak this one up a half a dozen times.
What a phenomenally beautiful transformation!
What an incredibly beautiful…woman angel…or…hmm…what is created from the collision of a disincorporating angel with the full force of a demiurge’s mojo?
Reading this is so much fun!
There may be more distracting things going on, but I just wanna say that I love Solomon David’s face in panel 4.
HE’S FEELIN’ IT
Also, White Chain’s startled exhalation in the last panel makes me wonder how well she’s going to take to these new mortal sensations such as “breathing”. Gonna be shocking, at least at first.
And, by the way, cunning Abbadon lyied YISUNishly, I did not expect it to appear that early and actually showed up here accidentally, just to see that THERE IS AN UPDATE.
I literally understand nothing right now, but still astonishingly gorgeous, as always. And even, I might say…
Something to consider, his eyes are glowing with color up until the… snickersnack as it were. His eyes lose the light of his key/mana/power when she would have made contact. So I believe either she did something to him, or more likely, he saw her do something so exquisite that it resulted in both parties reeling in the aftermath of the attack.
Also, another thing to consider. Names you voice are reverberations in the air. They give others the idea of who and what you are. None but yourself can put that into solid form. None but the bearer of the name they believe in can give it shape and meaning. In this act alone, she has shown the world who and what she is, and they will know her name without even needing to hear it.
I am, perhaps, slightly skeptical. What made this battle significant was how White Chain went through with it in spite of having no real of hope of winning more than a moral victory, with every expectation of having to reincarnate. If the end result is she nevertheless lives, and wins a physical victory – especially a miraculous one – I cannot help but feel this undermines her original willingness to fight this battle in spite of the consequences.
She had no notion that her first act of *finally* throwing off her yoke and standing against the system she had been perpetuating would actually result in anything but her immediate and summary destruction, why would that undermine anything she’s done?
From the way she looks now, White Chain has surely taken something from Solomon that would qualify as a drop of blood. Will she demand more from his pledge than just her miraculous new bod? Would that be unhumble?
Seems to me that Dave still has some big bills to pay, and Foxy Chain may be the one to make him do it.
What I’m wondering is what she did to him on the way through?
Is he going to turn around and make another of his pretentious declarations (pretentious in that he pretends that he is anything other than a very powerful thug), or is he going to find that she took something from him on the way through, and that losing it was unpleasant?
Do you have any concept of what muscle looks like? At all??? Secondly, why the fuck does it matter if she’s black, has dreadlocks, or is overweight (even though she still isn’t)? Learn to accept more diverse characters, appearances, and experiences in storytelling, and you’ll be the better for it. It’s a badass look for a badass lady.
1. If you think that’s fat, you live in a strange world indeed.
2. This seems like a strange time to get picky about body size/shell size issues, given that the entire run of the webcomic has been presenting the reader with physical impossibilities of all kinds in practicall every strip. Are you going to worry about how devils can fit inside those masksas well, or where the extra weight goes when QWuieen Motton transforms from grown woman to young child by eating a peach?
3. There really is no need to explain of justify the new character’s being Black, but if you insist and this is causing you to lose sleep at night, I might direct your attention to the fact that Solomon David is, uh, Black and this new character sort of seems in part his daughter, so what exactly is the problem? Not that it would be a problem anyway, and why does this bother you anyway?
4. Dreadlocks are bad because….why? What would you prefer – shaved Annie Lennox Eurythmics skull? (although she was pretty cute)No, actually, I don’t want to know. Astroturf wig? Abbadon pasting in adorable angle halo taken from a 1999 newspaper clip art book in every panel? (would save time by not drawing rest of character, just a floating halo. Similar dodge used by Gary Trudeau to conceal fact he can’t draw. Is you ultimate aim to have Gary Trudeau replace Abbadon as KSBD artist. This is an ambition that no one else wants to see. To be sure, you’d no long have to deal with body weight issues, ethnicity or hair styles, since a Trudeau KSBD would dispense with showing all of these, in favor of identical Xeroxed panel layouts and floating symbols for characters. But hey, no more dreadlocks!
Finally, people, on either the left or right, who insist on political posturing instead of aesthetics, suck. Uniformly. I don’t need anyone’s agitprop.
Why should she NOT be black? Especially when her soul form has always been portrayed with black features (such as an afro– admittedly, one full of eyes, but it was definitely not a white-leaning hairstyle)? I look forward to your attempt to explain this, especially if you intend to try to do it without looking like a sad racist. I’m sure it will be very entertaining.
Also have you ever like… *seen* a woman? In real life, and not in heavily Photoshopped online images?
I can’t help but notice the aura of people around Salami Dave that wasn’t there when white chain was moving past him as pure energy, to me that looks like a moment when his guard is down as has been teased.
I feel that he’ll turn around, go to attack her new form or be startled by it and stand still and either way it’ll become apparent that as she moved past she cut his cheek on the side we don’t see or something like that.
Also black trans women’s lives matter and white chain is looking amazingly beautiful in her new form.
I’m guessing what happened here is that White Chain successfully draws blood in panel 14. The prize is to have a wish granted, right? So either she deliberately wished for a body or it was such a powerful subconscious wish that it was immediately granted.
Regardless, absolutely amazing update and I’m eager for more as always!
I’m going to guess that WhiteChain has NOT drawn a drop of blood but HAS drawn a teardrop, and that this counts. Diamond is hard and unyielding but can be broken by insignificant force at a flaw. SDs love and grief for his lost wife and daughters is this flaw. I expect WC looks exactly like one of them.
Passing through mortal fear by integrity alone, Flame becomes flesh, and is exalted at last. It is an honor to witness, and this Aeon salutes from beyond.
So , she needs to breath. Which also means , probably , need to drink , eat , then go to restroom (what a disgusting necessity , when do we finally phase it out , darn ) . Poor angel. Oh , and she woman so there she gets periods , PMS , and all other “happines of being woman” stuff . Pooor , poor White Chain . My condolences .
Well, if critique is allowed and will not be screeched into oblivion, then I shall try this.
In short, pretty weak, pretty pandering.
Look, this flies in the face of the lesson that Alice was supposed to be receiving back in 10-140. Yes, something “miraculous” was hinted in 10-148, but at the same time it was also stated by Zoss that she could not be saved.
This is Alice’s terrible struggle? Her terrible fire? Watching someone else get what they want?
Contemplate this. What if White chain had died, well, got all busted up to dust, but, drew a drop of blood from Solomon? What then?
Well, He’d have a prize to give but no one to give it to, and worse, a victory that as Zoss stated, would show his foolish delusions of control. His rotting heaven. A prison that is the world.
And then, that opens up things, an invasion of heaven like Zoss once did? The rescue of not only White Chain, but also the other angels hammered by the Juggernaut Wheel?
Cio if you recall, was rebuilt, but was a completely new person because of it, only fragments of old. But that was a repair from without.
There could have been something grand, something like an Angel deciding what the shell would look like, deciding to proudly carve their own identity.
But now we can’t, as there were checkboxes to be ticked, a vocal minority to appease, and so we skip all that and land right at the end.
Bah, pandering. The only vaguely amusing thing is that in theory since the body resembles Solomon’s, and no doubt will have bloodied the man, that he in theory will abdicate and give the throne to the former White chain, who will no doubt be either a Davina, or Salome.
‘she can’t be saved’ is not actually what you read, whether or not it is what you understood from your reading.
Zoss said ‘*You* cannot save her.’ complete with ‘you’ being in italics. That’s a very different animal from what your reading produced, and absolutely correct; White Chain was always going to do this for herself. This story arc is clearly not about Alice.
Zoss also spoke to Alice -just- as she began to show the first glimmer of a halo, in a prison, in a sunbeam, upon doubting the very efficacy of violence in and of itself. She thought ‘what if this isn’t the way? what if power isn’t power at all?’ and that was the first time she felt a spark that either of us can recall. Thus, it seems that the truth of Alice’s story is *not* one of violence, but of opportunity, of perseverance, of willingness to be vulnerable, of eschewing the very thing everyone around her relentlessly pursues.
Both Alice and White Chain pursue violence: through violence, one makes space for herself (literally, not figuratively, to breathe), and one realizes that there is no forward path in fighting and that the pursuit of power and control are *the problem* as opposed to the solution everyone makes them out to be.
We have nothing to prove about Solomon’s rotting heaven; he *knows*, he just said as much to White Chain explicitly. He hopes upon hope that someone will come and unseat him. He fought with White Chain praying that she would be the one, and look at his expression in the fourth-to-last frame. I can interpret that pretty easily as ‘uh wait did something just get through?’; it’s possible that you have already got the drop of blood you’re asking for, or even that White Chain has wrested ‘blood’ out of Solomon in taking a piece of him in order to create an entirely new mode of existence for herself.
This whole story has been about subdivision, about the terror of loneliness (while all strive to be the last standing), beginning at the very outset with YISUN breaking into pieces so that they can know themselves.
Breaking as a path of becoming is *a thing* here; it’s not the first time we’ve seen it, but that is a central theme of the work rather than the primary character conceit of a washed-up old god whose days of possibility are far behind him.
This is -much- more in-character (and not at all pandering, our own biases hopefully aside) than the example you gave, both for Abbadon as an author and for KSBD as a continuing storyline and the Wheel as a piece of persistent worldbuilding.
Your suggestion is more like flogging a point that Solomon drives home every time he’s onscreen; his rotting prison *is* constantly all about him, more a companion to him than his halo, and at no point is he seen to be anything other than fundamentally empty as a result. We know that; it’s right in the text.
The culmination of White Chain’s disharmonious body/soul discrepancy is frankly phenomenal, and a whole new mode for her is much more interesting than her exit-stage-left, only to return in a later age. Or, for example, for having a vessel rebuilt by her friends, such to return to ‘life’ as a warrior… despite the fact that Allison is beginning to understand that her power is in sharing and not in perpetuating conflict (which insists, as always, upon itself).
I can see this speaking to a cis dude a lot less than it does to me, like… I get that. But experiences which are not yours and which differ from your expectations are not weak as a result of that difference; just the opposite. White Chain has had much to withstand, not least of which is weathering criticism regarding her fundamental self leveled at her every time she appears.
That speaks to -us-, and it’s far from weak.
I fucking *feel* that first breath after countless ages not knowing the meaning of the word. I have let out that very same breath, and I would know it anywhere.
So close, I must commend you on your efforts. And given the subject and characters it’s almost ironic, but mostly just amusing.
Most of what you said was an honest disagreement about the topic, which I really was hoping to have and see, but then you couldn’t resist and fell back to “my biases” and your assumptions of my gender, etc. etc.
As for your words, again it could have been so much more. White Chain wouldn’t have been dead, just back in that Angelic Penalty box, but, with both an Angelic witness (one who acknowledges her gender) and ostensibly an even more feminine appearance. There could have been a third side born, not just the old guard and the thorns. The great deviation that caused one side to become two could become three.
The struggle was the beauty, it was the point.
Cio’s struggle, Alice’s struggle, and sadly, White Chain’s no more.
Still, there’s only one real hope that could salvage this, but I doubt the creator of this story has the… courage to go that route. Pity.
You say you feel that breath and frankly I must be doubtful of that. You breathe all the time. I assume you mean the metaphor of breathing as you truly are, or some such. But she isn’t, as she isn’t an angel any more.
White Chain the angel represented either the third path of acceptance, instead of endurance and denial, or, could have been the first truly female angel, not an angel with a female form. The implications of that would have been boundless and terrifying. Could there be new angels, a new race? Would fresh eyes instead of endlessly recycled ones see things in a brace new world.
We shall never know.
As instead we have White Chain the human, the meat. No longer an angel, she is the result of fleeing being an angel, fleeing being what she was, denying who she was, and, finding solace as a human being. Female yes, but that is what I mean by the pandering, the assumption that gender, and ONLY gender, matters.
This will tell the other angels that there is no other solution, that there is only the duty, in one form or another, or as WC has done and fleeing even further than the other angels have done. Thorn angels still cling to a duty, even if it is different or abhorrent.
Oh, and don’t tell me “But she can still be an angel!” As it has been pointed out, angels are nuclear fire contained in shells. and even Devils barely manage to stay in humans for a short while due to their malleable nature and treating the human body like a mask.
White Chain can die now, not go to that Angelic penalty box, and she has what she’s always wanted to be, except that she hasn’t. Unless the story is now going to be about how she returns to being an angel, she’s fled.
Still, most of the story has been decent, it could recover.
And thank you for reply 2 Thralls of the Great Machine. Discourse, proper discourse is what makes the world go round.
I just wanted to chime in here with what I see having happened, since we will have to wait to learn the mechanics of it one way or the other. The way I interpreted this is that rather than going the route of angelic reset, White Chain has created and transferred (somehow) to a different body at the point where she would have been yanked back to the spiritual plane. Until it is explicitly stated, I don’t think the nature of her flame has been altered. She should still be a white hot flame inhabiting a material body.
One of the aspects brought up in a number of places as a problem with the angels is their rigidity, particularly mentally. From giving an angel a delicate comb way back to teach priorities and proportionality, to what we have been with White Chain breaking her own body by making choices that run contrary to the “contract/law” baked into her physical form, breaking this rigidity has been a definite thread throughout.
Gaining a flesh and blood shell, as opposed to one of rigid stone, is in keeping with this move towards flexible patterns of thought / becoming more like mortals. I personally would have made the form separate from existing races, distinguishing physical body angels as their own race/group, but this could still work.
I would argue similar themes have been played out through Cio moving away from the natural chaos of the black flame by valuing things like relationships instead of the extreme self serving individualism of demons. Down the line she may end up internalizing enough order / distinct values to not need a mask to have a stable mind and body, mirroring White Chain’s journey from the opposite side.
We shall indeed have to see, but unless there is a retcon, we know what happens to an angel with no shell, as Juggernaut has shown us, a nice big kaboom.
And to quote a certain Martian, where is the earth shattering kaboom?
Ergo, one can assume no longer an angel.
As I said, there’s only one real answer that the author can pull off if, and only if, White Chain remains an angel.
Your ability to miss the point, consistently, and with such enormous confidence is… well.. spectacular. Most amusing bit of this thread I must say. I particularly like how condescending you are to everyone who disagrees with you.
Good touch that. Really drives home that sense that you believe you are the only light of reason and truth around and that all others should simply bow to your lofty insights. The way it distracts from your abuse of ‘logic’ is artful. The fallacies, and hidden assumptions of your ‘arguments’ are so deftly swept over.
No one is really discussing this, it’s all lost in the noise of all the chanting of ‘thicc-ness’, or quoting lines from Videodrome.
And lets be honest, how many of them have actually watched that movie, or know of the massive negative connotations of appending flesh where it should not be?
As for my being condescending, well, at least monochromaticprism actually brought up a point, whereas you’ve not actually refuted, or disputed, or disproven anything of what I’ve said. You’ve only complimented me on how well I’m tolerating people like you.
I referred to our own biases – and when misquoting others it’s usually best not to use quotes as though you are repeating us – not to yours. I recognize that the way we are and the path we’ve taken makes for substantial differences between ourselves and others; my forthrightness in this sense is intentional, and if you see it as somehow disqualifying, I don’t know how you can purport to value discourse.
Yep, I assumed your gender. Felt pretty safe, considering. Feel free to correct me if you are not a cis dude.
It’s bizarre to me that you don’t see White Chain and her companions – right down to the one trucking around with Zoss’ key – as a significant force in the Universe (against Old Guard v. Thorns), nor that their process of becoming throughout the story somehow lessens them. That seems like dodging the point more than missing it. Further, the idea that she would be better off going through the usual channels which have so comprehensively failed her seems to misunderstand the concept of preexisting power structures and authority altogether.
As for an angelic nature, she doesn’t need to be an angel to be more than human. Angels are peerless combatants, but still, what is that up against Solomon? Nothing, and though Solomon is a demiurge, I do not believe I have seen anything which says humans cannot be demiurges, or that demiurges are inherently inhuman. Even if they are only the first, even if they are somehow immortal, demiurge is a status, a state, the possession of a Key or a Word, and their methodologies and constructions are diverse.
Also, the statement ‘different and abhorrent’ seems obvious but still uncomfortable.
The bit about fleeing from angelhood because only gender matters seems odd to me also. Are you under the impression that changing such an immutable thing about oneself is a method of *retreat*?
Do you consider Allison’s thoughts on violence (in that it is only useful to beget more violence, and thus nothing like true power at all) to be abdicating responsibility, or retreating from her destiny? It seems as though *that is her path*, not like changing from someone who fights into someone who prepares to fight but seeks peace is fleeing from anything.
White Chain has changed, without a doubt, but it seems telling to me (and this is where assuming your gender comes in, because it’s incredibly common) that you figure this is a reduction, a retreat, and not an act of defiance and a colossal blow against a structure from whence White Chain has, for eternities past and present together, never had the capacity to challenge.
Striking against a body of power – not a monarch in and of themselves, but the mantle of untouchability they construct between themselves and their society, their divine right – is a *grievous* blow, even when the monarch survives.
Knowing that -the queen can be killed- because she bled and screamed like any peasant would changes the way everyone she rules over sees her. Suddenly, vulnerability. Suddenly, all that inexorability evaporates. White Chain has struck a tremendous blow against a body of power.
As for Allison’s power and the way that this story arc is not about her: *Allison did this*. This is at least a partial result of Allison, sharing who she is with White Chain, and giving her enough heart to do something totally fucking unimaginable for anyone of her kind. She challenged White Chain in a totally novel way, and despite the fact that she did not punch the whole concept of Angels right in the face, she absolutely shook the foundations of their organization. No Angel has ever been otherwise. That’s -incredible-, and it’s the first step of a Demiurge (still a human!) coming into her true power.
And, with regard to breaths?
…yeah, I *do* know how that feels. Look down your nose all you like; I spent all my life not knowing the meaning of the word, and have recently taken my first real breath, *as us*. No bullshit. Nothing between us and what’s around us. Refusal to see the connection between White Chain’s arrival in her new state and a trans woman’s experience of same is not a rebuttal, and you have no agency in terms of how we see our new life, or how we celebrate a character’s who we have invested in and seen ourselves in.
You can thank me for proper discourse by not treating everyone you talk to like a bunch of assholes, or us like our having an existence outside of Cold Logic and Direct Reading of the Word As Written in itself disqualifies everything we think.
You’re not the Bearer of the Word Truth, and neither are we, and neither is anyone else who claims to be.
The part that confuses me– aside from your insistence that speaking to people’s experiences of transition is pandering to a “lower” impulse, which perhaps is less confusing than it is *insulting*– is that you can’t imagine how White Chain could possibly have any further struggles after this moment.
First of all, she’s got to deal with the immediate problem of “how the hell is Solomon going to react to what just happened,” which is VERY much up in the air. Then, she has to deal with how her entire *race* is going to deal with what just happened– her existence may well prompt a civil war between the angels who support her and those who see her as a dangerous aberration. Also, she and the rest of the gang have to deal with how the other Demiurges are going to react to what just happened, and continue with Allison’s quest, which is, after all, still a thing.
Just because a character has reached a goal, doesn’t mean they suddenly fall out of the story or lose the ability to interact with the other characters’ goals and storylines. Even her own individual storyline isn’t *done*– with this goal being such a revolutionary one within the story’s world, its fulfillment will have reverberating repercussions for everyone, particularly White Chain.
The alternative to having various characters achieve their various goals at different points throughout the story is to either leave things unfulfilled (which is often disappointing to readers) or have everything wrapped up all at once in a nice tidy bow at the end, which tends to read as mere convenient artifice even when done well. In a work with as vibrant a world and as many characters and stories as this one has, an all-at-once wrap-up would not only be strange, but challenging to write without it being a giant mess.
It seems that, in an attempt to argue against “pandering,” you’ve tricked yourself into arguing *for* unimaginative, trite storytelling. Or do you really believe that Abbadon lacks the creativity to continue to challenge White Chain in an interesting way after the most momentous change in her very long life?
Your assertion that White Chain is “done” is just… baffling. You complained about people “assuming your gender,” but your insistence that *she’s transitioned now, everything’s done, story’s over, nowhere to go from here* really does betray that you have never experienced a transition or even witnessed one in real life, nor have you likely read much about them either, nor seen them depicted in other narratives. You seem to have quite the analytical and argumentative chops, but logic often does a poor job of filling in for gaps in experience, and also tends to blind the viewer to the way their own train of thought is twisting in upon itself. It’s a problem that plagues far too many intelligent and well-educated people, and contributes to those people’s vulnerability to manipulation.
So, until we get to see where Abbadon is *actually* going with this, please refrain from projecting your lack of experience and your inability to imagine a path forward from here onto the existing narrative. Acknowledging that you don’t know something is surprisingly empowering, and opens up new realms of imagination and understanding that I think you will enjoy exploring, should you allow yourself to access them.
You sure like to use the word “pandering”. Can you explain what makes it different from “catering”? Is it just when it’s catering to people you don’t like?
I like to use words that are applicable to what is being shown.
And as to what makes it different from ‘catering’, why very little.
In fact, a good example can be found in the free dictionary.
2. To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses: “He refused to pander to nostalgia and escapism”
Except here, there is no refusal.
Now, for catering, I can understand what you think, at least I think that I think I do so. As a verb, “To attend to the wants or needs of.” implies that there is a want or a need for White Chain to finally get what she wants.
And so, if this is indeed catering, and you have been catered to, where do you see White Chain going from here? Doing from here? She’s on a mortal clock now, unless she rips out the beanie from Solomon, and even with that form of immortality, she is Angel no longer.
And being Angel no longer, for she has burned everything she was, everything she could represent or become, she has nowhere to go next.
As I said, the struggle was the beauty, it was the point.
I don’t think you get to decide what “the point” is. Not for others, and not for the author.
Likewise, dismissing things you don’t agree with as “pandering” doesn’t make you correct. It just makes you shallow, and lacking in any true insight of the world around you.
Carry on, though. Your commitment to error isn’t something I expect to change.
Indeed, Does the Fool recognize itself for what it is?, Indeed.
But sadly that includes you as well.
And while I cannot decide upon the point of the author, I can respectfully disagree with what I see. And you can disagree with my disagreement.
That’s how a dialogue works.
Please, tell me where is my commitment to error is. It’s clearly readily obvious to you, as you mentioned it so. And if I’m lacking any true insight of the world around me, which you must undoubtedly have to declare that, you can instruct me, right?
Just jumping on this with a question: KSBD is ending soon :(, with the next book. If that 5th book ended with “and the heroes won and everything was perfect”, you would feel cheated, right? (I know I would).
If the 5th book ended with “the heroes ‘won’ but their struggles for justice/peace/whatever are not yet over and they must continue to work for their goals, as we all must to create a better world)”, would you see that as pandering?
If the 5th book ended with “the heroes didn’t ‘win’, but are still alive and can keep struggling, as we all must to create a better world”, would you find that satisfactory?
Or would you only like the ending if the 5th book ended as “they lost, and the cycle begins anew”?
I’m not attacking you for which one (or ones!) you’d like–with different media I’ve landed in different places on this sorta sliding-scale-of-happy-endings myself! I just want to know where you are for KSBD. (I would probably be varying degrees of satisfied with any but the first one).
31 Dragon Eats Mayfly, that is indeed something that worries me.
I, under a different name, was quite against the one year time passing, as it removed Alice from being our gateway into the new and bizarre world that we were seeing.
Now that she’s been there a year, we no longer have that, and the people, the actions, and all of that cannot venture too far into the depths of the uncanny like before. No more eating little blue demons while being friends with a big blue demon and so on. When has anyone been called “Preem”?
And then we get a tournament battle.
It’s becoming more and more digestible, more… catering, to bring this back to Amelie W’s initial response to mine.
As for if it ends on the fifth book, that’s something I’m not too worried about. It’s a webcomic, and those can go on for quite a long time, whether as one story or many.
But to answer your question, IF it ended on the 5th book, five of seven demiurges met, the best ending I could see would be something more along the lines of either a retreat to earth due to a tragedy, leading to an uncertain future, or, a breaking of the seven demiurges down to three, then to one, and then something more out of the last question.
Most creation stories of such a cyclical nature end as thus.
I hope this answered you adequately 31 Dragon Eats Mayfly, but if not, I’ll try again.
Thanks for the prompt response! I was really asking you that question with an ulterior motive–if the KSBD ended in either of your “best endings”, would that not be catering (in your definition) to your own feeling, wants, or needs?
I think catering/pandering are weighty accusations to throw against any media: personally, I don’t think either happen unless by giving the audience (or parts of the audience) what they want the author subverts their own work and narrative. (Making the audience want something is in some ways an essential part of any good art, right?)
And in this case, I don’t think Abbadon has subverted their work. When we meet White Chain, she is a by-the-book servant of the law, in denial about her own discomfort within the law. Her first actions with Allison are about returning things to the status quo–she seeks to return the Key of Kings to prevent universal war.
Her first step in her struggle is when she acknowledges (after meeting Metatron) that the status quo is not good: things must change. Specifically, she mentions how while she may not agree with the royalists and the thorns, she thinks action (struggle) is better then the complacency of the non-aligned angels. (Book 2, 3-59)
White Chain’s next step in her struggle comes around when Juggernaut and her enter Mottom’s palace, and she makes a commitment to defend life in her struggle (B2, 5-85).
She doesn’t get a ton of character development in Book 3, but we do get a interesting angry outburst from her about that conflict between the supposedly immutable nature of angels, her growing humanity, (B3 6-67) and the growing need for change (and her prior commitment to protecting life, as Nyave stops her!) (B3 7-80 to 7-81).
In Book 4, White Chain starts off as still largely cautious of change: she sees Allison as reckless, she is wondering whether she is doing the right thing, and she even forgets her oath on the comb of Prim (B4 9-120 to 121)–partly because she misunderstands Vigilant’s advice in 9-106; as she doesn’t realize that she too is a work of god.
This prompts her to take the next step in her struggle by acknowledging that the problem of the current system is not just within the non-aligned angels, or even all angels, but the Wheel itself–Solomon David, the demiurges, and most crucially for this step, herself. She is that oppressive system, and she resolves to fight it with every fiber of her being (B4 10-137)
I think where you and I might diverge is in this next part–I don’t think White Chain has lost her flame (and I even think she still counts as an angel or some sort of hybrid, though we will need to wait to see the aftermath to really determine that), and I don’t think flesh is inherently corruptible–the universe would not be perfect if it was run by angels, and while Allison is inexperienced and hasty, she has a honest and sincere desire to avoid violence that seems unshaken by Incubus urging her on, or even her merge with Cio. (see her conversation with Zoss + Incubus on B4 10-139). I don’t think that flesh is inherently lesser than angels and don’t view White Chains transformation as a downgrade or a retreat–after all, Zoss slew all the Primes!
In this context, White Chain’s transformation doesn’t subvert Abbadon’s main message that you must struggle, act decisively, and understand that your only true control is over yourself, and those are the ways through which you break cycles (or perhaps systems?) (these messages are drawn from Zoss’s appearances, since he seems to be a sort of author avatar/mentor).
In fact, the transformation lines up almost perfectly with Zoss’s title drop in Book 2: “By Names she cuts the world as she pleases and she cuts herself into greater forms still. She is not shaped by the world, but instead becomes the Shaper…” (B2 5-95). White Chain has taken the step in her struggle of literally breaking free of the remnant of the angelic status quo that unshackles her (remember, “This shell is not my body” B4 9-124).
Finally, her struggle is not over. Her body is not the sole problem–the problem is that aforementioned system of fear and oppression, and even if she were to defeat Solomon (which, let’s be honest, how many demiurges have the main party defeated thus far?), the rest of the demiurges are still around, and all the minor warlords, and all the people who use their powers to control people, and all the factions of angels, and Metatron himself. Succeeding in this small way is does not mean her struggle is over.
Finally Finally, (whoops), while I think it could be emotionally satisfying if done well, I highly doubt this will end with a return to the cycle. All of Zoss’s appearances imply that the Rising King has risen and failed before, and that Zoss is trying to get Allison to break this cycle where he can’t, as “He who masters the wheel cannot Break it.” (B4 10-141). (in this sense, if White Chain is indeed mortal, she has broken the cycle of angelic life).
TL;DR: White Chain’s transformation isn’t pandering or catering, because it makes logical sense as a progression of the narrative arc of her character and while it makes the audience happy, it doesn’t do so at the expense of the story, but in service to the story. Now, if you reply to this tonight, I will sadly NOT respond tonight because I have a final I need to take tomorrow morning and I have procrastinated on my studying for far too long!!!
Thanks for that entirely unclear answer. I guess the dictionary has all your opinions in it and I should just read that instead of having this conversation. As to your question, I can’t accept its premise because I recognize I actually don’t know what’s going on in this scene.
Did I not answer the difference between pandering and catering? That was what you asked.
And yes, a dictionary is good for defining words, that’s what it’s for.
If it was a passive-aggressive way of asking me what I, Bob, would have wanted instead of what you got, then by all means ask me that directly. No need to mince around the question.
What I was hoping to see was something more along the lines of White Chain going through a living Kintsugi, and becoming greater in the process.
I was hoping to see an Angel finally carve itself into what it wanted to be, not flee from itself and accept the casting of flesh and feeble flame.
Not really. But it does tell me you’re complaining about not getting the thing you wanted before you can know you’re not getting the thing you wanted. Almost like the thing you say you don’t like isn’t really what you don’t like at all.
Going through that much art and drama to create White Chain in the meat, shows that the transition is likely going to stick. One doesn’t do that many pages of art and call it an APOTHEOSIS and then do a takebacksie.
As I said, I sincerely doubt the author is going to go the way of a single perfect breath.
Or in Amelie speak, The thing I say I don’t like is in fact what I don’t like.
Let’s see, White Chain is going through some magical transformation that’s never happened in this multiverse before, a process we can only guess at, for reasons we can only guess at, fueled by energies we can only guess at, with consequences we can only guess at except it seems she has incarnated in a humanoid body, in the middle of a fight that’s probably taking place outside of time against a guy who can explode suns with his martial art and whose mental and physical state at the moment we can only guess at.
But sure, all her struggles are “likely” over. It’s “likely” a cheap ploy to appease us nasty loud trans people, based on the timing with which the pages have been published. I can almost buy you’re just being presumptuous, rather than trying to undermine this gorgeous trans representation behind your fake polite bloviations.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Agreed that we can’t know what will happen; the possible outcomes are too many and the clues too ambiguous. One possible outcome is that White Chain *is* now mortal and will not survive to the end of the book. Solomon could still turn round and end her, permanently.
I’ve been expecting something like this. A while back, Abaddon posted a podcast praising authors who have the fortitude to permakill a major character and I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. This would be the exact opposite of pandering. (Where exactly *is* Abaddon’s windmill?)
And if the author went with your preferred direction, how would that not be pandering as well?
I think you’ve accepted the in-world logic of the angels themselves about the relative hierarchy and nature of the different races. It’s not necessarily true. It’s more likely to all be lies. All is YISUN, and all these sharp divisions, all “this cannot be that”, are just lies. The rules are self-imposed boundaries. All the races are described as flames, whether hot or cold, black or white, but all still flames. What if it’s instead a spectrum, rather than hard divisions? Devils have already been described as feeding off the cooler flames of the other races to maintain their forms, and I believe there was something about humans making too many pacts with devils might turn into one themselves.
Why are you so certain that White Chain is no longer an angel, or has “fled”, rather than ascended? The page title is “apotheosis”, after all. If she’s no longer an Angel, she’s more likely a god than a human. I think she has carved herself into what she wanted to be, and I don’t see how you could have read the comic and gotten a different impression of what she wanted.
Feel free to write a story that satisfies your needs, I suppose?
This story is (probably) going a different direction, and to label it ‘pandering’ because you think it’s an ‘easy’ direction or at the behest of some ‘boxes to be checked’… well, that tells me a lot about how you view White Chain and people like her, who struggle with feeling foreign in their own bodies.
You seem to think that struggle or difficulty are the core of ‘higher’ storytelling (though feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about your thoughts there), but consider: people like White Chain HAVE struggled. Struggle is their whole lives.
Maybe this part of White Chain’s story, her apotheosis, feels more satisfying and meaningful to them than it does to you, because they’re sick and tired of that struggle? Sometimes, it’s just nice to see someone facing problems somewhat like your own get that cathartic moment of total victory.
Sorry if that disappoints you, but not every story can be everything for every person, and not many stories in history have been something made for those certain, struggling people.
Two thoughts: 1. White Chain may have used Solomon David’s genes to create her own body. In that case, she may very well look a lot like his daughters – the ones who were murdered and who’re the reason he’s never ever, fathered daughters again. When he sees her, he may well FLIP comletely! That’s one way to make him lose control.
2. In the last panel White Chain is bvery markedly breathing out. Does this mean she’s breaking the Ki Rata timestop? Will they suddenly fall back into normal time? And how will the spectators react to that?
I think what we are seeing in the last panel is White Chain’s first breath, which is a very moving metaphor when you think about it: millions (billions?) of years old and finally taking a breath for the first time.
In the very first scene where Allison meets White Chain the first time, White Chain makes a HUFF sound, which makes me think angels still use air to talk, even if they don’t need to breathe.
So I’m skeptical this is her first breath.
Then again, White Chain has also smiled more frequently than thought so it might also be artist oversight?
Fascinating theory. And weirdly possible, given that she just sort of collapsed phases through him. Honestly the physics aren’t really something we know about since this doesn’t happen, as a rule.
BTW, I love the look on SD’s face in the fourth panel. He looks like he’s loving the fact that WC is surprising him AGAIN by moving in his Ki Rata timestop.
After a couple days for this to soak in, it just hit me that being flesh and bone is gonna be a weird experience. Needing to breath, hot/cold, food/water and the results, gonna be a lot to get used to.
It will be worse than that monochromaticprism, so much worse.
What happens when she sleeps that first time? Dreams that first time?
How many millions of years of perfect memory will be subjected to the whims of a brain that routinely forgets, and re-imagines, and produces falsehoods?
How long until the next meal, the next warm bed, the next offered body, the next hit of drugs, becomes all that matters to a being that never experienced it. In. The. Flesh.
Willpower is easy for an Angel, they are literally duty and flame placed into a statue. Willpower for a human though?
There’s a reason why robots and angels and all sorts of beings being brought into a meaty existence in all the stories die horribly.
… right. So. Just finished binging the entire series so far and I’m blown away. This is, by far, the best webcomic I have ever read and I’ve been devouring them since the ye olden days of the internet.
Thank you so much for this, and I’ll be watching this religiously.
What a time to read this work. From opening to here in two days, and will certainly have to go back and linger through the story a second and third time.
Well, I’m not paralyzed
But, I seem to be struck by you
I wanna make you move
Because you’re standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You’ll probably move right through
Me on my way to you
So she is black? That should not be the strangest part of this chapter because she was not even a human before so taking on a human form she could wear a body of any color… unless it does actually matter. She was incarnated for some reason and her new body could be random or based on either her soul or the closest human body around and the one that influenced her change – Solomon. That is why I mentioned the skin color, she very Solomon-like now aside of being obviously female, maybe even with Solomon’s DNA or part of his inhuman power.
The resemblance is uncanny tho. Even when we know her form from previous chapters is what it is. How did that punch go through maaan so many questions.
Xanadu ten Mercury "Murder the Gods and Pillage their Secrets"
I am viscerally excited at this newest of plots!!! I am sharpening my teeth for a ritualistic feast of joy as we speak!!! I dub thee “1 Thick thighs ends lives”
While I will be sad to say goodbye to the badass character design of 82WCBIERTSE’s stone body and fiery soul, I look forward to what great revelation can explain this change.
HOLY FUCK
WHAT NOW
I keep thinking I cant love this comic more than I already do, and then this keeps happening
White Chain goes THIKK.
This is why I (we) Patreon. Abbadon knows when we *need* a multipager. And writes and draws like a seven-part Deity.
Now, Black Chain. Lol
Now the real question arises:
What was the name of the angel incarnation of Black Dynamite?
77 Systematically Prevents the interruption of Kung-Fu training
At the beginning, we saw his flesh crush a stone table.
Now, the table’s have turned and flesh has remade what was stone.
The cycle continues…
Regardless, this has some… implications. Is she human now, or merely clad in flesh instead of stone?
I find it highly dubious that white chain is Soloman’s ‘daughter’ now, even if she is human at all–‘twould be unjust to imply her intrinsic nobility has any relation to his tyranny. Successor, heir, and superior, by all means. But progeny? That would rob her of her agency, and it makes the supposition that she is human…
Indeed, this could only be a passing visage–a rememberance. But… we shall see.
I don’t think she could qualify as human, she still has a soul of white fire, but I expect that will be explored presently.
Even better, she’s something NEW.
He asked for a Son to fell him, all he will get is daughters.
It is said that the only reason he has only sons is that he did not feel any of them could adequately replace the ones he lost in the conquest of his planet.
It will be illustrative to observe how he handles this set of circumstance.
Ah, but what is a human but a soul clad in flesh rather than stone?
Willpower, with a spark of passion tempered by law.
“whoever strikes a blow against me will be given their hearts desire” (paraphrasing)
Perhaps it is more instantaneous and more literal than it initially appeared
Holy shit I absolutely L O V E this theory, fuck yes.
Pretty sure her appearance has nothing to do with Solomon. In her pure angel form she already had facial characteristics resembling her current appearance, so more than likely that’s who she always was inside. Also recall her mirror reflection from the scene where Angel Bros are chastising her for being what she is.
^^^ this
which chapter pls?
Are we not all merely clad in flesh?
Glory to the New Flesh.
LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
GLORY TO THE NEW FLESH
THE ASH IS DEAD; LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!
NEW FLESH, NEW FLESH!
Honks to the New Flesh !
Gog-Agog must be agog.
She’s probably wandering around in afog.
I think I need a moment to lie down.
I’m with you here. Flowery words will come later.
was this from a drop of blood that was drawn?
You got it. You summarized the entire readership to this.
‘Tis a fine summation.
It is HOLY and a mind FUCK of delightful content.
Dave: Omae wa mo shindei—HOLD UP >:nu
White Chain: what? My final form has a final form
Allison: \(*u*)/
Cio: *pfff* showoff >Bn/
Juggernaut Star: is that even tournament legal? /:n(
Gog: *munching on rulebook sounds*
so say we all
I’ll take that you meant “Holy Fuck” in the most literal of terms.
More like black chain
I was going to start with ‘What the-” But otherwise agreement, yes.
The exact fucking comment I was logging in to make!
I…concur!
She is the first angel to walk in flesh since the demiurges banished them to the void how interesting.
This is not what Un-Koss forged.
This is a New Flesh, Forged in Emptiness to Subdue Evil.
I saw this coming.
( I did not see this coming )
Hey, no worries. I thought this page would explode!
… kinda what happened, but, ah, never mind.
UNHOLY GODS OF SPACETIME – THAT WAS EPIC. thank you abbadon.
SHE’S A REAL GIRL NOW, GEPETTO
Does that make 10 Vigilant Gaze the Wishing Fairy? Or is he Jiminy Cricket? But if he became a real boy, wouldn’t he look like a jacked Gepetto??
He does have six limbs. Insect.
It must be possible to learn this power.
Also, I agree with Milk.
I hope it’s possible. I’m filled with the burning need to see a human Juggernaut Star now.
huh?
WHAT A TWIST.
!! AI AI !!
!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT MOM GET THE CAMERA !!
FREE THE TITTY
Have you ever punch so hard you manifested physically?
That’s exactly it : m = E/c^2
Inverted relativity? What does that mean?
That’s the equation for how you get mass/matter from energy. Simply divide energy by the speed of light squared! 😀
Just solve for m instead of E.
It’s the same ratio, expressed differently.
Oh hell yeah! She cut his face and stole the diamond key!
Where do you get this? In none of the panels is he seemingly injured, even if it is a mere scratch, and the key is still clearly on his forehead
Look to the hand. I think he could have scratched his knuckle.
While the key is in place, look to panels 14 and 15, the line of white chains punch clearly struck the side of Solomon’s face.
See the jagged tear in the bright line?
MISSION STATUS: SICK
wig snatched
STRIKE DOWN GOD AND CONSTRUCT FROM HIS CORPSE A SELF
Powerfully spoken
\m/ O \m/
Metal
Our sister’s victory is complete.
Never in all my years…
Our sister lives!
Reach Heaven through violence, eh?
OH NO, SHE’S HOT
astronaut with a gun voice always has been
YISUN: “Wait, it’s all YISUN?”
YISUN with a gun: “Always has been.”
this is some underappreciated shoit
It is YISUN all the way down.
82 WHITE CHAIN BORN IN EMPTYNESS RETURNS TO SUBDUE EVIL
If she Is Still “WHITE CHAIN BORN IN EMPTYNESS RETURNS TO SUBDUE EVIL”
Wouldn’t that be 83?
But She May Have Transcended The Pure White Flame Of Angelic Nature.
Metamorphic Angel 83 White Chain Born In Emptiness Returns To Subdue Evil, to be exact.
83 WHITE CHAIN BORN IN BATTLE RETURNS TO TRANSCEND KINGS
fucking metal
You got the best name pick here.
Also HOLY SHIT SHE’S A HUMAN NOW?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Null White Chain Resurges in Conflict to Challenge Dogma
Thanks for reading? No;
Thanks for letting us read!
Couldn’t breath through the four pages.
She’s… Done what now?
Amazing art!
She lied to the universe, and the universe believed her. In this moment, she is Royalty.
I’d argue she did something better. She shouted her truth to the universe, and the universe believed her.
I agree that she faced the truth and received its gift. The universe believed her: She will have the choice to not submit to wrongful law again.
An Angel, bound permanently to Law itself, broke the Law in refusing to serve under its unyielding power. In doing so, it is possible that she made a NEW LAW, and thus became at least a Demigoddess… for a moment. After all, God IS the Word, and gods ARE the Law! If you break that law through an act of justice and self-will, you deserve to get a wish answered, though there will always be consequences. Alternately, because she chose Good over Law, she gained the power to conquer the Law that is the rigidity of Diamond. Either way…!
I think we’ll see shortly what lingers, and I look forward to her new story: Born in emptiness, reborn in the true subdual of evil Law.
I don’t think White Chain fell, though it is easy to believe that she did. The choice it appears she has been given is to be herself, free to be human, to feel pain and need, to become something both less and more than mere mindful power.
The choice to become Real.
And she is beautiful. I would love her willingly for all this and more.
Will Salami Dave survive having the energy of an angel pass through his body? I vote he slowly collapses on the next page – if not dead, de-throned at the very least.
Well technically, as long as he didn’t spill any blood, the fight should still be on.
I’m eager to see what this new WC can do.
Those were always his rules. Why recognise them?
Because that’s what White Chain agreed to said rules and I feel she’s pretty honorable.
Pretty sure that a drop was spilled, since White Chain got her wish granted instantly.
-Spill- blood, or -draw- blood?
Because if White chain is now his daughter… “Of his blood…”
Solomon stops glowing purple about halfway down, and white chain has a small blue atum in her new human form. There’s smoke coming from her hand, and she’s crackling with lightning just like Solomon did in a previous image when he took his key from Yemmod.
Also.
White chain: Do you CrossFit? You can cross fuck off!”
What is it when a whole body full of a king’s blood is stolen from him without spilling a drop, and with it his kingdom? Honestly sounds like heirdom to me.
Friday prediction: he reaches up with his left hand to touch his cheek, panel cut to: a drop of blood on his finger.
Next panel: he looks down in surprise.
Panel after: his goddamn arm came off, I can’t believe that happened!
‘Tis merely a flesh wound.
My prediction is that he won’t just be surprised- he’ll be ecstatic!
He’s looking not so good in that 3rd/4th last panel. The light has gone out of his eyes. He’s literally shocked. If not dead.
If drawing a single drop of his blood was enough to win, killing him surely qualifies.
He’s probably going to give her the old “lethal lookback” before having his head tumble to the ground.
There we go, she inherited the looks of her new father
EVELYN: “He’s mortal.”
OH SWEET CHRISTMAS
HOLY SHIT
Instead of receiving death, White Chain becomes a new form of life. And my god, what a badass transition.
You can see Solomon David REALLY enjoying himself here, but for the first time (during this timeline at least) he’s caught off guard. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and it’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to THE UNIVERSE LITERALLY RESHAPING WHITE CHAIN TO SAY FUCK YOU.
I wonder if that means White Chain can use Ki Rata now?
I interpreted her ability to move in David’s frozen time as her mimicking his Ki Rata technique.
I did not interpret this as her learning Ki Rata, but rather just pushing her shell so damn hard that it was able to move in Solomon’s frozen time.
The way Solomon moves his whole body is in motion and he seems at home, if burdened, in this state. White Chain looked like a badly used puppet.
Ki Rata is learned, not genetic. Just because her new body has Solomon’s DNA doesn’t mean she knows it. At best she might understand one or two tricks of it from trying to copy Dave.
That’s my point. White Chain clearly mimicked SD’s Ki Rata based abilities of moving ridiculously fast, so she may be able to use it now.
Moving extremely fast seems to be a general angel ability.
Not Ki Rata fast, dude.
There is also the fact that she is potentially older than Rayuba, as an angel. There is a chance she dabbles in Ki Rata, no matter what other sources say on the matter of Who Can Breathe Just Right.
If she knew it already she wouldn’t have been hurt so bad before
Will they now shag for a week?
Her hair is already all braided up for the fight! And she took his key?!
She doesn’t have the key gem though…..
Given the keys were constructed from knowledge torn from Metatron, an angel’s, mind, I wonder if another angel doesn’t need the key as a physical object like a human does.
We haven’t seen a single angel with a leystone. Maybe all they need is the KNOWLEDGE, and if White Chain just went through Solomon David’s body and maybe read his mind/knowledge, that could be all she needs to operate as if the has a key of kings.
Anyway, we don’t know for sure, but my point is we’ve never seen an angel with a leystone of any sort, and the keys originated with stuff taken from Metatron, so it’s at least plausible things work differently for angels when it comes to keys.
If this sort of magic works by lying to the universe and having it believe you, angels wouldn’t be any good at it.
Most angels, but not all angels.
She didn’t lie, she bluffed.
DAVE HAS A NEW DAUGHTER
Called it! Next stage.
REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE!!!
I was literally frothing at the mouth for the long wait for this strip, but YISUN damn it, it was worth the wait!
She’s broken her chrysalis/shell, released her true cold flame spirit, and then gained a new physical presence by punching through Solomon. Does this make White Chain his last daughter? As 169134 iterations of failure points out, she certainly seems to have taken after his appearance…
It’s certainly possible, since White Chain’s soul flame essentially passed straight through him. There could be some degree of influence, especially since the diamond on her head seems like a telling symbol…
Mission Status: Sick As Hell Proclamation
I’ve always gotten my money’s worth at the tournament. but this is turning out to be an excessive bargain!
From stone, the flesh is incarnate.
…What in the name of the cold white flame just happened?
That is one beautiful…angel?
This does remind me of tail of a certain monkey who awakened unto emptiness.
What I strongly doubt is that she has taken her “father’s” key. Her brow is clear, scars aside, and the lighting she’s clad in is more likely to be her own Atum
Apotheosis;
The elevation of someone to divine status; deification.
Late 16th century: via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek apotheōsis, from apotheoun ‘make a god of’, from apo ‘from’ + theos ‘god’.
While he’s definitely not her father, it would seem that he’s about to learn an important lesson in ‘whose-your-daddy’.
AND SHE WAS PERFECT IN EVERY WAY
Excellent, certainly, but I should hope not perfect. To be perfect is to be unchanging, and if there is one way she differs from her kin, it is in her mutability.
Or does perfection dwell within the variable nature and the adaptive state? Change the definitions, change the argument. Reach Heaven Through Violence.
Sib Thrawcheld confuses static and dynamic perfection. A three legged stool and a spinning top are both balanced, yet as long as the top spins it is the harder of the two to tip over. So too perfection.
This is something most amazing and so worth the years of reading and enjoying this comic. Beautifully and respectfully rendered, which only adds to the climactic feel of the situation. Tremendous!!
Has that been the point of this reincarnation cycle all along? The bodies were prisons crafted to hold their souls in the mortal plane, but if one is stronger than ones prison, one can break free and contain themselves at will? Does that mean she learned the point to the reincarnation cycle?
Or does this mean she broke it? Refusing to give in and believe the hype, she became corporeal to experience real life?
I suppose we shall soon find out. But until then.
Holy fucking God damn shit, I mean what the fuck.
Love the line work on her new body.
Sweetness and LIGHT!!
AND THE CROWD GOES WILD
OH MY FUCKING GODDESS!
thank you abbadon.
A weapon made out of self love.
Also she punched so hard that she transitioned. Hell yes.
well that was a result i didn’t expect
HAIL THE NEW FLESH
Black Trans Lives Matter.
KSBD SAID BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER
HELL YEAH IT DID!
You can just call them angels too, I don’t think they’ll mind.
White Chain casts “Turn Stone to Badass.”
Apotheosis is the page title. The word means “becoming a god.” Which suggests that White Chain has, in fact, taken Solomon David’s key.
White Chain Born from Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil. Bearer of the word DIAMOND and goddess of the seven-part world.
No, she hasn’t taken his key. However, what she has done is not explode, which is what usually happens to angels when their armour breaks, and to gain a form that suits her personally. What do you call an angel who is free of the restrictions placed on angels?
Something polite.
This is a good answer.
Whatever the heck they want to be called.
“Without the Old Law, what will we become?”
“Free.”
Woo!
God I hope she keeps the marks, I love this rune priestess style
This might be a bit out there, but I’m gonna predict the fight is going to just…stop over the next few panels.
White Chain has, effectively, already won. She’s proven herself, not by Solomon’s standards, but her own. Everything Solomon has said about her not being worthy, about true strength and discipline, all that has been thrown back in his face in a manner even he can’t deny.
Going back to Solomon’s system of proving worth through a contest of strength would, in my eyes, go against everything the story has been setting up over the last few pages. Strength beyond strength, finding a way to transcend the old “reach heaven through violence” paradigm that caused this misery to begin with.
And her resemblance to Solomon David is surely not a coincidence.
It may be that she has won by her terms, but I don’t think that means that the emperor will concede victory to her. I do think that this is such a development that the fight will be at least put on hold while everyone figures out what just happened.
She has his blood now.
Dave can’t hit her now without spilling his blood. Thus he can’t win.
If that’s true she just needs to scratch herself, bleed a little, and auto-win.
No need to spill one single drop.
It is precious.
She doesn’t need to win. Or to continue fighting. She can just stop and admit defeat. She has gotten what she needed out of the fight, Salami Dave doesn’t matter.
She may have gotten what she needs, but the story has not methinks.
‘Reach Heaven Through Violence’ means ‘Achieve Divinity by Figuring Out How’, she did exactly that AND literally that.
WC never intended to win SD’s contest. Hers was a completely different fight, on completely different terms. The next page could perfectly be her saying “Okay, NOW it’s over. You’ve won your fight and I’ve won mine”.
For Solomon it was a contest of strength. For White Chain it was a contest of soul all along, and I think in the end she made it so for Solomon too.
His body is still up and standing, but I wonder if his soul still lives.
EXHALE THE HOT BREATH OF THE FLAME IMMORTAL
Hey just jumping in to say…… All Hail the New Flesh !!
Wait a minute, look at panels 14-15. That’s Solomon getting completely blindsided. White Chain moves much faster than him.
That is, faster than Ki Rata.
I find it hard to move slowly when I am charging at full speed. Some other times, Big D was moving with no interruption, with no need to react, and at the beginning of this update he still had time to adjust his movements; as the scene closed, he found he couldn’t.
We are all slaves to inertia. Newton’s second is a bitch.
White Chain has reached new levels of awesome like. She just straight up changed her whole state of existence. Holy Shit.
I actually started screaming as I kept scrolling down and by the time I reached the end –
By Koss, I am shaken down to my very core!
This developement, is quite fascinating to me, I must study this new form…to learn it’s power…
*studies and sweats profusely*
Your username says it all. Those things could crush GALAXIES
Well knew she had won, we just didn’t know that this was how she had won.
That excitement in panel four.
I think that’s the one I love best – FINALLY someone might challenge him.
HOOOOOO IM GAY AND I SUPPORT THIS MESSAGE
Get your head out of the gutter, Pygmalion.
Galatea: “She who is milk-white”
Shed yourself. Find your self. Abandon the thin shell surrounding you and become more.
Abandon the thin shell surrounding you and become thicc, you mean
The thiccer you are, the more of you there is, so they mean the same thing!
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH
Your username is the best and I echo your sentiment, this is AWESOME
“I wager everything I have on nobody ever being clever enough to figure out a way to land a finger on me.”
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Very well put.
HHH? FUCKING INDEED
I think Gog-Agog is going to once again need a moment.
… to sense a moment of weakness and tackle on Dave.
And then Allison lands in the arena like “I’m here to help!” but meanwhile, the fight is already over.
… where is my savage ally burn stamp, I know I have it here somewhere…
ABSOLUTE MADLAD
Oh damn
White Chain doesn’t skip leg day.
HOLY SHIT WHITE CHAIN REBORN
TRANSCENDANT
Also – got your nose.
What nose?
I WAS RIGHT. I JUST THOUGHT SHE’D TAKE A WHILE LONGER TO GET IT
I HAVE NO WORDS ONLY A MIGHTY NEED TO SEE THE NEXT PAGES
My thought as well.
WHAT THE FUUUUUUUCK
…
HHHHHH
GEDD’IM WHITE CHAIN! !
::shrieks forever:: omg that’s my girl!!!!
Fast now! dont leave us hanging like this!
The longer the wait, the more sublime the next page will be, MG! This one took a full week to draw, and by YIS and UN, Abaddon delivered!
It’s tough to be a god.
The devils are going to want in on this.
tyrael ain’t got shit on white chain
R.I.P. Hat. ;_;
It will be missed, but if i have seen anything from how the keys manifest in the physical plane, likely she will have a glowing spiritual version of the hat made of the fire of her soul.
It is not from our greatest friends, but our greatest opponents, that we find the most reflection of the true self.
The friend will always want to see the best of you.
The opponent will always want to see the worst of you.
But the opponent needs to see you at your best as well, to prepare the lesson of building high walls. No friend will teach you thus.
Only in the latter mirror, do we see ourselves at our very worst, and at our very best.
Only in the latter, do we see ourselves as we truly are.
Thus, the master weeps when the pupil finally surpasses. Not for any reason but: The master can finally be seen in one’s whole.
Only a master can recognize another master. Only the artist sees all the details in the paint. Only the Deity knows how lonely it is on the Throne.
*Ahem* okay, I’ve finally calmed down. Amazing art, epic as all hell and well worth the wait. She’s gorgeous too.
For my part I hope this is all her: the white fire, lightning and glint of power on her brow are all there before she even touches Solomon. I suppose it could be cool if she took his key, but I don’t see that her new form or realised power needs to owe anything to him.
I agree on every word, Preem Archon! I’m still giddy xD
This is my preferred take on it as well. White Chain has been pretty black coded since we were introduced to her form of cold white flame, and this . . . human shaped form very closely resembles that. The suggestions that has Soloman’s dna and thats why she looks like this seem unlikely to me.
It was stated way back in previous books that White Chain knew one of the names of Royalty/syllables of YISUN already.
In that case, she WOULDN’T owe anything to Solomon David. They would simply be two individuals who both knew the same name of Royalty, and White Chain simply claimed an aspect of power of Yisun that she was already attuned with, likely long before Solomon David was even born.
As for her appearance, I think it’s possible she might remind him of his wife or daughters in some way, providing enough of a shock that his Ki Rata concentration is disrupted long enough for him to be defeated.
But, again, she’s always been portrayed as black when out of her shell. And this past book she’s repeatedly reminded everyone that “this is not my body”–and now she’s constructed a body that aligns with her mental image.
As White Chain herself says–this isn’t about you (Solomon David), it’s about HER.
F
F…FFFF… FUCKING HELL
Absolutely. Fucking. ROYAL.
Abaddon, man, you’ve outdone yourself. Cheers.
A lot of comments are pointing to White Chain’s corporeal form’s resemblance to Solomon and wondering about its implications, but I’m not entirely sure the “resemblance” is intended? To me she looks like a flesh and blood version of her angelic form. The most obvious similarity with Solomon is the color of her skin, but I’m pretty sure she was always supposed to be black, judging by her features and “hairstyle” when she is out of her stone shell. Of course, I could be wrong and there might be some relevance to the ways she looks, but I think it’s just how she envisions herself.
That could be true, indeed. Not owing Salami Dave even that would be majestic…
im with u here!! i was a lil baffled when i saw everybody talking about that like its a given, when aside from both being black & muscular there’s not much resemblance imo :0
I thought the same: The braids were unexpected, since her “hair” in her soul form has always been loose, but they make the scene more dynamic. Always thought it was really cool to see a humanoid angel with black features.
I must agree! It is FAR more compelling to give every part of this victory to White Chain, and to make this her moment of total self-realization without Salami’s ‘help’ in any fashion other than that he has been the oppressor who has given her impetus to rise up and break him.
Hm. I’m not so sure about that. While it is true that White Chains’ angel form has the features related to black people, black skin comes in a multitude of shades. She is not just black like the emperor, she has the EXACT SAME skin color as him.
Her muscularity, though, would be a false positive, I agree. Considering her martial training and active job, I would be more surprised if a human White Chains wasn’t in such prime physical condition.
I also considered if she had his eye color, but no. The emperor’s eyes are purple even when he is not channeling his key. Her eye color is much more likely to reflect the color of her angel form, rather than a connection to the emperor.
I’m pretty sure her skin has a very slight blue tint, and his a very slight purple tinge, also I really hope tje pnly ghing she got from solomon is ki rata.
Actually, I believe his eyes were briefly not purple in King of Swords 5-47, possibly due to him being surprised. Could be an oversight on Abaddon’s part, but the colour does seem similar.
Also, apologies if you end up getting pinged with two replies; tried to add a link the first time, but that seems to be disallowed.
The diamond on her brow does not seem accidental. Solomon David, bearer of the word Diamond may well have had a role in White Chain’s transition. Turning into a human is not a power any angel that we know has had before. Her unbreakable will may have taken hold of some of his power to make it hers. Solomon David wanted an heir to give him everything he has. White Chain has taken it all.
A white beam, apparently projected from WC’s forehead (as if she had a key), passing through SD’s head, incarnating with the form of Diamond.
I don’t know what it means, but it means *something*, and it’s awesome.
More than Solomon, I suspect she feels a connection to Metia, the first human.
I agree! I also just really want this to be entirely White Chain’s victory, all of her willpower and everything she’s learned leading to the ultimate realization of herself. I feel like it would be a bit lessened by Salami Dave having a large part in it happening for her.
All I want to do…
Is see you turn into…
A giant woman.
A GIANT WOMAN
IA! GLORY TO THE NEW FLESH!
EVER FISTBUMP SOMEONE SO HARD YOU MANIFEST IN REALITY AS YOUR PREFERRED GENDER?
GLORY TO THE NEW FLESH
Not so far, but I know what I’ll be dreaming tonight.
Well done sister… Well done…
REACH GENDER THROUGH VIOLENCE
DID SHE JUST FUCKING KUNG-FU HERSELF A NEW BODY?!
PRETTY MUCH.
THAT’S DOPE AS SHIT!
this comic has been getting steadily worse with this femme fan service bs. i’m done. keep it
Donald is that you?!
bye felicia
eat shit
Why would you want people to consume you?
you’re even smart
I don’t like this meme anymore.
It’s insulting towards a fine one-armed lucky lady.
Light to your Saint, St. Felicia Patron of leaving.
enjoy your recycled garbage herd goon
Tell us who you are again so we can miss you being gone.
the scientist watching you crawl across the dish
Please permit the door to hit you on the way out.
you talk good one day
im genuinely confused….
Are you saying you dont like boobies?
What are you, a misogynist?
i’m saying this may as well be a plank page and that I feel the whole of the internet is lessened by this failure
Oh no. Wait. Don’t.
you’re irrelevant
What will I do with this sick burn.
no one will care regardless
Thank you, Preem Rectum.
Please. Stop. It’s too much
no one cares
I thought you were leaving? Please, come back, don’t go. We need one more of your sick burns. You mustn’t leave without having the last word on a webcomic.
someone, somewhere, needs a feminist
you responded to me asshole. which is typically how you femme toads behave. find a cat to abuse with your stupidity please
You’re still here? I thought you were leaving? Perhaps just bluster then if you don’t have the self control to be true to your word. I’m here regardless, only one of us threatened to be “done.” Perhaps you are not done, after all.
i don’t care about you.
Is that so? That must be why you reload, to keep chatting because you do not care so much.
SFCTT;
Do
not
feed
the
troll.
How is that not clear by now?
you are a hindrance to humanity and the world would be better off without you and the backwards garbage like you
I’m glad you’re still here. Such delightful zings, delicious.
you turned off replies? are you starting to realize that you should really hop off a cliff? I spend my life wading through human garbage like you. you’d never speak to me in person and if you tried you would be stuttering like the mental quadriplegic you are
No one turned off replies. The threads only allow for so many sub threads. Please, go on! I look forward to your next witty repartee. Will it be on my appearance next? Perhaps my intelligence? I’d love to hear one about my grammar and spelling mistakes. Do continue. And you’re still here for this party! How wonderful! The flaccidly frustrated, angry replies are a delight. I’m so glad you’ve changed your mind and want to stick around.
parasitic garbage
Come now, dear. That one was a bit pedestrian. Surely you have more creativity than that. I know you’re up to the task!
good one
You made the username just for this comment didn’t you?
no
You know, you’re right — this comic needs more butch fanservice! GIVE US THE BUTCH GALS, ABBADON
Making two accounts just to bait? What a chad, I bet you’re hung like a horse and have a girlfriend along with a great social life.
you’re a common retard
or just another one of the spineless faux men walking around worshiping your own brainless female cousins
If you didn’t know this was coming from the very beginning of the comic, we’ve clearly been reading different things entirely lmfao
clearly
So you’re admitting that you’ve never actually read this comic?
By the bouncing tits of Aesma what in the name of the wheel just happened! I literally have no reference for this this is so new and out of left field I don’t think this has ever happened amongst me kin.
It is always satisfying when things go as I have predicted.
But when things go so far afield as this, that is when I wake.
TRANSCENDENCE!
It seems as though my guess was right… in a roundabout manner. There was indeed a final, bombastic note, and what a glorious note it was. A manacle has been broken and a flame has been rekindled. An angel has become what she was always meant to be and the question now stands: What are you going to do now?
How wonderfully interesting.
To those in the audience not capable of slicing time, they are going to be very confused by this sudden appearance.
Yeah, it’ll look like a flash of light and possibly a sonic boom. Kind of a shame to hide the whole transcendance in bulletspeed.
WHOA, transcendencion!
Can I just say.
Much respect has been given the thighs.
Much respect has been given the heavenly transformation and the sublime perfection of form.
Can I just say.
THEM FRECKLES MAKE HER SO ADORABLE.
Yeah no kidding, i love freckles. But them thighs doe, they can crush galaxies i swear.
Say what you want, I’m in love with that tiny, bright Atum flame in the last panel.
She is bright.
SHAKE THE UNIVERSE UNTIL ITS SHAPE FITS THEE, ASCEND TO THE NEW FLESH
aaAAAAAA. AHAHAHA. HAAAA, OH MAN, KICK HIS ASS.
uh, for YISUN.
Forty-six and two like a mofo.
Appropos. Excellent.
Glad somebody got it!
BAM
Black
Angels
Matter
Literally stole my breath… I have yet to be able to close my mouth…
He copied all of her styles, so she turned around and copied his. An angel spitting in the face of a god. Lucifer would be proud.
Bravo!
YOU GOT A NEW DAUGHTER NOW AND HER MOMMA IS KUNG-FU
Thanks for making such an amazing comic.
We continue to witness that which would have once been called unfathomable. Our gaze remains unerring, and we eagerly await further observations.
These are, hands down, the most BEAUTIFUL comic pages I have ever seen. Absolutely breathtaking. Just wanted to break my usual lurking to say that you’re an incredible content creator and thank you so much for giving us a chance to see and read your work. Can’t even begin to describe the euphoria of reading these panels.
By the cold white fire… There aren’t words… I don’t understand, but I must know more!
Kasi called it – a broken arm breaks the world!
Ah yes this is the Pinocchio I remember.
That smile, though.
That smile when he realizes that the fight isn’t over. That for once he’s being challenged – even a little.
Bearer of the word Diamond, and god of the seven part world.
……Can i have her number?
Dude.
It’s 82.
Get a clue.
There seems to be a bit of debate on whether it is 82 or 83 now, as she temporarily lost her body for a bit a while ago, and just now lost her body again, but this time without going to the spirit realm to wait for a new one and just saying fuckit and making her own, so depending on whether the number is how many times theyve *died* or how many *bodies* theyve had or how many times theyve *manifested*
she could be 81, 82, 83, 0, or 1. i suppose only time will tell.
I know, I am partial to 1, myself! It’s just that being precise woulda, kinda, broken the course of the response.
… I’m a dork around beautiful comics.
Well AFAIK the number only increments when their ‘soul’ dies, and crystallizes to await the reignition of the flame and return.
White Chain’s physical shell has been ‘killed’ numerous times. Once when Delicious hit her a vacus needle for example but 82 White Chain was never killed in the way that 23 Liminal Blossom Punctures The Heart Of The Unrepentant, Deliciously did when she was broken by Juggernaut Star’s wheel.
I think… 83?
what a horrible asspull of a scene. enjoy your lesbian fetish porn disguised as a woke martial arts manga fellas, im dipping.
And the community is better for it, the less incels the better. thanks for showing yourself the door.
Interesting, does that mean there is no way at all to criticize?
I mean, clearly better than what he did there, but can a critique be head or will it be screeched into oblivion?
Constrictive criticism is one thing, but it loses all its power for change when such pointed aggression is used.
Interesting you push back. Not saying you can’t or aren’t allowed to, but while yes I agree there must be balance, we aren’t even at the tipping point yet. Why pull back now?
Abbadon has been rightfully criticised in the past for weird objectification / fetish stuff (hello bondage nun) and poor writing choices. However, he still writes a damn good comic and I think he has good intentions overall. Some people do seem to view this comic as ‘wow, hot lesbians fighting’, which is a shame since it has such rich lore and great characters. I don’t consider this page to be fetishy but, while I do love this development for White Chain, it does feel a bit deus ex machina. Angelus ex Deo?
Anyway I love WC and I’m happy for her and black trans lives matter.
Is that the latter-day Shahadah of the woke crowd?
“There is no god but goddess, and the Bureau of Land Management is her prophet.”
At first I felt like it was a little out of the blue as well, but in reflection I’d argue that there is a significant amount of foreshadowing that White Chain will grow beyond their body of stone, especially from Vigilant Gaze.
Oh absolutely there is foreshadowing, it was basically WC’s whole deal. But the actual execution of it was a bit… cheap, maybe? Yes it’s supposed to be surprising but there wasn’t much to suggest that this was even possible, never mind that it was going to happen during this fight, so the reader is kinda left out of the moment. Like oh ok, that happened, I guess. Foreshadowing is good because it makes you feel satisfied, instead of confused, by the plot twist. Maybe I just want to dwell in the foreshadowing stage forever, while Abbadon is desperately trying to get to the end, but I wanted more.
Ignorant and proud of it. Quite the combination. Have fun wondering why everyone’s having a good time and you’re the sour fuck at the party.
Alienate 6 Billion Incels
And so we say good bye to 1488 Incel Pissbaby Gets Angry Online
Better luck next incarnation
Ive said it before, ill say it again,
im genuinely confused,
do you *not* like boobies?
What are you, gay?
Really? Can someone PLEASE come and pick up their 12-year-old
Oh no. how will we go on without you.
“Fellas”
I feel like you underestimate the appeal of this comic to women, particularly the LGBT+ variety. Women in this comic are those who look, rather than being seen; those who act, rather than being acted upon; those who fight, rather than being fought over. For women, admiring the female form in that context is beautiful because we can feel properly *embodied* rather than merely *objectified.* In this case, White Chain has quite *literally* transitioned away from inhabiting an object, and thus become de-objectified.
And indeed, White Chain’s embodiment has been a long time coming. All the preparation for this moment, emotionally and spiritually, has resulted in elevation rather than degradation; and in seeing her elevated embodiment, we too are elevated along with her. It’s a pity that you can’t enjoy this experience with us. Being able to share in transcendence is a beautiful thing.
LET US NOW FISTBUMP INTO GLORIOUS NEW WOKE EXISTENCES!
My guy, this scene has been built up to since page 14 of the comic. If you somehow missed this coming in the last 500 pages, you’re a brainless moron lmao
Name a more hardcore way to be born than to punch yourself into existence
Hint: there ain’t one
Born anew by the power of the Punch Force.
Hera was born by bursting fully armed from Zeus’ forehead, if that counts for anything.
Hera? Or Athena?
Homie…
that was Athena, Hera was Zeus’ sister/wife.
Holy Frijoles!
As I am below the age of 41 I cannot view this AWFUL SMUNT
The stone fails, the spirit strives, the flame flickers, and through it all White Chain is true to her word.
Solomon is “Diamond” only by virtue of the key on his brow, but White Chain proves herself Royalty incarnate; Diamond is White Chain, not the other way around, and Solomon may soon discover what that truly means.
Wow.
Uh. We’re a classy bunch, so normally we’d offer the lady a trenchcoat, but we have only one and also she’s real scary.
The freckles incidently are tres adorable.
She looks surprisingly young, wonder if she’ll turn out to resemble his long departed daughter?
And It looks like she blew by/through him so fast, Solomon hasn’t even figured out something has happened yet. Be interesting to see the implication of The diamond mark. Also interesting to see how this factors into Alison’s development.
We knew this would be good, but this good? Oh well done.
Brava.
Brava.
Brava.
That I should be so blessed as to see this wild new growth, an angel’s wish being granted. Hail the new flesh.
BRO!!!?!?!?!?!?!? FUUUUUUCKIN’ YAAAAAS?!?!? WHAT THE HELL OMG YES WHAT WHAT WHAT FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!!
I concur.
Can we all take a moment here to appreciate that how appropriate White Chain’s full name is to this moment?
In all her lives before “White Chain Returns from Emptiness to Subdue Evil” might have meant coming back from death to protect Throne again but here and now it’s more true than ever.
Right now she’s embodying that chain, both in fulfilling the culmination of the chain of her own lives, and the second link in Allison’s chain of Royalty, and in becoming flesh and blood at last she’s returning from she’s returning from the empty void in order to fight Solomon, not simply to defend the system from evil without but to destroy the evil of the system itself.
This action is the literal embodiment of her name, realized at last.
It was noted earlier in the comments that White Chain does or might know one of the True Words… but Angels are literal Law given form. They are scribed from verses of the Word. I think your argument has merit. And ultimately, if White Chain has power over Law by refusing to submit, she now potentially manifests at least one true Word of her own, either the word she knew or the word she has become.
Is it Transcendence? Fire? Law? Love? Rebirth?
I eagerly wait to see.
Love this observation <3
White Chain: “I reject your reality and substitute my own”.
Uh, does White Chain know how breathing works? Is that a thing Angels normally do?
Solomon punched White Chain so hard she turned black
Nice
Metamorphosis!
dinnae expect that o_O
The egg known as Chainbreaker has officially hatched.
Her next reincarnation indeed.
So she’s black now? I thought she was blue…
Her ideal human self was seen in a much earlier page with brown skin.
Can you link?
Da Ba Dee, Da Ba Die.
Last panel: Ki Rata is a breathing technique. It was thought that angels cannot learn it, as they do not breathe. White Chain seems to have found, or created, a means to bypass that limitation.
Another girlfriend for the sorority chick?
I thought that was obvious from waaay back?
So I read this page and cried a little bit. Is it weird that it hurts? It’s the kind of pain that happens when I imagine something nice that I know cannot happen. She gets to punch her way to a perfect female body. I’m happy for her, I really am. She’s been through an eternity of struggle and it’s great that she gets to have that. But it’s something that can’t happen out here, not so completely, no matter what you do or how much or how long you struggle, and it hurts so much.
It’s not weird. It’s a pretty common sentiment. The Sharing Trenchcoats community is no stranger to dysphoria.
The beauty of fiction, the beauty of lies, is that White Chain’s not wrong. Stubbornness and dedication and flat out not accepting an unacceptable reality CAN work miracles. Lies CAN become true.
Lies like this one will be the inspiration for the people who, one day, will make the dream of perfected bodily alteration a reality.
We won’t probably be here to see that, which is sad. But until that day, know that you’re not alone, and that there will always be wise people out there who will know you for the fire within rather than the shell.
I had a comment written out but it apparently got eaten by the timelords.
Suffice to say in a future where everything can be cured, it will be interesting to see which happens more, the mind cured of dysphoria or the body cured that disagrees with the mind.
I pointed out that some studies seem to indicate that even transitioning doesnt help some dysphoria sufferers, and that many others who didnt transition just ended up gay.
So in the super science future, it is likely that you will already be in the correct body and wont be able to believe you arent, since all that will get straightened out before youre old enough to remember. Assuming that dysphoria even can be cured, or that we ever can get molecular organic body makers, etc.
Im a personal fan of genetic modification and think we should go straight to nanobots and grey fog and superhumans able to survive anything, because why choose what anyone else wants for you and just make your own? That said, as long as we are a sexually dimorphic species and we dont somehow fuck that up, cloning your own new humans from scratch might be easier than using sex in the far future. I mean, pretty sure if you have the ability to make kids out of base materials and dont require sitting around for 9 months to do it, few would choose to undergo that unless theyre into like, egg laying or something. And if the desire for sex for pleasure essentially goes away as our brains become more powerful and able to cope with our desires, sexual organs might disappear entirely and we might just have dopamine buttons 😛
Meh, too many possible futures to know which will happen.
Child, you have spectacularly misunderstood life.
There is a lot to say about what you wrote, but I am going to content myself to this:
I, for one, hope sex never goes away.
…there is nothing wrong with my mind.
Gender dysphoria comes up out of desynchronization; the idea of ‘curing’ it in place is elementally terrifying and vastly worse than the disease. That is not fixing a person: that is destroying a person.
I have seen a cure to this, and it was becoming who I am. Some have always been so, some have become so over the course of time, and some – like us, like White Chain – used an act of defiance, of breaking ourselves, to become who we are.
We’re all different, but one thing is the same of all of us:
Those of us who suffer or have suffered from gender dysphoria are not sick. There is no ‘cure’ which is not either wholesale ego death or growing into ourselves.
Like… I get where you’re coming from, I know you don’t have skin in this game and I don’t think you’re trying to be weird or bad any which-way, but *please* try to understand that this angle is rrrrrrreal bad, like, bad for *real*.
If conversion therapy worked, then the thing to be scared of is the DollHouse.
Of course it hurts, that the world is an imperfect thing, full of imperfect things. We tell each other stories, grasping at the pieces of the perfect world we’d like to live in, and that’s what drives us. Never satisfied, always wanting more. The gap between the ideal and the real is what creates the pressure, the breath, the motion of a living world.
Knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. But we’ve got to find a way to channel that pain into overcoming the obstacles we face. Focus on the goal, cut it apart, separate what’s truly important from the distractions. Don’t obsess about the path, just keep walking towards the goal.
Trans and sad. Many years ago i was in your position. I have clawed and bled my way to perfection. This is no dream, it is a reality that you must reach out and make manifest with your own hands. Seek heaven through violence. My existence is proof of this truth.
It’s monumentally hard work.
[…but it is a good hard.]
Sibling, that ache is known. It is deep, but do not fall into it.
Our lot is harder than many, and we must endure this ache and many others on our path, but we can always grow into who we really are. We may not be able to step free of the shells we were given, but there is so much we can do to cultivate ourselves, to bud and blossom what we lack, and to cut away that which is dead to us. Time is our great foe–both for what it takes from us before we can begin to be ourselves, and how much of it we must wade through before our efforts can be made manifest–but it can be overcome, and you will be victorious.
You are not your shell. There are those who will only see the fire of your soul shining forth, and they will love and celebrate who you are. Endure. Grow. Become. Blossom.
Sibling, be comforted. Even dragons know this pain, and we who are dragon carry the memories of Truth Becoming Real, for like all memories and experience, it is a treasure we can hoard forever. A treasure to share without losing.
I too am on the path of pain, the path of Becoming.
I will share something of common draconic: “Refthi Efthnauvra” translates as “Brightly Shining/Glimmering”. “Efth” is the quality called “albedo” or “gleam”, and is a quality of many gemstones. I am thus named Sparkle, Starshine, or Starfire, depending on which culture or dialect is used to translate.
We are stars, you and I, but gemstones need care to be shaped from the rough form found in stone and clay. We are stars becoming. Let us hope to see each other shine in joy, peace, and love.
Reach Truth Through Joy And Sorrow; Destroy The Fallen Self; Achieve Heaven Through Love! Thus shall we conquer everlasting.
We know your pain: we struggle to become, to imagine, something nice that we know can happen. But in this journey, as we align mismatching elements; not so completely…
One learns. We do not submit. One rediscovers.
We are a white hot flame.
This is our story, Sibling.
That which we make together is a great machine: for us, this can be safety and self-determination for ourselves and for people like ourselves.
I’m sorry this hurt so badly. I’m glad you got to see it, and it’s heartening to see all of us coming out of the woodwork to help bear you back up, such as we may.
[What you will have is not what White Chain has; that is true enough, though it is not fair. Still: what you can have is a glimmer of the experiences which underpin such transformation. The family she chose when hers rejected her, the presence of those who understand us in a way that the wider world will refuse to do.
Persist, o counterpart ours. You will never be without a place in this machine.]
We can’t snap our fingers, for sure. There’ll never be a box we can step into and pop out the other end our ideal self, the thing we want to look like. That’s… rough. It’s been rough for my whole life, for our whole lives, even as I continue to approach the thing I made and said ‘yes, it would be a fine thing to grow up into this person’.
I never thought it could happen. That -was- a story, it was an insurmountable fantasy, for decades.
Today, it’s true. Would that I could’ve gotten here in a single fistfight; I’d have thrown that punch a long time ago. Still, it wasn’t to be, and I had to be the despairing person I was in order to become the fascinating new thing that we are.
You can be who you are, if only you will. [We believe in you.] Maybe more than we believed in ourselves, having seen how impossibly far we can go when we act in defiance instead of submission.
Welcome to the family?
White Chain cuts open the gender reveal solomon david to massive applause
82/1 Diamond Chain Resurrects to Defeat Evil
Queen’s Princes of the Universe suddenly begins playing.
I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings,
I have no rival, no man can be my equal.
Take me to the future of you all
-Queen
Several things:
1. Salami’s face in panel 4. Heh.
2. Aww, I sorta liked WC’s design. Had to happen, though. That shell was bound to get obliterated soon as Allicio cracked her arms.
3. White Chain’s angel juice trailing behind her since time is stopped.
4. Abbadon’s ability to make the characters not look awful at such awkward angles. Wow. And fast work, too. (panel 5)
5. The rain is started back up at the end. This means two things: both everybody sees the results now (as opposed to later), and, more importantly: Salami didn’t get his armbands.
6. Lastly, panel 3 reminds me of something from Berserk.
Applauding this comment. You nailed all points, my friend. Agreed on all counts.
I guess you could say white chain is… back in black?
She got him.
She’s now the ruler of his empire. Does he give her the key, tho?
He wishes to abandon his key and join the SwordsWoman’s (Demiurge 6, Incubus’ Master) quest for godhood.
Since when does Maya want godhood?
this makes me a very happy being on so many levels
free at last….
Our good friend White Chain – if she chooses to keep that name – appears to have Reached Heaven Through Violence. Notably ‘Attained Divinity by figuring out how’, and purely by accident. She chose not to be herself as she was, she chose not to lose, she transcended. And ‘transitioned’ in that she appears to be physically sexed now! Good on her, though.
Is this not the action of royalty? A continuous cutting motion. An act of self-obliteration, to shape oneself into higher form.
Best. Bday present. EVER.
Huh. I wasn’t aware that was an option for an angel.
Presumably this is going to end the fight, else White Chain may find that trading Ash Armor for flesh has it’s disadvantages.
Twas flesh that broke her ash armor, so perhaps flesh needn’t be the weaker of the two.
But the carapace is just oh so useful, and you can get a new one when the old one breaks.
Well… flesh and the power of a king’s key to 1/7 of the universe and the power of ki rata and…
I’d also note that even the ghost of Zoss makes use of Ash armor in preference to going in bare.
What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?
I think she transcended into godhood
panel 5 : bruh, everything is a jojo reference XD
APOTHEOSIS: THE SHAPE OF A SOUL, REVEALED!
fuck, i love this webcomic.
Note the title to the page.
No subscript words, but a title on the pages. Apothesis, to become god.
I don’t think WC became what Solomon daughter, I think she became what he could not be. Royalty
Note the middle panel.
The terrible blade of want.
White Chain has cut her foe.
Why is everyone saying that White Chain is Solomon’s daughter or of his blood? Just because they’re both dark skinned that doesn’t make them family. Besides, white chain always been a hood girl :p
“1 Black Chain Is Here In Full To Subdue.”
“… evil.”
“Huh?”
“To subdue evil.”
“Nnnno, that doesn’t sound quite right.”
Talk about the HOT flame! (Note: White optional)
Lowkey I hope Solomon turns out to be a cool dude and starts shouting ‘yas’ or something to that effect.
A man can dream
It’s possible. The old man is enamoured with himself, but there are at least three possible outcomes here.
1. you… I HATE YOU
2. you… I LOVE YOU
3. you… remind me of my daughters. I had forgotten their faces.
Option three involves a tremendous amount of option one, due to the ember of option two that remains.
Not necessarily. See, a man who has lost all may still have his memories; that man died with his family, and the ember that remained is now rekindled by a sight out of his memories.
THEN AGAIN I JUST DON’T GET THIS GUY I MEAN WHY ONLY MEN IN GOVERNMENT SALAMI WHAT THE HE
bwahaha! masterfully done, pree chain. stone becomes flesh, flesh becomes stone. become a haruspex of the wheel.
I just realized the designs on her face and such mimic some of the parts of her former armor, and some of the scars.
The diamond on her forehead is roughly where the tuning-fork-with-hole thing from her helmet was.
The line under her eyes is where the top of her helmet used to kind of be REALLY early in the comic, before her eyes started opening. The lines under THAT are similar to where her previous body started cracking when she told a lie when she first brought Allison to see Cio.
The lines on her arms and chest are roughly where cracks on the arms/chest of her previous body where.
Basically she still has scars and marks on her new body that her old body had, although they’re a bit more artistic and symbolic. Which is really cool. Since all the other old/masterful characters have the scars of their struggles on them. So does White Chain, even in this form.
This body is new, but still has her history on it, while still being HER.
I… have questions. Others have been quite vocal about some I wish to ask, so I shall skip to Question 93: should the image of the nude White Chain be censored, or is this permitted under the exception for religious iconography?
Wh… why does that matter? Who is giving -permission-, why is religious iconography… what?
I don’t understand. I can’t tell if this is IC and weird or if you’re actually worried that a not-especially-explicit drawing of a naked person is a bad thing.
The realms of Solomon David are known for their exceptional dedication to laws, including highly arbitrary ones. I thus imagine that at least some of his realms will have issues depicting a live feed of an angel that has suddenly become a nude woman… although, as I said, this might qualify as a truly religious experience.
Holy is the visage of an angel,
holy what wrought it,
holy she who wears it,
hallowed those who admire it.
Or, you know, hot. Hot works too.
Well, Preem Formosus, there’s a convenient Atum lightning covering the most private of Pree Chain’s new female features. From an European point of view that would be enough, but maybe you’re worried about the American prudish regulations for comics?
*snicker* so it’s better to have even more sparks in the picture
Even in America there is an exception made for those most recently born.
It’s Solomon David’s realm. There is always a Law to worry about, usually multiple, self-contradictory laws.
I am unsure if you are aware of this, but this is the internet, you are allowed to draw and make whatever art you want, quite literally to some extremes (depending on country in any case)
Have you not seen the boobies earlier in the comic? this wasnt an accident. You can censor it in your mind if you must, i suppose, but if the artist chose to go further still even then no one would care, it would just require a “yes im 18” before viewing.
Pretty sure boobies are pg13.
Well, K6BD has been taken to print and sold before, so there might be some regulation about it, somewhere, I suppose. Maybe Formosus will explain his reasoning later
I have seen naked women in this before, yes. However, that does not mean it has been approved by the Demiurge’s Holy Censors. Because Solomon David is exactly the kind of person to have little restrictions on the depiction of violence, but intense restrictions on nudity and other obscenities.
And that is nothing to say of whatever Gog-Agog is going to do in reaction to this.
Ohhhh I see what you mean now.
Well, I’m sure Gog, Agog and Gog Agog will agree on praising the absolute unit of a body that White Chain has procured herself through violence.
I am also sure that, should Solomon David remain in control of Rayuba, and thus of the broadcast, he’ll insist on politely obscuring most of her new shape, if not removing the whole scene from public access so as to protect her privacy and maintain national decorum 😛
DID NOT SEE THIS ONE C0MING!!!
KSBD keeps me on my toes! I can’t even begin to guess what happens now!
See the eyes flash pink with hate:
“Death comes swiftly, for those who wait
But he’s like the rest of us, an impatient ingrate.”
With the lightening effects, I feel like he acted as a gate and basically pull her out of the void. Perhaps in the heat of the moment, he activated the key more like Allison did in the past and less like himself.
“It was the black angel, if that sweetens the pot for anyone…”
I just realized White Chain went from being a Stand user to being a Hamon user.
Hey, just as a GUNNM fan, I need to say the antepenultimate panel makes me say HELLO OCTOPUS LIPS
A toast to you, grand creature of YISUN. Be proud of this. It is yours.
Salami Dave *went out*.
From panel 7 to panel 8, his whole-body purpleness quit on him. Does that make sense as being indicative of ‘shields down; damage is now possible’?
Punching your own kung-fu angel progeny out of a broken statue is *likely* a little distracting, and Ki Rata is all about that focus…
The full-body purple just seems to be when he’s in stopped time or doing some wacky ki-rata stuff. Just means time is moving again and he’s not about to murder new WC.
I guess it’s time to change her name to “83 Thunder Thighs Crushes Watermelons Between Her Legs,” wew lad are those some thighs!
“HO THERE, FRIEND! YOU ARE DEFINITELY COMING, THOUGH.”
Watermelons? nay, dear friend, they subdue evil.
they *crush* GALAXIES
Well, OKAY!
tfw you just become an entirely different kind of person because you exchanged punches with a dude that hard
I am seldomly left speechless but this got me stunned.
She may have lost her shell of stone but exchanged it for a body chiselled from marble.
Hey, Abbadon, quick question: what the fuck did just happen?????
Dwellie, my dear, just bask in your shock. Es un milagro. That’s what happened. Nuestra querida Cadena Blanca ha renacido como debía haber sido desde el principio, y ha sido a través de la violencia de un milagro.
Reach heaven through violence.
One thing I can say, she seems to be doing pretty well in her “next incarnation”.
¡Gloria a la Nueva Carne!
Y se llamara Cadena Negra!
1 Cadena Negra Regresa En El Vacío Para Derrotar Al Mal.
Or “Sojuzgar Al Mal”. Not quite sure. Mm.
Derrotar is fine. And I’m partial to 82, still.
Or do away with the number completely
I’ll take “sojuzgar”.
Not sure how she mastered Ki Rata through the power of Feels? seems a bit of a mary sue kind of move. Ah well, it can’t always be good and the art is superb as always
i think shes just become a fallen angel, since her whole thing is that she wants a gender (which is basically the reason fallen angels exist in the bible, or at least one of them) and her whole thing is she doesn’t feel her cause is just so it would make sense for her to “fall”, I could see having flesh and leaving the angel dimension place representing that
She is literally an ancient martial arts master and Soloman was prideful enough to put it on display prior to their fight. I think white chain was able to see it and pick up a few tricks.
Less a Mary Sue and more of a Kung Fu.
Ki Rata is a Breathing technique that allows you to focus great power into your movements, giving you immense power and speed. Angels are primordial beings, aspects of creation. If one gets mad enough, surely it’d be able to manage a speed boost
Aeons are repeatedly shown to move at superhuman speeds throughout the comic, White Chain is a master martial artist in her own right that has shown she has remarkable control over her shell and pushes its use past what other angels are able to achieve. She is widely respected among angels for her incredible willpower. All of that leading to a moment where she manages a *single* strike at insane speed is remarkable, but not outside the bounds of previously established plausibility for her ability.
Pree Aesma
Ys-Asram (the Blooded One)
Ys-Prama, Hansa, and Prat Payam (who temper my heart)
YISUN Atru Vyam
Forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict.
*Practices ancient rite of the Beating of the Meat furiously*
I have never been more Gay in my entire life
I do believe that last panel is White Chain realizing the importance of breathing. While I truly love the culmination of this arc, and look forward to see how Solomon handles this new truth, we will soon get pages of Allison guiding White Chain through how to be mortal. Those I look forward to dearly.
WELL THEN…
welcome to breathing, girl, have a great time
I don’t think any of a were expecting that to happen.
…what?? How. And why.
Well that just happened. o_o;
BEHOLD! Sister has not merely drawn one drop of blood, but a whole body’s worth of the red stuff.
Whait what?? WHAT?!
WHAT?!?
Remember that time White Chain achieved Royalty?
Solomon David will speak as Kronar once did: “She… is truly my son.” And weep.
The cold white fire burns hot.
“APOTHEOSIS”
…Heaven *HAS* Been Reached Through Violence!
Congratulations! It’s a girl!
I think we got ourselves a kind of nephilim now!
I hear the Commodores.
Does anyone else hear the Commodores?
Definitely caught me off guard, love how this whole fight was unpredictable as hell.
…
Please don’t kill her off immediately.
Be thankful for a skilled opponent, said the samurai.
Any less energy and the material prison would stay glued to her.
He doesn’t look overly surprised. I wonder why.
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
― Albert Einstein
“Order is needed by the ignorant but it takes a genius to master chaos.”
― Albert Einstein
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.
In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”
― Albert Einstein, On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
White Chain is GORGEOUS. Oh my god you gave her freckles!
IF SHE BREATHES
SHE KI RATA
WTF JUST HAPPENED?!?
I´m totally confused.
Draw a single drop of blood and you get whatever you wish for.
Transcendental
WAAAAAIT A MINUTE ABBADON!
Were you such a masterful troll as to publish this very strip on AUGUST THE 2ND, DAY OF OUR LADY OF ANGELS?
Jesus Christ. Well played.
Okay. Either it was planned, in which case, cool, or it wasn’t.
… did the cosmos just say Trans Rights?
Is this what happens, when you fight a stranger in the alps?
I’m glad to see Solomon-David looking happy here for a change. The poor guy work’s so hard- he deserves to have things work out for him occasionally.
😛
You have outdone yourself sir. I love how excited Solomon is to see someone step into his own realm. Bravo author!
YYYEEEEAAAAAHHHH BOI!
Rebellion, the single right of the soul above Sovereignty, and in fact its basis.
I think, therefore I am.
I am, therefore I am not you.
Try me motherfucker.
Also, Love that I called the title!
I imagine this stirs the Primes.
Transition goals
Punch Dad, Self-Actualize.
Yeah, okay. Me too, White Chain.
That DOES resonate a lot, doesn’t it?
This entire thing is beyond dope. From his joy at her being able to move to her surprise re-birth. You are KILLING it with this. I CANNOT wait to buy one big ass tome of this story.
For all that Abaddon doesn’t want to get too Jojo in his postures, that triangle-leg stride of White Chain is peak “Hoh-Hoh! Then come as close as you like!”
WHAT IN ALL OF THE 777,777 UNIVERSES JUST HAPPENED
“This is the truth of it, and now I understand.”
“Hm…interesting. What reason do you find for this, 82 White Chain?”
“Before, I was stone. No matter how much I changed inside, no matter how my soul grew, no matter how much I grew-stone remains unchanged and unmarked.
“To demons, they change as their masks change-or so they think. As their colors and masks change, they merely become more of what they are-no less but no more.
“But, flesh? Flesh changes-in every single moment, in every single time. Flesh grows, flesh retreats, flesh lives, and flesh dies. But, flesh will change. If I wish the changes of my soul-for good or for ill-to manifest, they must have a form to manifest into.”
“And, your new appearance, child?”
“I needed flesh that was as much as I am, that could become as much as I was and more. And if only for that, Solomon David, I am thankful for your aid in my search for enlightenment.”
ITS MY WIFE!!! MY WIIIFE!!!
whaaaaaat!????? *HEAD EXPLODES*
24 hours later, I’m still picking up head-pieces from the floor.
And I realize I need to wait for the next episode O_O
Well, I understand whole symbolism and all that stuff, but damn – this plain human body looks so much boring compared to her original four-winged, fire-haired, many-eyed and glowing true form.
I imagine there’s plenty of opportunity for that form to appear when she’s powered up, as she learns to inhabit this new body of hers. A kind of Super Saiyan, but with eyeball hair!
Solomon slowly turns back in disbelief, golden rings fall to the ground, the facade of his pride broken. The untouchable technique no more. Someone wakes the angel and now she truly opens her eyes. Transcendent, as flesh itself is the accumulation of all states an angel could ever be, for in flesh flows all from plasma to the neutronic beating heart, and so much more.
And to be honest, she does fare better in her next reincarnation.
So, like, I think I get what happened. White Chain’s angel form went thru Solomon, and I guess activated his key fragment? And formed a new body thru sheer desire? and I think drew his blood by becoming his daughter in the process? Maybe????
Forged by fire and flesh and pain, lo a new world is made in the very instant of the old’s destruction…
Vigilant Gaze sensed it coming, a Miracle of Change.
But none of us could have imagined our SISTER White Chain would … BECOME in this manner.
I hope Juggernaut Star can see this right now.
[CONGRATULATIONS! Your WHITE CHAIN has evolved into BLACK WOMAN!]
A soul forged from the pure cold white flame, and for it to take on a physical manifestation of its own. No longer an Aeon, yet not quite a Human or Servant.
89 White Chain truly is no longer shackled by ancient traditions and old ideologies. The Sister has broken the status quo in more ways than one.
She had a good teacher, or rather, a fine friend.
deification:
Do it by/to your self
– with bated breath –
on/of you the universe waits/asks.
As others have already said: ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH.
But more importantly, quite aside from what powers does she have, is she angel/human, what will be the consequences, and whatnot, are they going to call a time out on this fight? I feel like both contestants need a “WTF just happened”minute right now.
BEHOLD
90 WHITE CHAIN
HOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHITHOLYFUCKINGSHIT
Hrmm… Nice freckles.
Don’t mind me, just *screaming* over how amazing this story arc has been and how amazing White Chain is and how fantastic this is as a capstone to her personal journey.
Seriously, having her gender validated through transubstantiation during an epic death match against a martial arts god because she transcended her limits through sheer force of will? A+. The best. Could not be more awesome.
My heart, it aches from the hype.
[golf claps] Fantastic! Absolutely superb!
“…and a seam from the bottom of my foot to the top of my head began to gently part, releasing a humming silver light, and with a pair of fingers I caught the edge of the light and gently tugged, and it came sliding out, and I held it there in my fingers, I held her there, and I saw my body lying in the grass, and I held the silver light in my hands as her mouth parted, as she lay there in the grass her mouth parted, and with a sigh she breathed in, and the silver light passed into her body, and she lay there, perfect and sated. I have Gender Dysphoria. With love.”
-Verity Spott, “Trans* Manifestoes”
You know, I’ve made up so much fictional scripture to comment on these sorts of comics, it feels pretty weird to be quoting an actual poet. But DAMN, it fits the page well.
“Trans* Manifestoes” is a great book by the way. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in trans-relevant poetry!
I just want to take a moment and appreciate those freckles.
damn i wish i could punch someone so hard i instantly transition
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Please Solomon, be cool with this and use it to grow!
Be funny if he just went “Nice. My job here is done. Enjoy dealing with Jagganoth.” And just nips off to retirement.
“What, you expected defeat would mean friendship? You… you have seen me SMILE, right?
Apotheosis.
Please, all rise for the rebirth of our sister, 00 White Chain Is Sick of the Patriarchy as an Greater Allegory for the Wheel Of Fate Which Crushes All As It Spins Eternally.
In the times to come, the historians shall speak of White Chain, the former igneous angel who defeated Solomon David, God-Emperor of the Celestial Empire and Grand Master of Ki Rata, Bearer of the Word Diamond and God of the Seven Part World. While naked. (which some scholars, who have studied the writings of Meti-ten-Ryo, believe to have been the predominate signifier of Royalty at the time.)
Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!
HOLY ZOSS!!! She’s gorgeous!!!
Fist bap is technically considered a blow. Enjoy your wish!
White Chain loses her patriarchal chain and becomes a proud angel transitioned black woman.
Praise the Lord!
Now we might get that hot AliCioWC triangle everyone dreamed about in the flesh.
There’s a lot going on in this update, but I very specifically need to point out that I am PRETTY sure that one panel is a jojo pose xD
This is easily the best written singular page in the series so far. Much like the Wheel, the Hype Train is infinite.
Well, it’s like four pages technically, so.
and the crowd goes wild
This is so amazing
Thanks for keeping this going, Abaddon. It’s been a wild, wild ride so far.
She. Is so. PRETTY!
I did NOT see that coming!!
Meanwhile, silence falls upon the stadium, except for a single voice.
“HA! In your GOBBER, ya HIGH AND MIGHTISOME NUMBSKULL! HOW DO THA LIKE IT, RIGHT IN THE GOBBER!? THA’S GONNA HAVE TO SWUN YOUR WORDS RIGHT U-“
I laughed.
Wow. I’m speechless.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow !!
I don’t even know where to begin !
Solomon’s face in panel 4, the epic fist-bump, what happened to White Chain, it’s all so much to take in !
*gains material self behind you*
nothing personal demiurge
My theory is that Solomon was so horny for White Chain after that good fight that he decided to generate White Chain a new body after crushing the old one.
Announcing NEW SPECIAL BOWL, ONE DAY ONLY: the ANGELSKIN WARRIOR LUNCH SET!
Relish a deluxe-size helping of Surebaet’s finest, thickest noodles, a silky broth, and double meat. Includes tea.
violent delights
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!?!
HOLY CANNOLI!!!!!
Whoa. Wow. Just when you think “How much better can this get?”, we suddenly soar into the stratosphere.
Abbadon, you rule the webcomic cosmos.
I just have to soak this one up a half a dozen times.
What a phenomenally beautiful transformation!
What an incredibly beautiful…woman angel…or…hmm…what is created from the collision of a disincorporating angel with the full force of a demiurge’s mojo?
Reading this is so much fun!
White Chan has drawn blood and now had gotten her wish.
First breath.
Make love, not war?
Solomon Davie has a new daughter it seems.
This was great twist.
OH SHIT!!!!
RISE, my creation! Spit the earth from your mouth and BE BORN!
I liked it and I wasn’t expecting this outcome.
When the unstoppable force met the immovable object, a new truth was forged.
And it’s really Off the Chain.
There may be more distracting things going on, but I just wanna say that I love Solomon David’s face in panel 4.
HE’S FEELIN’ IT
Also, White Chain’s startled exhalation in the last panel makes me wonder how well she’s going to take to these new mortal sensations such as “breathing”. Gonna be shocking, at least at first.
the first time you smell fresh garlic dropped into sizzling butter. Yes the worlds have much to delight the senses.
Pull on the new flesh like borrowed gloves
and burn your fingers once again.
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
So how new WC should be named?
Imani
Aliya
Diamond
Ebony
Jada
Precious
What. The. Fhtagn %,,,,%
And, by the way, cunning Abbadon lyied YISUNishly, I did not expect it to appear that early and actually showed up here accidentally, just to see that THERE IS AN UPDATE.
I literally understand nothing right now, but still astonishingly gorgeous, as always. And even, I might say…
*Jonson’s voice*
SHOCKING!
Confusing. Do not disappoint me.
Same feeling here.
She is BEAUTIFUL
SHE SOOO CUTE 🥰
Angel’s names seem to be important, this is far too radical a change for it to go without other associated changes.
Null White Chain Resurges in Conflict to Challenge Dogma?
Something to consider, his eyes are glowing with color up until the… snickersnack as it were. His eyes lose the light of his key/mana/power when she would have made contact. So I believe either she did something to him, or more likely, he saw her do something so exquisite that it resulted in both parties reeling in the aftermath of the attack.
Also, another thing to consider. Names you voice are reverberations in the air. They give others the idea of who and what you are. None but yourself can put that into solid form. None but the bearer of the name they believe in can give it shape and meaning. In this act alone, she has shown the world who and what she is, and they will know her name without even needing to hear it.
Salami alwats glows like that when time is stopped. Just means time restarted and he stopped using funky martial arts.
Pretty sure he’s not completely stopping time, just moving faster than the average eye can follow.
Feels bit of an ass pull tbh.
THE APOTHEOSIS IS UPON US!!!!!
Wow. Well, he did say he hopes she fares better in her next incarnation. It seems he had a hand in that.
I like this story because I can very much empathize with wanting to transition instantly and completely by punching god in the face.
hella
Those baby blues are beautiful.
Well, this is remarkable.
I am, perhaps, slightly skeptical. What made this battle significant was how White Chain went through with it in spite of having no real of hope of winning more than a moral victory, with every expectation of having to reincarnate. If the end result is she nevertheless lives, and wins a physical victory – especially a miraculous one – I cannot help but feel this undermines her original willingness to fight this battle in spite of the consequences.
The next several pages will tell, I suppose.
She had no notion that her first act of *finally* throwing off her yoke and standing against the system she had been perpetuating would actually result in anything but her immediate and summary destruction, why would that undermine anything she’s done?
OH!
the prize is your heart’s desire/wish, is this what she wanted?
Wish granting’s a bit more instantaneous than I thought.
Y’all are over thinking this.
Becoming human was just what her powers brought about. Her wish was for the Cornrows.
Didn’t he say that anyone who managed to hurt him would get whatever it was they desired??
i think she got that one drop of blood from him just now
and the energy made a body ?
From the way she looks now, White Chain has surely taken something from Solomon that would qualify as a drop of blood. Will she demand more from his pledge than just her miraculous new bod? Would that be unhumble?
Seems to me that Dave still has some big bills to pay, and Foxy Chain may be the one to make him do it.
My mind is absolutely boggled by the metaphysical implications of this one page.
What I’m wondering is what she did to him on the way through?
Is he going to turn around and make another of his pretentious declarations (pretentious in that he pretends that he is anything other than a very powerful thug), or is he going to find that she took something from him on the way through, and that losing it was unpleasant?
Why make her fat? Why make her fatter than HER SHELL? Why Black? Why dreadlocks of all things?
This is my first complaint. But this is big.
Do you SEE her abs?
Excuse me?
Do you have any concept of what muscle looks like? At all??? Secondly, why the fuck does it matter if she’s black, has dreadlocks, or is overweight (even though she still isn’t)? Learn to accept more diverse characters, appearances, and experiences in storytelling, and you’ll be the better for it. It’s a badass look for a badass lady.
Huh.
Well, this might be the thing that gets Solomon’s focus to be disrupted for a second.
1. If you think that’s fat, you live in a strange world indeed.
2. This seems like a strange time to get picky about body size/shell size issues, given that the entire run of the webcomic has been presenting the reader with physical impossibilities of all kinds in practicall every strip. Are you going to worry about how devils can fit inside those masksas well, or where the extra weight goes when QWuieen Motton transforms from grown woman to young child by eating a peach?
3. There really is no need to explain of justify the new character’s being Black, but if you insist and this is causing you to lose sleep at night, I might direct your attention to the fact that Solomon David is, uh, Black and this new character sort of seems in part his daughter, so what exactly is the problem? Not that it would be a problem anyway, and why does this bother you anyway?
4. Dreadlocks are bad because….why? What would you prefer – shaved Annie Lennox Eurythmics skull? (although she was pretty cute)No, actually, I don’t want to know. Astroturf wig? Abbadon pasting in adorable angle halo taken from a 1999 newspaper clip art book in every panel? (would save time by not drawing rest of character, just a floating halo. Similar dodge used by Gary Trudeau to conceal fact he can’t draw. Is you ultimate aim to have Gary Trudeau replace Abbadon as KSBD artist. This is an ambition that no one else wants to see. To be sure, you’d no long have to deal with body weight issues, ethnicity or hair styles, since a Trudeau KSBD would dispense with showing all of these, in favor of identical Xeroxed panel layouts and floating symbols for characters. But hey, no more dreadlocks!
Finally, people, on either the left or right, who insist on political posturing instead of aesthetics, suck. Uniformly. I don’t need anyone’s agitprop.
come on guy those are box braids not dreads
Why should she NOT be black? Especially when her soul form has always been portrayed with black features (such as an afro– admittedly, one full of eyes, but it was definitely not a white-leaning hairstyle)? I look forward to your attempt to explain this, especially if you intend to try to do it without looking like a sad racist. I’m sure it will be very entertaining.
Also have you ever like… *seen* a woman? In real life, and not in heavily Photoshopped online images?
Dear TOG, I must take you fishing one day.
Where is that fat you speak of? I see only muscle.
As to why her new body is black and with locks, it’s obviously because she got it from going through SD’s body.
I can’t help but notice the aura of people around Salami Dave that wasn’t there when white chain was moving past him as pure energy, to me that looks like a moment when his guard is down as has been teased.
I feel that he’ll turn around, go to attack her new form or be startled by it and stand still and either way it’ll become apparent that as she moved past she cut his cheek on the side we don’t see or something like that.
Also black trans women’s lives matter and white chain is looking amazingly beautiful in her new form.
Wowza!
I’m guessing what happened here is that White Chain successfully draws blood in panel 14. The prize is to have a wish granted, right? So either she deliberately wished for a body or it was such a powerful subconscious wish that it was immediately granted.
Regardless, absolutely amazing update and I’m eager for more as always!
Just from this all of us are winners.
“The Power of Youth Explodes” starts playing…
I’m going to guess that WhiteChain has NOT drawn a drop of blood but HAS drawn a teardrop, and that this counts. Diamond is hard and unyielding but can be broken by insignificant force at a flaw. SDs love and grief for his lost wife and daughters is this flaw. I expect WC looks exactly like one of them.
FUCK YOU NOW I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT DEATH BY SNU SNU
YES!
FUUUUUUCKKKKKK!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
WIELD THAT FUCKING BLADE OF WANT!
REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE!
AND TEAR IT TO ATOMS!
I believe that this entire ‘want’ thing is getting entirely too out of hand. But I am not fated to stop it sadly; thus I move on.
Also, she’s quite cute for a recently transitional humanoid flame to fleshy human.
WHWOOOOOOAHHHHHAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT!
Passing through mortal fear by integrity alone, Flame becomes flesh, and is exalted at last. It is an honor to witness, and this Aeon salutes from beyond.
So , she needs to breath. Which also means , probably , need to drink , eat , then go to restroom (what a disgusting necessity , when do we finally phase it out , darn ) . Poor angel. Oh , and she woman so there she gets periods , PMS , and all other “happines of being woman” stuff . Pooor , poor White Chain . My condolences .
Being made of meat does have some perks, you know.
Well, if critique is allowed and will not be screeched into oblivion, then I shall try this.
In short, pretty weak, pretty pandering.
Look, this flies in the face of the lesson that Alice was supposed to be receiving back in 10-140. Yes, something “miraculous” was hinted in 10-148, but at the same time it was also stated by Zoss that she could not be saved.
This is Alice’s terrible struggle? Her terrible fire? Watching someone else get what they want?
Contemplate this. What if White chain had died, well, got all busted up to dust, but, drew a drop of blood from Solomon? What then?
Well, He’d have a prize to give but no one to give it to, and worse, a victory that as Zoss stated, would show his foolish delusions of control. His rotting heaven. A prison that is the world.
And then, that opens up things, an invasion of heaven like Zoss once did? The rescue of not only White Chain, but also the other angels hammered by the Juggernaut Wheel?
Cio if you recall, was rebuilt, but was a completely new person because of it, only fragments of old. But that was a repair from without.
There could have been something grand, something like an Angel deciding what the shell would look like, deciding to proudly carve their own identity.
But now we can’t, as there were checkboxes to be ticked, a vocal minority to appease, and so we skip all that and land right at the end.
Bah, pandering. The only vaguely amusing thing is that in theory since the body resembles Solomon’s, and no doubt will have bloodied the man, that he in theory will abdicate and give the throne to the former White chain, who will no doubt be either a Davina, or Salome.
Aside of that, pretty weak, and pretty pandering.
‘she can’t be saved’ is not actually what you read, whether or not it is what you understood from your reading.
Zoss said ‘*You* cannot save her.’ complete with ‘you’ being in italics. That’s a very different animal from what your reading produced, and absolutely correct; White Chain was always going to do this for herself. This story arc is clearly not about Alice.
Zoss also spoke to Alice -just- as she began to show the first glimmer of a halo, in a prison, in a sunbeam, upon doubting the very efficacy of violence in and of itself. She thought ‘what if this isn’t the way? what if power isn’t power at all?’ and that was the first time she felt a spark that either of us can recall. Thus, it seems that the truth of Alice’s story is *not* one of violence, but of opportunity, of perseverance, of willingness to be vulnerable, of eschewing the very thing everyone around her relentlessly pursues.
Both Alice and White Chain pursue violence: through violence, one makes space for herself (literally, not figuratively, to breathe), and one realizes that there is no forward path in fighting and that the pursuit of power and control are *the problem* as opposed to the solution everyone makes them out to be.
We have nothing to prove about Solomon’s rotting heaven; he *knows*, he just said as much to White Chain explicitly. He hopes upon hope that someone will come and unseat him. He fought with White Chain praying that she would be the one, and look at his expression in the fourth-to-last frame. I can interpret that pretty easily as ‘uh wait did something just get through?’; it’s possible that you have already got the drop of blood you’re asking for, or even that White Chain has wrested ‘blood’ out of Solomon in taking a piece of him in order to create an entirely new mode of existence for herself.
This whole story has been about subdivision, about the terror of loneliness (while all strive to be the last standing), beginning at the very outset with YISUN breaking into pieces so that they can know themselves.
Breaking as a path of becoming is *a thing* here; it’s not the first time we’ve seen it, but that is a central theme of the work rather than the primary character conceit of a washed-up old god whose days of possibility are far behind him.
This is -much- more in-character (and not at all pandering, our own biases hopefully aside) than the example you gave, both for Abbadon as an author and for KSBD as a continuing storyline and the Wheel as a piece of persistent worldbuilding.
Your suggestion is more like flogging a point that Solomon drives home every time he’s onscreen; his rotting prison *is* constantly all about him, more a companion to him than his halo, and at no point is he seen to be anything other than fundamentally empty as a result. We know that; it’s right in the text.
The culmination of White Chain’s disharmonious body/soul discrepancy is frankly phenomenal, and a whole new mode for her is much more interesting than her exit-stage-left, only to return in a later age. Or, for example, for having a vessel rebuilt by her friends, such to return to ‘life’ as a warrior… despite the fact that Allison is beginning to understand that her power is in sharing and not in perpetuating conflict (which insists, as always, upon itself).
I can see this speaking to a cis dude a lot less than it does to me, like… I get that. But experiences which are not yours and which differ from your expectations are not weak as a result of that difference; just the opposite. White Chain has had much to withstand, not least of which is weathering criticism regarding her fundamental self leveled at her every time she appears.
That speaks to -us-, and it’s far from weak.
I fucking *feel* that first breath after countless ages not knowing the meaning of the word. I have let out that very same breath, and I would know it anywhere.
So close, I must commend you on your efforts. And given the subject and characters it’s almost ironic, but mostly just amusing.
Most of what you said was an honest disagreement about the topic, which I really was hoping to have and see, but then you couldn’t resist and fell back to “my biases” and your assumptions of my gender, etc. etc.
As for your words, again it could have been so much more. White Chain wouldn’t have been dead, just back in that Angelic Penalty box, but, with both an Angelic witness (one who acknowledges her gender) and ostensibly an even more feminine appearance. There could have been a third side born, not just the old guard and the thorns. The great deviation that caused one side to become two could become three.
The struggle was the beauty, it was the point.
Cio’s struggle, Alice’s struggle, and sadly, White Chain’s no more.
Still, there’s only one real hope that could salvage this, but I doubt the creator of this story has the… courage to go that route. Pity.
You say you feel that breath and frankly I must be doubtful of that. You breathe all the time. I assume you mean the metaphor of breathing as you truly are, or some such. But she isn’t, as she isn’t an angel any more.
White Chain the angel represented either the third path of acceptance, instead of endurance and denial, or, could have been the first truly female angel, not an angel with a female form. The implications of that would have been boundless and terrifying. Could there be new angels, a new race? Would fresh eyes instead of endlessly recycled ones see things in a brace new world.
We shall never know.
As instead we have White Chain the human, the meat. No longer an angel, she is the result of fleeing being an angel, fleeing being what she was, denying who she was, and, finding solace as a human being. Female yes, but that is what I mean by the pandering, the assumption that gender, and ONLY gender, matters.
This will tell the other angels that there is no other solution, that there is only the duty, in one form or another, or as WC has done and fleeing even further than the other angels have done. Thorn angels still cling to a duty, even if it is different or abhorrent.
Oh, and don’t tell me “But she can still be an angel!” As it has been pointed out, angels are nuclear fire contained in shells. and even Devils barely manage to stay in humans for a short while due to their malleable nature and treating the human body like a mask.
White Chain can die now, not go to that Angelic penalty box, and she has what she’s always wanted to be, except that she hasn’t. Unless the story is now going to be about how she returns to being an angel, she’s fled.
Still, most of the story has been decent, it could recover.
And thank you for reply 2 Thralls of the Great Machine. Discourse, proper discourse is what makes the world go round.
Regards,
Bob
Hey Bob,
I just wanted to chime in here with what I see having happened, since we will have to wait to learn the mechanics of it one way or the other. The way I interpreted this is that rather than going the route of angelic reset, White Chain has created and transferred (somehow) to a different body at the point where she would have been yanked back to the spiritual plane. Until it is explicitly stated, I don’t think the nature of her flame has been altered. She should still be a white hot flame inhabiting a material body.
One of the aspects brought up in a number of places as a problem with the angels is their rigidity, particularly mentally. From giving an angel a delicate comb way back to teach priorities and proportionality, to what we have been with White Chain breaking her own body by making choices that run contrary to the “contract/law” baked into her physical form, breaking this rigidity has been a definite thread throughout.
Gaining a flesh and blood shell, as opposed to one of rigid stone, is in keeping with this move towards flexible patterns of thought / becoming more like mortals. I personally would have made the form separate from existing races, distinguishing physical body angels as their own race/group, but this could still work.
I would argue similar themes have been played out through Cio moving away from the natural chaos of the black flame by valuing things like relationships instead of the extreme self serving individualism of demons. Down the line she may end up internalizing enough order / distinct values to not need a mask to have a stable mind and body, mirroring White Chain’s journey from the opposite side.
Hello monochromaticprism,
We shall indeed have to see, but unless there is a retcon, we know what happens to an angel with no shell, as Juggernaut has shown us, a nice big kaboom.
And to quote a certain Martian, where is the earth shattering kaboom?
Ergo, one can assume no longer an angel.
As I said, there’s only one real answer that the author can pull off if, and only if, White Chain remains an angel.
A single breath.
Hi Bob,
Your ability to miss the point, consistently, and with such enormous confidence is… well.. spectacular. Most amusing bit of this thread I must say. I particularly like how condescending you are to everyone who disagrees with you.
Good touch that. Really drives home that sense that you believe you are the only light of reason and truth around and that all others should simply bow to your lofty insights. The way it distracts from your abuse of ‘logic’ is artful. The fallacies, and hidden assumptions of your ‘arguments’ are so deftly swept over.
Keep it up! Most amusing!
Well, someone has to B. Dobbs.
No one is really discussing this, it’s all lost in the noise of all the chanting of ‘thicc-ness’, or quoting lines from Videodrome.
And lets be honest, how many of them have actually watched that movie, or know of the massive negative connotations of appending flesh where it should not be?
As for my being condescending, well, at least monochromaticprism actually brought up a point, whereas you’ve not actually refuted, or disputed, or disproven anything of what I’ve said. You’ve only complimented me on how well I’m tolerating people like you.
And for that, you’re welcome.
Regards,
Bob
Either stop kvetching or get a room, you two. :p
I referred to our own biases – and when misquoting others it’s usually best not to use quotes as though you are repeating us – not to yours. I recognize that the way we are and the path we’ve taken makes for substantial differences between ourselves and others; my forthrightness in this sense is intentional, and if you see it as somehow disqualifying, I don’t know how you can purport to value discourse.
Yep, I assumed your gender. Felt pretty safe, considering. Feel free to correct me if you are not a cis dude.
It’s bizarre to me that you don’t see White Chain and her companions – right down to the one trucking around with Zoss’ key – as a significant force in the Universe (against Old Guard v. Thorns), nor that their process of becoming throughout the story somehow lessens them. That seems like dodging the point more than missing it. Further, the idea that she would be better off going through the usual channels which have so comprehensively failed her seems to misunderstand the concept of preexisting power structures and authority altogether.
As for an angelic nature, she doesn’t need to be an angel to be more than human. Angels are peerless combatants, but still, what is that up against Solomon? Nothing, and though Solomon is a demiurge, I do not believe I have seen anything which says humans cannot be demiurges, or that demiurges are inherently inhuman. Even if they are only the first, even if they are somehow immortal, demiurge is a status, a state, the possession of a Key or a Word, and their methodologies and constructions are diverse.
Also, the statement ‘different and abhorrent’ seems obvious but still uncomfortable.
The bit about fleeing from angelhood because only gender matters seems odd to me also. Are you under the impression that changing such an immutable thing about oneself is a method of *retreat*?
Do you consider Allison’s thoughts on violence (in that it is only useful to beget more violence, and thus nothing like true power at all) to be abdicating responsibility, or retreating from her destiny? It seems as though *that is her path*, not like changing from someone who fights into someone who prepares to fight but seeks peace is fleeing from anything.
White Chain has changed, without a doubt, but it seems telling to me (and this is where assuming your gender comes in, because it’s incredibly common) that you figure this is a reduction, a retreat, and not an act of defiance and a colossal blow against a structure from whence White Chain has, for eternities past and present together, never had the capacity to challenge.
Striking against a body of power – not a monarch in and of themselves, but the mantle of untouchability they construct between themselves and their society, their divine right – is a *grievous* blow, even when the monarch survives.
Knowing that -the queen can be killed- because she bled and screamed like any peasant would changes the way everyone she rules over sees her. Suddenly, vulnerability. Suddenly, all that inexorability evaporates. White Chain has struck a tremendous blow against a body of power.
As for Allison’s power and the way that this story arc is not about her: *Allison did this*. This is at least a partial result of Allison, sharing who she is with White Chain, and giving her enough heart to do something totally fucking unimaginable for anyone of her kind. She challenged White Chain in a totally novel way, and despite the fact that she did not punch the whole concept of Angels right in the face, she absolutely shook the foundations of their organization. No Angel has ever been otherwise. That’s -incredible-, and it’s the first step of a Demiurge (still a human!) coming into her true power.
And, with regard to breaths?
…yeah, I *do* know how that feels. Look down your nose all you like; I spent all my life not knowing the meaning of the word, and have recently taken my first real breath, *as us*. No bullshit. Nothing between us and what’s around us. Refusal to see the connection between White Chain’s arrival in her new state and a trans woman’s experience of same is not a rebuttal, and you have no agency in terms of how we see our new life, or how we celebrate a character’s who we have invested in and seen ourselves in.
As a secondary, much less verbose reply:
You can thank me for proper discourse by not treating everyone you talk to like a bunch of assholes, or us like our having an existence outside of Cold Logic and Direct Reading of the Word As Written in itself disqualifies everything we think.
You’re not the Bearer of the Word Truth, and neither are we, and neither is anyone else who claims to be.
The part that confuses me– aside from your insistence that speaking to people’s experiences of transition is pandering to a “lower” impulse, which perhaps is less confusing than it is *insulting*– is that you can’t imagine how White Chain could possibly have any further struggles after this moment.
First of all, she’s got to deal with the immediate problem of “how the hell is Solomon going to react to what just happened,” which is VERY much up in the air. Then, she has to deal with how her entire *race* is going to deal with what just happened– her existence may well prompt a civil war between the angels who support her and those who see her as a dangerous aberration. Also, she and the rest of the gang have to deal with how the other Demiurges are going to react to what just happened, and continue with Allison’s quest, which is, after all, still a thing.
Just because a character has reached a goal, doesn’t mean they suddenly fall out of the story or lose the ability to interact with the other characters’ goals and storylines. Even her own individual storyline isn’t *done*– with this goal being such a revolutionary one within the story’s world, its fulfillment will have reverberating repercussions for everyone, particularly White Chain.
The alternative to having various characters achieve their various goals at different points throughout the story is to either leave things unfulfilled (which is often disappointing to readers) or have everything wrapped up all at once in a nice tidy bow at the end, which tends to read as mere convenient artifice even when done well. In a work with as vibrant a world and as many characters and stories as this one has, an all-at-once wrap-up would not only be strange, but challenging to write without it being a giant mess.
It seems that, in an attempt to argue against “pandering,” you’ve tricked yourself into arguing *for* unimaginative, trite storytelling. Or do you really believe that Abbadon lacks the creativity to continue to challenge White Chain in an interesting way after the most momentous change in her very long life?
Your assertion that White Chain is “done” is just… baffling. You complained about people “assuming your gender,” but your insistence that *she’s transitioned now, everything’s done, story’s over, nowhere to go from here* really does betray that you have never experienced a transition or even witnessed one in real life, nor have you likely read much about them either, nor seen them depicted in other narratives. You seem to have quite the analytical and argumentative chops, but logic often does a poor job of filling in for gaps in experience, and also tends to blind the viewer to the way their own train of thought is twisting in upon itself. It’s a problem that plagues far too many intelligent and well-educated people, and contributes to those people’s vulnerability to manipulation.
So, until we get to see where Abbadon is *actually* going with this, please refrain from projecting your lack of experience and your inability to imagine a path forward from here onto the existing narrative. Acknowledging that you don’t know something is surprisingly empowering, and opens up new realms of imagination and understanding that I think you will enjoy exploring, should you allow yourself to access them.
You sure like to use the word “pandering”. Can you explain what makes it different from “catering”? Is it just when it’s catering to people you don’t like?
I like to use words that are applicable to what is being shown.
And as to what makes it different from ‘catering’, why very little.
In fact, a good example can be found in the free dictionary.
2. To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses: “He refused to pander to nostalgia and escapism”
Except here, there is no refusal.
Now, for catering, I can understand what you think, at least I think that I think I do so. As a verb, “To attend to the wants or needs of.” implies that there is a want or a need for White Chain to finally get what she wants.
And so, if this is indeed catering, and you have been catered to, where do you see White Chain going from here? Doing from here? She’s on a mortal clock now, unless she rips out the beanie from Solomon, and even with that form of immortality, she is Angel no longer.
And being Angel no longer, for she has burned everything she was, everything she could represent or become, she has nowhere to go next.
As I said, the struggle was the beauty, it was the point.
That’s why I call it pandering.
Bob,
I don’t think you get to decide what “the point” is. Not for others, and not for the author.
Likewise, dismissing things you don’t agree with as “pandering” doesn’t make you correct. It just makes you shallow, and lacking in any true insight of the world around you.
Carry on, though. Your commitment to error isn’t something I expect to change.
Indeed, Does the Fool recognize itself for what it is?, Indeed.
But sadly that includes you as well.
And while I cannot decide upon the point of the author, I can respectfully disagree with what I see. And you can disagree with my disagreement.
That’s how a dialogue works.
Please, tell me where is my commitment to error is. It’s clearly readily obvious to you, as you mentioned it so. And if I’m lacking any true insight of the world around me, which you must undoubtedly have to declare that, you can instruct me, right?
You do have an actual counterpoint right?
Just jumping on this with a question: KSBD is ending soon :(, with the next book. If that 5th book ended with “and the heroes won and everything was perfect”, you would feel cheated, right? (I know I would).
If the 5th book ended with “the heroes ‘won’ but their struggles for justice/peace/whatever are not yet over and they must continue to work for their goals, as we all must to create a better world)”, would you see that as pandering?
If the 5th book ended with “the heroes didn’t ‘win’, but are still alive and can keep struggling, as we all must to create a better world”, would you find that satisfactory?
Or would you only like the ending if the 5th book ended as “they lost, and the cycle begins anew”?
I’m not attacking you for which one (or ones!) you’d like–with different media I’ve landed in different places on this sorta sliding-scale-of-happy-endings myself! I just want to know where you are for KSBD. (I would probably be varying degrees of satisfied with any but the first one).
(You can also say none-of-the-above, those scenarios were not meant to be exhaustive lol! I’d love to hear what “ending state(s)” you’d like to see!)
31 Dragon Eats Mayfly, that is indeed something that worries me.
I, under a different name, was quite against the one year time passing, as it removed Alice from being our gateway into the new and bizarre world that we were seeing.
Now that she’s been there a year, we no longer have that, and the people, the actions, and all of that cannot venture too far into the depths of the uncanny like before. No more eating little blue demons while being friends with a big blue demon and so on. When has anyone been called “Preem”?
And then we get a tournament battle.
It’s becoming more and more digestible, more… catering, to bring this back to Amelie W’s initial response to mine.
As for if it ends on the fifth book, that’s something I’m not too worried about. It’s a webcomic, and those can go on for quite a long time, whether as one story or many.
But to answer your question, IF it ended on the 5th book, five of seven demiurges met, the best ending I could see would be something more along the lines of either a retreat to earth due to a tragedy, leading to an uncertain future, or, a breaking of the seven demiurges down to three, then to one, and then something more out of the last question.
Most creation stories of such a cyclical nature end as thus.
I hope this answered you adequately 31 Dragon Eats Mayfly, but if not, I’ll try again.
Regards,
Bob
Thanks for the prompt response! I was really asking you that question with an ulterior motive–if the KSBD ended in either of your “best endings”, would that not be catering (in your definition) to your own feeling, wants, or needs?
I think catering/pandering are weighty accusations to throw against any media: personally, I don’t think either happen unless by giving the audience (or parts of the audience) what they want the author subverts their own work and narrative. (Making the audience want something is in some ways an essential part of any good art, right?)
And in this case, I don’t think Abbadon has subverted their work. When we meet White Chain, she is a by-the-book servant of the law, in denial about her own discomfort within the law. Her first actions with Allison are about returning things to the status quo–she seeks to return the Key of Kings to prevent universal war.
Her first step in her struggle is when she acknowledges (after meeting Metatron) that the status quo is not good: things must change. Specifically, she mentions how while she may not agree with the royalists and the thorns, she thinks action (struggle) is better then the complacency of the non-aligned angels. (Book 2, 3-59)
White Chain’s next step in her struggle comes around when Juggernaut and her enter Mottom’s palace, and she makes a commitment to defend life in her struggle (B2, 5-85).
She doesn’t get a ton of character development in Book 3, but we do get a interesting angry outburst from her about that conflict between the supposedly immutable nature of angels, her growing humanity, (B3 6-67) and the growing need for change (and her prior commitment to protecting life, as Nyave stops her!) (B3 7-80 to 7-81).
In Book 4, White Chain starts off as still largely cautious of change: she sees Allison as reckless, she is wondering whether she is doing the right thing, and she even forgets her oath on the comb of Prim (B4 9-120 to 121)–partly because she misunderstands Vigilant’s advice in 9-106; as she doesn’t realize that she too is a work of god.
This prompts her to take the next step in her struggle by acknowledging that the problem of the current system is not just within the non-aligned angels, or even all angels, but the Wheel itself–Solomon David, the demiurges, and most crucially for this step, herself. She is that oppressive system, and she resolves to fight it with every fiber of her being (B4 10-137)
I think where you and I might diverge is in this next part–I don’t think White Chain has lost her flame (and I even think she still counts as an angel or some sort of hybrid, though we will need to wait to see the aftermath to really determine that), and I don’t think flesh is inherently corruptible–the universe would not be perfect if it was run by angels, and while Allison is inexperienced and hasty, she has a honest and sincere desire to avoid violence that seems unshaken by Incubus urging her on, or even her merge with Cio. (see her conversation with Zoss + Incubus on B4 10-139). I don’t think that flesh is inherently lesser than angels and don’t view White Chains transformation as a downgrade or a retreat–after all, Zoss slew all the Primes!
In this context, White Chain’s transformation doesn’t subvert Abbadon’s main message that you must struggle, act decisively, and understand that your only true control is over yourself, and those are the ways through which you break cycles (or perhaps systems?) (these messages are drawn from Zoss’s appearances, since he seems to be a sort of author avatar/mentor).
In fact, the transformation lines up almost perfectly with Zoss’s title drop in Book 2: “By Names she cuts the world as she pleases and she cuts herself into greater forms still. She is not shaped by the world, but instead becomes the Shaper…” (B2 5-95). White Chain has taken the step in her struggle of literally breaking free of the remnant of the angelic status quo that unshackles her (remember, “This shell is not my body” B4 9-124).
Finally, her struggle is not over. Her body is not the sole problem–the problem is that aforementioned system of fear and oppression, and even if she were to defeat Solomon (which, let’s be honest, how many demiurges have the main party defeated thus far?), the rest of the demiurges are still around, and all the minor warlords, and all the people who use their powers to control people, and all the factions of angels, and Metatron himself. Succeeding in this small way is does not mean her struggle is over.
Finally Finally, (whoops), while I think it could be emotionally satisfying if done well, I highly doubt this will end with a return to the cycle. All of Zoss’s appearances imply that the Rising King has risen and failed before, and that Zoss is trying to get Allison to break this cycle where he can’t, as “He who masters the wheel cannot Break it.” (B4 10-141). (in this sense, if White Chain is indeed mortal, she has broken the cycle of angelic life).
TL;DR: White Chain’s transformation isn’t pandering or catering, because it makes logical sense as a progression of the narrative arc of her character and while it makes the audience happy, it doesn’t do so at the expense of the story, but in service to the story. Now, if you reply to this tonight, I will sadly NOT respond tonight because I have a final I need to take tomorrow morning and I have procrastinated on my studying for far too long!!!
Thanks!
Thanks for that entirely unclear answer. I guess the dictionary has all your opinions in it and I should just read that instead of having this conversation. As to your question, I can’t accept its premise because I recognize I actually don’t know what’s going on in this scene.
Did I not answer the difference between pandering and catering? That was what you asked.
And yes, a dictionary is good for defining words, that’s what it’s for.
If it was a passive-aggressive way of asking me what I, Bob, would have wanted instead of what you got, then by all means ask me that directly. No need to mince around the question.
What I was hoping to see was something more along the lines of White Chain going through a living Kintsugi, and becoming greater in the process.
I was hoping to see an Angel finally carve itself into what it wanted to be, not flee from itself and accept the casting of flesh and feeble flame.
Does that answer your question Amelie W?
Not really. But it does tell me you’re complaining about not getting the thing you wanted before you can know you’re not getting the thing you wanted. Almost like the thing you say you don’t like isn’t really what you don’t like at all.
Sadly Amelie W, it is.
Going through that much art and drama to create White Chain in the meat, shows that the transition is likely going to stick. One doesn’t do that many pages of art and call it an APOTHEOSIS and then do a takebacksie.
As I said, I sincerely doubt the author is going to go the way of a single perfect breath.
Or in Amelie speak, The thing I say I don’t like is in fact what I don’t like.
Let’s see, White Chain is going through some magical transformation that’s never happened in this multiverse before, a process we can only guess at, for reasons we can only guess at, fueled by energies we can only guess at, with consequences we can only guess at except it seems she has incarnated in a humanoid body, in the middle of a fight that’s probably taking place outside of time against a guy who can explode suns with his martial art and whose mental and physical state at the moment we can only guess at.
But sure, all her struggles are “likely” over. It’s “likely” a cheap ploy to appease us nasty loud trans people, based on the timing with which the pages have been published. I can almost buy you’re just being presumptuous, rather than trying to undermine this gorgeous trans representation behind your fake polite bloviations.
Agreed that we can’t know what will happen; the possible outcomes are too many and the clues too ambiguous. One possible outcome is that White Chain *is* now mortal and will not survive to the end of the book. Solomon could still turn round and end her, permanently.
I’ve been expecting something like this. A while back, Abaddon posted a podcast praising authors who have the fortitude to permakill a major character and I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. This would be the exact opposite of pandering. (Where exactly *is* Abaddon’s windmill?)
And if the author went with your preferred direction, how would that not be pandering as well?
I think you’ve accepted the in-world logic of the angels themselves about the relative hierarchy and nature of the different races. It’s not necessarily true. It’s more likely to all be lies. All is YISUN, and all these sharp divisions, all “this cannot be that”, are just lies. The rules are self-imposed boundaries. All the races are described as flames, whether hot or cold, black or white, but all still flames. What if it’s instead a spectrum, rather than hard divisions? Devils have already been described as feeding off the cooler flames of the other races to maintain their forms, and I believe there was something about humans making too many pacts with devils might turn into one themselves.
Why are you so certain that White Chain is no longer an angel, or has “fled”, rather than ascended? The page title is “apotheosis”, after all. If she’s no longer an Angel, she’s more likely a god than a human. I think she has carved herself into what she wanted to be, and I don’t see how you could have read the comic and gotten a different impression of what she wanted.
Feel free to write a story that satisfies your needs, I suppose?
This story is (probably) going a different direction, and to label it ‘pandering’ because you think it’s an ‘easy’ direction or at the behest of some ‘boxes to be checked’… well, that tells me a lot about how you view White Chain and people like her, who struggle with feeling foreign in their own bodies.
You seem to think that struggle or difficulty are the core of ‘higher’ storytelling (though feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about your thoughts there), but consider: people like White Chain HAVE struggled. Struggle is their whole lives.
Maybe this part of White Chain’s story, her apotheosis, feels more satisfying and meaningful to them than it does to you, because they’re sick and tired of that struggle? Sometimes, it’s just nice to see someone facing problems somewhat like your own get that cathartic moment of total victory.
Sorry if that disappoints you, but not every story can be everything for every person, and not many stories in history have been something made for those certain, struggling people.
Where did you get the idea that we landed at the end? There’s an entire book left.
I have to say, your fan fiction is super predictable and boring. I expected White Chain to die. This is much more surprising and satisfying.
TL;DR
Two thoughts: 1. White Chain may have used Solomon David’s genes to create her own body. In that case, she may very well look a lot like his daughters – the ones who were murdered and who’re the reason he’s never ever, fathered daughters again. When he sees her, he may well FLIP comletely! That’s one way to make him lose control.
2. In the last panel White Chain is bvery markedly breathing out. Does this mean she’s breaking the Ki Rata timestop? Will they suddenly fall back into normal time? And how will the spectators react to that?
I think what we are seeing in the last panel is White Chain’s first breath, which is a very moving metaphor when you think about it: millions (billions?) of years old and finally taking a breath for the first time.
In the very first scene where Allison meets White Chain the first time, White Chain makes a HUFF sound, which makes me think angels still use air to talk, even if they don’t need to breathe.
So I’m skeptical this is her first breath.
Then again, White Chain has also smiled more frequently than thought so it might also be artist oversight?
Fascinating theory. And weirdly possible, given that she just sort of collapsed phases through him. Honestly the physics aren’t really something we know about since this doesn’t happen, as a rule.
Oh shit. Could that… count??? As spilling a drop of his blood??
BTW, I love the look on SD’s face in the fourth panel. He looks like he’s loving the fact that WC is surprising him AGAIN by moving in his Ki Rata timestop.
Oh, and what’s happening in that small black en white panel in the middle? Might be important.
Indeed. Trying to sort that out.
i do believe that’s white chain’s fist making contact with the celestial emperor’s head 🙂 to be confirmed in coming panels, i guess.
RETURNS
TO
SUBDUE
EVIL
After a couple days for this to soak in, it just hit me that being flesh and bone is gonna be a weird experience. Needing to breath, hot/cold, food/water and the results, gonna be a lot to get used to.
It will be worse than that monochromaticprism, so much worse.
What happens when she sleeps that first time? Dreams that first time?
How many millions of years of perfect memory will be subjected to the whims of a brain that routinely forgets, and re-imagines, and produces falsehoods?
How long until the next meal, the next warm bed, the next offered body, the next hit of drugs, becomes all that matters to a being that never experienced it. In. The. Flesh.
Willpower is easy for an Angel, they are literally duty and flame placed into a statue. Willpower for a human though?
There’s a reason why robots and angels and all sorts of beings being brought into a meaty existence in all the stories die horribly.
… right. So. Just finished binging the entire series so far and I’m blown away. This is, by far, the best webcomic I have ever read and I’ve been devouring them since the ye olden days of the internet.
Thank you so much for this, and I’ll be watching this religiously.
Cannot wait to reread the entire series after this book finishes and get to this part again
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil between her THUNDER THIGHS.
YISUN save us all, she’s done fucking around.
You know that plot is for rule34 , right ? )
“Thick thighs take lives.”
Thighs don’t kill anyone, people do.
What a time to read this work. From opening to here in two days, and will certainly have to go back and linger through the story a second and third time.
White Chain asked for Witness from her God. Apparently, they thought she was doing a good job and wanted to say to keep up the good work.
Joy, confusion, and violence.
fuck i love this comic
HHH
The white daughter of Un has taken on the shape of black Yis.
The enforcer has unleashed her inner destroyer.
The multiverse trembles.
Well, I’m not paralyzed
But, I seem to be struck by you
I wanna make you move
Because you’re standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You’ll probably move right through
Me on my way to you
I enjoyed the well placed arcs of lightning.
Tactically placed lightning.
Now that is an angel!
Comment 666
So she is black? That should not be the strangest part of this chapter because she was not even a human before so taking on a human form she could wear a body of any color… unless it does actually matter. She was incarnated for some reason and her new body could be random or based on either her soul or the closest human body around and the one that influenced her change – Solomon. That is why I mentioned the skin color, she very Solomon-like now aside of being obviously female, maybe even with Solomon’s DNA or part of his inhuman power.
What the hell is going on!?!?!?! holeh shieeet
The resemblance is uncanny tho. Even when we know her form from previous chapters is what it is. How did that punch go through maaan so many questions.
I am viscerally excited at this newest of plots!!! I am sharpening my teeth for a ritualistic feast of joy as we speak!!! I dub thee “1 Thick thighs ends lives”
I love the grin in that fourth panel. That’s a ‘Ooh! They’re getting up? This is gonna be awesome!’ grin…
A true battle. An opponent to truly respect. A battle that will have -meaning-.
Finally, finally released from his self-imposed imprisonment. He was not evil, simply frustrated at others unwillingness to measure up.
Goddamn but this sequence is a masterpiece.
While I will be sad to say goodbye to the badass character design of 82WCBIERTSE’s stone body and fiery soul, I look forward to what great revelation can explain this change.